An artist's composite sketch led to "quite a few calls" offering names of possible suspects in the Sept. 23 midafternoon rape of a 38-year-old Evansville woman, attacked as she walked along the Pigeon Creek Greenway.
At least one caller said the drawing looked just like Robert Angus Smothers, 20, who was jailed 13 days after the attack when the victim quickly identified him from a photographic lineup as the man who sexually assaulted her. David R. Wood, the artist who drew the sketch that led to Smothers' arrest, became convinced he should be a police artist while watching "The New Detectives" on TV one night in 2000. The subject of the program was Karen Taylor, composite artist formerly with the Texas Department of Public Safety. She is among the best-known of some 200 sketchers in the United States who draw likenesses of criminal suspects to aid police in their capture.
"I said to myself, `I can do that!'" Wood had been doing portrait art for decades. "I thought, here I've been, sitting around 40 years and never offering my services to law enforcement."
Not that Wood has spent his 65 years in idleness. Wood possesses one of the best-known voices in Evansville radio history. Thousands of Tri-Staters grew up hearing him on WJPS ("the original WJPS," he emphasizes), where he worked 18 years jocking on the rock 'n' roll radio before moving to WIKY, where he spent 14 years. His "Daddy Dave's Hollywood Diner" aired Friday nights on WJPS in the mid-1990s. Early in his radio career, Wood got heavily into the voice-over and commercial production business, which has long been his bread and butter.
He temporarily left his NTA (National Teledigital Associates) Studios in the hands of associate Charleen Finch so he could take a "sabbatical" and train as a forensic artist. He jumped in with both feet. In February 2000, he was mentored by Houston Police Department forensic artist and instructor Lois Gibson. The following month, he studied the craft at the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. In May 2000, he studied under Taylor in Scottsdale, Ariz.
In June of the same year, Wood studied three-dimensional skull reconstruction at the Cleveland Institute of Art, then in July attended the International Association of Craniofacial Identification at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C. After composite artist certification training in Idaho, Wood studied again under Lois Gibson in an advanced course on the FBI Facial Identification Catalog. In October 2000 he studied interviewing and then was off to the Oakland County Sheriff's Department near Detroit for mentoring under a forensic artist with more than three decades of experience.
"All a forensic artist is is a tool for detectives," the easygoing Wood explained, leaning back in a chair inside his bright, airy studio in McCutchanville. "We don't solve crimes. But we help the detectives save hundreds of man hours by getting the `perp' off the street sooner, as was the case with the Greenway rapist."
On Sept. 24, a day after the rape, the victim, wearing a a cast on her arm, was brought to Wood's studio. Wood employed the FBI Facial Identification Catalog, containing pages of individually numbered eyes, eyebrows, head shapes, lips, foreheads, ears, hair and facial lines.
From that "grocery list," the victim gave catalog numbers for features that most resembled those of the man who attacked her. Wood drew while she selected, using the catalog sketches she chose, assembling them into a composite that would become a unique face.
Wood said he could tell from the victim's body language that his drawing came close to capturing the looks of the man who is accused of raping her: "You can tell -- a victim will get shook up. This is when I'll say, `Imagine you're watching this on film -- it's not real now. Just try to give me the freeze-frame you have of this person.'"
The drawing that led to an arrest in the case cost the Evansville Police Department $150. Wood said he spent two hours interviewing and finishing the basic drawing, then rendered the drawing into its final form using a computer program.
"That's cheap," Wood said. "Other artists I've talked to across the country get $100 to $150 an hour."
Wood says he doesn't get a lot of work from local police. Evansville Police Sgt. D.J. Thompson, now supervisor of the city police Sex Crimes Unit investigating the Greenway rape, was a detective when he called Wood out at 3 a.m. for his first Evansville police assignment, involving the robbery of a Northeast Side supermarket. "Most police departments budget little or nothing for artist sketches."
Most of Wood's forensic work is gratis. The Doe Network , an international clearinghouse for unidentified and missing persons, sends Wood work to do in connection with unsolved "cold" cases and unidentified remains. He and three other artists have formed an association they call E.D.A.N., which stands for "everybody deserves a name."
The work has included using a photograph of a skull to produce a drawing of a woman with a broken front tooth. Her skeletal remains were never identified. By using "tissue-depth markers," adjusted on the basis of the victim's age, race and sex, a forensic artist can accurately re-create a victim's face by using 31 markers on the skull.
Wood also produced an "age progression" drawing of a 52-year-old Ohio man missing since 1974, using his 1967 high school picture and a picture of his father as guides in showing how he would appear today. Few newspapers would ever run an autopsy picture, but with Adobe Photoshop, Wood can transform a picture of the deceased into one that represents the victim when alive.
"The most heartbreaking one I ever did," Wood begins, detailing the 15-year-old case of a child who might have been about 3 whose battered body was found floating in a river near Kelso, Wash. Based on Wood's reconstruction, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer newspaper ran a major story in February 2003 titled "Baby Jane Doe."
"It's kind of disappointing, though," Wood says, showing a copy of the newspaper story. "The victim gets a picture the size of a postage stamp, and the picture of the detective runs a half-page."
To stay on top of his art, Wood, while waiting for his breakfast at Bob Evans, likes to glance at a face across the room, then draw it on a place mat.
Invariably, the waitress will comment on the drawing. When she does, Wood will ask if she sees the person in the restaurant. Just as invariably, Wood says, she will.