Forensic artist Lois Gibson says helping other victims and witnesses seek justice has been therapeutic. Photo: Capehart Photography 2024
Lois Gibson is the holder of the 2017 Guinness World Record for most positive identifications by a forensic artist. More than 1300 perpetrators correctly identified more than 1000 convictions, 750 criminals put behind bars.
She's been helping the Houston Police Department in the United States catch criminals for nearly 40 years.
But there's a harrowing reason why. When she was a 21-year-old model and dancer in LA, she was raped, tortured and left for dead by a serial rapist and murderer.
Seeing her attacker get arrested for another crime, fight with the officers and beaten into submission was like a "miracle".
"After that, I could work crime, because I saw justice," Gibson tells Sunday Morning.
"That's how I get with my witnesses, I tell them I know what it's like to see justice, and I want you to feel that wonderful feeling, and that's why I'm taking up your time, just one hour, to try to sketch from your memory."
She says it's been a healing process for her and the victims and witnesses she speaks to.
"It can be the best therapy in the world is to do my job and get justice over and over. Sometimes three a month, two a day.
"He [the attacker] did nearly kill me and everything I did was a reaction because you can draw better if you're upset.
"I forced myself on the police department, and they fiercely resisted me. They were horrible to me, but I resisted them and would not stop. Five thousand guys on the department. I said no, I can do this. They said you can't do it from somebody's memory, you can't do a portrait. Because I was nearly killed, I would not give up."
Her artistry in sketching was already polished by the time she was helping police, having drawn thousands of portraits of people at San Antonio's River Walk tourist attraction spot, where she also happened to meet then Prince Charles in 1977.
"Everybody listening right now says it's impossible to do a sketch from someone's memory. Wrong. You just have to love so much and be so patient.
"You have a catalogue with different features and you show the witness features and then you have your own picture of the catalogue, and then they pick a nose, lips and eyes from hundreds of them, and then you draw what they say.
"And I had two sketches I did where the perpetrator, one of which was a murderer, saw my sketch and called the cops and turned himself in."
Children are often good, if not better than adults, at remembering details, she says.
"I had a 4-year-old boy in Kansas, Ulysses ... He had seen his parents slashed to death in front of him. They never would have caught this murderer because he murdered just for fun of murdering. He didn't know these people. He didn't owe 'em anything. Nothing. No fights.
"So I got with him and did a sketch, and it's such a small town, they were able to just walk to the neighbourhood and every single neighbour they showed, which was six different people, said, 'well, he lives there'. They knock on the door. It looks like him, and he confessed and he gave him the knife he used."
After 30 years, detectives found this killer in just 10 days thanks to Lois Gibson’ age-progression portrait. Photo: Supplied / Lois Gibson
Gibson even helped catch a man who was wanted for about 30 years - using a picture of him from his early 30s to reimagine what he would look like in his 60s.
"It was very, very, very easy. And then they caught him in 10 days. And they say 'are you Orad Lott?', and he goes 'no, that's not me'. And they showed him the picture and he goes 'ohh'. He turned around, just put his hands back for the cuffs."
Helping verify known figures
Edith Shain, who claims to be the nurse in the famous kiss picture that was photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt was meeting with veterans at the VA Hospital as part of her "Keep the Spirit Alive" campaign that raises awareness about the 65th anniversary of World War II on 20 April, 2010. Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images/AFP
But not all her work has to do with crime.
Glenn McDuffie - the man whose picture of him kissing a young woman when the Japanese surrendered in 1945 become famous - sought Gibson's help to verify he was indeed that man in the iconic photo.
"He passed away a few years ago and he was in World War II, he lied about his age and he went in when he was young.
"Nobody believed him. He was forgotten. He was living in poverty and ignored. And then, once I was sure, they flew us to be on Good Morning America ... And then every time he goes somewhere, he'd show his card and they'd put him in first class or they put him in the box at the sports arena."
She's even helped verify photos of Billy The Kid (Henry McCarty) - a notorious American outlaw in the late 1800s - and lawman Wyatt Earp - famous for his involvemnent in the OK Corral fight in 1881 which Netflix retold in a dramatised documentary this year. Photos of Billy The Kid are known to have been sold for millions.
Every career of an artist can help solve crime
In her Forensic Art Essentials book, she looks back on the grim cases she has helped solve and provides a helpful guide for budding police sketch artists, who she says are a vanishing breed.
Although she believes their skills cannot be replaced by technology, humans can make the technology better.
"I'm gonna try to get as many forensic artists' careers started before I get to the big drawing board in the sky.
"We're able to do our sketches as forensic artists, they put it on a computer and do facial recognition, comparing it to all these mugshots of known perpetrators, and they're starting to solve crimes from sketches.
"I will stand up for you if I believe you could do the work. I will stand up with you for your career in a law enforcement in your area, and I'm like a 900-pound gorilla in law enforcement.
"Because every career of an artist I start could solve murders, stop rapists, stop robbers."
