Stuff You Should Know - How Police Sketches Work

Episode Date: March 12, 2013

Creating composite drawings of suspected criminals from eyewitness accounts has been around since a Frenchman introduced it in the 19th century. Despite the introduction of new techniques and software it hasn't changed all that much. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jackmove or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Chuck, Chuck, Chuck. Before we get started, we should tell everybody we have a brand new animated web series. It's awesome. Yeah, they're animated shorts by this dude that was a fan, started out as a fan, Nick Shown, and said, hey, I'd like to do this for you. And we hired him.

And he's done 10 episodes. Dude, he's amazing. It's really very cool, actually. He's one of the most astute animators I've ever seen in my entire life. Like he just little pauses and things like that that I wouldn't have noticed we did. Yeah. 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 want to get the word out on the podcast. Just go to StuffYouShouldKnow.com and click on the videos tab. And you're going to see one, and they're going to release one each Monday. But that's 10 weeks. That's right. And it's pretty awesome. I think you'll enjoy it. Hopefully it'll keep going on longer than 10 weeks, too,

if Shown's arm doesn't give out. I agree. Yeah. So thanks a lot to Nick Shown for the just amazing animated series he's delivered to us. And thank you in advance for watching it at StuffYouShouldKnow.com. Yeah. Share it with some friends. Yeah. It's your problem. All right. Ready? Yeah. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. She's done the best move today. He just ruined my mood. Like you're jumping today. 10 seconds before we recorded. I was heading in a good direction. I didn't ruin your mood. You reminded me of some task that we have to do tomorrow. Like what can you do if this is waiting for us after we recorded to say those words?

It's okay. I wanted to get it off my chest. That's Thursday. And you know what? Today is Tuesday. You're gonna be mad until then? No. I'm saying I'm going to put off being mad again until Thursday. Oh, good. 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 going to use every bit of power that I have, which is not much around here. Let me know how that works out. Get this changed. At the very least, can we turn the overhead fluorescent lights on? No, we don't want that on. Does it not work? No, we don't want that on. Are you sure? Well, I mean, what is that would make it more serial killer light if there's like a buzzing

fluorescent? Let's see what it looks like. This is nice. All right, we'll turn it off. Thanks, Casey. Casey is our editor again. Oh, yeah. That's Chuck and I'm Josh and this is stuff you should know. That may have been our most slapdash ever intro. No, prepare for that one. Okay. Are you familiar with the guy named Timothy McVeigh? I do not know him personally, but I am familiar with his work. So in 1995, he rented a rental truck, packed it full of fertilizer nitrogen based explosives and drove it parked it next to the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and detonated it and killed 168 people, including a bunch of kids at a daycare center in the building. 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. Do you remember the view of that building which is the whole side missing? Horrific. It was horrific because this is pre-2001 and this is at a time when terrorism happens in Beirut. Just don't fly a plane from Germany to Beirut and you're going to be fine if you're in America. This was weird. 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 is the first big homeland incident that shocked everyone, I think. Yeah. Timothy McVeigh got away. It wasn't even a suicide bombing.

He got away. Within two hours he happened to be pulled over for a traffic violation and the cop said, do you seem a little hinky skinny? Let me search your car and found some weapons and said, do you have registration for these? I'm sure Timothy McVeigh said some crazy thing. I don't bow to your authority pig or something like that and the cop said, why are you coming with me? Just on suspicion of those things. Totally accidental. It was totally happenstance as Conger put it in this article that he was pulled over, but he was ultimately found out as the guy who blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City because while he was in police custody after being pulled over, a police sketch

came across the wire and this police, I guess the highway patrol looked at it and said, you know what? This looks a lot like our guy and in fact it was. This police sketch helped catch the Oklahoma City bomber who was ultimately executed. Have you seen the 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. Yeah, 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 we'll learn later is a very small percentage. Yeah, the 9% that are pretty darn 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... It's a photo of a police sketch in a newspaper. They made it out and were disseminated and... Yeah. Well, we'll learn there are varying levels of competency and artistic merit when it comes to these. Right. So that's probably where you get... 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. That's awesome. And it was pretty cool. Casey's nodding. Did you see that? It was awesome. It was like a big internet thing a couple

years ago. I have not seen it. I would like to. Like what is the great Gatsby look like in a sketch? I'm fond of those ones where they illustrate, like with photo realism, a cartoon character, like what they look like in real life, like those Beavis and Butthead sculptures. Those are so creepy. Aren't they? And I think everyone looked at those and be like, wait a minute, I think I knew that guy. Exactly. Yeah. So we shouldn't just lay... We shouldn't start the whole thing out by making fun of police sketches, even though there are some really bad ones. You could have a really genuinely talented artist with a sketch pad in hand. And if the eyewitness isn't giving it up well, it's not going to come anywhere close. Yeah, exactly.

Ultimately, it comes down to the eyewitness. Yeah. The problem is, is we're going to find out eyewitnesses are not very reliable. And so it's up to the police sketch artist to figure out how to call information from the eyewitness. Yeah. That the eyewitness might not even know they know. The sweet science. That's boxing. 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 is they call it a science to combat the notion that it's just like two brawling guys. That's like a lot more... Oh, sugar strategy. Yeah, sure. I like boxing. I'm not a big fan of MMA, but I like boxing. Agreed. Okay, so police sketching has been around for a while. In fact, there was a...

There's an anecdote in here about a guy named Annabel Karachi. You should say him. Annabel Karachi? Yeah. Who was a 16th century painter, a good one too. And as a boy, he and his father were attacked by robbers 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. Yeah, my hands. Yeah, exactly. 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. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great story, at least, whether it's true or not. Right. 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. Yeah. Which was actually founded by a guy named Alphonse Bertillon. Yes, in the 1880s in France, obviously, because from Josh's outrageous accent, 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. Right. And he would measure them and measure their forehead, measure their arms and ears and just anything that stood out, you know, scars, tattoos. And it became known as criminal anthropometry. And in 1884, the police there in France nabbed 241 repeat offenders based on his notations. Yeah. 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. 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. But eventually, like, yeah, people started to think, maybe we should start using this one particular thing called sketching, police sketching, to create an image of a suspect. Yeah, a lead perhaps. Exactly. And we mentioned this guy in our crime scene photography episode, if you'll remember, because he started that as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Same guy. Same guy. Wow. We owe a lot to Alphonse. Yeah, he was an obsessive Frenchman that we owe a lot to.

All right. So a forensic artist these days, it sort of depends on what kind of outfit you're running with. It could because they point out in here, this is Conger. Yeah. 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 force. Exactly. Who is like a patrolman otherwise. But yeah, it's like, oh, we need somebody to make the sketch. And I took some art classes. You can draw that turtle. What is that? Turtle 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 send it in and what got what like? Well, you send them some money too. And then they would

teach you how to draw even better. Gotcha. It was a mail in art, art courses. And I always knew it's some sort of a scam probably, but not 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, sure. If that was, if that was the only scammy come on. Yeah, that and sea monkeys. Hey, that's all you got to worry about. Those were real. They're Brian shrimp and they were alive. They were, yeah, they were, but they don't have faces and stand around and chat like the little cartoon depicted. No. Okay. So it might be a patrol officer that control really well, right? Or a civilian contractor that's, you know, qualified. Although I learned there is no

like official university degree that you can earn. No, but you can go off courses. 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, so it could be a private civilian contractor or it could be, you know, a full time, fully employed artist that you have on staff, right? I guess if you got enough crime going on, yeah, might be good to pay that person on a yearly basis. Instead of like, hey, we got a murder once every six months, you know, like Atlanta probably has their own sketch artist. This is what I'm guessing. I wonder, I bet they do or more than one probably. Oh, I don't know. You don't think? No. We'll have to look into this. Yeah, we need to find out a lot of crime in

Atlanta. So that if you are a witness to a crime and you agree to do to give some, some eye witness accounts to a police sketch artist, you're going to find what it's kind of like the lie detector test a little bit. Oh, yeah. It can be broken down into three parts. Never thought about 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's Dave. This is a pencil and this is a sketch pad. Right. Don't be alarmed. Make yourself comfortable. You can you can throw those magazines anywhere. Just just have a seat. I'm

sorry. I'm an artist and these are my cramped quarters. Right. I'm going to go off and smoke some opium. Right. I'll be right back. Let me go get my beret. So that is part one, wherein they disarm and make the person feel comfortable. Yeah, with opium. That's right. That is not true. Then what's the second part called? That is recall. It's free recall. Yeah. 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, I'd be like, well, he had fantastic hair and a beard. Yeah. Drawing. Yeah. They would draw, you know, Zach Galifianakis. Yes. He has great hair and

a beard. He does have a nice hair, doesn't he? No, it's thick. Lustrous. You could call it main. It's a main. So the guy would be like, really, that's it? Yes. The free recall is 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 kidding around about why I bet a lot of times these artists are just like, like, come on, man, I'm really trying here. Right. But you're not giving me much besides horse face. And apparently that's what a lot of people say. Oh, you had a horse face or he had bug eyes or something like that. Yeah. And again, part of the forensic artists. The sweet science. 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. Exactly. And so if you say bug eyes, it can be helpful to, if you're saying it to an experienced forensic artist. 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 eye witness or the victim says, you know, here's all the stuff I remember. Buck teeth, claw hands, clubfoot, wearing like a high lace collar, like you'd see on like Emily Dickens and yeah, goiter disco eye. And then they say, okay, well, I'm glad you came up with all that really mean stuff to say about 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 look like this? Did it look like that? That's 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? Right. They may pull out celebrities and show them celebrities because I guess. And the person goes, that's him. It's Bert Reynolds. 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 when someone says, you know, what's, what does your friend look like if I'm setting your friend up? You would often say, you wouldn't say, well, he's got a horse face and great cheekbones. You

would say he looks like, you know, Josh DuHommel. Right. 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 what I'm saying? 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 is we'll see eventually. Yeah. So you've got the interviews kind of done, the Q recalls done, and the forensic artist has probably been kind of sketching. It's a work in progress for sure. Right. But as the work progresses, the eye witness will probably be like, oh, yeah, that's like starting to look like this person, but maybe just change this a little bit or change that. And as this kind of fourth part where they're

working together to kind of carry out the details, that's when the sketch really starts to pop. Yeah. I'm telling you. That's when they put like the shadow in the eye or something like that. He had a third eye in the center of his forehead. That's where the guy. All right. So who are these people? Well, again, you said that they may or may not be a full-time employee and 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 1959, a company called the Townsend Corporation introduced this thing in the United States called Identikit. Yeah. Still around. It is still around. Now,

there's Identikit 2000. Yeah. This version 6.0 is what they're on. So originally, Identikit was a wooden box that had a bunch of little, I guess, plastic, like, it's nozzes. No. What was it called where that you used on the overhead? Oh, like an overhead projector? Yeah. What would you, the transparency? Yeah. Transparencies. And then that transparency would have a certain type of eyebrows. Gotcha. And then another transparency is certain type of eyes, certain type of nose, and you have this literal toolkit of facial characteristics that anybody, you didn't have to draw anything. You just construct a face. Did the eyebrows look like this? Yeah. Yes. And then you construct a face like that. That's pretty cool. It is pretty cool, but it also

created some pretty laughable images. And we should say that is what's called a composite image. It's like a bunch of different stuff put together. You could also call a composite image if a police sketch artist interviews a bunch of different eyewitnesses and then calls it all together. Yeah. That's a composite image as well. I bet 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. Right. And the guy's just the artist that the lady of the dude is just like, oh my God. Right. What is it? Five o'clock. Hey, I witnessed this so much. So you've got Identikit. You have, that was the first one. 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. Sure. Computer or paper. And a lot of people say, why not both, man? Yeah. So for example, there's a guy in the NYPD who uses nothing but pencil and paper. Old school. Steven Mancusi. Then there's a guy named Roderick Scratchard who 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 both of them kind of have in common the idea that a hand-drawn sketch is better than a computer composite. And the 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 4% greater likelihood of it being accurate when it's hand drawn. Yeah. It gives the ability to add more nuance. Sure. 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 those numbers are right. Sadly, 9% of the time for hand-drawn and 5% of the time, do you create what ends up being 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, or the number of sketches that it actually led to an apprehension. Right.

Because 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. Yeah. They have a good website that I found today that had some of the more famous killers and then their police sketches. And a lot of them are pretty good. Yeah. You know, close. Yeah. And that's 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 eyewitness, you're not going to produce a recognizable sketch. And the reason why eyewitness testimony 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 they have bug eyes or a horse face, they look like who? I said, Josh DeHommel. Okay. And if that's the case, ladies, you're in luck. He's hunky. The reason we do that is because we use what's called recognition memory. Yeah. Where we look at someone's face as a whole. We look at the forest rather than the trees. Yeah. If we were to look at it as the trees, what the eyes look like, what the eyebrows look like, what the nose looks like, what the mouth looks like, and broke it down into 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? Right. Well, kind of, but he also looked like Brad Pitt with Steve Buscemi's eyes. And then the sketch artist goes, whoa. Yeah, it's like that kind of no Brian thing they do. Yeah. If they made it. Yeah, exactly. That's, that's, that would be a composite sketch. Yeah. And that's why if like, I could see Josh Duhamel walking down the street and in my heart would flutter. Right. But if I sat down with the sketch artist and had to describe Josh Duhamel 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 Duhamel. You know, like 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, and sort of looks like Robert Redford. He's starting to a little bit, isn't he? I think he always has, especially as Benjamin Button. Boy, that movie was sad. It was good. Did you like it? Yeah, I liked it. I didn't. It was very touching. It was touching, but the whole time it was just like the inevitable sad conclusion was just looming. You know, it's weird as 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, two F Scott Fitzgeralds. What was the

first reference? You said that, um, uh, the Great Gatsby was drawn 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 we're podcasting. I said I am and I just proved it. The war on drugs impacts everyone, whether or not you take drugs. America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. This podcast is going to show you the truth behind the war on drugs. They told me that I would be charged for conspiracy to distribute, uh, 2,200 pounds of marijuana. Yeah, and they can do that without any drugs on the table. Without any drugs, of course, yes, they can do that. And I'm the prime example of that. The war on drugs is the

excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss you off. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call, like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast on the podcast. Hey, dude, the nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack

and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey,

dude, the nineties called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we can put that one to rest. 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. That's a good point. I think you should make it. Well, you're stressed. Yeah, it happens very fast. Right. You're probably not thinking, all right, I got to get a good look at this perpetrator's face and features, you know. And have you ever noticed that in like a convenience store, if you look at the doorframe inside, it'll say like four, five, six, seven. Oh, really? You know, that's four. Well, I do now,

but I never knew it existed. That's exactly what it's for. For when a perpetrator runs out, the person can just very easily at the very least get the guy's height. Well, now every convenient store robber is just going to like get small as they exit or jump. He's between four and seven feet tall. Right. 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. Yeah. And one of the reasons also is Conger 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 have to basically be strengthened over and over again. And that requires thinking about that

person, which you might not want to do. Sure. So a strong memory may never be created, which means that the eyewitness account may be flawed from the start. Yeah, it might not even be there. If it is there, it's also subject to a lot of infiltration by unreal memories. Yeah. Like, there's, there's some work that's going on. Like they used to think that once a memory was consolidated, it was done. Right. Apparently the guy who came up with that won the Nobel Prize for it. 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 brainwort store and putting it back together. And when we do that, it's subject to infiltration.

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 witnessed. Right. That's a big problem with eyewitness testimonies. Our recall is very flawed. It's flawed. Yeah. You know, the other problems is, is just eyesight being poor is one of the fundamental basics. I wrote another article called Why are eyewitnesses unreliable? Yeah. And they did a study in University of Virginia. And it's not surprising. They found that participants over the age of 60 performed much worse than younger people. Right. 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 was what he looked like. I swear. I never forget a face. Yeah, exactly. It sounds like something some old guy would say. Yeah. And then they did some testing with eyewitnesses and they found that even if you have good eyesight, just 10 feet away, you may not be able to tell what color in person's eyes are from 200 feet away. The eyes themselves like are just a blur. At 500 feet, you probably won't be able to recognize any facial features at all. Right. And if that sounds like, you know, big D 500 feet away, there have been convictions of 500 feet away eyewitness accounts based on that, you know, convictions, convictions based

on that. So yeah, what about 12 angry men? Yeah, good movie. Yeah, it's great movie. They've come up with this, this thing called DNA phenotyping that actually is showing a little bit of promise, at least in theory. Yeah. If a suspect leaves behind some sort of usable DNA, some sort, you could test it and you could say, Oh, well, the suspect has brown hair, brown eyes, and is probably Caucasian. Right. So at the very least, you have that set. And then if you could add to that eyewitness testimony, that's a good one to punch. Yeah, but that's still in its infancy. So we talked about sketching criminals. There are other things if you're a forensic artist 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 16. Right. So advancing or a criminal who has been on the lamb for 15 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. So that's called age progressed imagery. And then they have reconstructive imagery when you have an unidentified body that's it's decayed quite a bit. Right. And sometimes it'll be sculpture even that they'll try and put together what the person. Meases me. Yeah, it's so cool. 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 putting. 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 think there's a lot they know as far, but it's not just like surmising. They're not telling. No, you can probably find out. Take one of these courses. So, oh, and then there's also ones where they basically touch up photos of really, really gruesome dead bodies if they need to show the public something. Yeah. Chuck, if only 9% of hand drawn police sketches are recognizable as the

actual suspect and even fewer are computer generated sketches do or are. What's the point of police catching? I was about to say there's no point, but there is a point because what it does is, like I said, it provides a lead. It publicizes the crime. Yeah. It gets a face out there. Even if it's and this is me talking here, even if it's only 9% accurate, it's probably not so inaccurate that, you know, it's probably in the wheelhouse as far as, you know, some features of like this is a white guy who had dark hair and bug eyes. Exactly. So, at least that puts you in the wheelhouse in most cases, I would say. So, also, if the witnesses all agree, oh, yeah, I had a huge scar across his face. Well, that helps. Just seeing that in print, the suspect has a scar

across his face. Yeah. Might not do the same as seeing it even just on a rudimentary drawing. Yeah. Of the scar, 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. Sure. So, I did look up a little bit of the schooling in there, all kinds of courses. That one guy, the pencil and paper guy, Mancusi. Yeah. I think he has his own website. Nice. It's very outdated, but he teaches courses. Cool. So, if you're listening out there, you should update your website. You might get a little more, boy, what was that one website? Oh, it was the cryogenics one, remember? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was one of the worst websites

I've ever seen. That was pretty bad. But this lady, Karen Taylor, is a forensic artist, and she says that, you know, besides the FBI, there are 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. Yeah. It's like a team effort sometimes. You know that you mentioned animation. You know those Chinese, I guess, state television news, where they do like the CGI recreations of big news stories. Yeah, they did remember. It's like anime or? No. It's almost

like instruction manual art. Oh, right. But they did one for that's the steward, the sky steward, the flight attendant guy who told everybody to go to hell and then like grab two beers and slid down the chute. Stephen something, remember him? They did one for that for some reason. Normally, it's like crimes that they do too, but they did it for that one. But I imagine like you would be a forensic artist in that sense because you're just taking a recounting of the episode and drawing it. Yeah. Hey, do you ever make note when you see something you think might be shady going on? 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 going to take an extra glance and notice that he's

tall and has long blonde hair and a horse face. Sean White. It's never come up, but you never know. I think you should owe it to the world to be like a vigilant citizen. And a no CPR. Yeah. Don't be a dummy. That's true. Let's see. You got anything else? No, sir. DB Cooper, great police sketch. Who knows if it's what he looks like then. Unabomber. Yeah, they didn't give him much to go on. Anybody with a hoodie and sunglasses pretty much. Which anybody who wears a hoodie and sunglasses now looks like they got the nose wrong big time. And it's Harry. He had like a Jerry curl in it, like a perm. Yeah. His note, the really unabomber's nose is like really bulbous and this nose was just, you know,

was a nice nose. Anything else? No. Okay. Let's please sketches. You can type those words into the search bar at house.stuffworks.com. It will bring up this great article and you can see some police sketches in it, including the one of Timothy McVeigh 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. The war on drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff. Stuff that'll piss y'all. The property is guilty. Exactly. And it starts as guilty. It starts as guilty. The cops. Are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging? They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil

acid. Be sure to listen to the war on drugs on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. On the podcast, pay dude, the nineties called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show. Hey, dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey, dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the nineties. We lived it. And now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co stars, friends and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember

AOL instant messenger and the dial up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friends beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the nineties. Listen to Hey, dude, the nineties called on the I heart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. Now listen to me. Josh, I'm going to call this we laughed. He cried. My name is Luke. I'm currently a junior at Grand Valley State. I'm a bottle deposit broke student, which I guess that's a term for when you turn in glass bottles for five cents. I guess so. So I guess he's also in the 1950s about 97% of the

time I'm broke. Because of this, I got a job at the beginning of the school year making hunting knives. And I just want to thank you both for 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 emotion that Josh made me laugh so hard I was sent to the ER. Oh, wow. That's really something. 33 minutes and 42 seconds into the episode. Chuck, you had just officially introduced Ben Soli to the audience, our musical guest. I was sitting on a bench using a belt sander 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. Yeah. And you just couldn't get it together. I don't remember that though. I like always, Josh, your laugh triggered 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 the hole so big in my leg. You could see the muscle in the meat. Oh, 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 ER and eight stitches later, I still can't listen to that clip without laughing out loud. Really love the show.

No hard feelings at all. A trip to the ER is good for a person every now and again. I disagree, by the way. That's a terrible philosophy. Yeah. And my parents aren't too happy about the hospital bill, but what's done is done. Well, thanks for covering for it. Keep up the good work, and if you feel a desire, I would not deny a free 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 them on Discovery Store, but they ain't free. I might try and dig one up for this kid, but he was legitimately injured because of our actions. Yeah, thanks again for covering for us, Luke, and thanks for writing, and we're glad you're okay. Seriously, we do think you should reconsider

your trip to the ER every once in a while is a good thing idea, though. Let's see. If you want to let us know how we've made you injure yourself in a lighthearted way. I hope there's not a lot of the stories. I would hope not. You can tweet to us at SYSK podcast. You can join us on facebook.com, you slash stuff you should know. Email us at stuffpodcasts at discovery.com, and visit us at our website, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. The War on Drugs is the excuse our government uses to get away with absolutely insane stuff, stuff that'll piss you off. The cops, are they just like looting? Are they just like pillaging?

They just have way better names for what they call like what we would call a jack move or being robbed. They call civil answer for it. Be sure to listen to The War on Drugs on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know, the president came after me. Everybody time Warner was madness. Music was magic, and I had completely burned that to the ground. I realized I'm the forbidden fruit. So listen and follow Where Are You 92 on the iHeart radio app, apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.