March 12, 2013 • 37 mins
Creating composite drawings of suspected criminals from eyewitness accounts has been around since a Frenchman introduced it in the 19th century. Despite the introduction of new techniques and software it hasn't changed all that much.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know front House, Stuff
Works dot Com. Chuck Chuck Chuck. Before we get started,
we should tell everybody we have a brand new animated
web series. It's awesome. Yeah, they're animated shorts by this
dude that was a fan. Started out as a fan.
(00:22):
They shown and said, hey, I'd like to do this
for you, and we hired him and he's done ten episode. Dude,
he's amazing. It's really very cool. Actually, he's one of
the most astute um animators I've ever seen in my
entire life. Like he just a little pauses and things
like that that I wouldn't have noticed we did. He
totally gets and then just exaggerates through animation. It's pretty
(00:42):
amazing stuff. Yeah, and the reaction to these so far
have been great. People seem to really like them, and
so we wanted to get the word out on the podcast.
Just go to Stuff you Should Know dot com, click
on the videos dab and you're gonna see one and
they're gonna release one each Monday. But it's ten weeks
and uh, pretty awesome. I think you'll enjoy it. Hopefully
(01:02):
it'll keep going on longer than ten weeks. Two if
Shan's arm doesn't give out tread. Yeah. Well, so thanks
a lot to Nicktion for the just amazing animated series
he's delivered to us, and thank you in advance for
watching it at Stuff you Should Know dot com. Yeah,
share it with some friends. Yeah, that's your problem, all right. Ready, Hey,
(01:22):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Just's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. She's done the best mood today. He just
ruined my mood. Like seconds before we recorded. Um, I
was heading in a good direction. I didn't ruin you.
You reminded me of some task that we have to
do tomorrow, Like why did what? Can you just wait
a full after we recorded to say those words? Uh?
(01:45):
Because that's okay. I liked, I liked. I wanted to
get it off my chest. That's Thursday, and you know
what today is Tuesday. He would be mad until then. No,
I'm saying I'm gonna put off being mad again until Thursday.
Put on a sunshine face, Smiley. It's kind of hard
in the serial killer layer. But I hate this place.
I hate this place. I'm gonna use every bit of
(02:08):
power that I have, which is not much around here,
and you know how that works out? This change the
very least. Can we turn the overhead fluorescent lights on? No,
we don't want that. Does it not work? No, we
don't want that one. Are you sure well? I mean,
what is that would make it more serial killer light?
If that's all right, we'll turn it off. Thanks Casey,
(02:30):
Casey as our editor again. Oh yeah, uh that's Chuck
and I'm Josh And this is stuff you should know.
That may have been her most slap dash ever intro.
Uh no, prepare for that one. Are you familiar with
the guy named Timothy McVeigh um. I do not know
him personally, but I am familiar with his work. So
in he uh rented a truck, a rental truck, packed
(02:56):
it full of fertilizer nitrogen based explosives of it, parked
it next to the Alfred pi Mura Federal Building in
Oklahoma City and detonated it and killed um oh, got
a hundred and sixty eight people, including a bunch of
kids at a daycare center in the building. I was
I remember seeing that as it unfolded. That was one
(03:17):
of the few that I was up early when I
was living in New Jersey. And do you remember the
view of that billings missing. It was horrific because I mean,
this is pretty two thousand one, and this is at
a time when he was like, terrorism happens in Beirut.
I just don't fly a plane from Germany to Beirut.
And you're gonna be fine if you're in America. This
was weird. I mean, like it was after the World
(03:40):
Trade Center bombing, the first one, but that one hadn't
gone very well. And I remember I think America felt
a little cocky. This was the first big homeland incident
that kind of shocked everyone. I think. Ye. So, uh,
Timothy McVeigh got away and it wasn't even a suicide bombing, right,
he got away Within two hours, he happened to be
(04:02):
pulled over for a traffic violation and the cops said,
you seem a little hinky, skinny. Um, let me search
your car and found some weapons and said are these
do you have registration for these? And I'm sure Timothy
mcbate sid some crazy thing like I don't I don't
see I'm I don't bow to your authority, pig or
something like that, and um, and the cops that, well,
(04:24):
you're coming with me just on suspicion. Totally totally accidental.
It was totally happenstance, as Congra put it in this article,
that he was pulled over, but he was ultimately found
out as the um guy who blew up the Federal
building in Oklahoma City because while he was in police
(04:47):
custody after being pulled over a um a police sketch
came across the wire and this police uh this, I
guess the highway patrol looked at it and said, you
know what, this looks a lot like our guy. And
in fact that was and this police sketch helped catch
the Oklahoma City bomber. Have you seen it was ultimately executed.
(05:07):
Have you seen a sketch? Yeah, it's in the article,
and it's actually like it's pretty good. It is. At
first glance, it's like, that's not that great, and then
when you really start to look at it feature by feature,
it's pretty close or maybe two things that should have
been changed, or when you look at other police sketches
you realize this one falls in the what will learn
(05:28):
later is a very small percentage. Yeah, the nine that
are pretty aren't accurate. Yeah, And if you are in
the mood for amusement. You can type in funny police sketches,
bizarre police sketches. There's a lot of image galleries out
there of just there's no other way to put it,
really bad police sketches, and hilariously, some of them are
(05:50):
in like there it's a photo of a police sketch
in a newspaper, so like they made it out and
we're disseminated and and um, yeah, well we'll learn they
were varying levels of competency and artistic merit when it
comes to these, so that's probably where you get. Uh,
did you ever see the one where they did the
literary characters? No. I think they gathered sketch artists to
(06:13):
do some of the more famous literary characters based on
their book descriptions. And uh, it was pretty cool. Casey's nodding.
Did you see that? It was awesome? It was like
a big, you know, internet thing a couple of years ago. Um,
I have not seen it. I would like to, like,
what is what is the Great Gatsby look like? I'm
also I'm fond of those ones where they illustrate like um,
(06:37):
like with photo realism a cartoon character like what they
look like and really like those Beavis and butt Head
sculptures are so creepy, aren't they? And I think everyone
looked at those and be like, wait a minute, I
think I knew that exactly. Yeah. Um, so we shouldn't
just lay uh. We shouldn't start the whole thing out
by making fun of police sketches either. There are some
really bad ones. Um. You could have a really genuinely
(06:59):
talented artist with um with a sketch pad in hand,
and if the eye witness isn't isn't giving it up,
well it's not gonna come anywhere close exactly. Ultimately it
comes down to the eye witness. The problem is is
we're going to find out eye witnesses are not very reliable,
and so it's up to them, the police sketch artist,
(07:21):
to figure out how to call information from the eye witness.
That eye witness might not even know they know the
sweet science that's boxing though, that's right. I've never understood
why it's called sweet or science. It doesn't make any
sense either way. I think that's the whole point. As
they call it a science too, combat the notion that
(07:42):
it's just like two brawling guys. That's like a lot
more strategy yeah, I'm not a big fan of M
M A, but I like boxing. Um. Okay, So a
police sketching has been around for a while. In fact,
there was a there's an anecdote in here about a
guy named Annabel Karaate you should say him Annabella yea
(08:05):
who It was a sixteenth century painter, a good one too,
And as a boy he and his father were attacked
by robbers um on the road to Cremona, and Karachi said,
you know what, I have a secret weapon you don't
know about. I'm going to draw you guys my hands.
(08:26):
Yeah exactly. Uh, and he drew the band of robbers
and apparently he did such a good job. The robbers
were immediately identified and the kid got his father's stuff back.
That's a great story, at least, whether it's you or not. Right.
The modern police sketching came about around the time of
Jack the Ripper. Actually, oh yeah, there were a lot
(08:46):
of police sketches associated with the Jack the Ripper case,
and that was actually one of the early one of
the births of forensic police work, which was actually founded
by a guy named Alphonse Bertillon. Yes, and the teen
eighties in France, obviously because from Josh's outrageous accent. Uh,
you could tell. So this guy was a criminologist and
(09:10):
he started he became obsessed, some say, with notating these
physical characteristics of various criminals. And he would measure them
and measure their forehead, measure their arms and ears and
just anything anything that stood out, you know, scars two
(09:31):
twos and uh. It became known as criminal anthropometry, and
in four the police there in France napped repeat offenders
based on his notations. And from that people started saying,
you know, what might be good to start noting what
(09:52):
these people look like and drawing them because that could
help us. Yeah. Um. At first he was just looking
to find repeat offenders that kept coming in and out,
because this is prior to fingerprinting being a reliable technique. Sure, um.
But eventually, like yeah, people started to think, maybe we
should start using this one particular thing called sketching, please,
(10:14):
sketching to um to create a what an image of
a suspect, a lead perhaps exactly. And we mentioned this
guy in our crime Scene Photography episode if you remember,
because he started that as well. Oh yeah, yeah, same guy,
same guy. Wow, we have a lot to Yeah, he
was he was an obsessive Frenchman that we owe a
(10:37):
lot too. Alright, So a forensic artist these days, Um
it sort of depends on what kind of outfit you're
running with. Um it could, because they point out in
here it was this Connor um Kristen points out that
if you're in a sort of a small town, it
might just be a cop that draws better than the
(10:59):
rest of the cops on the course exactly, who was
like a patrolman otherwise. But it's like, we need some
money to make the sketch, and hey, I took some
art classes. Turtle what a turtle of the pirate? Or
I can't remember the other thing? What was that? Anyway?
It was for art mail in art courses and you
(11:21):
would if you could draw it really well, you sent
it in and what got what? Like you some money too,
and they would teach you how to draw even better?
Got you? It was a mail in art art courses,
And I just knew it was some sort of a
scam probably, but necessarily there's I'm sure they taught you
some techniques. I just remember that as like part of
the simpler times. Yeah, me too, you know, if that
(11:44):
was if that was the only scammy. Come on that
and see monkeys. That's all you gotta worry about it.
Those were real there, Brian shrimp, and they were alive.
They were they were, but they don't have faces and
stand around and chat like the little cartoon depicted. Um. Okay,
So it might be a patrol officer that control really well,
(12:04):
or a civilian contractor that's you know, qualified, although I've
learned there is no um like official university degree that
you can earn. No, but you can go of course,
you can go to the FBI. They have a training
program for forensic art and a lot of private people.
Private people teach this kind of thing too. So um.
(12:28):
So it could be a private uh civilian contractor. Or
it could be you know, a full time fully employed
artists that you have on staff. I guess if you've
got enough crime going on, might be good to pay
that person on a yearly basis instead of like, hey,
we gotta murder once every six months. You know, like
(12:48):
Atlanta probably has their own sketch artists, is what I'm guessing.
I wonder. I bet they do, or more than one. Probably, Oh,
I don't know, you know, think, No, we have to
look into this. We need find out a the crime
in Atlanta. Um, so that if you are a witness
to a crime and you agree to do uh to
give some some eye witness accounts to a police sketch artist,
(13:13):
you're going to find um. Well, it's kind of like
the lie detector test a little bit. It can be
broken on into three parts. Never thought that. And the
first part is just like what you will get when
you go take a lie detector. That's report building sure,
where the police sketch artist is saying like, hey, how's
it going. How are you feeling? You're okay, everything's good.
(13:33):
You want some ice cream? Can I get you a
Coca cola? What's going on? My name is Day. This
is a pencil, and this is a sketchpad. Right, don't
make yourself comfortable. Um you can. You can throw those
magazines anywhere. Um, just just have a seat. I'm sorry,
I'm an artist. And and is there my cramped quarters.
I'm gonna go off and smoke some opium. I'll be
(13:54):
right back. Let me go get my beret. So that
is part one, wherein they just arm and make the
person feel comfortable. That's right, That is not true. Uh,
then what's the second part called uh that is recall.
It's free recall. It's basically like, tell me everything you
remember about this person. And apparently most eyewitnesses start with
(14:17):
the shape of the head or the hair, usually the hair. Sure,
that makes sense. Like if I were to describe, you
would be like, well, he had fantastic hair and a beard. Yeah,
and then draw, Yeah, they would draw you know, Zach Galifanakis, Yes,
he has great hair and a beard. He does have
(14:37):
a nice hair, didn't he. You can call the main
it's a main. Uh, And the guy would be like, really,
that's it. That's the free recalls over, and you'd be like, yes,
let's move to part three. Well this is but that's
a perfect point. Even though you're getting around about why
I bet. A lot of times these artists are just
(14:57):
like like, come on, and I'm really trying here, but
you're not giving me much besides horse face. And apparently
that's what a lot of people say. He had a
horse face or he had bug eyes or something like that.
And again, part of the forensic artists, um the sweet science, right,
part of their job is to say, okay, well I
(15:20):
kind of know what they're talking about, and they can't
just like draw bug eyes. They know that bug eyes
also includes like a certain kind of bridge of the
nose and like makes the cheekbones go this way. And
so if you say bug eyes, it can be helpful
too if you're saying it to an experience. Forensic artists. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's the great skill I guess to
draw those things out right literally, And so that's part
(15:42):
of free recall, where the the eyewitness or the victims says,
you know, here's all the stuff I remember buck teeth, um,
claw hands, um, but wearing like a high lace call
or like you'd see on like Emily Dickinson or goiter disco.
I uh. And then they say, okay, well, I'm glad
you came up with all that really means stuff to
(16:05):
say about this this perpetrator. Yeah, let's but we didn't
talk about the mouth. So tell me about the mouth.
What did the mouth look like? Did it you know, look,
did it look like this? Did it look like that?
That's a cute recall. Yeah, And they may bring out
pictures of other criminals in the database just to see, like,
you know, did he look like this guy with a
big nose or this guy with a big nose. They
might pull out celebrities and show them celebrities because I
(16:28):
guess and the person sam, it's Burt Reynolds, right, he
did this to me. But I guess that can help.
I think people operate on those terms in this age
of celebrity anyway, because when someone says, you know, what's
what does your friend look like? If I'm setting your
friend up, and you would often say, you wouldn't say, well,
he's got a horse face and great cheekbones. He would
(16:49):
say he looks like, you know, Josh Dohamel, because that's
just the way we operate because everyone knows those faces.
So it doesn't surprise me that they use that tactic.
I'm with you, you know, in yeah, man, it's sad,
but it's the way things are these days. Well it's
part of our the way we remember things, as we'll
see eventually. Yeah. Um, so you've got the the interviews
(17:13):
kind of done, the que recalls done um, and the
forensic artists has probably been kind of sketching. It's a
work in progress for sure, right, But as the work progresses,
the the the eyewitness will probably be like, oh yeah,
that's like starting to look like this person, but maybe
just change this a little bit, change that, and as
the this this kind of fourth part where they're working
(17:35):
together to kind of carry out the details. Um, that's
when the sketch really starts to pop. That's when they
put like the shadow and the eye or something had
a third eye in the intermaw swords where to God?
All right, so who who are these people? Well, again
you said that they might may or may not be
a full time employee. Should just be like a patrol
(17:55):
officer who's good at drawing, or I guess what are
their what are their skills? Like, if you're not an
artist with a pen, you can use things like computers, right, Well, yeah,
sometimes you don't even have to have skills. So in
nine a company called the Townsend Corporation introduced this thing
in the United States called Identicate Yahn. It is still
(18:15):
around now, there's Identicate two thousand. Yeah, this version six
point is what they're on. So originally Identicate was a
wooden box that had a bunch of little um, I
guess plastic like know what it was it called where
that you used on the overhead like an overhead projector yeah,
(18:37):
what with the transparency transparencies, and then that transparency would
have a certain type of eyebrows, and then another transparency
have a certain type of eyes, certain type of nose,
and you have this this literal toolkit of facial characteristics
that anybody you didn't have to draw anything to the
did the eyebrows look like this? Yes, and then you
(18:57):
construct a face like that. That's pretty cool. It is
pretty cool, but also created some pretty laughable UM images.
And we should say that that that that's what's called
a composite image. It's like a bunch of different stuff together.
You could also call a composite image. If a police
sketch artists interviews a bunch of different eye witnesses and
then pulls it all together, that's a composite image as well.
(19:20):
That that's frustrating, Yeah, you know, because people see things
so differently. It's like he had a small nose, he
had a huge nose, and the guy's just the artist
that the lady of the dude is just like, oh
my god, here, when is it five o'clock? Eye witnesses? Um,
so you've got identicate you have. That was the first
one UM and they've kind of expanded on that ever since.
(19:43):
Then and entered the realm of computer software. And there's
basically like a division among forensic artists computer or paper,
and a lot of people say why not both man
so um. For example, there's a guy in the NYPD
who uses nothing but um pencil and paper, Stephen Mancusie.
(20:04):
Then there's a guy named Roderick Scratchard who, um it
works for Philly, and he basically creates a composite of
all like a computer composite of all the features, and
then he draws a sketch from that composite, and um,
both of them kind of have in common the idea
that a hand drawn sketch is better than a computer composite,
(20:25):
and that FBI actually agrees. Yeah, I mean that's my
first question was why would this guy draw it after
he's done the computer composite? Because they found there's about
a four percent greater likelihood of it being accurate when
it's hand drawn. Yeah, it gives the ability to add
more nuance. And apparently computer software is getting better and
better at that, but you still can't compare to a
(20:48):
really good hand drawn composite sketch. And and those numbers
are right. Sadly, nine percent of the time for hand
drawn in five percent at the time do you create
what ends up being uh in terms of what being
accurate in terms of like producing an image that looks
like the suspect, right, that's recognizable as yeah, that's that person. Yeah.
(21:11):
So it's not like they take the percentage on the
number of people who are the number of sketches that
it actually led to an apprehension, but that's probably way lower.
Even that's the only way to create this estimate is
by taking a police sketch and then taking a picture
of the guy who was eventually caught for this and
comparing them. They have a good website that um that
(21:31):
I found today that had some of the more famous
you know, killers and then their police sketches and a
lot of them are pretty good. Yeah, you know close, yeah,
and that's what what you're gunning for. You know, you
can't do a photo real picture of someone because, as
we're about to learn, people's memories suck. Right. So, like
we said, if you have a really great police sketch
(21:53):
artist and a really bad eye witness, you're not going
to produce a recognizable sketch. Um. And the reason why
I wentness by witness testimony um is so unreliable. Is
basically like what you were talking about earlier, Like when
you're saying, like you set your friend up with somebody
else and you don't say that they have bug eyes
(22:14):
or horse face, they look like who And that's the case, ladies,
you're in luck. The reason we do that is because
we use what's called recognition memory, where we we look
at someone's face as a whole. We look at the
forest rather than the trees. If we were to look
(22:34):
at it as the trees, that what the eyes look like,
what the eyebrows look like, what the nose looks like,
what the mouth looks like, and broke it down in
those component parts, that would be recall memory, and it
would pretty much be perfect. Our recall memory requires like
almost no priming. Recognition memory does require priming. So you
could say, did he look like Brad Pitt? Well kind of,
(22:55):
but he also he looked like Brad Pitt with Steve
Bushmi's eyes, And then the sketch are goes, it's like
that kind of O'Brien thing they do. Yeah, if they
made it, yeah exactly, Um, that's that's um. That would
be a composite sketch. Yeah, and that's why if like
I could see Josh Dohamel walking down the street and
in my heart would flutter. But if I sat down
(23:17):
with the sketch artists and had to describe Josh Touhamel
for him to sketch, it would probably end up looking
more like Josh Clark, which is even hunkier. Thanks man,
But yeah, it probably wouldn't look anything like Josh. Know.
I started to think about when I read this, like
they use Brad Pitt in the article, Like, how would
I describe Brad Pitt besides you know, handsome and then
(23:37):
sort of looks like Robert Redford a little bit. He
I think he always has, especially as Benjamin button By.
That movie was Sad? It was good. Did you like it? Yeah?
I liked it. I didn't have it was touching, But
the whole time it was just like the inevitable sad
conclusion was just looming. You know. It's weird, is the
That's the second time Scott Fitzgerald's come up because he
(24:00):
wrote that short story. Oh really, yeah, I don't think
I knew that one episode to a Scott Fitzgerald. What
was the first reference you said that? Um, Uh, the
Great Gatsby was dawned by a police sketch artist. Look
at that. I see. I told you I'm paying attention
that time. You took me to the side and you
said you need to pay attention while the podcast, and
(24:22):
I just proved it. Okay, we can put that on.
So we're talking about memory, right, Yeah, and now it
stinks for the most part if you're well, it stinks
in general, but especially if you're the victim of a crime. Right. Um,
that's a good point. I think you should make it. Well,
you're stressed. It happens very fast. You're probably not thinking.
All right, I gotta get a good look at this
(24:43):
perpetrator's face and features, you know, and have you ever
noticed and like a convenience store, if you look at
the door frame inside, it'll say like four or five, six, seven?
Really you know what it's for? Well, I do now,
but I never knew it existed. That's exactly what it's
force for. A wine of perpetrator runs out, the person
can just very easily, at the very least, get the
(25:03):
guy's height. Well, now, every convenient store rubber is just
going to like get small as they exit or jump. Um,
so that's a great tidbit. But yeah, if you are,
if you are the victim of crime, you're not going
to recall it very accurately. Um. And one of the
(25:24):
reasons also is Congred points out that to create a
long term memory, it has to undergo consolidation, which means
we have to file it away, and the neural pathways
that that memory follows I have to basically be strengthened
over and over again. Uh. And that requires thinking about
that person, which you might not want to do. So
(25:47):
a strong memory may never be created, um, which means
that the eyewitness account may be flawed from the start.
It it might not even be there. If it is there,
it's also subject to a lot of infiltration by unreal memories. Like, um,
there's there's some work that's going on. Like they used
(26:08):
to think that once a memory is consolidated, it was done.
Apparently the guy who came up with that won the
Nobel Prize for it. Um. They've recently proven or shown
that that's probably not the case. That every time we
remember something, we're actually taking all of its constituent parts
from the different parts of our brainword store and putting
it back together. And when we do that it's subject
(26:31):
to infiltration. Um. So, like if you are a victim
of bank robbery and you're remembering the bank robbery, you
may also inadvertently remember a scene from a movie about
a bank robbery, and that detail might enter and become
part of what you think is the actual event that
you witness. That's a big problem with eyewitness testimonies. Our
(26:53):
recall is very fat it's flawed. Yeah, you know. The
other problem, says is just eyesight being poor is one
of the fundamental basics. I wrote another article called wire
eyewitnesses Unreliable and uh. They did a study in the
University of Virginia and it's not surprising. They found that
participants over the age of sixty performed performed much worse
(27:15):
than younger people. But what's scary is the older eyewitnesses
were more adamant than the younger ones. So like they
would have the face wrong, but be like, you know,
super adamant. That exactly. It sounds like some some old
guy would say. Um. And then they did some testing
with eyewitnesses and they found that even if you have
(27:37):
good eyesight just ten feet away, you may not be
able to tell what color and person's eyes are from
two hundred feet away, the eyes themselves like are just
a blur U five ft you probably won't be able
to recognize any facial features at all. And if that
sounds like, you know, big d five feet away, there
(27:57):
have been convictions of five feet away eye witness accounts
based on that, you know, convictions convictions based on that.
So yeah, what about twelve Angry Men. Yeah, good movie,
that's a great movie. Um. They've come up with this, uh,
this thing called DNA phenotyping that actually is showing a
little bit of promise, at least in theory. If a
(28:19):
suspect least behind some sort of um usable DNA, some
sort um, you can test it and you can say, oh, well,
this suspect has brown hair, brown eyes and it's probably
um um. So at the very least you have that
set and then if you could add to that eyewitness testimony,
(28:39):
that's a good. Yeah, but it's still in its infancy.
So we talked about sketching criminals. There are other things
if you're forensic artists that you do that you probably
don't think about a lot, but you see it a lot. Like,
for instance, this child was abducted when they were six
and here is what they might look like today at sixteen,
(29:01):
so advancing or a criminal who has been on the
lamb for fifteen years on the lamb. Or here's what
they might look like with a beard. It's believed that
they've grown out their hair, and this is what they
might look like. Now here's what they might look like
as a clown exactly. Here's what they might look like
as a clown under your bed. Um. So that's called
age progressed imagery. Um. And then they have reconstructive imagery
(29:25):
when you have an unidentified body that's decayed quite a bit,
and sometimes it will be sculpture even that they'll try
and put together what the person. And I've never figured
out how they know where to put the points, you know,
the little points that stick off of the skull that
they use as like a guide, a structure for the putty.
How did they figure out how long it should be
(29:46):
where it should be. I guess it's just a decision
by the artist. Or was this person really fat because
your skull wouldn't be this any different. But it's just
it blows me away, man. I bet they there's a
lot they know. As far as I bet it's not
just like surmise and they're not telling no. You can
probably find out take on these courses. So oh, and
then there's also ones where they basically touch up photos
(30:08):
of really really grewesome dead bodies if they need to
show the public something. Um chuck. If only nine of
hand drawn police sketches are recognizable as the actual suspect
and even fewer are computer generated um sketches to or are,
(30:30):
what's the point of police catching. I was about to
say there's no points, but there is a point, because
what it does is, like I said, it provides a lead,
It publicizes the crime, It gets a face out there.
Even if it's and then this is me talking here,
even if it's only nine person accurate, it's probably not
(30:50):
so inaccurate that you know, it's probably in the wheelhouse
as far as you know some features. That's like, this
is a white guy who had dark hair and bug
eyes exactly, So at least that put you in the
wheelhouse in most cases, I would say. So. Also, if
the witnesses all agree, oh yeah, he had a huge
scar across his face, well that helps. Um, just seeing
(31:11):
that in print the suspect has a scar across his
face might not do the same as seeing it even
just on a rudimentary drawing of the scar and maybe
the direction it's going in, maybe how long it is.
That's going to help tremendously as well, because you know,
we're visual creatures. That is certainly true. So I did
look up a little bit of the schooling and they're
all kinds of course. Is that one guy, the pencil
(31:35):
and paper guy. Yeah, I think he has his own
um website. It's very outdated, but he teaches courses. So
if you're listening out there, uh, you should up thought
your website might get a little more Boy, what was
that one website we went to? It was the cryogenics
won't remember? Oh yeah, that's all the worst websites I've
(31:55):
ever seen. That was pretty bad. But this lady, Karen
Taylor is a forensic artists and she has the you know,
besides the FBI, they're all kinds of courses you can take.
You probably should have some artistic merit to go into it,
otherwise why would you even be interested in it to
begin with? And it can involve sculpting, model making, computer graphics, animation.
(32:15):
Even so they're doing all sorts of stuff. You can
work with anthropologists and dental specialists and other forensic scientists.
It's like a team effort sometimes. You know that Um
you mentioned animation. You know those those Chinese UM, I
guess state television news where they do like the c
g I recreations of I haven't seen that big news stories. Yeah,
they did, remember it like anime. Heir. No, it's um,
(32:38):
it's almost like uh like instruction manual art um. But
they an'd be awesome. Um. They they did one for
that's the Steward, this guy Steward, the flight attendant guy
who like told everybody to go to hell and then
(32:58):
like grab two beers and slid down on the shoe. Yeah,
Stephen something remember him. They did one for that for
some reason. Normally it's like crimes that they do it too,
but they did it for that one. It's weird. But
I imagine, like you, you would be a forensic artist
in that sense because you're just taking your recounting of
the of the episode and drawing it. Yeah. Hey, do
(33:19):
you ever make note when you see something you think
might be shady going, especially license plates? Yeah? I do that.
I do license plates and I look at people and
think this guy looks shady and I'm just gonna take
an extra glance and notice that he's tall and has
long blonde hair and the horse face Sean Sean White.
(33:41):
It's never come up, but you never know. I think
you should. You owe it to the world to be
like a vigilant citizen and no CPR. Yeah, don't be
a dummy, that's true. Uh, let's see you got anything else,
Sir d V. Cooper, great police sketch. Who knows if
they's what? He looks like the UNI bomber. Yeah, they
didn't give him much to go on, like anybody with
(34:03):
a hoodie and sunglasses pretty much, which anybody who wears
a hoodie and sunglasses. Now it looks like the UN.
They got the nose wrong the big time because it's Harry.
You had like Jerry curling like a perm Yeah, his nose,
the brilliant of bomber's nose is like really bulbous. And
this nose was just you know, it was a nice nose.
Anything else, Okay, let's police sketches. You can type those
(34:24):
words into the search bar how stuff works dot Com
and we'll bring up this great article and um you
can see some police sketches and including the one in
timis Mumick. They with a photo of him side by
side um and Uh, I said, uh, search bar in
there somewhere. So it's time for word from our sponsor.
All right now, listener mail Josh, you're gonna call this,
(34:47):
We laughed, he cried. My name is Luke. I'm currently
a junior at Grand Valley State. Uh. I'm a bottle
deposit broke student, which I guess that's a term for
when you're turning in glass bottles for five cents, So
I guess he's also in the nineties fifties about of
(35:07):
the time. I'm broke because of this. I got a
job at the beginning of the school. You're making hunting knives,
and I just want to thank you both were giving
me eight stitches and a trip to the emergency room.
I always have the iPod preloaded with a variety of
stuff you should know episodes, so I'm prepared for any
situation of sheer boredom. It was while I was listening
to Why Does Music Provoke the Motion that Josh maybe
(35:28):
laugh so hard I was sent to the e er.
Oh wow, that's really something. Thirty three minutes and forty
two seconds into the episode, Chuck, you had just officially
introduced Ben so Lee to the audience our musical guests.
I was sitting on a bench using a belt center
to sharpen blades when Ben said, all right, well, I
can't wait to hear what you all have been talking about.
Then Chuck manages to keep it cool, but Josh loses
(35:50):
it and starts immediately laughing hysterically. I don't remember that,
I guess because we did it in two parts and
it was clearly faked and you just couldn't get it together.
I don't remember that, though, I like always, Josh, your
laugh trigger my own laugh, and I was laughing so
hard that my left knee jerked up to my chest,
only to be stopped by the belt Sander caught my
lower thigh and sanded a hole so big in my
(36:12):
leg you could see the muscle in the meat. This
is your fault, dude. I never admitted to my employer
that it was you guys that made me laugh so hard,
But a trip to the E R and eight sigges later,
and I still can't listen to that clip without laughing
out loud. I really love the show no hard feelings
at all. Trip to the e R is good for
a person every now and again. I disagree by the way,
(36:32):
yeah he should. Really that's a terrible philosophy. Yeah. Uh,
and my parents aren't too happy about the hospital bill.
But what's done is done well. Thanks for covering for
keep up the good work. And if you feel a desire,
I would not deny a pret T shirt that is
from Luke Newman. And if we can dig up a
T shirt Luke, I'll send it to you because you
can find him on Discovery Store. But thing I might
(36:54):
try to dig one up for this kid, but he
was legitimately injured because of our actions. Yeah. Thanks, thanks
again for covering for us, Lucan, thanks for writing, and
we're glad you're okay. Seriously, we do think you should
reconsider your trip to the e ER every once in
a while. It is a good thing. Idea though. Uh,
let's see if you want to let us know how
we've made you injury yourself in a lighthearted way. I
(37:17):
hope there's not a lot of the stories. I would
hope not. Um. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com. You slash Stuff you Should Know. Email us
at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and visit us
at our website Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
(37:38):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
how stuff Works dot com
Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know front House, Stuff
Works dot Com. Chuck Chuck Chuck. Before we get started,
we should tell everybody we have a brand new animated
web series. It's awesome. Yeah, they're animated shorts by this
dude that was a fan. Started out as a fan.
(00:22):
They shown and said, hey, I'd like to do this
for you, and we hired him and he's done ten episode. Dude,
he's amazing. It's really very cool. Actually, he's one of
the most astute um animators I've ever seen in my
entire life. Like he just a little pauses and things
like that that I wouldn't have noticed we did. He
totally gets and then just exaggerates through animation. It's pretty
(00:42):
amazing stuff. Yeah, and the reaction to these so far
have been great. People seem to really like them, and
so we wanted to get the word out on the podcast.
Just go to Stuff you Should Know dot com, click
on the videos dab and you're gonna see one and
they're gonna release one each Monday. But it's ten weeks
and uh, pretty awesome. I think you'll enjoy it. Hopefully
(01:02):
it'll keep going on longer than ten weeks. Two if
Shan's arm doesn't give out tread. Yeah. Well, so thanks
a lot to Nicktion for the just amazing animated series
he's delivered to us, and thank you in advance for
watching it at Stuff you Should Know dot com. Yeah,
share it with some friends. Yeah, that's your problem, all right. Ready, Hey,
(01:22):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Just's Charles W.
Chuck Bryant. She's done the best mood today. He just
ruined my mood. Like seconds before we recorded. Um, I
was heading in a good direction. I didn't ruin you.
You reminded me of some task that we have to
do tomorrow, Like why did what? Can you just wait
a full after we recorded to say those words? Uh?
(01:45):
Because that's okay. I liked, I liked. I wanted to
get it off my chest. That's Thursday, and you know
what today is Tuesday. He would be mad until then. No,
I'm saying I'm gonna put off being mad again until Thursday.
Put on a sunshine face, Smiley. It's kind of hard
in the serial killer layer. But I hate this place.
I hate this place. I'm gonna use every bit of
(02:08):
power that I have, which is not much around here,
and you know how that works out? This change the
very least. Can we turn the overhead fluorescent lights on? No,
we don't want that. Does it not work? No, we
don't want that one. Are you sure well? I mean,
what is that would make it more serial killer light?
If that's all right, we'll turn it off. Thanks Casey,
(02:30):
Casey as our editor again. Oh yeah, uh that's Chuck
and I'm Josh And this is stuff you should know.
That may have been her most slap dash ever intro.
Uh no, prepare for that one. Are you familiar with
the guy named Timothy McVeigh um. I do not know
him personally, but I am familiar with his work. So
in he uh rented a truck, a rental truck, packed
(02:56):
it full of fertilizer nitrogen based explosives of it, parked
it next to the Alfred pi Mura Federal Building in
Oklahoma City and detonated it and killed um oh, got
a hundred and sixty eight people, including a bunch of
kids at a daycare center in the building. I was
I remember seeing that as it unfolded. That was one
(03:17):
of the few that I was up early when I
was living in New Jersey. And do you remember the
view of that billings missing. It was horrific because I mean,
this is pretty two thousand one, and this is at
a time when he was like, terrorism happens in Beirut.
I just don't fly a plane from Germany to Beirut.
And you're gonna be fine if you're in America. This
was weird. I mean, like it was after the World
(03:40):
Trade Center bombing, the first one, but that one hadn't
gone very well. And I remember I think America felt
a little cocky. This was the first big homeland incident
that kind of shocked everyone. I think. Ye. So, uh,
Timothy McVeigh got away and it wasn't even a suicide bombing, right,
he got away Within two hours, he happened to be
(04:02):
pulled over for a traffic violation and the cops said,
you seem a little hinky, skinny. Um, let me search
your car and found some weapons and said are these
do you have registration for these? And I'm sure Timothy
mcbate sid some crazy thing like I don't I don't
see I'm I don't bow to your authority, pig or
something like that, and um, and the cops that, well,
(04:24):
you're coming with me just on suspicion. Totally totally accidental.
It was totally happenstance, as Congra put it in this article,
that he was pulled over, but he was ultimately found
out as the um guy who blew up the Federal
building in Oklahoma City because while he was in police
(04:47):
custody after being pulled over a um a police sketch
came across the wire and this police uh this, I
guess the highway patrol looked at it and said, you
know what, this looks a lot like our guy. And
in fact that was and this police sketch helped catch
the Oklahoma City bomber. Have you seen it was ultimately executed.
(05:07):
Have you seen a sketch? Yeah, it's in the article,
and it's actually like it's pretty good. It is. At
first glance, it's like, that's not that great, and then
when you really start to look at it feature by feature,
it's pretty close or maybe two things that should have
been changed, or when you look at other police sketches
you realize this one falls in the what will learn
(05:28):
later is a very small percentage. Yeah, the nine that
are pretty aren't accurate. Yeah, And if you are in
the mood for amusement. You can type in funny police sketches,
bizarre police sketches. There's a lot of image galleries out
there of just there's no other way to put it,
really bad police sketches, and hilariously, some of them are
(05:50):
in like there it's a photo of a police sketch
in a newspaper, so like they made it out and
we're disseminated and and um, yeah, well we'll learn they
were varying levels of competency and artistic merit when it
comes to these, so that's probably where you get. Uh,
did you ever see the one where they did the
literary characters? No. I think they gathered sketch artists to
(06:13):
do some of the more famous literary characters based on
their book descriptions. And uh, it was pretty cool. Casey's nodding.
Did you see that? It was awesome? It was like
a big, you know, internet thing a couple of years ago. Um,
I have not seen it. I would like to, like,
what is what is the Great Gatsby look like? I'm
also I'm fond of those ones where they illustrate like um,
(06:37):
like with photo realism a cartoon character like what they
look like and really like those Beavis and butt Head
sculptures are so creepy, aren't they? And I think everyone
looked at those and be like, wait a minute, I
think I knew that exactly. Yeah. Um, so we shouldn't
just lay uh. We shouldn't start the whole thing out
by making fun of police sketches either. There are some
really bad ones. Um. You could have a really genuinely
(06:59):
talented artist with um with a sketch pad in hand,
and if the eye witness isn't isn't giving it up,
well it's not gonna come anywhere close exactly. Ultimately it
comes down to the eye witness. The problem is is
we're going to find out eye witnesses are not very reliable,
and so it's up to them, the police sketch artist,
(07:21):
to figure out how to call information from the eye witness.
That eye witness might not even know they know the
sweet science that's boxing though, that's right. I've never understood
why it's called sweet or science. It doesn't make any
sense either way. I think that's the whole point. As
they call it a science too, combat the notion that
(07:42):
it's just like two brawling guys. That's like a lot
more strategy yeah, I'm not a big fan of M
M A, but I like boxing. Um. Okay, So a
police sketching has been around for a while. In fact,
there was a there's an anecdote in here about a
guy named Annabel Karaate you should say him Annabella yea
(08:05):
who It was a sixteenth century painter, a good one too,
And as a boy he and his father were attacked
by robbers um on the road to Cremona, and Karachi said,
you know what, I have a secret weapon you don't
know about. I'm going to draw you guys my hands.
(08:26):
Yeah exactly. Uh, and he drew the band of robbers
and apparently he did such a good job. The robbers
were immediately identified and the kid got his father's stuff back.
That's a great story, at least, whether it's you or not. Right.
The modern police sketching came about around the time of
Jack the Ripper. Actually, oh yeah, there were a lot
(08:46):
of police sketches associated with the Jack the Ripper case,
and that was actually one of the early one of
the births of forensic police work, which was actually founded
by a guy named Alphonse Bertillon. Yes, and the teen
eighties in France, obviously because from Josh's outrageous accent. Uh,
you could tell. So this guy was a criminologist and
(09:10):
he started he became obsessed, some say, with notating these
physical characteristics of various criminals. And he would measure them
and measure their forehead, measure their arms and ears and
just anything anything that stood out, you know, scars two
(09:31):
twos and uh. It became known as criminal anthropometry, and
in four the police there in France napped repeat offenders
based on his notations. And from that people started saying,
you know, what might be good to start noting what
(09:52):
these people look like and drawing them because that could
help us. Yeah. Um. At first he was just looking
to find repeat offenders that kept coming in and out,
because this is prior to fingerprinting being a reliable technique. Sure, um.
But eventually, like yeah, people started to think, maybe we
should start using this one particular thing called sketching, please,
(10:14):
sketching to um to create a what an image of
a suspect, a lead perhaps exactly. And we mentioned this
guy in our crime Scene Photography episode if you remember,
because he started that as well. Oh yeah, yeah, same guy,
same guy. Wow, we have a lot to Yeah, he
was he was an obsessive Frenchman that we owe a
(10:37):
lot too. Alright, So a forensic artist these days, Um
it sort of depends on what kind of outfit you're
running with. Um it could, because they point out in
here it was this Connor um Kristen points out that
if you're in a sort of a small town, it
might just be a cop that draws better than the
(10:59):
rest of the cops on the course exactly, who was
like a patrolman otherwise. But it's like, we need some
money to make the sketch, and hey, I took some
art classes. Turtle what a turtle of the pirate? Or
I can't remember the other thing? What was that? Anyway?
It was for art mail in art courses and you
(11:21):
would if you could draw it really well, you sent
it in and what got what? Like you some money too,
and they would teach you how to draw even better?
Got you? It was a mail in art art courses,
And I just knew it was some sort of a
scam probably, but necessarily there's I'm sure they taught you
some techniques. I just remember that as like part of
the simpler times. Yeah, me too, you know, if that
(11:44):
was if that was the only scammy. Come on that
and see monkeys. That's all you gotta worry about it.
Those were real there, Brian shrimp, and they were alive.
They were they were, but they don't have faces and
stand around and chat like the little cartoon depicted. Um. Okay,
So it might be a patrol officer that control really well,
(12:04):
or a civilian contractor that's you know, qualified, although I've
learned there is no um like official university degree that
you can earn. No, but you can go of course,
you can go to the FBI. They have a training
program for forensic art and a lot of private people.
Private people teach this kind of thing too. So um.
(12:28):
So it could be a private uh civilian contractor. Or
it could be you know, a full time fully employed
artists that you have on staff. I guess if you've
got enough crime going on, might be good to pay
that person on a yearly basis instead of like, hey,
we gotta murder once every six months. You know, like
(12:48):
Atlanta probably has their own sketch artists, is what I'm guessing.
I wonder. I bet they do, or more than one. Probably, Oh,
I don't know, you know, think, No, we have to
look into this. We need find out a the crime
in Atlanta. Um, so that if you are a witness
to a crime and you agree to do uh to
give some some eye witness accounts to a police sketch artist,
(13:13):
you're going to find um. Well, it's kind of like
the lie detector test a little bit. It can be
broken on into three parts. Never thought that. And the
first part is just like what you will get when
you go take a lie detector. That's report building sure,
where the police sketch artist is saying like, hey, how's
it going. How are you feeling? You're okay, everything's good.
(13:33):
You want some ice cream? Can I get you a
Coca cola? What's going on? My name is Day. This
is a pencil, and this is a sketchpad. Right, don't
make yourself comfortable. Um you can. You can throw those
magazines anywhere. Um, just just have a seat. I'm sorry,
I'm an artist. And and is there my cramped quarters.
I'm gonna go off and smoke some opium. I'll be
(13:54):
right back. Let me go get my beret. So that
is part one, wherein they just arm and make the
person feel comfortable. That's right, That is not true. Uh,
then what's the second part called uh that is recall.
It's free recall. It's basically like, tell me everything you
remember about this person. And apparently most eyewitnesses start with
(14:17):
the shape of the head or the hair, usually the hair. Sure,
that makes sense. Like if I were to describe, you
would be like, well, he had fantastic hair and a beard. Yeah,
and then draw, Yeah, they would draw you know, Zach Galifanakis, Yes,
he has great hair and a beard. He does have
(14:37):
a nice hair, didn't he. You can call the main
it's a main. Uh, And the guy would be like, really,
that's it. That's the free recalls over, and you'd be like, yes,
let's move to part three. Well this is but that's
a perfect point. Even though you're getting around about why
I bet. A lot of times these artists are just
(14:57):
like like, come on, and I'm really trying here, but
you're not giving me much besides horse face. And apparently
that's what a lot of people say. He had a
horse face or he had bug eyes or something like that.
And again, part of the forensic artists, um the sweet science, right,
part of their job is to say, okay, well I
(15:20):
kind of know what they're talking about, and they can't
just like draw bug eyes. They know that bug eyes
also includes like a certain kind of bridge of the
nose and like makes the cheekbones go this way. And
so if you say bug eyes, it can be helpful
too if you're saying it to an experience. Forensic artists. Yeah,
I mean, that's that's the great skill I guess to
draw those things out right literally, And so that's part
(15:42):
of free recall, where the the eyewitness or the victims says,
you know, here's all the stuff I remember buck teeth, um,
claw hands, um, but wearing like a high lace call
or like you'd see on like Emily Dickinson or goiter disco.
I uh. And then they say, okay, well, I'm glad
you came up with all that really means stuff to
(16:05):
say about this this perpetrator. Yeah, let's but we didn't
talk about the mouth. So tell me about the mouth.
What did the mouth look like? Did it you know, look,
did it look like this? Did it look like that?
That's a cute recall. Yeah, And they may bring out
pictures of other criminals in the database just to see, like,
you know, did he look like this guy with a
big nose or this guy with a big nose. They
might pull out celebrities and show them celebrities because I
(16:28):
guess and the person sam, it's Burt Reynolds, right, he
did this to me. But I guess that can help.
I think people operate on those terms in this age
of celebrity anyway, because when someone says, you know, what's
what does your friend look like? If I'm setting your
friend up, and you would often say, you wouldn't say, well,
he's got a horse face and great cheekbones. He would
(16:49):
say he looks like, you know, Josh Dohamel, because that's
just the way we operate because everyone knows those faces.
So it doesn't surprise me that they use that tactic.
I'm with you, you know, in yeah, man, it's sad,
but it's the way things are these days. Well it's
part of our the way we remember things, as we'll
see eventually. Yeah. Um, so you've got the the interviews
(17:13):
kind of done, the que recalls done um, and the
forensic artists has probably been kind of sketching. It's a
work in progress for sure, right, But as the work progresses,
the the the eyewitness will probably be like, oh yeah,
that's like starting to look like this person, but maybe
just change this a little bit, change that, and as
the this this kind of fourth part where they're working
(17:35):
together to kind of carry out the details. Um, that's
when the sketch really starts to pop. That's when they
put like the shadow and the eye or something had
a third eye in the intermaw swords where to God?
All right, so who who are these people? Well, again
you said that they might may or may not be
a full time employee. Should just be like a patrol
(17:55):
officer who's good at drawing, or I guess what are
their what are their skills? Like, if you're not an
artist with a pen, you can use things like computers, right, Well, yeah,
sometimes you don't even have to have skills. So in
nine a company called the Townsend Corporation introduced this thing
in the United States called Identicate Yahn. It is still
(18:15):
around now, there's Identicate two thousand. Yeah, this version six
point is what they're on. So originally Identicate was a
wooden box that had a bunch of little um, I
guess plastic like know what it was it called where
that you used on the overhead like an overhead projector yeah,
(18:37):
what with the transparency transparencies, and then that transparency would
have a certain type of eyebrows, and then another transparency
have a certain type of eyes, certain type of nose,
and you have this this literal toolkit of facial characteristics
that anybody you didn't have to draw anything to the
did the eyebrows look like this? Yes, and then you
(18:57):
construct a face like that. That's pretty cool. It is
pretty cool, but also created some pretty laughable UM images.
And we should say that that that that's what's called
a composite image. It's like a bunch of different stuff together.
You could also call a composite image. If a police
sketch artists interviews a bunch of different eye witnesses and
then pulls it all together, that's a composite image as well.
(19:20):
That that's frustrating, Yeah, you know, because people see things
so differently. It's like he had a small nose, he
had a huge nose, and the guy's just the artist
that the lady of the dude is just like, oh
my god, here, when is it five o'clock? Eye witnesses? Um,
so you've got identicate you have. That was the first
one UM and they've kind of expanded on that ever since.
(19:43):
Then and entered the realm of computer software. And there's
basically like a division among forensic artists computer or paper,
and a lot of people say why not both man
so um. For example, there's a guy in the NYPD
who uses nothing but um pencil and paper, Stephen Mancusie.
(20:04):
Then there's a guy named Roderick Scratchard who, um it
works for Philly, and he basically creates a composite of
all like a computer composite of all the features, and
then he draws a sketch from that composite, and um,
both of them kind of have in common the idea
that a hand drawn sketch is better than a computer composite,
(20:25):
and that FBI actually agrees. Yeah, I mean that's my
first question was why would this guy draw it after
he's done the computer composite? Because they found there's about
a four percent greater likelihood of it being accurate when
it's hand drawn. Yeah, it gives the ability to add
more nuance. And apparently computer software is getting better and
better at that, but you still can't compare to a
(20:48):
really good hand drawn composite sketch. And and those numbers
are right. Sadly, nine percent of the time for hand
drawn in five percent at the time do you create
what ends up being uh in terms of what being
accurate in terms of like producing an image that looks
like the suspect, right, that's recognizable as yeah, that's that person. Yeah.
(21:11):
So it's not like they take the percentage on the
number of people who are the number of sketches that
it actually led to an apprehension, but that's probably way lower.
Even that's the only way to create this estimate is
by taking a police sketch and then taking a picture
of the guy who was eventually caught for this and
comparing them. They have a good website that um that
(21:31):
I found today that had some of the more famous
you know, killers and then their police sketches and a
lot of them are pretty good. Yeah, you know close, yeah,
and that's what what you're gunning for. You know, you
can't do a photo real picture of someone because, as
we're about to learn, people's memories suck. Right. So, like
we said, if you have a really great police sketch
(21:53):
artist and a really bad eye witness, you're not going
to produce a recognizable sketch. Um. And the reason why
I wentness by witness testimony um is so unreliable. Is
basically like what you were talking about earlier, Like when
you're saying, like you set your friend up with somebody
else and you don't say that they have bug eyes
(22:14):
or horse face, they look like who And that's the case, ladies,
you're in luck. The reason we do that is because
we use what's called recognition memory, where we we look
at someone's face as a whole. We look at the
forest rather than the trees. If we were to look
(22:34):
at it as the trees, that what the eyes look like,
what the eyebrows look like, what the nose looks like,
what the mouth looks like, and broke it down in
those component parts, that would be recall memory, and it
would pretty much be perfect. Our recall memory requires like
almost no priming. Recognition memory does require priming. So you
could say, did he look like Brad Pitt? Well kind of,
(22:55):
but he also he looked like Brad Pitt with Steve
Bushmi's eyes, And then the sketch are goes, it's like
that kind of O'Brien thing they do. Yeah, if they
made it, yeah exactly, Um, that's that's um. That would
be a composite sketch. Yeah, and that's why if like
I could see Josh Dohamel walking down the street and
in my heart would flutter. But if I sat down
(23:17):
with the sketch artists and had to describe Josh Touhamel
for him to sketch, it would probably end up looking
more like Josh Clark, which is even hunkier. Thanks man,
But yeah, it probably wouldn't look anything like Josh. Know.
I started to think about when I read this, like
they use Brad Pitt in the article, Like, how would
I describe Brad Pitt besides you know, handsome and then
(23:37):
sort of looks like Robert Redford a little bit. He
I think he always has, especially as Benjamin button By.
That movie was Sad? It was good. Did you like it? Yeah?
I liked it. I didn't have it was touching, But
the whole time it was just like the inevitable sad
conclusion was just looming. You know. It's weird, is the
That's the second time Scott Fitzgerald's come up because he
(24:00):
wrote that short story. Oh really, yeah, I don't think
I knew that one episode to a Scott Fitzgerald. What
was the first reference you said that? Um, Uh, the
Great Gatsby was dawned by a police sketch artist. Look
at that. I see. I told you I'm paying attention
that time. You took me to the side and you
said you need to pay attention while the podcast, and
(24:22):
I just proved it. Okay, we can put that on.
So we're talking about memory, right, Yeah, and now it
stinks for the most part if you're well, it stinks
in general, but especially if you're the victim of a crime. Right. Um,
that's a good point. I think you should make it. Well,
you're stressed. It happens very fast. You're probably not thinking.
All right, I gotta get a good look at this
(24:43):
perpetrator's face and features, you know, and have you ever
noticed and like a convenience store, if you look at
the door frame inside, it'll say like four or five, six, seven?
Really you know what it's for? Well, I do now,
but I never knew it existed. That's exactly what it's
force for. A wine of perpetrator runs out, the person
can just very easily, at the very least, get the
(25:03):
guy's height. Well, now, every convenient store rubber is just
going to like get small as they exit or jump. Um,
so that's a great tidbit. But yeah, if you are,
if you are the victim of crime, you're not going
to recall it very accurately. Um. And one of the
(25:24):
reasons also is Congred points out that to create a
long term memory, it has to undergo consolidation, which means
we have to file it away, and the neural pathways
that that memory follows I have to basically be strengthened
over and over again. Uh. And that requires thinking about
that person, which you might not want to do. So
(25:47):
a strong memory may never be created, um, which means
that the eyewitness account may be flawed from the start.
It it might not even be there. If it is there,
it's also subject to a lot of infiltration by unreal memories. Like, um,
there's there's some work that's going on. Like they used
(26:08):
to think that once a memory is consolidated, it was done.
Apparently the guy who came up with that won the
Nobel Prize for it. Um. They've recently proven or shown
that that's probably not the case. That every time we
remember something, we're actually taking all of its constituent parts
from the different parts of our brainword store and putting
it back together. And when we do that it's subject
(26:31):
to infiltration. Um. So, like if you are a victim
of bank robbery and you're remembering the bank robbery, you
may also inadvertently remember a scene from a movie about
a bank robbery, and that detail might enter and become
part of what you think is the actual event that
you witness. That's a big problem with eyewitness testimonies. Our
(26:53):
recall is very fat it's flawed. Yeah, you know. The
other problem, says is just eyesight being poor is one
of the fundamental basics. I wrote another article called wire
eyewitnesses Unreliable and uh. They did a study in the
University of Virginia and it's not surprising. They found that
participants over the age of sixty performed performed much worse
(27:15):
than younger people. But what's scary is the older eyewitnesses
were more adamant than the younger ones. So like they
would have the face wrong, but be like, you know,
super adamant. That exactly. It sounds like some some old
guy would say. Um. And then they did some testing
with eyewitnesses and they found that even if you have
(27:37):
good eyesight just ten feet away, you may not be
able to tell what color and person's eyes are from
two hundred feet away, the eyes themselves like are just
a blur U five ft you probably won't be able
to recognize any facial features at all. And if that
sounds like, you know, big d five feet away, there
(27:57):
have been convictions of five feet away eye witness accounts
based on that, you know, convictions convictions based on that.
So yeah, what about twelve Angry Men. Yeah, good movie,
that's a great movie. Um. They've come up with this, uh,
this thing called DNA phenotyping that actually is showing a
little bit of promise, at least in theory. If a
(28:19):
suspect least behind some sort of um usable DNA, some
sort um, you can test it and you can say, oh, well,
this suspect has brown hair, brown eyes and it's probably
um um. So at the very least you have that
set and then if you could add to that eyewitness testimony,
(28:39):
that's a good. Yeah, but it's still in its infancy.
So we talked about sketching criminals. There are other things
if you're forensic artists that you do that you probably
don't think about a lot, but you see it a lot. Like,
for instance, this child was abducted when they were six
and here is what they might look like today at sixteen,
(29:01):
so advancing or a criminal who has been on the
lamb for fifteen years on the lamb. Or here's what
they might look like with a beard. It's believed that
they've grown out their hair, and this is what they
might look like. Now here's what they might look like
as a clown exactly. Here's what they might look like
as a clown under your bed. Um. So that's called
age progressed imagery. Um. And then they have reconstructive imagery
(29:25):
when you have an unidentified body that's decayed quite a bit,
and sometimes it will be sculpture even that they'll try
and put together what the person. And I've never figured
out how they know where to put the points, you know,
the little points that stick off of the skull that
they use as like a guide, a structure for the putty.
How did they figure out how long it should be
(29:46):
where it should be. I guess it's just a decision
by the artist. Or was this person really fat because
your skull wouldn't be this any different. But it's just
it blows me away, man. I bet they there's a
lot they know. As far as I bet it's not
just like surmise and they're not telling no. You can
probably find out take on these courses. So oh, and
then there's also ones where they basically touch up photos
(30:08):
of really really grewesome dead bodies if they need to
show the public something. Um chuck. If only nine of
hand drawn police sketches are recognizable as the actual suspect
and even fewer are computer generated um sketches to or are,
(30:30):
what's the point of police catching. I was about to
say there's no points, but there is a point, because
what it does is, like I said, it provides a lead,
It publicizes the crime, It gets a face out there.
Even if it's and then this is me talking here,
even if it's only nine person accurate, it's probably not
(30:50):
so inaccurate that you know, it's probably in the wheelhouse
as far as you know some features. That's like, this
is a white guy who had dark hair and bug
eyes exactly, So at least that put you in the
wheelhouse in most cases, I would say. So. Also, if
the witnesses all agree, oh yeah, he had a huge
scar across his face, well that helps. Um, just seeing
(31:11):
that in print the suspect has a scar across his
face might not do the same as seeing it even
just on a rudimentary drawing of the scar and maybe
the direction it's going in, maybe how long it is.
That's going to help tremendously as well, because you know,
we're visual creatures. That is certainly true. So I did
look up a little bit of the schooling and they're
all kinds of course. Is that one guy, the pencil
(31:35):
and paper guy. Yeah, I think he has his own
um website. It's very outdated, but he teaches courses. So
if you're listening out there, uh, you should up thought
your website might get a little more Boy, what was
that one website we went to? It was the cryogenics
won't remember? Oh yeah, that's all the worst websites I've
(31:55):
ever seen. That was pretty bad. But this lady, Karen
Taylor is a forensic artists and she has the you know,
besides the FBI, they're all kinds of courses you can take.
You probably should have some artistic merit to go into it,
otherwise why would you even be interested in it to
begin with? And it can involve sculpting, model making, computer graphics, animation.
(32:15):
Even so they're doing all sorts of stuff. You can
work with anthropologists and dental specialists and other forensic scientists.
It's like a team effort sometimes. You know that Um
you mentioned animation. You know those those Chinese UM, I
guess state television news where they do like the c
g I recreations of I haven't seen that big news stories. Yeah,
they did, remember it like anime. Heir. No, it's um,
(32:38):
it's almost like uh like instruction manual art um. But
they an'd be awesome. Um. They they did one for
that's the Steward, this guy Steward, the flight attendant guy
who like told everybody to go to hell and then
(32:58):
like grab two beers and slid down on the shoe. Yeah,
Stephen something remember him. They did one for that for
some reason. Normally it's like crimes that they do it too,
but they did it for that one. It's weird. But
I imagine, like you, you would be a forensic artist
in that sense because you're just taking your recounting of
the of the episode and drawing it. Yeah. Hey, do
(33:19):
you ever make note when you see something you think
might be shady going, especially license plates? Yeah? I do that.
I do license plates and I look at people and
think this guy looks shady and I'm just gonna take
an extra glance and notice that he's tall and has
long blonde hair and the horse face Sean Sean White.
(33:41):
It's never come up, but you never know. I think
you should. You owe it to the world to be
like a vigilant citizen and no CPR. Yeah, don't be
a dummy, that's true. Uh, let's see you got anything else,
Sir d V. Cooper, great police sketch. Who knows if
they's what? He looks like the UNI bomber. Yeah, they
didn't give him much to go on, like anybody with
(34:03):
a hoodie and sunglasses pretty much, which anybody who wears
a hoodie and sunglasses. Now it looks like the UN.
They got the nose wrong the big time because it's Harry.
You had like Jerry curling like a perm Yeah, his nose,
the brilliant of bomber's nose is like really bulbous. And
this nose was just you know, it was a nice nose.
Anything else, Okay, let's police sketches. You can type those
(34:24):
words into the search bar how stuff works dot Com
and we'll bring up this great article and um you
can see some police sketches and including the one in
timis Mumick. They with a photo of him side by
side um and Uh, I said, uh, search bar in
there somewhere. So it's time for word from our sponsor.
All right now, listener mail Josh, you're gonna call this,
(34:47):
We laughed, he cried. My name is Luke. I'm currently
a junior at Grand Valley State. Uh. I'm a bottle
deposit broke student, which I guess that's a term for
when you're turning in glass bottles for five cents, So
I guess he's also in the nineties fifties about of
(35:07):
the time. I'm broke because of this. I got a
job at the beginning of the school. You're making hunting knives,
and I just want to thank you both were giving
me eight stitches and a trip to the emergency room.
I always have the iPod preloaded with a variety of
stuff you should know episodes, so I'm prepared for any
situation of sheer boredom. It was while I was listening
to Why Does Music Provoke the Motion that Josh maybe
(35:28):
laugh so hard I was sent to the e er.
Oh wow, that's really something. Thirty three minutes and forty
two seconds into the episode, Chuck, you had just officially
introduced Ben so Lee to the audience our musical guests.
I was sitting on a bench using a belt center
to sharpen blades when Ben said, all right, well, I
can't wait to hear what you all have been talking about.
Then Chuck manages to keep it cool, but Josh loses
(35:50):
it and starts immediately laughing hysterically. I don't remember that,
I guess because we did it in two parts and
it was clearly faked and you just couldn't get it together.
I don't remember that, though, I like always, Josh, your
laugh trigger my own laugh, and I was laughing so
hard that my left knee jerked up to my chest,
only to be stopped by the belt Sander caught my
lower thigh and sanded a hole so big in my
(36:12):
leg you could see the muscle in the meat. This
is your fault, dude. I never admitted to my employer
that it was you guys that made me laugh so hard,
But a trip to the E R and eight sigges later,
and I still can't listen to that clip without laughing
out loud. I really love the show no hard feelings
at all. Trip to the e R is good for
a person every now and again. I disagree by the way,
(36:32):
yeah he should. Really that's a terrible philosophy. Yeah. Uh,
and my parents aren't too happy about the hospital bill.
But what's done is done well. Thanks for covering for
keep up the good work. And if you feel a desire,
I would not deny a pret T shirt that is
from Luke Newman. And if we can dig up a
T shirt Luke, I'll send it to you because you
can find him on Discovery Store. But thing I might
(36:54):
try to dig one up for this kid, but he
was legitimately injured because of our actions. Yeah. Thanks, thanks
again for covering for us, Lucan, thanks for writing, and
we're glad you're okay. Seriously, we do think you should
reconsider your trip to the e ER every once in
a while. It is a good thing. Idea though. Uh,
let's see if you want to let us know how
we've made you injury yourself in a lighthearted way. I
(37:17):
hope there's not a lot of the stories. I would
hope not. Um. You can tweet to us at s
Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
dot com. You slash Stuff you Should Know. Email us
at stuff podcast at Discovery dot com, and visit us
at our website Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
(37:38):
more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that
how stuff Works dot com
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Josh Clark
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