The Girlfriends: Spotlight, E12: Lois Captures Criminals

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. No matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children. I dread the conversation with my son. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, girlfriends. I just wanted to give you a heads up that this episode includes conversations about rape, murder, and graphic violence. But if you do listen, you'll hear some crime fighting with an easel. And don't come for me if we swear. This is a safe space for that kind of thing. Lois is at home after work one evening, getting ready to put the kids to bed, when her phone rings. The detective on the homicide called me, and he said, you did it, girl. You gotta come down here. So I took the kids to the sitter and went down. When she gets to Houston Police Station, the detective has news for her. So he tells me, we wouldn't have solved the case without that drawing. Lois has just done her first piece of forensic art. I'm talking about a witness remembering a face they saw, the face that represents the person that did the horrible thing they saw. She's just sketched the perpetrator of a dreadful murder based on the fragmented memories of a hysterical bystander. It's her first assignment for the Houston Police Department, and it caught the killer. Overwhelmed, she has to decompress in her car. It was too such a burden. I knew I would do whatever it took to help somebody get justice. You see, Lois has a special connection to this case. This guy was murdered the same way I was, nearly murdered. Lois uses the trauma of her near-death experience to find a new purpose. She's on her way to become the world's most successful forensic artist. She'll help thousands of people to find justice, one face at a time. And in doing that, Lois will also find justice for herself. I'm Anna Sinfield, and from the teams at Novel and iHeart Podcast, This is The Girlfriend's Spotlight, where we tell stories of women winning. Today, Lois captures criminals. Hi, Anna. How are you doing, girl? Hi, Lois. What I do is guess your sign. Sign as in star sign. Capricorn, cancer, you know the drill. But I'm going to wait till we talk a while. Yeah, okay. You get a flavor of who I am. Oh, I have to push you around and see if you get mean. I don't know. Kidding. Kidding. Just kidding. I'm not mean. Hey, I'm game for you trying. Well, this will be the best interview you ever had, Anna. Already the best interview ever. The thing about Lois Gibson is that you never quite know whether she's being serious. But I do know that she's always been into drawing. My first drawing in kindergarten, the kindergarten teacher noticed, and she freaked and drug me away from the easel, and they called the lady at the museum in Kansas City, Missouri, and they came out and framed it and put it in the museum, I guess. So I drew since I was young, and I drew in high school and everything, and I always wanted to draw people. So I waited tables for nine years to get through college. And all I wanted to do was draw faces. Why did you want to draw faces in the first place? What drew you to people's faces in your art? The reason I wanted to draw faces in the beginning is the same reason other artists who are like me. I was just drawn like when I was only five, I wanted to do a face. That's all I wanted to do. and like poor Michelangelo, same birthday as him only 510 years later. I love people and I love to draw. Much the same, you and Michelangelo. And like Michelangelo, who I imagine would go on many long tortured walks around Florence, Lois would visit the Riverwalk in her college town of San Antonio, Texas to contemplate what to do with her life. And it's a beautiful waterway with cafes on the edge with colored umbrellas on each side reflected in the water and a Japanese half-moon bridge. I'm like, okay, cha-ching, cha-ching, I want to make money down here. I should do portraits. She was studying dentistry, but she was a little distracted. Dental school students have the best parties. Unbelievable. So on the side, she decided to paint portraits for tourists keen to remember their time in beautiful San Antonio. I sat there and it was hot and the tourists were wiggly and moving and sometimes drunk. And I had to draw fast. The faster I went, the more money I made. And during the portrait, I would just be engulfed in their personality, completely immersed. And I did a stint at Six Flags Over Texas doing watercolor portraits live. So if you're an artist out there, you go, that's impossible. Yeah, it's really hard. but I did live portraits of tourists in watercolor. Lois got an art degree from the University of Texas. She was good. All these people that do landscapes, I love them. I love, I love. However, you've got to be brave to do faces because inside that face is a human being and nobody likes their own photographs so they're going to look at your drawing and go, oh, and it could be terrific. So you're going to get emotional rejection. I did about 3,000 portraits. And one of those was a portrait that will change her life. I drew a portrait of a guy who fell in love with him and moved to Houston. Oh, wow. Houston, Texas, the fourth most populous city in the United States, was a long way from the quaint college town Lois came from. It's a place where the hot air from the Gulf Coast and the cool air from the Rocky Mountains collide to form many a thunderstorm, which is the case today when Lois and I are talking. Oh my God, the weather. Yes, ma'am. Totally 100% Mother Nature. No, a little scary, hey. It wasn't just the storms Lois had to get used to when she first moved to Houston in 1981. The place was a bloodbath. They had 701 murders that year that I moved. One day, Lois and her friend Diane are hanging out. The TV's on in the background. They talk about a dance instructor who was raped in front of her little 11- and 12-year-old little students. and in a split second I said, oh my God, Diane, I could draw a picture of that guy. After developing her portrait skills on the riverbank in San Antonio, Lois had started to believe that she could draw just about anyone, even if she's never seen them before. She recruits Diane to help her put it to the test. You go to the gas station and there's going to be a male homo sapien, a man working there, right? Look at the man, Diane, and I'll take care of you to your daughter. So she goes to the gas station, looks at the guy. She comes back, and I tried to draw the guy. Lois gets Diane to describe this gas station employee, who she's only seen for a few seconds, remembering as many details as she can about his face, his hair, his skin. And I got down to below the nose. I got all that. She goes, pretty good. She goes, oh, you're not going to be able to draw this. He shows both upper and lower teeth, like Satchmo, Louis Armstrong, upper and lower teeth all the time, even when he's not smiling. And I went, oh, I said, yeah, that would be hard except for I went to dental school. So I drew the teeth real good. We drove to the gas station and the guy came out and it looked exactly like him. And so I hung onto the gas pump and I started weeping uncontrollably. The portrait is a success, but Lois's reaction is unexpected. Her friend Diane is confused, but Lois knows where her tears are coming from. I didn't tell anybody I'd been attacked. I'd been nearly killed in a rape, but I barely survived. And the discovery that she could draw a person's face from a verbal description by an unreliable eyewitness sparked something in her. All of a sudden, I thought I could catch somebody like that, and the thought of being able to do that drove me out of my mind with desire to do that. Eleven years before the gas station drawing, Lois Gibson was out driving. It was the early 70s, and Lois was in her early 20s. I was driving home trying to get out of traffic, and literally something took my steering wheel. I went up a hill. I didn't mean to go up this hill. It was hills of Hollywood. You have to go back and forth. No way to turn around. You're forced up the hill, up the hill. And then when I got to the top of the hill, there was a piece of gravel that I could turn around on. I turned onto the gravel. I looked up and there was his face. The man that tried to kill me. Six weeks earlier, Lois had been at home when a stranger broke into her apartment. And I was nearly strangled to death. So it was a really brutal attack. I didn't admit to myself that it happened till six years afterward. So you never reported it at the time? I never reported the attack. And since I was a dancer and a model, I thought they would think I was sexy, whatever that means, and blame me. I couldn't report it. And so considering you didn't kind of admit to yourself that it even really happened, you couldn't face reporting it to the police. Were you seeking some kind of justice? Were you hoping that there would be justice? I knew I couldn't get justice. I was so mad I wanted justice, but I was in Los Angeles. Are you kidding me I sure you heard the stories of 70s LA being rife with dancers and models like Lois being abused and assaulted It became so normalized that she lost all faith in any formal justice system So she thought that was that But as Lois tells it, the next thing she knows, she's driving up into the Hollywood Hills without meaning to and sees her attacker. When I saw him, that was the miracle that I had prayed for. and I froze and there were guys in front and behind him. And then I realized they were LAPD and then he was sideways and I realized he was in handcuffs. She told me he was being arrested for a drug-related crime. And then they're at the top of the stairs and they got to go down tall wooden two-story stairs and he starts fighting them like an animal. At one point they hold his elbows up and he's running his legs like a bicycle in midair. so they had to beat him to keep him from knocking them and himself down the stairs and breaking somebody's arms and legs. So I got to see him get beaten and beaten and beaten. It was so beautiful. And I drove down to the bottom of the hill, and it was like a Volkswagen got pulled off my back. I got justice. I got justice in spite of myself. So that's the Lois that winds up hanging over a pump at a Houston gas station, laughing and crying at the same time. Clearly not getting any gas, but elated that she's been able to draw the guy who works there without ever having seen him. So I scared the gas guy, and he sees the picture of me, and he goes, wow, you're really good. You're such a good artist. I made him look cuter than he was. I always do that. Now Lois knows she has a talent that can help get justice for fellow survivors When I realized I could draw faces from someone's memory I realized this was an insanely important tool that the law enforcement could use After the break, using that tool I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. Until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first Bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said And the search for accountability in a sea of lies I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words that make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence, it just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Bo is born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Yes, I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. I've got you. Forensic art helps law enforcement identify suspects and solve crimes using artistic skill. One of the most common types is called a composite sketch, which is created by interviewing witnesses and drawing a face based on their memories of the person they saw committing a crime. You've probably seen them on the news or on crime dramas. They sometimes look a bit weird, but they're also often eerily similar to the person who's eventually found to have done it. I realized that me doing portraits on the Riverwalk in San Antonio was the perfect setup to be able to do that. And now it was somebody I couldn't see. Okay, flash forward. I knew I could solve murders. Lois just needs to persuade the cops that they need her. Sure enough, I called 20 phone calls over a period of weeks. Everybody just got rid of me. Everybody had excuses. Houston Police Department aren't used to artists blowing up their phones. They have procedures for recruiting new staff. But Lois won't let something as boring as bureaucracy get in the way of her plans. So here's how I finally got through. I went insane with, what do you call it, courage, gonads, whatever. Too much bravery. But I was going for broke. So I call them up and I go, look, here's my proposition. I'll bring my gear. I'll go to your office. In front of you, I'll have you take some of your personnel, someone, to look at someone in the jail. who they'd never seen and who I can't see. Bring them back down. I'll do a sketch from just their description. If I can, wouldn't that be a great trick? If I can't, you guys are armed. I'll just leave. So I said that speech, and they couldn't answer anything because I had them by the gonads. So somebody talked to somebody, and the last two I talked to said, you need to talk to Lieutenant Don McWilliams. So when I got him, I started the speech. And before I got a few words in it, he goes, come on down, girl. I'm like, so he's the one. He goes, yeah, that would be a great trick. And they put me in a patrol car like I was under arrest, but with my easel and everything. And I set up and they said, well, should we have a detective go to the jail? And I was too brave. I go, no, get me a dinghy person. She wants someone who's a few sandwiches short of a picnic, you know, like not a lot going on upstairs. And I'll be darned. They got the dingiest dang secretary. And she comes back and she freaked. She almost cried. So I had to go, oh, relax now, just relax, relax. Anyway, the first thing I do is the hair. And she pointed the top of her head and said, dark, dark. I mean, I found out right away he was wearing a black hat. But then I got the eyes, I got the nose, and then he has weird teeth. And it completely blew them away. Wow. I mean, what did they say? Were they like, you're hired, we need you? No, they were too big of a bureaucracy and I didn't expect them to, but they used me. They start hiring her on a freelance basis and Lois, green and keen to impress, says yes, yes, yes, even though she's just had her first child 11 months ago. When I had to start working forensic art with a baby at home. It was really intense. I had loved being home with a baby. It was so good. I loved it. And then I get a call from the detective and I get to do something. And I always had the gear to do the sketches in the trunk of my car. I would bring all my gear, easel, drawing boards, pastels, a paper, purse, blah, blah, blah, drag it in, set up in a room, do the case. The worst thing that happened in the world, in Houston that week, and then break it down and go back to the trunk of my car. The first homicide I worked, I solved it. I had a hysterical witness. He saw a man stabbed to death in our Memorial Park, and he thought somebody was digging in the dirt, and he walks up and looks beyond this log, and somebody's stabbing somebody in the back. Well, he was hysterical. It was the most hysterical witness that I've ever had, and it took forever, and he cried uncontrollably a whole bunch of times, and I comforted him. Anyway, I finished the sketch, and it looked horrible. You know, it's not a fine work of art. None of them are, right? I gave it to him, and I drove away from the police station, and I parked at this street in a parking lot. And I said, I'm never doing that again. And it would be so good if it could work, but there's no way it's working. I'm going to go home. I'm going to be a mom to my 11-month-old baby. I went home. The next morning, Douglas Osterberg, the detective on the homicide, everybody called him Big Bird. So Big Bird called me. And he said, hello? And I went, what? The police had circulated Lois sketch on the evening news and he said that the murderer roommates called him in They saw the news that night and they waited for the rebroadcast at 2 in the morning and they watched that You'd be pretty freaked out too, right? You're watching the news, and a drawing comes up of a man wanted for a brutal murder. And the guy looks just like your roomie. He goes, oh my God. He called the detectives. The roommate tells the cops that he knows the murderer. It's the guy he lives with. And they go, can we search your house? He goes, yeah. Permission to search? They found the weapon and the underwear with the blood wiped off on it. Oh, my gosh. You must have felt amazing in that moment. It was too such a burden when I found out I was going to do that. I did better drawings when I was eight years old. This sketch sucks. And it stopped a murderer. He was 17. If he was 17 and he was killing for fun, he was going to kill again and again. My sketch stopped him. Gosh, that's hard. I'd really like to know how you do the sketches. Would you be able to walk me through your process? Okay, for witness memory, I get the Samantha Steinberg catalog and I give it to the witness and they tell me which features to draw. The Samantha Steinberg catalog is like a giant visual menu that helps forensic artists draw faces. It has over a thousand different eyes, noses, and hairstyles to help witnesses pick out exactly what they remember. And I draw it where they're not looking. You always use an easel. It's a 5,000-year-old piece of equipment. You have to have a light source. It's on your easel. You're drawing facing the drawing board. The witness is sitting facing the back of the drawing board. So they're private. It's like a barrier between you and them. They've been through the worst thing in their life. So the way I draw is I start at the top and go down like a printer, and then when I get it composed, like just the good composition of proportion for features that they give you, all on a face, then you tell them, I'm going to turn around and show you, and I will change anything you want, any way you want me to change it, and then do that. You turn it around, and whatever they say, witness is king. They saw him. You do exactly what they say. And the way to know you're done is the witness will say, ah, it's not perfect, but I can't think of what else to change. That means you are done. Take a picture first. And if you're old like me, there weren't cell phones until I did halfway through my career. But take a Polaroid, and then give it to the detective. And do you interact much with the witness of the crime? It depends on who you are. If you're a man and your son has just been shot to death in a road rage as you drive out of the Astros ballgame, and you're standing there and your arms are crossed and you look like you want to punch me because you do want to punch somebody and you're mad and you just donated the 17-year-old's organs, then I'm really, really, really nice. You want to hear what I said to that guy? He wanted to be strong and his arms were crossed. So I looked at him and I went, compared to all the people that I've worked with, you're like almost the strongest and the most composed and you're emotionally stable considering what you've been through. And his whole body relaxed because that's what he wanted to be. And then I got him to laugh anyway. I'm real funny. I can get people to laugh in situations, but you got to tell me the crime. No, it's all customized to the crime. I would talk to you. The witness that relaxes the most is the witness that remembers the most. Every witness tells you in the beginning, they can't do the sketch. They scream it. They yell it. They say it in different languages, but don't listen. Here's what you need to know. I'm absolutely positive. A hundred percent of the time when you do a sketch from a witness who is not lying, your drawing will look like the person described. A hundred percent. You don't believe it. I know you don't believe it. And the law enforcement, hey, they don't believe it. But I'm right. And if you doubt me, you're wrong. What qualities do you have that make you so good at it? The quality I have that makes me so good is I'm empathetic. You got to feel what the other person feels. And that can be so horrific if you think about what you're going to go through because it's the worst thing on the news. But I do it because I'm strong, because I've been attacked. And then that informs you what you should say to that person. Empathy, a powerful tool, probably the most important one to have in law enforcement. I wanted to ask you how would you draw me? Oh, you'd be easy. I'd do it real quick. Oh, okay. Yeah, your hair is raw sienna. You know, nobody and yellow ochre and there's a little raw umber. Yeah, in the UK I just get called ginger. With her easel and color palette in hand Lois wants to take her career to the next level. After the break justice. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpright became the victim of a random crime. He pulls the gun, tells me to lie down on the ground. He identified Jermaine Hudson as the perpetrator. Jermaine was sentenced to 99 years. I'm like, Lord, this can't be real. I thought it was a mistaken identity. The best lie is partial truth. For 22 years, only two people knew the truth. until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict? A villain? A nurse named Lucy Letby. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story? The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived it to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Letby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level if the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. China's Ministry of State Security is one of the most mysterious and powerful spy agencies in the world. But in 2017, the FBI got inside. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. This MSS officer has no idea the U.S. government is on to him. But the FBI has his chats, texts, emails, even his personal diary. Hear how they got it on the Sixth Bureau podcast. I now have several terabytes of an MSS officer, no doubt, no question, of his life. And that's, a unicorn. No one had ever seen anything like that. It was unbelievable. This is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The Sixth Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd, and in 2022 I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. Unfortunately, it didn't go according to plan. He became the first bachelor to ever have his final rose rejected. The internet turned on him. If I could press a button and rewind it all, I would. But what happened to Clayton after the show made even bigger headlines. It began as a one-night stand and ended in a courtroom, with Clayton at the center of a very strange paternity scandal. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. Please search for it. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. This is Love Trapped. This season, an epic battle of he said, she said, and the search for accountability in a sea of lies. I have done nothing except get pregnant by the f***ing bachelor. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I'm joined by Luke Combs, award-winning country music artist and one of the most authentic voices in music today. Luke opens up about success, self-doubt, mental health, and what it really takes to stay true to who you are when your life changes overnight. I hate fame. I hate the word celebrity. I hate those words. They make me uncomfortable. But I think when you get to a certain point, the fame or the success or the influence. It just accentuates and exacerbates the inherent person that you are. The guy that says he's always going to be there and that will do anything to be there is the only guy that's not there. I'm in Australia when Bo was born. My whole identity is that no matter what, I'm going to prioritize my wife and my children over my job. I dread the conversation with my son. What do you think you'd say? Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Lois becomes the go-to freelance forensic artist for the Houston Police Department. I mean, she's on a roll, fighting crime left and right. One of the most wonderful cases I was able to do was we had an officer named Paul Deason, and he stopped somebody not realizing it was an escaped convict, and the man got out and shot him in the head, shot him in the back. And then on purpose, the shooter got in his car and ran over and drug Paul under the car for about 65 feet. so Paul walked back and called in his own assist and he survived so I heard about it on a Friday night now I'm a sleepwalker and I can't explain but I ended up sitting down on a fork the fork went clear to the bone it punctured my back of my leg right under my booty and my husband threw hydrogen peroxide on it Lois ends up in hospital where she's pumped full of antibiotics and promises the doctor that she'll rest fully for two days. But of course, she's barely out of the hospital when she gets a call. Paul is conscious and ready to do a sketch. I sat in my car. I had to for the guys. I had to. I ignored my leg. It was kind of hurting, and I sat sideways, drove to the hospital. It's really an ordeal. You have to walk about quarter mile with the easel. And I got to him and he was wrapped in gauze, completely covered in gauze like the mummy, but just slits for the ears, the eyes, the nose. And then I just whispered in his ear. And he said, I never saw his face. I only saw the flash of the gun. Anyway, I make him laugh. I make everybody laugh. I was whispering. He's laughing. Anyway, and then he says, I only saw the flash of the gun And so I have a trick You say what kind of expression did he have You know you talk about something else You don argue Yes you did see the face You go oh what kind of expression did he have Paul And if they answer that you going to get a sketch. So I held my breath, and Paul says, he didn't have any expression. He looked like a shark, like he didn't care about anything at all. So in my mind, I'm screaming, yes, yes, yes, I'm going to And then I got the sketch done, but it was so hard. He was coming in and out of consciousness. I wasn't sure I had anything. I gave it to the detective wanting to say, I don't think it's any good, because he wouldn't even tell me at the end if it was any good. So I went home, and they put the sketch out. Two guys were at the jail, and they thought the sketch looked like a guy they had just arrested for shoplifting a chainsaw from a store. They held a video lineup in Paul Deason's room, and he picked him out, and then they went to the place where the shoplifting happened, and they found a car with pieces of Paul's skin and uniform hanging from the undercarriage. So they know that that's the man who did it. And it looks like the sketch. Lois spots Paul in court, looking different now, without the gauze on his face. She goes up to him. And he looked real mean. He crossed his arms. He said, can I help you, ma'am? He said, oh, Paul, I'm the artist that did the sketch. And then he told me, I don't remember doing the sketch with you, Lois. I do not remember doing that with you. I only remember the end. Wow. And there are many memorable cases, each one worthy of a podcast in itself. If this is the only case I ever did, this would make my life absolutely worthwhile. They called me late in the day and said, a baby's been kidnapped from a hospital. Everybody drops everything. You're looking at the mom, and she's going, where's my baby? I can't even explain. The personnel at the scene of the hospital were so upset. I've never seen dozens of officers upset. So I get to the hospital, and the security guard, you could feel the feeling in the building. A 10-hour-old baby had been kidnapped. This woman comes in. She's acting like she's a nurse, and she's convincing. And she tells the woman she's with this nursing program helping moms with newborn babies. Fine. She's there for several hours. Then the mom goes to the bathroom to take a tinkle, and the kidnapper takes the baby, puts it in a really large purse she had brought with her, and she just walks down the stairwell and exited with the baby. So I got up, and the mom, I won't even describe, she turned her Bible into papier-mâché, and then the detective, the female officer that was left to keep her company, said, do you need me? I go, no, I like doing it alone. She tried to not act like she was running out of the room. She could hardly wait to get out, because the feeling when there's a kidnapping, it grabs you at the base of your throat, and it's hard to breathe. It's so hard to explain. So I did my best, and it looks like she posed for the kidnapper. Oh, my God. And they put it out. I didn't know at the time. I was sure it would be kind of close. I knew I had the air right. But I was exhausted, and so I went home, and I sat down, and I went, Oh, I can't go to bed and go to sleep if there's a baby still out there. So I turned on the news, and within 15 minutes, they showed the nurse that was at the hospital crying, holding the baby, kissing it. They said, they got the baby back. They got the baby back. And I watched, didn't even hear them after that. I just watched the people at the hospital kissing the baby. If that is the only thing I did in my life, I'm done. I'm fine. I'll just go make sourdough bread. I mean it's an awful lot for you to be taking on these stories you know you're right there in that crisis point well I have gotten a lot of strength by literally being almost killed that'll give you the little bumper sticker quote like what doesn't break us makes it stronger and if you go down as far as I have then you come back real strong and all the detectives they talk like you Anna they go how do you keep a sound mind? You're out of your mind. How can you do all this? Because they do murders and they work child sex crimes and they work rapes, but nobody does it all, but I do it all. And God literally, through the Holy Ghost, gives me a sound mind. I'm positive it's from Heavenly Father, because I'll be feeling just normal and goofy, and I get a call at 3.30 in the morning to talk to a girl that's seen her mom killed, and then she's been raped. So come on down. and I get this feeling in my chest of power and love and I feel healthy in my mind. And then I feel really healthy if I get to solve the crime. According to the Oracle Guinness World Records, Lois has become the world's most successful forensic artist. I worked 5,089 cases over 40 years. Wow. And I've helped solve over 1,313 cases of some of the worst felons to walk the face of the earth. Every third sketch I would do is solve a case. It took seven and a quarter years to give me a full-time job. After all these years, do you feel that young Lois has received some justice for what she went through? After all these years, yeah, I got justice for what I went through. that stupid guy got me going after every kind of guy like him. It was therapy talking to the witnesses and talking to the girls that had been attacked. It was so good because I knew how to make them feel better. And then if the sketch caught the guy, then that really made them feel better. And so, oh, I just, I got the most fulfilling life. I want to help other artists start their careers. I mean, it's too wonderful. I've got to spread it before I go to the big drawing board in the sky. And now it's time for the most important assessment of this podcast. So are you a Scorpio? No, I'm not. What? I'm Gemini, apparently. Oh, yay. That's the opposite. okay, Gemini's are supposed to be real funny. You should do radio interviews. See? No, but no. Here we are. Even though Lois couldn't get my star sign right, I get the effect she has on people. She's disarming, constantly observing. Two great skills for a forensic artist and a podcaster, to be fair. Some of her stories are wild. But I get the feeling that's all part of the charm she needs to lull people into the sort of headspace where they can describe a man they only saw for a split second, right before he shot them in the head. And the numbers speak for themselves. Forensic art clearly has a place in law enforcement. But during our conversation, she told me it's a dying trade, barely used outside of the States, and hardly used there either. Now she's headed towards retirement, Lois wants to turn her focus onto helping train up a new generation of artists and campaign for their work to be recognised by police departments worldwide. So if you want to see if you've got the skills to do this job, you can head over to her Facebook page, Lois Gibson's Institute of Forensic Art. She's got a bunch of exercises for you and she'll review your work and let you know if you've got that secret crime stop-in sauce. Good luck. And yes, best interview ever. If you've enjoyed this conversation, you can find loads more incredible women on our feed. Do check them out. And please do spread the word and tell your friends about us. We want as many people as possible to be part of the Girlfriends Gang. This season, we're supporting the charity Womankind Worldwide. They do amazing work to help women's rights organisations and movements to strengthen and grow. If you'd like to find out more or donate to help them secure equal rights for women and girls across the globe, you can go to womankind.org.uk. The Girlfriend Spotlight is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcast. For more from Novel, visit novel.audio. The show is hosted by me, Anna Sinfield. This episode was written and produced by Amalia Sautland. Additional production by Al Shabani. Our assistant producer is Lucy Carr. Our researcher is Zayana Youssef. The editor is Hannah Marshall. Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan are our executive producers. Production management from Joe Savage, Sheree Houston, and Charlotte Wolfe. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Nicholas Alexander and Daniel Kempson. Music supervision by Jake Otaievich, Nicholas Alexander and Anna Sinfield. Original music composed by Louisa Gerstein and Gemma Freeman. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemkool. Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Special thanks to Katrina Norville, Carrie Lieberman and Will Pearson at iHeart Podcasts, As well as Carly Frankel and the whole team at WME. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 2 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous lie that destroyed two families. Late one night, Bobby Gumpwright became the victim of a random crime. The perpetrator was sentenced to 99 years until a confession changed everything. I was a monster. Listen to Burden of Guilt Season 2 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt, the case of Lucy Letby, we unpack the story of an unimaginable tragedy that gripped the UK in 2023. But what if we didn't get the whole story? Everything's been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, The Case of Lucy Letby on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it, all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before. I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Shetty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Special Agent Regal, Special Agent Bradley Hall. In 2018, the FBI took down a ring of spies working for China's Ministry of State Security, one of the most mysterious intelligence agencies in the world. The Sixth Bureau podcast is a story of the inner workings of the MSS and how one man's ambition and mistakes opened its vault of secrets. Listen to The 6th Bureau on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.