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How Police Sketches Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to you Stuff you Should Know front House, Stuff
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Speaker 1: share it with some friends. Yeah, that's your problem, all right. Ready, Hey,
1:22
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. Just's Charles W.
1:25
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant. She's done the best mood today. He just
1:27
Speaker 1: ruined my mood. Like seconds before we recorded. Um, I
1:32
Speaker 1: was heading in a good direction. I didn't ruin you.
1:34
Speaker 1: You reminded me of some task that we have to
1:37
Speaker 1: do tomorrow, Like why did what? Can you just wait
1:39
Speaker 1: a full after we recorded to say those words? Uh?
1:45
Speaker 1: Because that's okay. I liked, I liked. I wanted to
1:48
Speaker 1: get it off my chest. That's Thursday, and you know
1:50
Speaker 1: what today is Tuesday. He would be mad until then. No,
1:54
Speaker 1: I'm saying I'm gonna put off being mad again until Thursday.
1:58
Speaker 1: Put on a sunshine face, Smiley. It's kind of hard
2:02
Speaker 1: in the serial killer layer. But I hate this place.
2:05
Speaker 1: I hate this place. I'm gonna use every bit of
2:08
Speaker 1: power that I have, which is not much around here,
2:11
Speaker 1: and you know how that works out? This change the
2:14
Speaker 1: very least. Can we turn the overhead fluorescent lights on? No,
2:17
Speaker 1: we don't want that. Does it not work? No, we
2:19
Speaker 1: don't want that one. Are you sure well? I mean,
2:21
Speaker 1: what is that would make it more serial killer light?
2:24
Speaker 1: If that's all right, we'll turn it off. Thanks Casey,
2:30
Speaker 1: Casey as our editor again. Oh yeah, uh that's Chuck
2:34
Speaker 1: and I'm Josh And this is stuff you should know.
2:36
Speaker 1: That may have been her most slap dash ever intro.
2:39
Speaker 1: Uh no, prepare for that one. Are you familiar with
2:43
Speaker 1: the guy named Timothy McVeigh um. I do not know
2:46
Speaker 1: him personally, but I am familiar with his work. So
2:49
Speaker 1: in he uh rented a truck, a rental truck, packed
2:56
Speaker 1: it full of fertilizer nitrogen based explosives of it, parked
3:00
Speaker 1: it next to the Alfred pi Mura Federal Building in
3:02
Speaker 1: Oklahoma City and detonated it and killed um oh, got
3:08
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty eight people, including a bunch of
3:12
Speaker 1: kids at a daycare center in the building. I was
3:15
Speaker 1: I remember seeing that as it unfolded. That was one
3:17
Speaker 1: of the few that I was up early when I
3:19
Speaker 1: was living in New Jersey. And do you remember the
3:22
Speaker 1: view of that billings missing. It was horrific because I mean,
3:26
Speaker 1: this is pretty two thousand one, and this is at
3:28
Speaker 1: a time when he was like, terrorism happens in Beirut.
3:31
Speaker 1: I just don't fly a plane from Germany to Beirut.
3:34
Speaker 1: And you're gonna be fine if you're in America. This
3:37
Speaker 1: was weird. I mean, like it was after the World
3:40
Speaker 1: Trade Center bombing, the first one, but that one hadn't
3:43
Speaker 1: gone very well. And I remember I think America felt
3:45
Speaker 1: a little cocky. This was the first big homeland incident
3:48
Speaker 1: that kind of shocked everyone. I think. Ye. So, uh,
3:53
Speaker 1: Timothy McVeigh got away and it wasn't even a suicide bombing, right,
3:59
Speaker 1: he got away Within two hours, he happened to be
4:02
Speaker 1: pulled over for a traffic violation and the cops said,
4:06
Speaker 1: you seem a little hinky, skinny. Um, let me search
4:09
Speaker 1: your car and found some weapons and said are these
4:12
Speaker 1: do you have registration for these? And I'm sure Timothy
4:15
Speaker 1: mcbate sid some crazy thing like I don't I don't
4:19
Speaker 1: see I'm I don't bow to your authority, pig or
4:21
Speaker 1: something like that, and um, and the cops that, well,
4:24
Speaker 1: you're coming with me just on suspicion. Totally totally accidental.
4:31
Speaker 1: It was totally happenstance, as Congra put it in this article,
4:34
Speaker 1: that he was pulled over, but he was ultimately found
4:38
Speaker 1: out as the um guy who blew up the Federal
4:42
Speaker 1: building in Oklahoma City because while he was in police
4:47
Speaker 1: custody after being pulled over a um a police sketch
4:51
Speaker 1: came across the wire and this police uh this, I
4:55
Speaker 1: guess the highway patrol looked at it and said, you
4:57
Speaker 1: know what, this looks a lot like our guy. And
4:59
Speaker 1: in fact that was and this police sketch helped catch
5:03
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bomber. Have you seen it was ultimately executed.
5:07
Speaker 1: Have you seen a sketch? Yeah, it's in the article,
5:10
Speaker 1: and it's actually like it's pretty good. It is. At
5:13
Speaker 1: first glance, it's like, that's not that great, and then
5:16
Speaker 1: when you really start to look at it feature by feature,
5:19
Speaker 1: it's pretty close or maybe two things that should have
5:22
Speaker 1: been changed, or when you look at other police sketches
5:25
Speaker 1: you realize this one falls in the what will learn
5:28
Speaker 1: later is a very small percentage. Yeah, the nine that
5:32
Speaker 1: are pretty aren't accurate. Yeah, And if you are in
5:35
Speaker 1: the mood for amusement. You can type in funny police sketches,
5:39
Speaker 1: bizarre police sketches. There's a lot of image galleries out
5:43
Speaker 1: there of just there's no other way to put it,
5:46
Speaker 1: really bad police sketches, and hilariously, some of them are
5:50
Speaker 1: in like there it's a photo of a police sketch
5:53
Speaker 1: in a newspaper, so like they made it out and
5:57
Speaker 1: we're disseminated and and um, yeah, well we'll learn they
6:01
Speaker 1: were varying levels of competency and artistic merit when it
6:05
Speaker 1: comes to these, so that's probably where you get. Uh,
6:08
Speaker 1: did you ever see the one where they did the
6:09
Speaker 1: literary characters? No. I think they gathered sketch artists to
6:13
Speaker 1: do some of the more famous literary characters based on
6:17
Speaker 1: their book descriptions. And uh, it was pretty cool. Casey's nodding.
6:22
Speaker 1: Did you see that? It was awesome? It was like
6:25
Speaker 1: a big, you know, internet thing a couple of years ago. Um,
6:28
Speaker 1: I have not seen it. I would like to, like,
6:30
Speaker 1: what is what is the Great Gatsby look like? I'm
6:32
Speaker 1: also I'm fond of those ones where they illustrate like um,
6:37
Speaker 1: like with photo realism a cartoon character like what they
6:40
Speaker 1: look like and really like those Beavis and butt Head
6:42
Speaker 1: sculptures are so creepy, aren't they? And I think everyone
6:45
Speaker 1: looked at those and be like, wait a minute, I
6:47
Speaker 1: think I knew that exactly. Yeah. Um, so we shouldn't
6:51
Speaker 1: just lay uh. We shouldn't start the whole thing out
6:54
Speaker 1: by making fun of police sketches either. There are some
6:56
Speaker 1: really bad ones. Um. You could have a really genuinely
6:59
Speaker 1: talented artist with um with a sketch pad in hand,
7:04
Speaker 1: and if the eye witness isn't isn't giving it up,
7:07
Speaker 1: well it's not gonna come anywhere close exactly. Ultimately it
7:11
Speaker 1: comes down to the eye witness. The problem is is
7:13
Speaker 1: we're going to find out eye witnesses are not very reliable,
7:18
Speaker 1: and so it's up to them, the police sketch artist,
7:21
Speaker 1: to figure out how to call information from the eye witness.
7:25
Speaker 1: That eye witness might not even know they know the
7:28
Speaker 1: sweet science that's boxing though, that's right. I've never understood
7:32
Speaker 1: why it's called sweet or science. It doesn't make any
7:35
Speaker 1: sense either way. I think that's the whole point. As
7:38
Speaker 1: they call it a science too, combat the notion that
7:42
Speaker 1: it's just like two brawling guys. That's like a lot
7:45
Speaker 1: more strategy yeah, I'm not a big fan of M
7:50
Speaker 1: M A, but I like boxing. Um. Okay, So a
7:54
Speaker 1: police sketching has been around for a while. In fact,
7:57
Speaker 1: there was a there's an anecdote in here about a
7:59
Speaker 1: guy named Annabel Karaate you should say him Annabella yea
8:05
Speaker 1: who It was a sixteenth century painter, a good one too,
8:10
Speaker 1: And as a boy he and his father were attacked
8:13
Speaker 1: by robbers um on the road to Cremona, and Karachi said,
8:20
Speaker 1: you know what, I have a secret weapon you don't
8:22
Speaker 1: know about. I'm going to draw you guys my hands.
8:26
Speaker 1: Yeah exactly. Uh, and he drew the band of robbers
8:29
Speaker 1: and apparently he did such a good job. The robbers
8:31
Speaker 1: were immediately identified and the kid got his father's stuff back.
8:37
Speaker 1: That's a great story, at least, whether it's you or not. Right.
8:40
Speaker 1: The modern police sketching came about around the time of
8:43
Speaker 1: Jack the Ripper. Actually, oh yeah, there were a lot
8:46
Speaker 1: of police sketches associated with the Jack the Ripper case,
8:50
Speaker 1: and that was actually one of the early one of
8:52
Speaker 1: the births of forensic police work, which was actually founded
8:56
Speaker 1: by a guy named Alphonse Bertillon. Yes, and the teen
9:00
Speaker 1: eighties in France, obviously because from Josh's outrageous accent. Uh,
9:06
Speaker 1: you could tell. So this guy was a criminologist and
9:10
Speaker 1: he started he became obsessed, some say, with notating these
9:16
Speaker 1: physical characteristics of various criminals. And he would measure them
9:20
Speaker 1: and measure their forehead, measure their arms and ears and
9:25
Speaker 1: just anything anything that stood out, you know, scars two
9:31
Speaker 1: twos and uh. It became known as criminal anthropometry, and
9:38
Speaker 1: in four the police there in France napped repeat offenders
9:44
Speaker 1: based on his notations. And from that people started saying,
9:48
Speaker 1: you know, what might be good to start noting what
9:52
Speaker 1: these people look like and drawing them because that could
9:55
Speaker 1: help us. Yeah. Um. At first he was just looking
9:58
Speaker 1: to find repeat offenders that kept coming in and out,
10:01
Speaker 1: because this is prior to fingerprinting being a reliable technique. Sure, um.
10:05
Speaker 1: But eventually, like yeah, people started to think, maybe we
10:09
Speaker 1: should start using this one particular thing called sketching, please,
10:14
Speaker 1: sketching to um to create a what an image of
10:19
Speaker 1: a suspect, a lead perhaps exactly. And we mentioned this
10:22
Speaker 1: guy in our crime Scene Photography episode if you remember,
10:26
Speaker 1: because he started that as well. Oh yeah, yeah, same guy,
10:30
Speaker 1: same guy. Wow, we have a lot to Yeah, he
10:33
Speaker 1: was he was an obsessive Frenchman that we owe a
10:37
Speaker 1: lot too. Alright, So a forensic artist these days, Um
10:42
Speaker 1: it sort of depends on what kind of outfit you're
10:45
Speaker 1: running with. Um it could, because they point out in
10:48
Speaker 1: here it was this Connor um Kristen points out that
10:53
Speaker 1: if you're in a sort of a small town, it
10:56
Speaker 1: might just be a cop that draws better than the
10:59
Speaker 1: rest of the cops on the course exactly, who was
11:01
Speaker 1: like a patrolman otherwise. But it's like, we need some
11:05
Speaker 1: money to make the sketch, and hey, I took some
11:08
Speaker 1: art classes. Turtle what a turtle of the pirate? Or
11:14
Speaker 1: I can't remember the other thing? What was that? Anyway?
11:16
Speaker 1: It was for art mail in art courses and you
11:21
Speaker 1: would if you could draw it really well, you sent
11:23
Speaker 1: it in and what got what? Like you some money too,
11:26
Speaker 1: and they would teach you how to draw even better?
11:30
Speaker 1: Got you? It was a mail in art art courses,
11:33
Speaker 1: And I just knew it was some sort of a
11:34
Speaker 1: scam probably, but necessarily there's I'm sure they taught you
11:38
Speaker 1: some techniques. I just remember that as like part of
11:41
Speaker 1: the simpler times. Yeah, me too, you know, if that
11:44
Speaker 1: was if that was the only scammy. Come on that
11:47
Speaker 1: and see monkeys. That's all you gotta worry about it.
11:50
Speaker 1: Those were real there, Brian shrimp, and they were alive.
11:53
Speaker 1: They were they were, but they don't have faces and
11:56
Speaker 1: stand around and chat like the little cartoon depicted. Um. Okay,
12:01
Speaker 1: So it might be a patrol officer that control really well,
12:04
Speaker 1: or a civilian contractor that's you know, qualified, although I've
12:09
Speaker 1: learned there is no um like official university degree that
12:15
Speaker 1: you can earn. No, but you can go of course,
12:18
Speaker 1: you can go to the FBI. They have a training
12:20
Speaker 1: program for forensic art and a lot of private people.
12:24
Speaker 1: Private people teach this kind of thing too. So um.
12:28
Speaker 1: So it could be a private uh civilian contractor. Or
12:31
Speaker 1: it could be you know, a full time fully employed
12:36
Speaker 1: artists that you have on staff. I guess if you've
12:38
Speaker 1: got enough crime going on, might be good to pay
12:41
Speaker 1: that person on a yearly basis instead of like, hey,
12:45
Speaker 1: we gotta murder once every six months. You know, like
12:48
Speaker 1: Atlanta probably has their own sketch artists, is what I'm guessing.
12:51
Speaker 1: I wonder. I bet they do, or more than one. Probably, Oh,
12:54
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, think, No, we have to
12:58
Speaker 1: look into this. We need find out a the crime
13:00
Speaker 1: in Atlanta. Um, so that if you are a witness
13:05
Speaker 1: to a crime and you agree to do uh to
13:08
Speaker 1: give some some eye witness accounts to a police sketch artist,
13:13
Speaker 1: you're going to find um. Well, it's kind of like
13:17
Speaker 1: the lie detector test a little bit. It can be
13:20
Speaker 1: broken on into three parts. Never thought that. And the
13:22
Speaker 1: first part is just like what you will get when
13:25
Speaker 1: you go take a lie detector. That's report building sure,
13:28
Speaker 1: where the police sketch artist is saying like, hey, how's
13:31
Speaker 1: it going. How are you feeling? You're okay, everything's good.
13:33
Speaker 1: You want some ice cream? Can I get you a
13:35
Speaker 1: Coca cola? What's going on? My name is Day. This
13:37
Speaker 1: is a pencil, and this is a sketchpad. Right, don't
13:40
Speaker 1: make yourself comfortable. Um you can. You can throw those
13:44
Speaker 1: magazines anywhere. Um, just just have a seat. I'm sorry,
13:48
Speaker 1: I'm an artist. And and is there my cramped quarters.
13:51
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go off and smoke some opium. I'll be
13:54
Speaker 1: right back. Let me go get my beret. So that
13:57
Speaker 1: is part one, wherein they just arm and make the
14:01
Speaker 1: person feel comfortable. That's right, That is not true. Uh,
14:06
Speaker 1: then what's the second part called uh that is recall.
14:10
Speaker 1: It's free recall. It's basically like, tell me everything you
14:13
Speaker 1: remember about this person. And apparently most eyewitnesses start with
14:17
Speaker 1: the shape of the head or the hair, usually the hair. Sure,
14:21
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Like if I were to describe, you
14:23
Speaker 1: would be like, well, he had fantastic hair and a beard. Yeah,
14:28
Speaker 1: and then draw, Yeah, they would draw you know, Zach Galifanakis, Yes,
14:35
Speaker 1: he has great hair and a beard. He does have
14:37
Speaker 1: a nice hair, didn't he. You can call the main
14:42
Speaker 1: it's a main. Uh, And the guy would be like, really,
14:45
Speaker 1: that's it. That's the free recalls over, and you'd be like, yes,
14:49
Speaker 1: let's move to part three. Well this is but that's
14:52
Speaker 1: a perfect point. Even though you're getting around about why
14:55
Speaker 1: I bet. A lot of times these artists are just
14:57
Speaker 1: like like, come on, and I'm really trying here, but
15:02
Speaker 1: you're not giving me much besides horse face. And apparently
15:06
Speaker 1: that's what a lot of people say. He had a
15:08
Speaker 1: horse face or he had bug eyes or something like that.
15:11
Speaker 1: And again, part of the forensic artists, um the sweet science, right,
15:17
Speaker 1: part of their job is to say, okay, well I
15:20
Speaker 1: kind of know what they're talking about, and they can't
15:22
Speaker 1: just like draw bug eyes. They know that bug eyes
15:24
Speaker 1: also includes like a certain kind of bridge of the
15:27
Speaker 1: nose and like makes the cheekbones go this way. And
15:32
Speaker 1: so if you say bug eyes, it can be helpful
15:34
Speaker 1: too if you're saying it to an experience. Forensic artists. Yeah,
15:37
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the great skill I guess to
15:39
Speaker 1: draw those things out right literally, And so that's part
15:42
Speaker 1: of free recall, where the the eyewitness or the victims says,
15:46
Speaker 1: you know, here's all the stuff I remember buck teeth, um,
15:49
Speaker 1: claw hands, um, but wearing like a high lace call
15:54
Speaker 1: or like you'd see on like Emily Dickinson or goiter disco.
15:58
Speaker 1: I uh. And then they say, okay, well, I'm glad
16:02
Speaker 1: you came up with all that really means stuff to
16:05
Speaker 1: say about this this perpetrator. Yeah, let's but we didn't
16:09
Speaker 1: talk about the mouth. So tell me about the mouth.
16:11
Speaker 1: What did the mouth look like? Did it you know, look,
16:13
Speaker 1: did it look like this? Did it look like that?
16:14
Speaker 1: That's a cute recall. Yeah, And they may bring out
16:17
Speaker 1: pictures of other criminals in the database just to see, like,
16:20
Speaker 1: you know, did he look like this guy with a
16:22
Speaker 1: big nose or this guy with a big nose. They
16:24
Speaker 1: might pull out celebrities and show them celebrities because I
16:28
Speaker 1: guess and the person sam, it's Burt Reynolds, right, he
16:31
Speaker 1: did this to me. But I guess that can help.
16:35
Speaker 1: I think people operate on those terms in this age
16:38
Speaker 1: of celebrity anyway, because when someone says, you know, what's
16:41
Speaker 1: what does your friend look like? If I'm setting your
16:43
Speaker 1: friend up, and you would often say, you wouldn't say, well,
16:46
Speaker 1: he's got a horse face and great cheekbones. He would
16:49
Speaker 1: say he looks like, you know, Josh Dohamel, because that's
16:54
Speaker 1: just the way we operate because everyone knows those faces.
16:57
Speaker 1: So it doesn't surprise me that they use that tactic.
16:59
Speaker 1: I'm with you, you know, in yeah, man, it's sad,
17:01
Speaker 1: but it's the way things are these days. Well it's
17:03
Speaker 1: part of our the way we remember things, as we'll
17:06
Speaker 1: see eventually. Yeah. Um, so you've got the the interviews
17:13
Speaker 1: kind of done, the que recalls done um, and the
17:16
Speaker 1: forensic artists has probably been kind of sketching. It's a
17:19
Speaker 1: work in progress for sure, right, But as the work progresses,
17:22
Speaker 1: the the the eyewitness will probably be like, oh yeah,
17:25
Speaker 1: that's like starting to look like this person, but maybe
17:28
Speaker 1: just change this a little bit, change that, and as
17:31
Speaker 1: the this this kind of fourth part where they're working
17:35
Speaker 1: together to kind of carry out the details. Um, that's
17:39
Speaker 1: when the sketch really starts to pop. That's when they
17:43
Speaker 1: put like the shadow and the eye or something had
17:46
Speaker 1: a third eye in the intermaw swords where to God?
17:48
Speaker 1: All right, so who who are these people? Well, again
17:51
Speaker 1: you said that they might may or may not be
17:53
Speaker 1: a full time employee. Should just be like a patrol
17:55
Speaker 1: officer who's good at drawing, or I guess what are
17:57
Speaker 1: their what are their skills? Like, if you're not an
18:00
Speaker 1: artist with a pen, you can use things like computers, right, Well, yeah,
18:04
Speaker 1: sometimes you don't even have to have skills. So in
18:06
Speaker 1: nine a company called the Townsend Corporation introduced this thing
18:10
Speaker 1: in the United States called Identicate Yahn. It is still
18:15
Speaker 1: around now, there's Identicate two thousand. Yeah, this version six
18:19
Speaker 1: point is what they're on. So originally Identicate was a
18:23
Speaker 1: wooden box that had a bunch of little um, I
18:26
Speaker 1: guess plastic like know what it was it called where
18:32
Speaker 1: that you used on the overhead like an overhead projector yeah,
18:37
Speaker 1: what with the transparency transparencies, and then that transparency would
18:41
Speaker 1: have a certain type of eyebrows, and then another transparency
18:45
Speaker 1: have a certain type of eyes, certain type of nose,
18:47
Speaker 1: and you have this this literal toolkit of facial characteristics
18:51
Speaker 1: that anybody you didn't have to draw anything to the
18:55
Speaker 1: did the eyebrows look like this? Yes, and then you
18:57
Speaker 1: construct a face like that. That's pretty cool. It is
19:00
Speaker 1: pretty cool, but also created some pretty laughable UM images.
19:06
Speaker 1: And we should say that that that that's what's called
19:08
Speaker 1: a composite image. It's like a bunch of different stuff together.
19:11
Speaker 1: You could also call a composite image. If a police
19:14
Speaker 1: sketch artists interviews a bunch of different eye witnesses and
19:16
Speaker 1: then pulls it all together, that's a composite image as well.
19:20
Speaker 1: That that's frustrating, Yeah, you know, because people see things
19:23
Speaker 1: so differently. It's like he had a small nose, he
19:26
Speaker 1: had a huge nose, and the guy's just the artist
19:29
Speaker 1: that the lady of the dude is just like, oh
19:31
Speaker 1: my god, here, when is it five o'clock? Eye witnesses? Um,
19:37
Speaker 1: so you've got identicate you have. That was the first
19:40
Speaker 1: one UM and they've kind of expanded on that ever since.
19:43
Speaker 1: Then and entered the realm of computer software. And there's
19:46
Speaker 1: basically like a division among forensic artists computer or paper,
19:52
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say why not both man
19:55
Speaker 1: so um. For example, there's a guy in the NYPD
19:59
Speaker 1: who uses nothing but um pencil and paper, Stephen Mancusie.
20:04
Speaker 1: Then there's a guy named Roderick Scratchard who, um it
20:08
Speaker 1: works for Philly, and he basically creates a composite of
20:11
Speaker 1: all like a computer composite of all the features, and
20:15
Speaker 1: then he draws a sketch from that composite, and um,
20:19
Speaker 1: both of them kind of have in common the idea
20:21
Speaker 1: that a hand drawn sketch is better than a computer composite,
20:25
Speaker 1: and that FBI actually agrees. Yeah, I mean that's my
20:28
Speaker 1: first question was why would this guy draw it after
20:31
Speaker 1: he's done the computer composite? Because they found there's about
20:34
Speaker 1: a four percent greater likelihood of it being accurate when
20:38
Speaker 1: it's hand drawn. Yeah, it gives the ability to add
20:42
Speaker 1: more nuance. And apparently computer software is getting better and
20:45
Speaker 1: better at that, but you still can't compare to a
20:48
Speaker 1: really good hand drawn composite sketch. And and those numbers
20:52
Speaker 1: are right. Sadly, nine percent of the time for hand
20:55
Speaker 1: drawn in five percent at the time do you create
20:59
Speaker 1: what ends up being uh in terms of what being
21:03
Speaker 1: accurate in terms of like producing an image that looks
21:07
Speaker 1: like the suspect, right, that's recognizable as yeah, that's that person. Yeah.
21:11
Speaker 1: So it's not like they take the percentage on the
21:13
Speaker 1: number of people who are the number of sketches that
21:16
Speaker 1: it actually led to an apprehension, but that's probably way lower.
21:19
Speaker 1: Even that's the only way to create this estimate is
21:23
Speaker 1: by taking a police sketch and then taking a picture
21:26
Speaker 1: of the guy who was eventually caught for this and
21:28
Speaker 1: comparing them. They have a good website that um that
21:31
Speaker 1: I found today that had some of the more famous
21:33
Speaker 1: you know, killers and then their police sketches and a
21:36
Speaker 1: lot of them are pretty good. Yeah, you know close, yeah,
21:40
Speaker 1: and that's what what you're gunning for. You know, you
21:42
Speaker 1: can't do a photo real picture of someone because, as
21:46
Speaker 1: we're about to learn, people's memories suck. Right. So, like
21:50
Speaker 1: we said, if you have a really great police sketch
21:53
Speaker 1: artist and a really bad eye witness, you're not going
21:55
Speaker 1: to produce a recognizable sketch. Um. And the reason why
21:59
Speaker 1: I wentness by witness testimony um is so unreliable. Is
22:06
Speaker 1: basically like what you were talking about earlier, Like when
22:09
Speaker 1: you're saying, like you set your friend up with somebody
22:11
Speaker 1: else and you don't say that they have bug eyes
22:14
Speaker 1: or horse face, they look like who And that's the case, ladies,
22:21
Speaker 1: you're in luck. The reason we do that is because
22:25
Speaker 1: we use what's called recognition memory, where we we look
22:29
Speaker 1: at someone's face as a whole. We look at the
22:32
Speaker 1: forest rather than the trees. If we were to look
22:34
Speaker 1: at it as the trees, that what the eyes look like,
22:37
Speaker 1: what the eyebrows look like, what the nose looks like,
22:39
Speaker 1: what the mouth looks like, and broke it down in
22:41
Speaker 1: those component parts, that would be recall memory, and it
22:44
Speaker 1: would pretty much be perfect. Our recall memory requires like
22:47
Speaker 1: almost no priming. Recognition memory does require priming. So you
22:52
Speaker 1: could say, did he look like Brad Pitt? Well kind of,
22:55
Speaker 1: but he also he looked like Brad Pitt with Steve
22:57
Speaker 1: Bushmi's eyes, And then the sketch are goes, it's like
23:01
Speaker 1: that kind of O'Brien thing they do. Yeah, if they
23:03
Speaker 1: made it, yeah exactly, Um, that's that's um. That would
23:08
Speaker 1: be a composite sketch. Yeah, and that's why if like
23:11
Speaker 1: I could see Josh Dohamel walking down the street and
23:14
Speaker 1: in my heart would flutter. But if I sat down
23:17
Speaker 1: with the sketch artists and had to describe Josh Touhamel
23:20
Speaker 1: for him to sketch, it would probably end up looking
23:23
Speaker 1: more like Josh Clark, which is even hunkier. Thanks man,
23:26
Speaker 1: But yeah, it probably wouldn't look anything like Josh. Know.
23:29
Speaker 1: I started to think about when I read this, like
23:31
Speaker 1: they use Brad Pitt in the article, Like, how would
23:33
Speaker 1: I describe Brad Pitt besides you know, handsome and then
23:37
Speaker 1: sort of looks like Robert Redford a little bit. He
23:41
Speaker 1: I think he always has, especially as Benjamin button By.
23:45
Speaker 1: That movie was Sad? It was good. Did you like it? Yeah?
23:48
Speaker 1: I liked it. I didn't have it was touching, But
23:52
Speaker 1: the whole time it was just like the inevitable sad
23:54
Speaker 1: conclusion was just looming. You know. It's weird, is the
23:57
Speaker 1: That's the second time Scott Fitzgerald's come up because he
24:00
Speaker 1: wrote that short story. Oh really, yeah, I don't think
24:02
Speaker 1: I knew that one episode to a Scott Fitzgerald. What
24:06
Speaker 1: was the first reference you said that? Um, Uh, the
24:10
Speaker 1: Great Gatsby was dawned by a police sketch artist. Look
24:13
Speaker 1: at that. I see. I told you I'm paying attention
24:16
Speaker 1: that time. You took me to the side and you
24:18
Speaker 1: said you need to pay attention while the podcast, and
24:22
Speaker 1: I just proved it. Okay, we can put that on.
24:26
Speaker 1: So we're talking about memory, right, Yeah, and now it
24:28
Speaker 1: stinks for the most part if you're well, it stinks
24:31
Speaker 1: in general, but especially if you're the victim of a crime. Right. Um,
24:34
Speaker 1: that's a good point. I think you should make it. Well,
24:37
Speaker 1: you're stressed. It happens very fast. You're probably not thinking.
24:41
Speaker 1: All right, I gotta get a good look at this
24:43
Speaker 1: perpetrator's face and features, you know, and have you ever
24:46
Speaker 1: noticed and like a convenience store, if you look at
24:48
Speaker 1: the door frame inside, it'll say like four or five, six, seven?
24:53
Speaker 1: Really you know what it's for? Well, I do now,
24:56
Speaker 1: but I never knew it existed. That's exactly what it's
24:58
Speaker 1: force for. A wine of perpetrator runs out, the person
25:01
Speaker 1: can just very easily, at the very least, get the
25:03
Speaker 1: guy's height. Well, now, every convenient store rubber is just
25:07
Speaker 1: going to like get small as they exit or jump. Um,
25:14
Speaker 1: so that's a great tidbit. But yeah, if you are,
25:18
Speaker 1: if you are the victim of crime, you're not going
25:20
Speaker 1: to recall it very accurately. Um. And one of the
25:24
Speaker 1: reasons also is Congred points out that to create a
25:28
Speaker 1: long term memory, it has to undergo consolidation, which means
25:32
Speaker 1: we have to file it away, and the neural pathways
25:36
Speaker 1: that that memory follows I have to basically be strengthened
25:41
Speaker 1: over and over again. Uh. And that requires thinking about
25:44
Speaker 1: that person, which you might not want to do. So
25:47
Speaker 1: a strong memory may never be created, um, which means
25:50
Speaker 1: that the eyewitness account may be flawed from the start.
25:55
Speaker 1: It it might not even be there. If it is there,
25:58
Speaker 1: it's also subject to a lot of infiltration by unreal memories. Like, um,
26:06
Speaker 1: there's there's some work that's going on. Like they used
26:08
Speaker 1: to think that once a memory is consolidated, it was done.
26:11
Speaker 1: Apparently the guy who came up with that won the
26:13
Speaker 1: Nobel Prize for it. Um. They've recently proven or shown
26:18
Speaker 1: that that's probably not the case. That every time we
26:21
Speaker 1: remember something, we're actually taking all of its constituent parts
26:25
Speaker 1: from the different parts of our brainword store and putting
26:28
Speaker 1: it back together. And when we do that it's subject
26:31
Speaker 1: to infiltration. Um. So, like if you are a victim
26:34
Speaker 1: of bank robbery and you're remembering the bank robbery, you
26:38
Speaker 1: may also inadvertently remember a scene from a movie about
26:42
Speaker 1: a bank robbery, and that detail might enter and become
26:45
Speaker 1: part of what you think is the actual event that
26:49
Speaker 1: you witness. That's a big problem with eyewitness testimonies. Our
26:53
Speaker 1: recall is very fat it's flawed. Yeah, you know. The
26:57
Speaker 1: other problem, says is just eyesight being poor is one
27:00
Speaker 1: of the fundamental basics. I wrote another article called wire
27:04
Speaker 1: eyewitnesses Unreliable and uh. They did a study in the
27:08
Speaker 1: University of Virginia and it's not surprising. They found that
27:11
Speaker 1: participants over the age of sixty performed performed much worse
27:15
Speaker 1: than younger people. But what's scary is the older eyewitnesses
27:20
Speaker 1: were more adamant than the younger ones. So like they
27:23
Speaker 1: would have the face wrong, but be like, you know,
27:25
Speaker 1: super adamant. That exactly. It sounds like some some old
27:30
Speaker 1: guy would say. Um. And then they did some testing
27:33
Speaker 1: with eyewitnesses and they found that even if you have
27:37
Speaker 1: good eyesight just ten feet away, you may not be
27:40
Speaker 1: able to tell what color and person's eyes are from
27:43
Speaker 1: two hundred feet away, the eyes themselves like are just
27:46
Speaker 1: a blur U five ft you probably won't be able
27:50
Speaker 1: to recognize any facial features at all. And if that
27:53
Speaker 1: sounds like, you know, big d five feet away, there
27:57
Speaker 1: have been convictions of five feet away eye witness accounts
28:02
Speaker 1: based on that, you know, convictions convictions based on that.
28:05
Speaker 1: So yeah, what about twelve Angry Men. Yeah, good movie,
28:10
Speaker 1: that's a great movie. Um. They've come up with this, uh,
28:13
Speaker 1: this thing called DNA phenotyping that actually is showing a
28:16
Speaker 1: little bit of promise, at least in theory. If a
28:19
Speaker 1: suspect least behind some sort of um usable DNA, some
28:23
Speaker 1: sort um, you can test it and you can say, oh, well,
28:26
Speaker 1: this suspect has brown hair, brown eyes and it's probably
28:31
Speaker 1: um um. So at the very least you have that
28:36
Speaker 1: set and then if you could add to that eyewitness testimony,
28:39
Speaker 1: that's a good. Yeah, but it's still in its infancy.
28:44
Speaker 1: So we talked about sketching criminals. There are other things
28:48
Speaker 1: if you're forensic artists that you do that you probably
28:50
Speaker 1: don't think about a lot, but you see it a lot. Like,
28:53
Speaker 1: for instance, this child was abducted when they were six
28:58
Speaker 1: and here is what they might look like today at sixteen,
29:01
Speaker 1: so advancing or a criminal who has been on the
29:04
Speaker 1: lamb for fifteen years on the lamb. Or here's what
29:07
Speaker 1: they might look like with a beard. It's believed that
29:09
Speaker 1: they've grown out their hair, and this is what they
29:11
Speaker 1: might look like. Now here's what they might look like
29:14
Speaker 1: as a clown exactly. Here's what they might look like
29:17
Speaker 1: as a clown under your bed. Um. So that's called
29:21
Speaker 1: age progressed imagery. Um. And then they have reconstructive imagery
29:25
Speaker 1: when you have an unidentified body that's decayed quite a bit,
29:30
Speaker 1: and sometimes it will be sculpture even that they'll try
29:32
Speaker 1: and put together what the person. And I've never figured
29:36
Speaker 1: out how they know where to put the points, you know,
29:39
Speaker 1: the little points that stick off of the skull that
29:41
Speaker 1: they use as like a guide, a structure for the putty.
29:44
Speaker 1: How did they figure out how long it should be
29:46
Speaker 1: where it should be. I guess it's just a decision
29:48
Speaker 1: by the artist. Or was this person really fat because
29:52
Speaker 1: your skull wouldn't be this any different. But it's just
29:54
Speaker 1: it blows me away, man. I bet they there's a
29:57
Speaker 1: lot they know. As far as I bet it's not
29:59
Speaker 1: just like surmise and they're not telling no. You can
30:01
Speaker 1: probably find out take on these courses. So oh, and
30:05
Speaker 1: then there's also ones where they basically touch up photos
30:08
Speaker 1: of really really grewesome dead bodies if they need to
30:11
Speaker 1: show the public something. Um chuck. If only nine of
30:17
Speaker 1: hand drawn police sketches are recognizable as the actual suspect
30:23
Speaker 1: and even fewer are computer generated um sketches to or are,
30:30
Speaker 1: what's the point of police catching. I was about to
30:35
Speaker 1: say there's no points, but there is a point, because
30:36
Speaker 1: what it does is, like I said, it provides a lead,
30:39
Speaker 1: It publicizes the crime, It gets a face out there.
30:43
Speaker 1: Even if it's and then this is me talking here,
30:47
Speaker 1: even if it's only nine person accurate, it's probably not
30:50
Speaker 1: so inaccurate that you know, it's probably in the wheelhouse
30:55
Speaker 1: as far as you know some features. That's like, this
30:58
Speaker 1: is a white guy who had dark hair and bug
31:00
Speaker 1: eyes exactly, So at least that put you in the
31:02
Speaker 1: wheelhouse in most cases, I would say. So. Also, if
31:06
Speaker 1: the witnesses all agree, oh yeah, he had a huge
31:08
Speaker 1: scar across his face, well that helps. Um, just seeing
31:11
Speaker 1: that in print the suspect has a scar across his
31:14
Speaker 1: face might not do the same as seeing it even
31:16
Speaker 1: just on a rudimentary drawing of the scar and maybe
31:19
Speaker 1: the direction it's going in, maybe how long it is.
31:22
Speaker 1: That's going to help tremendously as well, because you know,
31:25
Speaker 1: we're visual creatures. That is certainly true. So I did
31:29
Speaker 1: look up a little bit of the schooling and they're
31:31
Speaker 1: all kinds of course. Is that one guy, the pencil
31:35
Speaker 1: and paper guy. Yeah, I think he has his own
31:39
Speaker 1: um website. It's very outdated, but he teaches courses. So
31:43
Speaker 1: if you're listening out there, uh, you should up thought
31:46
Speaker 1: your website might get a little more Boy, what was
31:49
Speaker 1: that one website we went to? It was the cryogenics
31:51
Speaker 1: won't remember? Oh yeah, that's all the worst websites I've
31:55
Speaker 1: ever seen. That was pretty bad. But this lady, Karen
31:57
Speaker 1: Taylor is a forensic artists and she has the you know,
32:01
Speaker 1: besides the FBI, they're all kinds of courses you can take.
32:04
Speaker 1: You probably should have some artistic merit to go into it,
32:08
Speaker 1: otherwise why would you even be interested in it to
32:10
Speaker 1: begin with? And it can involve sculpting, model making, computer graphics, animation.
32:15
Speaker 1: Even so they're doing all sorts of stuff. You can
32:18
Speaker 1: work with anthropologists and dental specialists and other forensic scientists.
32:22
Speaker 1: It's like a team effort sometimes. You know that Um
32:25
Speaker 1: you mentioned animation. You know those those Chinese UM, I
32:28
Speaker 1: guess state television news where they do like the c
32:31
Speaker 1: g I recreations of I haven't seen that big news stories. Yeah,
32:35
Speaker 1: they did, remember it like anime. Heir. No, it's um,
32:38
Speaker 1: it's almost like uh like instruction manual art um. But
32:44
Speaker 1: they an'd be awesome. Um. They they did one for
32:50
Speaker 1: that's the Steward, this guy Steward, the flight attendant guy
32:55
Speaker 1: who like told everybody to go to hell and then
32:58
Speaker 1: like grab two beers and slid down on the shoe. Yeah,
33:01
Speaker 1: Stephen something remember him. They did one for that for
33:04
Speaker 1: some reason. Normally it's like crimes that they do it too,
33:07
Speaker 1: but they did it for that one. It's weird. But
33:09
Speaker 1: I imagine, like you, you would be a forensic artist
33:12
Speaker 1: in that sense because you're just taking your recounting of
33:15
Speaker 1: the of the episode and drawing it. Yeah. Hey, do
33:19
Speaker 1: you ever make note when you see something you think
33:21
Speaker 1: might be shady going, especially license plates? Yeah? I do that.
33:25
Speaker 1: I do license plates and I look at people and
33:27
Speaker 1: think this guy looks shady and I'm just gonna take
33:30
Speaker 1: an extra glance and notice that he's tall and has
33:34
Speaker 1: long blonde hair and the horse face Sean Sean White.
33:41
Speaker 1: It's never come up, but you never know. I think
33:44
Speaker 1: you should. You owe it to the world to be
33:45
Speaker 1: like a vigilant citizen and no CPR. Yeah, don't be
33:50
Speaker 1: a dummy, that's true. Uh, let's see you got anything else,
33:54
Speaker 1: Sir d V. Cooper, great police sketch. Who knows if
33:57
Speaker 1: they's what? He looks like the UNI bomber. Yeah, they
34:01
Speaker 1: didn't give him much to go on, like anybody with
34:03
Speaker 1: a hoodie and sunglasses pretty much, which anybody who wears
34:06
Speaker 1: a hoodie and sunglasses. Now it looks like the UN.
34:08
Speaker 1: They got the nose wrong the big time because it's Harry.
34:11
Speaker 1: You had like Jerry curling like a perm Yeah, his nose,
34:15
Speaker 1: the brilliant of bomber's nose is like really bulbous. And
34:17
Speaker 1: this nose was just you know, it was a nice nose.
34:20
Speaker 1: Anything else, Okay, let's police sketches. You can type those
34:24
Speaker 1: words into the search bar how stuff works dot Com
34:26
Speaker 1: and we'll bring up this great article and um you
34:29
Speaker 1: can see some police sketches and including the one in
34:32
Speaker 1: timis Mumick. They with a photo of him side by
34:34
Speaker 1: side um and Uh, I said, uh, search bar in
34:39
Speaker 1: there somewhere. So it's time for word from our sponsor.
34:42
Speaker 1: All right now, listener mail Josh, you're gonna call this,
34:47
Speaker 1: We laughed, he cried. My name is Luke. I'm currently
34:51
Speaker 1: a junior at Grand Valley State. Uh. I'm a bottle
34:55
Speaker 1: deposit broke student, which I guess that's a term for
35:00
Speaker 1: when you're turning in glass bottles for five cents, So
35:03
Speaker 1: I guess he's also in the nineties fifties about of
35:07
Speaker 1: the time. I'm broke because of this. I got a
35:09
Speaker 1: job at the beginning of the school. You're making hunting knives,
35:12
Speaker 1: and I just want to thank you both were giving
35:14
Speaker 1: me eight stitches and a trip to the emergency room.
35:17
Speaker 1: I always have the iPod preloaded with a variety of
35:20
Speaker 1: stuff you should know episodes, so I'm prepared for any
35:23
Speaker 1: situation of sheer boredom. It was while I was listening
35:25
Speaker 1: to Why Does Music Provoke the Motion that Josh maybe
35:28
Speaker 1: laugh so hard I was sent to the e er.
35:30
Speaker 1: Oh wow, that's really something. Thirty three minutes and forty
35:33
Speaker 1: two seconds into the episode, Chuck, you had just officially
35:37
Speaker 1: introduced Ben so Lee to the audience our musical guests.
35:40
Speaker 1: I was sitting on a bench using a belt center
35:42
Speaker 1: to sharpen blades when Ben said, all right, well, I
35:45
Speaker 1: can't wait to hear what you all have been talking about.
35:46
Speaker 1: Then Chuck manages to keep it cool, but Josh loses
35:50
Speaker 1: it and starts immediately laughing hysterically. I don't remember that,
35:54
Speaker 1: I guess because we did it in two parts and
35:56
Speaker 1: it was clearly faked and you just couldn't get it together.
36:00
Speaker 1: I don't remember that, though, I like always, Josh, your
36:02
Speaker 1: laugh trigger my own laugh, and I was laughing so
36:04
Speaker 1: hard that my left knee jerked up to my chest,
36:07
Speaker 1: only to be stopped by the belt Sander caught my
36:10
Speaker 1: lower thigh and sanded a hole so big in my
36:12
Speaker 1: leg you could see the muscle in the meat. This
36:15
Speaker 1: is your fault, dude. I never admitted to my employer
36:18
Speaker 1: that it was you guys that made me laugh so hard,
36:19
Speaker 1: But a trip to the E R and eight sigges later,
36:22
Speaker 1: and I still can't listen to that clip without laughing
36:23
Speaker 1: out loud. I really love the show no hard feelings
36:26
Speaker 1: at all. Trip to the e R is good for
36:29
Speaker 1: a person every now and again. I disagree by the way,
36:32
Speaker 1: yeah he should. Really that's a terrible philosophy. Yeah. Uh,
36:36
Speaker 1: and my parents aren't too happy about the hospital bill.
36:38
Speaker 1: But what's done is done well. Thanks for covering for
36:40
Speaker 1: keep up the good work. And if you feel a desire,
36:42
Speaker 1: I would not deny a pret T shirt that is
36:45
Speaker 1: from Luke Newman. And if we can dig up a
36:48
Speaker 1: T shirt Luke, I'll send it to you because you
36:50
Speaker 1: can find him on Discovery Store. But thing I might
36:54
Speaker 1: try to dig one up for this kid, but he
36:56
Speaker 1: was legitimately injured because of our actions. Yeah. Thanks, thanks
37:00
Speaker 1: again for covering for us, Lucan, thanks for writing, and
37:03
Speaker 1: we're glad you're okay. Seriously, we do think you should
37:06
Speaker 1: reconsider your trip to the e ER every once in
37:08
Speaker 1: a while. It is a good thing. Idea though. Uh,
37:12
Speaker 1: let's see if you want to let us know how
37:14
Speaker 1: we've made you injury yourself in a lighthearted way. I
37:17
Speaker 1: hope there's not a lot of the stories. I would
37:19
Speaker 1: hope not. Um. You can tweet to us at s
37:22
Speaker 1: Y s K podcast. You can join us on Facebook
37:24
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37:27
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37:30
Speaker 1: at our website Stuff you Should Know dot com. For
37:38
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37:40
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