SKETCHCOP-Michael W. Streed

business running. With stamps dot com, seamlessly connect with every major marketplace and shopping card if you sell online, schedule package pickups through the dashboard, and automatically see your cheapest and fastest shipping options from different carriers with rates up to eighty nine percent off USPS and UPS rates. And with the stamps dot Com mobile app, you can take care of mailing and shipping wherever you are, even on

the go. Make the same no brainer decision as over one million other business decision makers with stamps dot Com. Sign up at stamps dot Com with Code Program for a special offer that includes a four week trial plus free postage and a free digital scale, no long term commitments or contracts. That's Stamps dot Com Code Program.

sign up now at Chumbuck Casino dot com. That's Chumbuck Casino dot com.

as well as the Baton Roue serial killer. The Sketch Cop has fought crime coast to coast, from Los Angeles to Baltimore, Salt Lake City to Baton Rouge. Along the way, he has papered the walls of police squad rooms with sketches of their city's most dangerous criminals. In this collection of true crime stories, Michael shares cases from his own portfolio. He describes how he connects with and empowers courageous victims

and eye witnesses from all walks of life. Using their descriptions, the author creates lifelike sketches of the assailants with an accuracy that has led to quick identifications and captures. Sketch Cop Drawing a Line against Crime provides readers a glimpse at some of Michael W. Streed's career cases and the

significant role he plays in the criminal justice system. The book that we are profiling this evening is Sketch Cop Drawing a Line Against Crime with my special guest, sergeant journalist and author Michael W. Streed picked up there.

your background. So tell us your background and how you came to want to be a police officer, and how it came to be that you combined your love of art and combined artistry and your police background and your interest in police enforcement to be able to combine these two things into what you have appropriately called sketch cop.

so I was pretty much inundated with it. But at the same time, like most kids, I had a variety of interests, and I was really interested in art as a kid, and I just doodled and drew nothing really serious growing up. And as I got older, towards high school graduation, but what am I going to do with

my life? And I thought about being an artist, and I realized that, you know, I would probably started us because unless you were really popular had some sort of niche type of art, you were going to be like everyone else. And I always wanted to stand out somehow. So I went ahead and went into police worker as a cadet just out of high school. Because every profile I took said, you know, you are helpful to people, you want to help people, and you like being outside.

And that's what police work afforded me, the ability to help people be outside because had adrenaline and rushby the first one there, and the art was always there. As I went into police work, and one night I was off and was enjoying dinner at home watching television. I love to watch the news and I still do. And I happen to see a composite sketch flash on the screen. I dropped my fork. I'm like, that's it. That's that's the epiphany, that's the that's the thunderbolt, the lightning strike.

This is what I want to do. This is how I combine my love for art with my desire to help people in public service. So I started training, and you know, I still love catching bad guys, and for me, you know, I like the car chase and I like chasing people down alleys and stuff and all the cops and robberts stuff. But I wanted to find a way to set myself apart from my peers and find another way to further help people and catch bad guys and

catch more and catch some of the worst people. And so when I started taking courses in police sketching and learning how to sketch the bad guys and talk to people and turn their words into pay sure, you know, I learned that there was much more in terms of age progression, facial reconstruction, so many facets that I could learn that I could add to my friends, a toolbox and and again, you know, further my reach and law enforcement.

So so when people came to, you know, ask me what do you do, I said, I'm a police sketch artist. And I said, they said, well, they didn't really they couldn't wrap their head around it. So I said, I'm I'm I'm a sketch cop. Like, oh, okay, you're a police officers sketches. I said, yeah, absolutely, that's that's it. And so the word kind of stuck, and the name stuck, and uh, I've used it ever since in terms of

the title of the book. Uh, you know, facial compositive software products of my company sells and training and such. So it's it's sketch coop is my brand. And and that's how I describe pretty much what I do in a word.

So that's what I had told the audience that we would be discussing with your book Sketch Coop, but you provide a very good example and also how all facets of law enforcement before DNA and before some of the other forensic sciences were either discredited or as has happened, have been developed. So you talk about December eleventh, nineteen eighty and you talk about getting learning a little bit about along the way, about what not to do or

how to do things a little bit differently. So you were sort of thrown into the fire here with this, Dwayne McKinney. So maybe tell us a little bit about this. I think this You said this was your very first, So tell us a little bit about this case and what you learned, and tell our audience about this case and how you accomposite drawing was an integral part of this case.

misdemeanor type of cases and such. So when does murder happened? I was, you know, six months out of my first police sketch arts school, and you know, I was I was trained how to interview people on crime scenes during the academy. It's a very very different interview than you do as a forensic artist and even as a police investigator.

And so it happened when I was working on shifts uniform and you know, I was dealing with traumatized people, and you know, I was sitting bend a big desk and then uniform, badge and gun and I was just like dripping with authority. And I didn't realize at the time because at the time, you know, it was a police sketch artist. The name important. It was all about the drawing, all about the art. So that's what I was focusing on. Even though you know, my skills are

fairly raw. Then I make a draw recognizable faith, but not not the skill level I have now. But but I learned along the way that it was more about the ability to communicate with people, you know, the ability to get them to trust you very quick, and trust you with sharing their fears and their trauma and just how they were scared to death they're going to die or something that they happened to see a traumatic event

like someone you know, murdered in front of them. And I realized that, you know, all the authority, the trappings of authority, whether it was like putting a large barrier between me and the person, and you know, you know, wearing you know, an offensive weapon like a gun and having a baton and stuff in that just further you know, froze people up. It was. It was much different than

I do now. I've obviously I've evolved, and so when I developed this sketch, I actually developed two sketches that night. I think that the person was so upset and I didn't quite know how to help them other than the process of getting this drawing down a paper. And it did look like Dwayne McKinney, and it did look like herman jacket. The person eventually figured had done the crime. You know that it hit both marks, so to speak, and of course they were able to exonerate Dwayne McKinney

after you know, eighteen years in prison. But if I've learned a lot since then, and I think that anybody who believes it's about the art, they might be partially right. But really, like I tell people, now, well, you know, I consider on draw three pictures all day. I can go to Disneyland or go on the boardwalk. But if if I, if I make the drawing all about me, and I become so heavily invested ego wise in it, then it becomes my drawing and it's and so it's

not about me, it's about them. So I take great care is to take that time to build a rapport with them, to get to know them quickly, to build that bridge, and to get in and get out. Because people do have lives. You have short attention spans, and you have to get them well you can get them, so to speak, and you get one bite at the apple, so to speak, and you want to make a good one.

And so I do a lot of things differently now in terms of the emphasis I place on the process and the people aspect of it more so than the artistic angle of it.

And the first thing I do is a developer, for I have to find some sort of common ground, some sort of commonalities, so I kind of know as much as I can about a lot of different things, so I can so I can more easily jump start those conversations.

Maybe somebody comes in with, like, you know, a T shirt on, you know, some heavy metal rock band, or a mom comes in with a key chain that has pictures of her sons and the Little League uniforms and such and and and so I find things that, you know, that I can quickly associate things I know something about

and start asking them about that. And I give an example in Baltimore, when I was the full time sketch artist there, I had a poster hanging in my office called the Bad Guys, and it was a caricature poster of all the different movie and TV you know, the Sopranos,

the Godfather characters and such. And people would come in and they may not be able to remember who the first president United States was, but they, you know, they knew these these culture icons, the gangster so to speak, and they start asking about them and start talking about them, and we're able to talk about the movies and stuff like that, and you can see people start to relax, and after about ten minutes of talking about it, they

start relaxing. Then we go in and start talking about the process, explaining and managing their expectations, what what I'm hoping to get from them and what they can offer

to me. And then once they you know, once they know the ground rules so to speak, and the expectations, it's almost like you can see it's almost like an air being let out of them, and you can see them just instantly relax and then they want to try because their biggest fear when they come into police stations is this compositive is going to get the wrong person in trouble, when in fact it won't. And so then

I have them, you know, talking about the crime. If it's a sexual assault crime, I have them taking up to the up to the edge so to speak, when the attack occurred, and I leave the I will leave them of having to tell me the goal details to everything else. And then I have them describe the faithfully

and as much detail as they can. And then I showed them a book of facial reference pictures to reinforce what they're telling me, because in memory, the visual part, the recognition part, the ability of people to be able to show you versus tell you is always stronger because people have different educational levels. Different their ability to articulate is better in some than others. But they can all

pick a picture out and show you. Once they do that, then then I sketch the picture I get much like building a house, you sketch the framework out. Then I let them view that and that's the refinement process where they get a chance to tell me no, you know, you need to change this or that's good. And once they get all done with that, then we render it in and a couple of times during the final running of process, I show them the composite just to make

sure I'm not going off in the wrong direction. And then when I'm done, I give them one last get their feedback, thanks them for taking part in the process, because I want them to walk away feeling good about what they did. I want them to feel like they were able to help they feel good about it. And then I give it to the detective and give them any information I think might be relevant, and I go on to the next case and wait for the detective to let me know they caught the bad guy.

that's useful for a composite sketch. Why is that?

sometimes and or things that we see. And so you know, very young children don't necessarily have that yet, you know, it's you know, out of the mouths of babes as they say, you know, kids will come up. It's it's really kind of funny because kids and elderly people have a tendency just to pop off and say stuff, and no one holds them responsible for it because it's very unbiased, it's very unfiltered. It's just straight out this is what

it is. I use the example of a chair. You know, a child may able to tell you to take a three legged chair. It's okay, it's got three legs, a back, it's a brown, and it's got like a big scratch on the seat, and an adult may give you partial description. Then they may go on about how they don't like brown, they thought the chair was too uncomfortable, and they prefer fabric and wood, and they started, you know, going off

on tangents and stuff. And I think sometimes the child's witness brings information it's still pure and unfiltered that I think that they shouldn't be discounted as witnesses.

which was then totally a soonerted after eighteen years. So in light of that, I thought, this is fascinating that you were able to get a you know, a composite from a detailed description from a six year old in light of all the discrediting of that eyewitness testimony. So tell us a little bit more about go ahead.

Because really, as a police sketch artist, that's my job is to do memory minding, so to speak, you know, being able to take that memory and retrieve it and

make it something that's going to be useful. Now, it would be very easy for me to say, you know, on the cases where I didn't get it right, so to speak, that it's it's I can blame it on the on the witness, but it's not necessarily blaming on anybody as much as the fact that you know, you have to be able to evaluate the eyewitness properly, and you have to be able to find ways of accessing

it and retrieving that memory. Now, you know, we talk about protecting memory, but it's really hard because you know once that person with Hey, guys, it is Ryan.

is as purely as possible. And you know, sometimes you know, you get it right and you're able to hit a home run, and other times, you know, people just they just there's there's blocks, and there's trauma, there's things that prevent you from getting it out of them, from being able to share it and in and then you have to rely on other evidence at that point. Just like when somebody says, well, you know, this is this composite wrongly convicted somebody, and I say, no, it's not the

composite wrongly. The composite is just a tool. It's more of a elimination tool than an identification tool. Once the composite identifies the person, I would, I would. I don't want to say that the artist is off the hook at that point, but really it's up to the detective to take that identification and gather evidence to corroborate it

or exonerate that person. And sometimes under the best circumstances, the officers go through all the steps and later they find out that they were one step shorter, information came out much later that they had no control of, or they got lazier, sloppy and felt the pressure to have a conviction or arrest in shortcuts and the wrong person gets convicted.

And so I went to her home and I sat on and talk to her, and at the conclusion of the sketch, it's just terrified, understandably, And she saw the sketch and started trembling and pushed it away from me and jumped up and ran in another room. And I heard her vomiting. I mean, she was she got nausey she got sick. I mean the just the visceral reaction she had, and it was so powerful that I knew that we were, you know, on the right track. It's like on television that news people will always tell hey,

they cried, you know, tears are good TV. Well, in my business that people have a visceral response like that, I go, okay, we're onto something. So the detectives took it doory door. They found the car in an area just south of the city where I threw the sketch, and so they found the car. So they determined a certain radius and they started going doordoor sharing the sketch. So when they knocked in the door, a young man came to the door. He you know, the detectives said,

here's a sketch and we're looking for this person. Do you know who this person might be? And he said no, no, no, I don't have no idea who could be. And as it turns out, it was his brother, and he was covering for his brother. And of course you know kids are curious. Well, kid comes by, pushes through but says, hey,

what like, what's going on? Hey, that's Uncle Tommy. And so Uncle Tommy turns out to be the person at the door's brother, and they're able to identify him and arrest him, and he's a very close match for the sketch.

photographic lineup, depending upon what region or jurisdiction you're in. Essentially, they take six photos one of the suspects, five of other people who look similar to and they present it to the eyewitness, and once the eyewitness makes a positive identification, oftentimes that will give probable cause for officers to go out and arrest the person without a warrant, and then you know, interview them, mirandize them, interview them, collect whatever

evidence they can legally without a search warrant, and sometimes that you know, things that they find during the arrest will provide probable cause for a search warrant to obtain evidence from a car or a home or even things like DNA samples or hair samples and things like that

to further strengthen the identification. And I think that's where you know, we've gotten in trouble with a lot of cases before DNA because they base these arrests and convictions solely on eyewitness identification, when in reality now maybe even then, there's more and more evidence that they can use to strengthen that identification or in some cases exonerate the person right there before it even goes to trap.

so they started making these mechanical kits. They have uh cellophane overlays with different facial features on them, and you know, people would come and they would they would pick out the noses and the eyes and such, and they would do the overlays to where it formed a fuzz puzzle. It was almost like putting it together a puzzle. And then they would you know, pay per clicking, pay per clip them together, make a xerox copy for a wanted poster or if the person a mustache and use a

grease pran to draw in a mustache. It was very crude, but it worked. And then there were other mechanical assembly kiss in England as well, So England and the United States were they were doing parallel developments. The first one was the Identic kit and and the the e fit over in England, and so in the early nineties, late eighties early nineties was when you first started seeing computer software development. They would take those features and automate them.

And so I got in early started working for companies as a consult in the nineteen nineties because I'd seen these products developed and I knew that it was inevitable that they were going to develop as the technology got better and impact our industry, and they would you know, they'd be putting they'd be giving the ability to create faces.

They'd be taking it away from the artists and giving it to the line officers, the detectives, the support personnel, whoever could sit and talk to somebody and figure out that the technology would now become a composite artist so to speak, or police sketch artists by proxy. And so my experience with the companies was such that they were really interested in making a profit, but they didn't know anything about the product itself, or the police industry and

or the process of interviewing people. It was their whole pitch was, with our software, you can develop a sketch and minutes. Mechanically you could, but the process itself they weren't expecting in terms of interviewing people. They were just not even acknowledging any sort of training aspect. So I thought, well, if this is going to impact my industry, I want to get in on it. I want to be the person driving. I want to be the conductor and the train and not the person in the cabooz so to speak.

So I started working as a consultant and I started training different agencies using the software, and there was a real we hit a certain point where there's a lack of development, and so I thought, well, there was a point time I said, you know, I'm going to do it myself and I'm going to go ahead and create

a product. And I created Sketch cop Base sets Facial Composite System software so I could properly dispense the training and have some influence in terms of how departments used it, how they perceived facial composites in their investigative protocols and their role as detectives. And I just figured the more faces that are out there, the more people that can do it, means more bad guys are going to jail. You know, some artists may be really invested, say, look,

you know what, my pencil is better. I can do better than what the computer can do. But with the software tools we've developed in the partnerships with other digital imaging software, you can really do what a sketch artist does with a click of a mouse and an eight to sixteen hour course that we put on. And so that's what I'm doing today, and I'm working on a new book. It'll instruct officers law enforce or personality and forensic science students, how to create how to use these tools,

both hardware tools and software to create digital faces. In some instances you don't have to be an artist. In other instances where you are an artist, there's software tools and painter tools and stuff you can use to quickly develop your own libraries, quickly use the stylists and the tools within the software to create sketches that look very lifelike that you can more quickly disseminate to still law course in the public.

formed in nineteen ninety three. So tell us a little bit about what's different about this gang and why you think these young offenders are the most dangerous threat and explain the story for our audience.

you don't act it out, we're fine. You can play it. But what happened was is a lot of kids these days and even back then, they didn't understand the line between reality and the game, so to speak. And so with all the violence that these kids are exposed to both on television, in their homes, in the video games and such, they were so desensitized the violence that once they you know, once they're out there, it was like

the world was a video game. And they didn't realize that once you pulled the trigger on a gun, you can't call the bullet back. You can't punch a reset button like you can a video game or start over. And so what happens is I think that kids are probably the most dangerous predators of all because they don't they lack the inhibitions that adults have because in certain generations of adults, you know, there was consequences for misdeeds

at home and when you're out in the street. In these days, I mean, I could go on a long die tribe about the effectiveness of the criminal justice system, but the bottom line is is that the kids aren't being held responsible and there's no consequences for what they do. So it makes them very dangerous because they think they're invential.

Nothing's gonna happen to hm because oftentimes nothing does. So what was different about the Temp style hustlers was, you know, not unlike most gangs, there's a charismatic leader and in this case, this adult, this charismatic leader is pretty smart. He set up the gang like a multi level corporation and kids had to do certain things to earn their stripe,

so to speak, and make more money. And they're talking about, you know, having iras and then taking the money from the crimes and investing it and the bank accounts and such. So it was it was very different. It was very forward thinking for a gang even back then. But if you look at you know, gang models and stuff, I mean a lot of motorcycle gangs back then we're already investing in in in clubs and and and laundering their

money in honest businesses. So he was just he was just taking what he what he's seen out there on Wall Street in different you know, legal and illegal gangs and stuff like that, and putting it to work and wowing these kids and then letting them think, hey, you can make these crimes. You're gonna make a lot of money. We're gonna invest and you're gonna make you more money. And that with kids being bored and unsupervised and just

craving excitement such it was a bubbling cauldron. It just exploded Marino Valley and it resulted in the in the death of this young mother.

and they already they were familiar with my work. So they called me and said, hey, look, you know, we've got like twenty investigtors working on this thing, and we need to catch these people because you know, the community demands that they're afraid. These kids have already committed a bunch of other series of robberies and attempted carjackings and such, and so they said, you know, take a crack out and see what you can do. So I interviewed the witness and she did such a great job. I mean,

she's very observant. She saw the shooting, she saw the aftermath, she went and called the police right away. She was from a police family herself, so you know, she sat around the dinner table hearing the stories and so she wasn't so I mean, she was upset by what she saw, but it wasn't like the whole police procedural aspect of what was happening during the investigation was intimidating to her.

So it made it very easy to connect with her and to form that relationship and to form that partnership to work through this sketch. And as soon as the sketch hit the media and hit the news. They were getting some tips and they showed the sketch are on some use and they identified this person in the sketches,

a thirteen year old kid, Nam Chris Lyons. It was eventually, you know, arrested and convicted for But I mean, I've had primes where they've where I've had a composite go out and They've identified the person in less than a minute, in like thirty seconds, And I've had cases go on cold cases gone for eight years before a result comes up.

So I think the combination of a good eyewitness and and the police using the composite properly in terms of making sure got white distribution was great for having this kid quickly I did.

to go, what he wanted to do. He favored large apartment complexes near freeways where he could walk around and target his victism anonymously and then be on the freeway fairly quickly and be in another county quickly and elude police. And when you know, back then in the eighties, we didn't have the crime analysis tools that we have now. We didn't have people dedicated to, you know, going through crimes and collating the information and disseminating it to patrol

officers and to detectives like we do now. Also, we didn't have the social media in the Internet. So if you put a composite out in Orange County, if the person lived in Riverside County like Kuntis George Wade did, no one would know it. Because he owned a business in Temecula in Riverside County. He did business in Orange County but largely lived out there. So he got in, he got out, he got away, and no one was

the wiser. And then of course he went to jail between so there were some cooling off periods between his attacks. It was just the fact that law enforcement just didn't make the link because he was in that generation of the law enforcement where we would reteletypes, We would rely on going to meetings and sharing information, you know, and a lot of people fell through the cracksident and in

this case it was good old fashioned police work. It was a street cop that started taking the information and saying, Okay, I know that this guy has a tendency to get in one place and at some point he'll circle background and come back in the same area again. And that's what he did. He patiently waited and Kenneth George's way would binge. It was he was like he was like, you know, testosterone has like had this in facial sexual appetite.

He would he would go on sexual binges. And so he went in this one actual binge and with all the information they were able to have this detective. I'm sorry. The patrol lieutenant from Anaheim Police Department, Joe Reef, he just they had an attack in Anaheim. He knew that he'd be attacking again eventually would come back round. He just waited and his patients paid off. He waited, and all of a sudden, it's kind of George Wade again. Chase was on and he was able to capture him.

And after that all the pieces fell together and a case clothes.

Through John Douglas and a couple of other guys. And he you know, he said that he normally has more, he normally requires more information, but based on what I gave him, yeah, he said, he's very he's a ritualistic offender. And and the ritual came in from you know, how he treated his victims, and you know, how he treated them as if they were girlfriends. And he went through this whole process and you know, telling them what to say and how to treat him, how to act and

so forth. I mean, even to the point where he committed a rape in East Anaheim. And Anaheim is a big city. Just give you your listener's context. It's the city about three hundred and firty thousand people in the center of Orange County. It's it's over sixty score miles, so it stretches. It's pretty good sized city. So she moved from the east side to the west side to get away from several miles. I mean, just so one night he breaks into her apartment of the west side.

He recognizes during the encounter it's her, and his word to her was, you know what to do? You know the drill. The drill was the ritualistic behavior the whole girlfriend experienced, you know, telling me you know how good I am in bed, and how handsome I how you know how large my you know, you know how large I am? And this that and the other. I mean this,

you know, referring to his Genitalian stuff like that. He wanted to feel popped up and feel like a man and just be that guy, and that was part of the rituals.

And and during one attack he actually pulled a knife out and led the victim around her apartment at knife point and didn't realize until later that he stabbed her, and I mean she didn't realize till later that he that she suffered a small, stablish slight stab wound. And this is where the dichotomy came in with him as that you know, it really upset him that you know, he hurt this person, because you know, he wasn't about that.

I mean, here was a guy that he reported, you know that he would at night would look in the mirror at himself and be disgusted and start screaming himself to stop raping. So he was very passive aggressive. The detective, the detective in this case, you know, she since passed away, and you know she the sant and the police are entrusted her with taking on this investigation and leading it and eventually interviewing him, and she did a phenomenal job.

And then you know they normally, you know, police department only they want a sworn detective and not you know, not a civilian investigator who you know doesn't carry badge in a gun. And she did a phenomenal job in interviewing him and getting him to admit to all this. And you know, had he not been caught, who knows what might have happened because he was escalating.

year old brother and ten year old cousins. She said, they were playing literally twenty feet outside our front door. You know, kids were playing. We were adults are inside the house. It was an effect portion of the yard in this serial sexual predator, child murderer Joseph Edward Duncan the third, he rolled up in his car and like most kids, you know a lot of these predators, they'll use the whole He helped me find my duck. He helped me find my cat. I'll give you a dollar.

He did that with the kids, and Anthony was really wary, and he was he was really you know, he take good head on his shoulders by all accounts, a great kid, great intelligent, and he kind of waved the guy off and he came back around again, and in this time he peeked a couple of their interests and got him outside the protected area of the fence and he pulled a knife out and he and the suspect, you know, Joseph Edward Duncan the third, he actually tried to abduct

Anthony's eight year old brother. He actually was focused on him, and Anthony jumped between the suspect and his brother to save his brother's wife. So the predator grabbed him instead and ran off through him in the car and took off with him. And to hear those kids, I mean I interviewed them when when I was called the scene, I was I think it was the day after the abduction, and I walked into this roll call room and there were police officers from every agency in that in the

in that area. There they were lining the walls, they were they were there to help, and there was a news media you know circus going on in the parking lot. And you know, they had a couple of agents in with me while I was talking to the kids and I was on the floor and we're drawing and talking, developing rapport. Every two minutes, it seemed like there was another agent going to say, hey, you know, when you

gonna be done with this? The news media wants that the news media wants and I and I said, look, you know what, I'm not working on their timeline for their news show. I mean, I want to be compliant and cooper because they're very important the process. The news media is a very very important part of the law enforcement team when it comes to investigations like this. And

so I said, just let me do the process. And so it was very valuable in the fact that, you know, there's some information that came out to the detectives needed. But you know, just all the kids kept saying, is I just want my brother back. I mean every tune, I just want my brother back and it just can't help,

but just you know, rip your heart out. And then of course, in a lot of these cases, like the Samantha Running case, the Anthony Martinez case, you know, any case where there's nothing more than an eyewitness and a

sketch art gets called her. In these cases, when I've been called, you almost feel like all eyes in the rumor on you like, okay, do something because at that point they've got nothing, they've got nothing at all to work with it other than the eyewitness in you, and you want to make sure you everything right, so you come up with a good sketch so the investigation remains, you know, keeps that momentum and going in the right direction.

And you know, I don't want to be the person that just like you know, just spins it off where it doesn't need to be.

the investigation off. I mean people sometimes they'll illustrate, say, for example, they illustrate blonde hair using the color yellow. Well, that's that's that's that's comic book blonde as far as I'm concerned, And that's nothing to do with the hair color. So you people get really literal sometimes, so I just keep it black and white, very you know, gray scales. But every so often there's going to be something that

stands out. I'll give you an example. And when I was the sketch arts in Baltimore for three years there there were there would be African American eyewitnesses him and say, okay, this this person is black, but he had light green eyes, and in the African American community, that is something that's going to stand out. So there were sometimes I would just go ahead and do this black and white drawing, but include you use photoshop to you know, include the

correct tone of green for eyes. SA with the Anthony Martinez drawing, what it happened was is going back to the thirty thousand tips Americans must want. It was it as popular, It's most popular, as heights of popularity in terms of viewership and such and cult following. They had an artist that they'd worked with that they would bring in on cases to redo other people's work or sensationalize them for the use of their show. They wanted in on this case. They wanted to bring their own artists in,

and the police agency didn't necessarily want that. They liked what they had, but they were getting tremendous pressure to bring this gallon because she had great success, and so the alternative was the FBI would just send their own

artists out. Because they actually found another witness who was an adult downtown that describes somebody very similar their thinking at the time was an adult witness is better than a child's witness, which I wholly disagreed with, but I said, look, you know what, step away, take your ego out of it. It's all about finding this child killer. So if that's what they think is the best, that's what's the investigation at this point in time. Let's just go with it.

So the police were able to successfully hold off the America's most wanted artists, but yet they couldn't hold off the FBI because there was a new witness. So protocol wise, that was proper to bring somebody else in, whether I

agreed or not. Then when then when it was the case was thrown back to the Riverside Sheriff's Department, their hot their central Homicide and you started looking at all the evidence, all the facts, the arena, read eyewitnesses, and it went from the FBI drawing back to my drawing being the primary drawing that they felt was most reliable. So they said, you know, we want to take another run at this, but we want to really get this

out in the media, put it on billboards. Everybody keeps going back to this piercing blue eyes that this guy had. So why don't we do it in color? I said, why not, Fine, we'll do it and call it. And so the idea was was to get this piercing blue eyes and everything else in terms of whether the skin tone was correct or not. I mean, at the time, the the eyewitnesses family said, look, you know, we've had enough of our son being our kids being exposed. Law

enforce this investigation, are traumatized. We're done. Your artists can't reinterview them. And this is like four or five years after the case. And I get that. You know, people want to move on, they don't want they have to protect their kids. I fully endorse their decisions. So the the really light blue eyes I illustrated, and the skin tones and the color of the plaid shirt were all very literal based upon a verbal description, but no eye

witness speedback saying yeah, that's that's correct. So what happened was is you know, they put it out there, nothing happened. And again, like the like the Ken's George Wade case, Justseph Edward Duncan, the third was a nomad. He wasn't from this area, so they put that composite all over the place because he was from the state of Washington and South Dakota. No one knew him here, and if they then the people that did know him here were

very protective of him. Anyway, wouldn't have called the police. So it took the slaughter of that family in Idaho and the abduction of those children and his eventual capture in the interview with the police where he tipped his hand and disclosed that he was involved in the Anthony Martinez debduction emurder.

it was in the top of his thumb. When the police roll your thumbs, they don't always they get the flat of your thumb, not always the top. So they got a search warrant to the tops of his thumbs compared them to the Layton Princes left on the duct tape. They made a positive match and now he's sitting on death row in Tara Haut, Indiana, waiting to get executed.

was is uh you know. Jeannie Pang was a former exotic dancer, a beautiful young woman, mother of two children and his two two children, and her husband was a financier and entrepreneur and file cause she was living a great life tended to a Roses roller skated, great striking woman, stood up in the neighborhood, great friendly everyone, everyone liked her,

Everyone loved her. And so one day there's a knock at the door in her housekeeper ants at the door and here's a man dressed in a suit, briefcase, looked professional, nice haircuts, And she invited him in her home and went upstairs to get miss Pang. And when when this Pang came down the stairs, he produced a gun and started chasing her through the house. Housekeeper ran up and door went through. Neighbor called the police, and he chased

Janey upstairs. He tried to hide in a closet. He fired one bullet through the closet door, and as bad luck would have it, you know, had hit her right in the chefs and killed her. And the person fled. They called me. I came in and again it was it was a huge deal. And nothing, I mean, I don't I couldn't remember all my years working there where

there was ever a homicide in bill Park. I mean Kevin Costner went to bill Park High School starting baseball there, and I mean nobody it was just this bucolic, just nice little place so you know, fifty panemonium got to sketch prety distinct hairstyle, Pemplton mustache like Clark Gable, looked like it was pasted on his face, according to the

eye witness. And so they found out through their investigation that Jennie Pang's husband was involved in some litigation and actually owed his law firm about I think, you know, several thousand dollars. I don't call him, but maybe he was twenty thousand dollars, some significant figure. And the lawyers do about four grand of that twenty thousand it was

paid to the firm. So when they went to the law firm with the composite, the secretary looked at the composite, So, why do you have a picture of, you know, Hugh mcconolins their lawyer, They said, why do you have a picture? Randy is what they call it, And we have plenty of pictures of him here. And so they got a driver's license photo of him and noticed how much he resembled the sketch, right down to the part in the

hair and the very squared off hairstyle. And so if you threw a fake mustache on the photograph of Hugh Randy McDonald, you would see that. Yeah, he very much resembled the sketch well. Further into their investigation, he find out that he mailed some belongings home with the suicide notes to his wife and just disappeared and baked the

suicide off the San Francisco Golden Gate Bridge. And from there he embarked on this odyssey of hiding from the police, shaving his head, taking on assumed names, you know, looking in habituaries to take on these identities, and you know, went to Utah for a while. It was always one step ahead of the police. Whenever they thought they identified

his location, he was off the door before they got there. Eventually, they were able to tap in the social security system and found out that someone that they suspected with him was receiving social Security checks, and they backtracked and found out they were being deposited in a particular bank, and they found out that a woman was making regular deposits.

So they went and they followed her back to a residence in Sherman Oaks, a suburb in Los Angeles, and went into the house and found him, found him hiding and arrested and brought him back for trial. And he was acquitted and to this day it's still a mystery if in fact he was the one that killed her for somebody else. Since then, you know, obviously of course she was murdered, and then her husband he remarried and he eventually died under suspicious circumstances. That was finally attributed

to an intentional overdoe. And so there lives the mystery who done it? And go apart.

But this story is going to be a little bit different because, as I talked to the audience waiting for you, there's some law enforcement initiatives or part of me assistance in terms of some of the software like rapid Start, and so we can talk about that. So tell us a little about this heartbreaking story about Samantha Runyon and her abduction.

of solving the case. And this and that wasn't the case of the Samantha Running case. And she's abducted in July of I believe it was two thousand and two. He's not playing with with her playmate six year old. You know, Mom was working, Grandma's watching her and after dinner they went and played alley way near their apartment and they were approached by this person and who abducted Samantha again using the patented have you seen my Little

dog trick and I'll give you a dollar. You know that these predators are so fond of So after she was abducted, you know, the police responded and it was a huge response, as it should have been. And I didn't get to her until after midnight, and by then she talked to everybody under the sun and I don't. I'm surprised they even got a really good description from her. But once that description came out, I'm sorry. The description was broadcast and the composite was released the media. You know,

tens of thousands of leads start coming in. The great thing about having the FBI come in to an investigation is while they may be better suited to do the footwork in terms of investigative fall up on terrorism cases in large financial fraud cases, typically they're not geared towards homicides and things like this, but they have a tremendous amount of resources they can bring to bear on a case. They can give you availability as their crime lab of

all their different forensic experts. And in this case, they had a new software called rapid Starts. And what rapid Start would do is that it would take all the it was a relation. It was a relational database type of program where it would take all this all this tip information and collate it in terms of giving it levels of importance, tying it to other potential leads and such.

It was a great organizational tool for law enforce and to be able to sift through these tips and follow them up and keep in mind, whether it's five tips or fifty thousand tips. Even if you catch the perpetrator in the in the middle of the investigation, and as a time is the time you capture him or her,

you've only follow up on twenty thousand tips. You still have to finish something and follow the other thirty thousand and close them out, because what you risk is the defense attorneys saying, hey, you never fully followed this up. There's twenty thousand tips that it could have been the real suspect, and all they have to do, remember is create reasonable doubts. So rapids start was a great way to organize it, collate it, keep it, keep everything in

sync in moving in one direction. And in this case, you know Sheriff Mike Current at the time was again he was a new sheriff and you know he had great leadership capabilities. Unfortunately was his judgment that got him in trouble sent to prison, but he was a great

leader for that investigation. He kept the he he put a human face on it, and in the human face he put on it, in the personality and force of nature that he put to it was backed up by all this technology and software and in lab work and such because the suspect in this case, Alejandro Avola, left

the treasure trove of information and evidence behind. Not only did the eyewitness get a great description of a partial license plate, the color of the car was able to describe the composite, but where they found Samantha's body, they found footprints, tire prints, you know, other types of DNA evidence. And then ultimately when they arrested him, you know, there was other evidence on him as well, you know, scratch

marks where she was fighting for her life. It's such assaulting her and you know, you know, tear you know, tearstains. You know they found in his car with her DNA on it, you know, child corners computer, the tennis shoes left, the shoe prints, the tires left, the tire prints, the shoe box, the receipt, I mean, it just his cell phone information, you know, and it was just the case is wrapped up in five days. It was phenomenal. It was it was it was in all the years in

law enforcement. It was probably one of the biggest, most massive man hunts. It was the best organized in terms of everyone coming together for a common purpose, common goal. The family was strong. The family's co oper with law enforcemance. Everybody did everything they had to do to bring this little girl Homa. Unfortunately it wasn't enough.

you can't get any more high profile. You bring the FBI, brings in doctor Park, Deets from Law and Order Fame to come in who had interviewed Dahmer and John Hinckley Jr. Trying to get a grasp of this because it didn't get solved right away. And the reward was offered one hundred grand one hundred and fifty grand. I think it

went up to two hundred grand. What's interesting in your book, you provide comparative sketches with the perpetrators and many many are very uncanny, and this one is one of those very very uncanny resemblance to the to the killer himself. Yeah, very very amazing case in that all the people that were trying, like you say, to try to find this girl in the in the you know, slim hope that she was still alive, and then afterwards to capture this perpetrator and bring them to justice, you know.

to do it. And I think that sometimes that you know, victims get overlooked, and I think this was a you know, you know, my book was a great way to you know, honor somewhat of her life story and to be able to describe a very human process several that we go through in terms of memory, in terms of you know, the sketch artis involvement in how we interact with all

the other experts. I remember one time a woman asked me, she said that you must get board sitting here in your office drawing all day, because like when I was at Baltimore. I do, like, you know, ten fifteen drawings a week and just this insane amount of crime. I said, you know, it's not about the drawing. For me, it's about the people who walk through my door and their amazing stories of survival, their their tenacity, you know, the things that they go through and they overcome, and just

their life story and their backgrounds themselves. It's just fascinating and I'm just humbled to be a part of of all this, and it's it's just it's a career I still am involved with. And yeah, sometimes I'm online and on the phone interviewing eyewitnesses, and other times I'm there in person. I mean, I find I use any way I can find, you know, you know, legally and technologically to to to help police departs, help victims, and and try to further my reach into a law enforce to

be able to catch these bad guys. And I'm not the only one. There's others out there doing it. I mean, there's there's you know, you see composites out there all the time, and people people all often ask, you know, you know, how do you do this? And I thought, you know, the only way to probably effectively explain it is to write a book about it.

we're talking about back from the eighties to currently. So tell us about the importance, tell us about the need, and tell us about maybe just to give us an idea of the numbers, because if you're doing that many composite drawings in a week, the idea that you have something that assists makes that those composite drawings quicker, maybe easier or more available to people less inclined to be artists first and police officer, and yet police officers first

rather than artists first. So tell us about this need, the importance, and what kind of numbers are we're talking about, and a little bit about your company in the training and preparation for this occupation.

composite sketch artist in the United States. I was. I was pretty much doing the same amount of work that artists at NYPD and Houston Police Department was doing. I was doing it is much or more on average on you on a yearly average, So I've been pretty busy. I think that there's I think there's an importance for it. I think that you know, outside of DNA, you know, you're you know, DNA has kind of taken the center stage, as it should because it's it's a very very good technology,

very good crime fighting tool. But I think what's happening with composites now is I think with the proliferation of cameras in terms of surveillance cameras to fix the buildings, uh and you know, people's cell phones and banks and seven elevens, and you can be ince sort things like that that officers or detective fields, there's less of a need to do compositive sketches, which I don't necessarily agree with.

I think that there's instances where these bank cameras and other cameras catch a person's likeness very well, so there's

no need to do a sketch. But sometimes the image is still blurry and take them from an angle that nobody would be able to iv them, but detectives still rely on them, so I try to encourage them to, you know, put a composite from an eyewitness subscription next to that surveillance photo, and not only are people going to recognize the face, but they're probably going to recognize the person's posture, distinct their clothing or wearing, the way

they stand or whatever. It's a very powerful combination. Well, I think that's fuck anything else. I think every so often you have to go back and remarket and show the value of these things because you know, police retire, they get promoted, and new people come in. They don't always pass on the information too them. So my goal again and writing the book and setting up the company, is to remind the texts and people listening to people

in you know, entering forensic science careers. But if you can't draw, you can still make a positive contribution by encouraging your agency to buy a facial composite software a hopefully mind sketch cup, they said, and then engage in some sort of training. And I think that it's important

for law enforcement agencies to have this option. So if they don't have an artist on hand, they have people trained to use the software, because no one can predict when these horrible crimes are going to happen, and there's these child subductions have shown. When all you've got is an eyewitness and an important heinous crime like this, you don't want to be digging around looking for a local artist or who might be drawing, or who might be

retired or whatever. You want to have your own in house person, your own tool availble to say, hey, you know what, bust out the software, let's sit out this eyewitness and let's get a sketch up. And so that's what my company does, is that you know, not only do I consult on cases myself and provide remote drawings. I actually have some contacting from Romania. It was a victim to crime, wind me link and put them online on the computer and draw compositive which I can do.

I do composits on a regular basis for police departments back east, you know, through a remote hookup and I roll the local agencies in southern California. But if they don't need me and they want software as a solution, then I'm glad to hold trainings online in person, sell them to software support it, and give them what they need so they can turn out some really good faces and catch some really serious criminals.

process of sketching. But mostly your book is really about these dramatic cases that you were involved with, and so I think we touched on a couple of them, but for those that we were listening, there are some fascinating stories that were again the perpetrator wasn't caught for a few years, but the development of the sketch and then the importance of that sketch, sometimes not immediately but then later on is very dramatic and expressed in these some

of these stories that you have in your book so very very interesting. I wanted to ask just one last question in that it seems that at least just from me, is that some of the witnesses, even though they were traumatized, even though they were young, led to these detailed descriptions, that you were able to make this composite drawing and successfully be able to make an arrest or a conviction as a result. Is part of or am I just

looking at this wrong part of it? In that a person can memory or can remember certain specific details like a nose, or you mentioned a hairstyle, distinctive hairstyle, or how important are those details like eyes and mouth features and how a mustache would say was described as in your book a certain way, so you drew it that way?

How important are some of those features later in not so much the accuracy in that the composite looks exactly the same, but that those specific details like eyes and ears, those pronounced features that we would have and we would see more importantly, I would think, is that part of the value of the composite more so than the accuracy of that composite.

that's a distinctive feature. You know, maybe that the person, yeah, is really large ears like typically people I'll ask him is I always like to laugh if it's a sixty four thousand dollars question, what do his ears look like? And I didn't really notice the ear, But yet they can tell you that, you know, the person had you know, a certain hairstyle or you know, some people will tell you they were looking away and they didn't see certain things.

But it's trying to get them to focus on the face in their mind before they looked away to catch these things. But I try to pick on something that's going to be you know, distinctive to them that they remember to capitalize on. There's an anchor point to build around the rest of the sketch arounds. Yes, we've established a we've established a court down starting up, but we can to establish the court that can draw a good composite. I just can't tell time really well, so you know,

during the different time zone. So again I apologize to your listeners and yourself for burning up about you know, nine or ten minutes of your show waiting for me to call. But the cool thing about this is that you know from this book for your listeners out there, that this will evolve into taking some of those cases and expanding on them becoming their own books. So if they were really interested in that particular case, the chances are it's going to develop into its own books someday.

about this, Michael. For those that might want to say contact to you or find out more about your work, I know this is a Wild Blue Press release, a publisher that Steve Jackson and company and with a great great other great authors as company on this publishing company as well. So tell us a little bit about that and where people might be able to contact you ask questions to do Facebook. Do you have a website? Tell us a little bit about that.

access a kindle form and in paperback form. I do have a website, SketchCop dot com www dot SketchCop dot com, and I'm also on Twitter at sketch Coops. I'm also on Facebook Michael W.

job into of itself. So but people are free to contact me, of course on my email address Michael at sketch cop dot com and just go to the website and you know, buy the book obviously, and I'll be happy to answer any questions people have of me. Uh, you know, follow me. I'm really good about getting back to people. That's part of this whole thing. I love the the fan interaction. I really enjoy, you know, getting messages from people, and people are interested in the job itself,

interested in my career, the cases. You know, how do you become a sketch artist? You know, what have you done? And it's just you know, I'll I'll go wherever they want me to go. I just you know, I want to get two personal my shoe size or white size and things like that. But you know, the things in terms of other things, in terms of crimes and stuff, I'm an open book and I welcome their inquiry.