Keeping Her Eyes on the Prize

August 3, 2004

Teresa Redmon is one of those people who doesn't wait around for things to happen. She joined Kentucky State Police 16 years ago as a dispatcher and quickly moved her way up to develop a position that matches her interest in law enforcement with her talent as an artist. Today she's Kentucky's only full-time forensic artist and has mastered the skill of interviewing witnesses and victims and creating composite sketches to help solve crimes and identify missing persons. So far this year her success rate for capturing suspects or identifying missing persons from her composite sketches is almost 80 percent. Her artistic talent and her interest and knowledge of technology keeps her at the top of her field nationally.

You've probably seen Teresa's work. Her composite sketches end up
on the Kentucky State Police's Web site, at the post office, in newspapers, on TV and in the national media. She spends the bulk of her work doing composites, but also handles fugitive sketch enhancements, age progressions, skull reconstructions, demonstrative evidence for courts and crime scene reconstruction and modeling. Her work extends beyond Kentucky's borders and includes work on numerous cases for the federal government, the FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), and the U.S. Marshals Service.

When she started her career as a forensic artist in 1994, the tools she had to work with were minimal. Trying to recreate a person's identity was drawn by hand, using notes from witness and victim interviews and trying to match those up with outdated facial feature transparencies and a charcoal pen. She knew there had to be a better way, so she contacted the FBI and started Kentucky down the path of investing in the latest technology.

A Steady Hand Teresa Redmon works on a composite sketch using Electronic Facial Identification Technique software. The combination of effective technology and careful interviewing skills of witnesses and victims have made Teresa one of America's best forensic artists.

She finally settled on a tool from Aspley Ltd. called Electronic Facial Identification Technique or E-FIT™. It was the one software package that solely focused on law enforcement and had a rich set of human facial features, product support and updates. It was developed for Scotland Yard for the purpose of creating a facial composite and contains the world's largest database of hairstyles, facial features, and accessories. According to Redmon, it wasn't the cheapest, but it quickly proved its worth. Out of the first 14 suspect composites she created, 10 arrests were made.

Today, Redmon has E-FIT™ and other software imaging tools loaded on her laptop as she travels the state of Kentucky working with state and local police. When she meets with witnesses or victims, she uses cognitive interviewing skills to get the closest description as possible. Once she has a full palette of information, she begins creating the composites and continuously updating the facial features to get as close as possible to what has been described.

So what's the best and the toughest part of her job? Redmon said she got a lot of satisfaction when one of her composites resulted in the arrest of a serial pedophile in Lexington last year. She says it's sometimes difficult to visit the state morgue in Frankfort, however, where she photographs unidentified missing persons. She's there to capture images to reconstruct what the person may have looked like alive in an effort to establish identity. "Whenever I do my work with helping to identify a missing person, I have to keep my eyes on the prize which is helping a family find their loved one," Redmon says. "The same is true for the victims of crime I talk to. If I don't keep my thoughts on the benefits of what I'm doing, it can sometimes be tough."

Teresa is an instructor for the International Association for Identifiers and for Kentucky Law Enforcement. She also works closely with the State Medical Examiners Office and Dr. Emily Craig, the State's Forensic Anthropologist who Teresa considers her mentor. In addition, she contributes to two Websites that are helping find and identify missing persons, the Doe Network and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Find out more:

Visit the Kentucky State Police Website: www.kentuckystatepolice.org
Visit the Doe Network Website: www.doenetwork.org
Visit the National Center for Missing and Explioted Children Website:
www.missingkids.com/

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