11/5/2003 Criminal sketches: Forensic artist relies on talent, FBI techniques and a strong stomach
Kelly Westhoff
Local forensic artist Ingrid Holley helps police identify and catch criminals. When the police are on the trail of a suspect, it is her black and white sketch that flashes on the evening news or appears in the newspaper. As the artist behind the drawings, Holley hopes her work ends up in the trash. "The goal of a composite sketch is for that thing to hit the garbage. Identify the person, and throw it away," she said.
The word forensic, Holley explained, means applicable to law. As a forensic artist, most of Holley's work involves drawing composite sketches, but she also works on skull reconstructions, post mortem drawings and video clarifications ‹producing a sketch from a video image.
Despite the somewhat grim nature of the job, she finds satisfaction when a suspect identified from one of her drawings is captured. "Yep, it's a smiler," Holley nodded proudly.
Though she's skilled at drawing strangers from descriptions, Holley balks at providing a description of herself. "Typical old lady," she finally offers, laughing to try to deflect the topic. Only Holley, in her mid-fifties, is not an old lady and she certainly isn't typical.
Born in Germany, she speaks fluent German. She has held various jobs over the years, including teacher, curriculum designer and graphic designer. She's married and has two adult sons, and she credits motherhood, in part, for helping her develop the skills necessary for a forensic artist.
"You have to be a little hard [to be a forensic artist]. And actually, I think the best training for that is motherhood. You have to be tough with your kids‹say this is wrong and this is right."
Holley stumbled into forensic arts while working as a graphic designer for the city of Minneapolis. "I didn't even know forensic art existed when I was in college," she said.
While working for the city, Holley was approached by "the guys in I-Dent," as she calls the officers from the Identification Division of the police department.
They came to the graphic arts department to ask if someone could draw a baseball cap on a composite sketch. The composite kit the officers were using was dated. It relied on a series of overlays to compile a face, but the hats, glasses and hairdos in the kit were no longer stylish. Holley added the baseball cap. Soon the officers began to rely on her artist's hand.
A couple of years passed before Holley asked if she could learn to use the composite kit. The answer was no; she wasn't a sworn police officer. But that didn't stop police from seeking out her help. Finally Holley spoke up. "Look," she said. "I know I'm not a sworn officer, but your sworn officers can't draw. So what's the problem here?"
Soon after, when an opening at a composite kit training session came up, Holley badgered her way in.
That was 12 years ago. The first year, Holley did just one or two composite sketches; the next year it was closer to six. Each successive year brought a few more. Then in 2000, Holley was invited to study forensic facial imaging at a prestigious FBI Academy training program.
Asked how she got an invitation, Holley shrugged. "I really don't know." The officers in I-Dent, she suspects.
Holly described the FBI course as fabulous, adding, "I have never done any schooling that intense." While there, she improved her composite skills, focused on victim interviewing and learned 3-D skull reconstruction.
Skull reconstruction? A surely gruesome task‹but Holley shrugged off the gore. "I don't think I've ever had a queasy stomach," she said. "I look at it very objectively. That is a body. That is blood. I just don't freak out. It's not pleasant, I'll tell you that. And the odor is..."
She paused. "...it gets pretty gamy. I'll stop."
Today Holley sketches one or two composite drawings a month and continues to work as a graphic designer for the city of Minneapolis. The forensic work comes mainly via word of mouth from police departments who pass along her name.
A group of Minnesota forensic specialists created a website about four years ago, www.forensicexpertise.com, as an online resource for police or lawyers searching for forensic consultants or expert witnesses. The website features a dozen experts, including a pathologist, a fingerprint specialist, a blood pattern analyst and Holley.
Generally, police call Holley in to make a sketch anywhere from two days to a week after a crime is committed. Longer than two weeks, Holley said, and mental images can start to get fuzzy. Holley doesn't use memory tricks or hypnosis to pull descriptions from a witness or victim; she relies instead on her own ears. "I listen about as hard as anyone can listen," she said.
She also asks questions using methods learned from the FBI. Holley begins by asking multiple questions about the details of about a criminal's appearance, everything from shape of the eyebrows to the curve of a chin.
Victims and witnesses often use ambiguous language, but Holley knows she has to probe deeper. For example, she has heard many times that an attacker had "mean eyes." But how should she draw mean eyes? Are mean eyes squinty? Pale blue? Deep set? She asks follow-up questions until the description becomes clearer.
"The interview is probably 80 percent of the composite," she said. "If you don't have a good interview, you don't get the information, you can't do the sketch."
Because of the nature of the work, however, those she interviews range from flaky to stoic, and many break down during the process. Despite their tears, victims and witnesses don't desert the interview, she said. "I've never had one that wouldn't do it. They cry, they mope, they whine‹but they do it."
Over the years, Holley has learned to carry candy and Kleenex, two small things that help her attention remain focused on a victim. "I feel really bad for the victims. I know they've got a road to go down that's gonna take a long time to clean up."
For many crime victims, the composite sketch interview is a good way to start down the road to recovery. It's a time, Holley suggests, when "...[victims] can take all that information that they are keeping, and just get rid of it."
Holley admits it's sometimes hard to tell if her drawings are accurate depictions of a suspect. "Sometimes when you draw them, you think, "This is not a human being.' But they're out there."
She remembered one crime in which eight different witness interviews resulted in eight very different composite sketches. But that case was an extreme.
More often, Holley noted, two different witnesses interviewed from the same crime result in composite sketches that are eerily similar. Holley recalled one finished sketch that was almost too true-to-life. The victim took one glance at the drawing, turned away and told Holley to never show it to her again.
Just like the victims and witnesses she interviews, Holley often leaves a composite interview emotionally exhausted. "You can't do more than one [interview] a day. A couple times I've done two a day, and I was just wasted. I can't do it. You invest so much into listening," she said.
Despite that, and despite confronting so many ugly crimes, Holley maintains a positive outlook on society. "You look around, and for every ten thousand people walking around out there, one of them's a creep. But the others aren't. The others are your friends and your family. Or they are someone else's friends and family."
Crime and violence, she insisted, have always existed. Tapping her book of sketches, she said, "If you sat down and thought about the instances in that book, you'd cry and cry and never get out of bed. I don't get into that. It's just not worth it."
What makes her work worthwhile, Holley said, is helping victims. "It's not unusual to have a victim hug me, write me a letter, thank me a hundred times over. It's amazing," she said.
"...At the end of the composite, if I get that feeling that the victim has been relieved in some way, that's the best." She smiled. "I love that."
