How Police Sketches Work

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 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 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, 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? 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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

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 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, 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

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 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 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

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, 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. 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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

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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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.

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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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

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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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

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 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, 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 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 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

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 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. 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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

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 more on this and thousands of other topics. Is that how stuff Works dot com