A Story Idea Each Day for a Month — Day 18

This is the 9th year in a row I’ve run this series in April.

Today’s story: The world’s most successful forensic artist: How Lois Gibson’s incredible sketches have helped solve thousands of crimes.

Lois Gibson is used to coming face-to-face with treacherous criminals.

As a Forensic artist for the Houston Police Department in Texas, her visionary talent has helped to positively identify 751 criminals and secure over 1,000 convictions.

Each day, she sits at her blank easel with charcoal in hand; meeting people whose lives have been stricken by burglars, murderers, and abusers.

More often than not, the victims who come to her have only seen their assailant during the fleeting and unnerving time they were targeted.

Many say they wish they could offer more details to construct the portrait — but the nature of the crime committed against them means they have little recollection of their attacker.

When this happens, Lois hears what they have to say as they sit across from her in the room of the police department.

She connects with them, nods, and discusses something else, pondering the character of the attacker out loud with them.

Then she asks a single, definitive question: “What kind of expression did they have?” “If they can answer that, if they can tell you what the expression was, then they saw the face,” she says, “despite being convinced that they hadn’t.”

Lois makes it her passion, and more importantly, her ambition to reconfigure the facial features of the felon from a book of human characteristics she hands victims.

That’s an interesting enough hook, but this next aspect of the story makes it truly compelling:

The sessions, which average around 120 portraits per year, can unsurprisingly be hugely emotional. With the victims reliving a horrendous moment, Lois is responsible for re-configuring the antagonist of a horrific time in the their lives.

Reliving those moments is an experience known only too well by Lois. Back in 1972, she sat in the same seat as with many victims she consults with for forensic drawings, after being brutally attacked by a serial rapist and murderer.

“I know what it’s like to ponder my own death at the hands of somebody else for no reason,” she says, comprehending the immense pain of the people who’ve come to her.

I could have seen this as a jumping off point for a case-of-the-week TV series back in the 70s or 80s, but I’m not sure there’s enough there for TV today. However, I can see a movie in this because as I was reading the article and this woman’s heroic work, my mind went to this question:

What do the criminals she has helped to identify and put behind bars think about this artist? More importantly, what do they feel about her? I would imagine at least some of them — deflecting responsibility for their own actions — would project anger, even rage toward her.

And what if one of them escaped from prison?

Another angle would be more of a psychological thriller: What if in working with several victims, the artist began to see a pattern in the sketches. The modus operandi is different for each crime, yet the face of the perpetrator is the same.

And oh yeah… what if the assailant happens to be someone she knows? The closer she gets to tracking them down, the more of a threat she becomes to the perpetrator.

In either case, the artist goes from drawing a sketch about a crime to becoming a target for a crime.

It would be great if her drawing skills could somehow be involved in saving the day and her own skin.

There you go, my eighteenth story idea for the month. This time a TV series concept. And it’s yours. Free!

Here are links for all the previous posts in this year’s series:

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day 11
Day 12
Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16
Day 17

Each day this month, I invite you to click on RESPONSES and join me to do some further brainstorming. Take each day’s story idea and see what it can become when you play around with it. These are all valuable skills for a writer to develop.

See you in comments. And come back tomorrow for another Story Idea Each Day For A Month.