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American Morning

Author Discusses Artist's Sketch That Lead to Arrest in Runnion Case

Aired July 22, 2002 - 09:06   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the West Coast now, prosecutors in California may seek the death penalty in the Samantha Runnion case. Alejandro Avila will be formally charged this morning with her murder. Avila's arrest on Monday came four days after he allegedly kidnapped the child while she was playing with her 5-year-old friend, Sarah Ahn.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF MICHAEL CARBONA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA: Young Sarah has done a fantastic job for us. She's become a very credible witness. The information she gave up front was what got this going. And then your ability -- the media's ability to put it out and let the public see it and respond to it was incredibly helpful.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ZAHN: Sarah's description led to a sketch by forensic artist Michael Streed that appears to closely resemble the suspect.

So how was such a detailed composite put together?

Karen Taylor has written the book on forensic reproductions. Her work is a sketch bible for the FBI. And she trained Michael Streed, the man who drew that picture of the suspect. She joins us from Austin, Texas this morning.

Good morning and welcome.

KAREN TAYLOR, FORENSIC ARTIST: Thank you. God morning, Paula.

ZAHN: So, Karen, when you look at the composite sketch of the suspect and you see the police photo taken of the suspect, are you thinking this is probably one of the best students you've ever had?

TAYLOR: Well certainly I'm very pleased for Michael Streed and the success he's had with this case. He and I have been forensic colleagues for many years. And obviously this case has fulfilled the essential purpose of a forensic art composite sketch in that it did, through the presentation of it in the media, trigger that little bit of recognition that prompted someone to call in and help get him identified.

ZAHN: I guess to those of us that aren't trained the way you are, we just find it remarkable that any young child could give investigators the detailed information she did. But if you could, walk us through what happens in the very beginning once police get that information and then link up with the forensic sketch artist.

TAYLOR: Well I think it goes without saying that the pressure is tremendous on the sketch artist, as on all members of law enforcement, when the case is of this nature and a child is involved and a life of a child. The artist, and in Mike Streed's case he has -- I know him to be a police officer, a skilled interviewer, of a lot of experience, and he has an understanding of how to adapt his interview procedure to a child to make a child-friendly interview. And in order to do that, he has to do things like adapt his language to try to operate within a child's frame of reference in the way he chooses words in order to effectively communicate with a young child.

ZAHN: So could you walk us through some of what an artist might say and what this child might have told him to get what appears to be almost a dead-on portrait of the suspect?

TAYLOR: Well, we all, and adult witnesses this is true of as well, we all tend to operate within our own references to things we have had experience with, our own frames of reference. Again, as you -- as you interview someone, you try to get an idea of not only the overall essence of what they have seen and let them communicate that first. Then you begin to, as a sketch artist, pull more and more specific details from the memory.

The interview of the child would mean adapting by asking questions in such a way as knowing that a child describing someone, for instance, as being very old, might mean they're only referring to someone who's age 20. Whereas an interview with a senior citizen describing someone as oh just a kid, that might mean describing somebody's who's 50. So you have to adjust in a child interview.

ZAHN: We're looking, Karen, again at the forensic sketch, and it's just remarkable how similar the nose is, you know the shape of the mustache might be a little bit off but the hair is correct. It's just uncanny how accurate this is. In what percentage of the cases do you get this close?

TAYLOR: Well I can't really give you accurate stats on percentages. But as I said before, this drawing certainly achieved its purpose in that it triggered recognition and that phone call being made.

It's -- I often refer to my job as a forensic artist as being the middleman. It's the role of the artist to take information, in this case a description, a verbal description, and provide an image of that face that can be put out in the media so that members of the public can cooperate, call in. And then once a name is attached to that drawing, then elements of forensic science come into play like the sorts of things that Dr. Baden mentioned earlier so that an individual can be arraigned as Mr. Avila is being done today. The trial will come to pass and the forensic evidence will, perhaps, be able to positively link him. But the role of the sketch is to be that intermediary step that's required in order to get a name. ZAHN: Karen, I know you brought along with you a couple of sketches and if you want to share some of them with us. Describe to us maybe what the most important characteristics were on here that helped investigators lead to the arrest of these guys.

We're looking at this first one, a guy has a back -- a baseball cap on backwards.

TAYLOR: Yes, well the gestalt of the face, the overall holistic grasp of the face is what we tend to capture in memory. Certainly when emotional, traumatic event is taking place, that memory, according to psychological studies about cognition and perception, is encoded deeply into memory. And so the sketch artist's role is to learn to retrieve that encoded memory from the person who's been through such a terrible event.

So what we try to capture, and even though every hair and freckle might not be exactly correct, we try to capture that overall impression, that holistic impression, and that has to do with getting the proportional layout of the face right. The overall -- the spacing between features is more important than the individual features themselves sometimes, for instance.

ZAHN: Oh this one is so close, too. I mean somehow you got that, you know, weird look in the eyes that you see in the police photo. It's remarkable.

TAYLOR: This is -- thank you. This was a case of sexual assault. And as often happens in those types of cases, the victim witness described in some detail the expression, the particular expression that was so encoded in her memory. And she would not be satisfied with that drawing until I was able to incorporate that expression. So she wanted that what she described as sort of a dumb expression, that relaxed chin expression that this guy in fact had. Once he was captured and compared to the drawing, it was a nice favorable comparison that we like to see.

ZAHN: How long does the process take, Karen?

TAYLOR: Well every interview is different. Each individual should be -- you know there should be rapport building, the artist should know what the person's been through. It can take from -- an average time is a couple of hours, although it can certainly take longer, and sometimes there are breaks given and you come back to interviews and so forth.

ZAHN: Well we applaud the good work you do, and particularly send our congratulations to you for training Michael Streed so well that...

TAYLOR: Well Michael certainly did this on his own, and he's so much to be commended, as all of the members of law enforcement in that area should be. Their prompt actions in this case very likely have led to a capture that may well mean that other families won't have to go through the tragic heartbreak that this family's going through.

ZAHN: We hope you're right.

Karen Taylor, again, thank you for sharing some of your talents with us this morning.

TAYLOR: Thank you.

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