Faces of Evil Page 25

  But this time…this time I saw in my mind a terrified little girl fighting for her life with a man who’d just set her mother on fire. In large part because of her courage, we’d caught the guy, he would never hurt anyone else and I could let the emotions wash over me that I’d pushed aside in my office when she’d asked me, “Did they kill your mommy too?”

  I am convinced that these fine investigators would have eventually caught Jeff Williams without my sketch. I don’t pretend to be superwoman to the rescue. I regard myself as one of several instruments used by detectives in any investigation. But I do believe that they were able to catch this monster much faster because they had my sketch and I was able to do the job I did because I had the bravest little person as a witness.

  Three days later I got a memo from Billy Belk in homicide:

  “Attached is a copy of your composite drawing, as well as a mug photograph of the suspect charged with the capital murder. It looks pretty good to me. To steal a phrase from Rush Limbaugh, sometimes your stuff is like ‘talent on loan from God!’ Once again, thanks for coming in at 4:30 A.M. and for the insight to go with your instincts. Remember even the nine-year-old victim said after completing your work that the drawing did not really look ‘exactly’ like him, but looked ‘too girlish.’ Now I see why you said, ‘Trust me.’ Thanks again. Billy.”

  I couldn’t ask for any greater reward than that.

  Except for maybe one.

  Almost a year later, in District Judge George Godwin’s court at Williams’s trial for the murder of Cynthia Tyson and the assault on Annie, newspaper accounts would relate, it was brought out that when Williams was serving time in prison in 1989, he was removed from a slaughterhouse detail, in which his job had been to kill and butcher hogs. It appeared he enjoyed it too much.

  Nobody knows what brought Williams to Cynthia’s door that night. He lived in an adjoining apartment complex, and neighbors think he’d seen her around. He had apparently gone to her door about ten that night supposedly to ask for directions. He came back at 10:30, shoved his way in, and attacked her.

  Prosecutor Jim Mount took an unprecedented step for his office: he put Annie on the stand. He told me later that the courtroom sat spellbound when Annie reached out her thin arm and pointed out Jeff Williams as the man who had killed her mother, and told jurors how she struggled with Williams and got punched in the head, how she tried to talk to her dead mother, how she ran for help.

  Since Sgt. Belk was a witness in the case, he wasn’t permitted in the courtroom before he testified, but he says that Annie’s amazing composure astonished everyone who was there.

  The next day, Jeff Williams was convicted. It took the jury only twenty-three minutes to sentence him to death.

  After the trial Annie Tyson went to live with a maternal aunt in Houston, who saw to it that Annie had extensive counseling to help her cope with the ordeal she’d been through. She has been surrounded by love and never wanted for a thing.

  Except for her mother. And her innocence. Those were lost forever.

  On June 26, 2002, after all his appeals had been exhausted, when Annie Tyson was sixteen years old, Jeffrey Lynn Williams was executed by lethal injection. To his dying day he refused to admit that he had committed a crime, maintaining that he’d had consensual sex with Cynthia Tyson.

  He never mentioned Annie.

  “There are some cases that stand out in your memory,” Billy Belk told me recently, “that you never forget.” He paused. “Let’s see…how can I say this and be politically correct? In some cases you have what I call true victims. Cases where justice just has to be served. In this case, not only was Jeff Williams an animal and a murderer, but he assaulted a little girl. That fact alone makes it much more likely that we will go beyond the call of duty. We’ll go the extra mile.”

  And then he said the words I’ll never forget: “We’ll see to it that justice has been served.”

  Justice.

  I guess if there was one word driving my life and my career, it would be justice.

  People often ask me how can I do my job, day in and day out, how can I sit there and listen to people pour out the horrid details of the worst moments of their lives, how can I stand the misery, heartache and gore?

  Well, it’s not really about the crime and sadness. It’s about the heroism of the courageous survivors and their families; it’s about the determination and dedication of hardworking law enforcement officers who never give up…and it’s about justice.

  Because for every person who goes on to find justice due, in part, to my talents and gifts and labors…then there’s that much more justice for me.

  And there’s just nothing in the world sweeter than that.

  Chapter Thirteen:

  Catching KAOS: “They Can’t Hide Their Faces with Me Around”

  September 11, 2002.

  A whole year had passed since the massive tragedy that changed our nation, and the smaller—but no less meaningful—tragedy of the Angel Doe case.

  Angel Doe had been identified and given a Christian burial, while her evil parents had been arrested, charged, sentenced and jailed and their three other children had been put in foster care.

  In New York, the memorial service for the last firefighter identified as having been killed at the World Trade Center had been held on September 9 and the city, as well as Washington, D.C., was preparing for the memorials for all who had been lost that terrible day that had come to be known the world over simply as “9-11.”

  The slow, shaky business of healing was going on. However, as Heidi Guzman, who lost a loved one to violence, so eloquently put it, there is no such thing as closure, no real sense of “acceptance.”

  But you adjust, you adapt, you go on with your daily life as best you can.

  For me, that meant continuing to work with victims of violent crime and its witnesses, doing my part to help the cops chase down the bad guys.

  As Hemingway said, there is no hunting like the hunting of men.

  A couple of days later, I was working a particularly sad homicide. A video store robber, on the run from police, had broken into a home nearby and, after surprising the retired homeowner who was taking a nap, had beaten the man to death in his bed and stolen his pickup. In a sketch session with some teenagers who worked at the video store, I got a call from K.O. Thomas, a detective in the Harris County Sheriff’s Office sex crimes division, about a case that had occurred on the morning of September 11.

  Detective Thomas, a tall, well-built African-American man, looked twenty years younger than he was. Years before, he’d attended college on a music scholarship and played trombone while getting his degree in history. Clean-cut, with glasses and a gentle demeanor, he seemed more like a scholar than a cop, but when it came to a case, especially the one he telephoned me about, he was all business.

  Emily, a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore, had been waiting at her school bus stop for the bus. It was fairly cold that morning for Houston. Some time past 6 A.M., a maroon Dodge Ram pickup truck with two men in it screeched to a halt in front of where Emily stood watching for the bus. One man jumped out and, brandishing a knife, forced Emily into the truck.

  They took her to a wooded area of northeast Harris County where they raped and sodomized the young girl. After that violation, they then robbed her of her meager possessions.

  Then they warned her, “Don‘t look back,” and shoved her out of the pickup truck stark naked except for her socks.

  Sobbing, shivering, holding her arms across her exposed breasts and private parts, Emily stumbled down the road, filled with morning traffic. She was rescued by a schoolteacher who happened to be driving past.

  Detective Thomas asked if I could make a “house call” to the county headquarters of the sheriff’s department and I assured him, “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  The detective bureau for the Harris County Sheriff’s Department is located in a massive brick building, a former warehouse that has recently bee
n converted into the investigative offices of the sheriff’s department. (The main office for the HCSD is located downtown.) The detective bureau is only a five-or ten-minute drive away from my office at HPD headquarters downtown.

  On the drive over, my own rape, so many years before came rushing back to my mind—that crystallizing moment when I’d realized that I was not going to die—followed in the aftermath by the crippling rage, fear and isolation I’d felt as I struggled to get on with my life. I felt so badly for the young girl I was going to see, who had just experienced a similar attack, that I almost wept, but I reassured myself that I would be there soon to help her.

  By this time, I’d helped to put away more than two hundred rapists with my composite drawings. The odds were good that I’d be able to do the same thing in this case.

  After finding an empty space, I parked my car and gathered my gear together. Then I walked to the building and headed up to the third floor, where the homicide division was located. There the deputies introduced me to Emily, a lovely girl with long dark hair, soft smooth skin and big brown eyes. Her anxious mother hovered nearby. I noticed Emily was working hard at keeping no expression on her face—probably to keep her mother from worrying even more—but she didn’t fool me. I knew the pain she must have been feeling.

  Catching Emily’s glance, I said, “I’m so glad you’re here,” gave her and her mother a warm, welcoming smile. Then I walked past them into the room I always use at the sheriff’s department when I’m doing an afternoon sketch. I started setting up my easel. Hesitating outside the door, Emily moved slowly, reluctantly, into the room.

  This is absolutely normal behavior for victims of violent crimes. The truth is that they don’t want to be there, because they know they’re going to have to relive the worst thing that ever happened to them. Consequently, they almost never barge into my office. In nearly every case, the victims or witnesses sit or stand reluctantly outside the door of wherever I’m doing the sketch and often have to be coaxed inside.

  Behind the desk was a big, brown leather chair. I pointed at it.

  “You can sit there,” I said in a soft, non-threatening voice.

  Whenever there is a “power chair” in a room where I’m sketching, I always have the witness sit in it. With that great big desk in front of her for psychological “protection,” and me sitting on the other side almost like a supplicant, my hope is that the witness will feel more in control.

  For young Emily, this may very well have been the first time in the more than forty-eight hours since those two savage men had dragged her from the school bus stop and torn her life apart that she had been able to feel this sense of comfort.

  As I told her what I tell everyone, that this is going to be easy and go quickly, I studied her. Though she was obviously shaken, her back was straight, her head was up and she struck me as someone who was determined not to let this experience destroy her life, but to find some way, somehow, to be happy in spite of it.

  Remembering how, after my own attack years before, I had cowered and cringed in my apartment, I was already in awe of her.

  “Who would you like to describe first?” I asked. (Again, letting her be in control.) She chose the driver and I wrote the word DRIVER across the top of the sketch in black marker as a reference for the detective to use when comparing her statement with the sketch.

  I usually start my sketch with the perpetrator’s hair and this composite was no exception, but I’d scarcely even begun the drawing when Emily blurted out, “Tonight, my drill team is going to perform during half-time at the homecoming football game.” Her face seemed to light up. “It’s my first time to perform.”

  “Oh, how wonderful!” I cried. “What does your costume look like?”

  Excitedly, she dug her wallet out of her purse and produced a photograph of herself, smiling and waving her pom-poms in her sparkling blue and silver costume. Watching her, it occurred to me that it wasn’t that she was denying the terrible thing that had happened to her; it was more like she had made a choice not to let it dominate her life.

  This was her way of beginning the healing process, by focusing on this happy, momentous upcoming event rather than obsessing over the tragic one that occurred in the past. I took that cue from her and decided to do the same thing.

  Over more than twenty years of doing these sketches, I’d learned that one of the best ways to improve a witness’s memory is to use mood enhancement. Recent studies have borne me out. The better a witness feels, the better the sketch. And the real bonus comes when the witness (especially a victim of sexual assault) leaves the session feeling better than she did when she first came in.

  “How long will this take?” asked Emily, a shadow of anxiety crossing her face. “I have to be at the football stadium by 6:15.”

  This presented a problem. In order for Emily to be at the stadium by 6:15, we would have time to do only one sketch. And I knew the detectives were depending upon me to get sketches of both of Emily’s assailants. It had already been two days since her attack and they were anxious to crack this case.

  While I debated what to do, I reflected once again on my own actions and feelings after I had been raped. Starving myself, staying in my apartment for days rather than going out, afraid, alone, spiraling downward…and here was this young girl, who stood ready to grab life again and charge full-speed ahead in her shining blue and silver uniform, prancing in the lights with her friends at her side…well, who was I to hold her back?

  “No problem,” I assured her. “We’ll do just this one today, then you can go on and make the game. We’ll do that other creep tomorrow or whenever you can.”

  She beamed with joy.

  “I’m so proud of you, Emily,” I said and I meant it. “You’re doing great. The most important thing in the world right now is for you to go on to the game and have the time of your life. These two perverts can’t take that from you. No one can ever take that from you!”

  She gave me a shy smile.

  “Don’t you worry,” I added, my voice firm with self-assurance, “They can’t hide their faces with me around.” She looked very happy.

  Quickly I handed her the FBI Facial Identification Catalogue. While she selected facial features and I began the drawing, I told her about having been a high school majorette, performing at half-time. Then I asked her what songs the drill team would be using for the performance, how she liked the instructor and who were her closest friends on the team.

  As we moved past the nose to the lips and chin, I said, “Tonight, you’ll be the best you’ve ever been. You won’t be afraid because, after all, you almost got killed and you lived.” I winked at her. “And, really, nobody ever got killed over a drill routine.”

  She laughed at that.

  I told her I’d been attacked, too. “Going through it caused me to throw myself into my art more and to enjoy music more.”

  She agreed. “I’ve been practicing at home and I’ve really been enjoying the music more than I ever did before,” she said, “and I just lose myself in the routine.”

  When I was finished drawing, I told her I could make any changes she requested and turned the sketch around to show her.

  Emily gasped and shrank back into the chair, her careful composure lost for the moment. But this remarkable young lady soon recovered and ordered me to make the chin and one of the ears bigger, which I quickly did.

  “It looks like him, for sure,” she said. Then she grew thoughtful and said, “You know, you really must have a gift from God to do this.”

  I hear this a lot from witnesses and it always means a great deal to me. “Thank you,” I said.

  It is a gift, I thought and that makes what I do my mission in life.

  Giving her a light little hug, I walked her to the door and then went with her and her mother to the stairs. “I know you have to be somewhere soon, so we’re done,” I said to her relieved mother.

  Returning to the sergeant’s office, I sprayed fixatif on the drawing
and wasted some time while I dreaded the detective’s return.

  A few minutes later Detective Thomas came into the room and spied my drawing. Glancing around, he said, “Where’s the other sketch?”

  Four other burly detectives now crowded into the room and they all had pretty much the same reaction he had.

  I swallowed, but I have a policy of never lying. “She had to dance with her drill team tonight,” I said. “It’s homecoming and it’s her first time.”

  Dead silence.

  Finally, betraying no emotion whatsoever, one of them deadpanned, “She has to dance with her drill team at half-time at a football game?”

  We all knew that time is always of the essence in any criminal investigation and the more time a culprit has “on the ground,” or at large, the more likely he will flee the jurisdiction altogether and never be caught.

  Without dropping my gaze, I said firmly, “That’s right.”

  They stared at me.

  “We can do the other one tomorrow, any time you say,” I assured them. “Call me and I’ll come right over.”

  Unspoken in that room was what we all knew: that although I’d do anything in the world for those guys, I was a victim’s advocate, first and foremost. They also knew about my own attack and that I had very powerful instincts when it came to working with victims of violent crime.

  Detective Thomas glanced at my sketch again and commented that the man looked Hispanic, even though Emily had said in her statement that he was white. I told him not to worry about it, that plenty of white males have dark complexions. The witness had said this looked like the guy and that was good enough for me.

  Finally, with a half-hearted smile, Detective Thomas said, “Okay. Thanks.”

  They all turned, walked slowly out and dribbled back to their offices.

  I left shortly afterward. As I loaded my gear back into my car, I had a moment or two where I wondered if maybe I’d screwed up. What if they never caught those guys, simply because of a judgment call I had made? What if—heaven forbid—those monsters hurt someone else? I tried not to obsess about this possibility.