A conversation with the busiest police sketch artist in the world
More than 1,000 criminals identified, and counting.
Police sketch artist Lois Gibson had just interviewed a witness to a murder in Houston when she picked up the phone on a recent evening.
Gibson, a Guinness world record holder as the artist whose composite work has helped identify the most criminals, had spent 45 minutes sitting at her easel, using charcoal to reconstruct the image of a gunman based on the witness’ description.
The witness, whose lover was killed, seemed more troubled by the idea that she would have to spend part of her workday answering questions from a detective and police artist than the death of her boyfriend, Gibson said with a slight Texas drawl.
“She was a Gemini and a self-made woman so naturally she didn’t want to help us,” she added, without explaining what she meant. “I was chatting her up to get her cozy with the detective. I told her ‘You look so good in that dress,’ and got everybody into a Kumbaya mode so we could actually be productive.”
If all went according to plan, the police would distribute Gibson’s sketch to local media outlets and distribute it on social media to help identify a killer.
The afternoon session was the latest of more than 3,000 occasions since 1982 that Gibson worked with a witness or victim to try giving the cops an idea of a suspect’s appearance. By her own count, she’s sketched more than 1,200 people who have gone on to be convicted of crimes ranging from rape, murder, armed robberies and kidnapping.
“In order to do it, you have to just let it flow,” she said. “Everybody’s always freaking out because of whatever event that just happened, but I need to relax.”
Among the most remarkable identifications are Vito Arena, a Gambino family associate who flipped on John Gotti, a number of FBI cold case suspects and a man who allegedly threatened Stormy Daniels on behalf of Donald Trump.
Rather than asking witnesses to describe perpetrators, Gibson relies on photo albums full of moustaches, ears and other facial features of various sizes. The point is to give young kids or victims who can’t speak — perhaps because of an injury — a resource that can only improve accuracy.
“It’s a yearbook-sized magazine full of eyebrows and lips and scars and blonde hair and black hair and spindly cartoon moustaches and Duck Dynasty beards,” she said. “You name it. I usually don’t talk at all.”
Gibson’s career started after she, herself, was the victim of a crime. In the early 1970s, when Gibson worked as a model and actress in Los Angeles, she was raped and choked by an attacker who left her bleeding from the face. The incident convinced her to abandon her career path at the time to earn a degree in forensic art and begin working with police agencies through the U.S.
At one point, she said, she witnessed police officers beat and then arrest her rapist, enjoying a sense of satisfaction.
"I saw the arrest," she told ABC News. "I know what it is to see justice...It changes your life."
When asked about the most memorable case with which she was involved, Gibson answers immediately: the kidnapping of a newborn baby taken from its mother on the first day of its life.
“The only thing worse than a murder is the kidnapping of a baby by a stranger because you don’t know if the baby is killed or its crying or dehydrated,” Gibson says now. “This was in 1995, and the cops didn’t even think about the mother as they interviewed her.”
The incident involved a woman impersonating a nurse who appeared to be helping with new mothers. The suspect briefly pulled the baby out of view, put the child in a large purse and walked out the building. Police called in Gibson, who arrived at the hospital roughly 10 hours after an otherwise happy birth.
“Everybody wanted to die,” she recalls. “The whole thing was hard to look at — I could barely do it.”
A friend of the kidnapper who was watching the evening news saw Gibson’s sketch on TV, and called the police.
“If that was the only case I ever solved in my whole life, it all would have been worth it,” Gibson went on.
“I could take cruises and clip my toenails and read books. It’s all been interesting, though. This job is the other side of boring. It works for me, and I’m addicted.”
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one more thing
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