Speaker 1: Mother Knows Death Presents External Exams with Nicole and Jimmy.
Speaker 2: Hi everyone, welcome to this week's External Exam on Mother
Speaker 2: nos Death. Since we started our podcast, we've had multiple
Speaker 2: stories in the news relating to skulls being found. And
Speaker 2: I'm always curious who works on these cases. How when
Speaker 2: they're found, where does the skull go? Who determines who
Speaker 2: this person is that has either been missing or is
Speaker 2: a victim of a crime. And today we are going
Speaker 2: to talk to a forensic artist. Her name is Lisa Baily,
Speaker 2: and she's coming out with a new book actually today
Speaker 2: called Clay and Bones. So welcome to the show. Lisa,
Speaker 2: Thanks so much.
Speaker 1: This is the true because I've been following you the
Speaker 1: moment I got on Instagram. Yeah, Ie, So.
Speaker 2: That that's awesome because I've been a huge fan of
Speaker 2: your work as well. So I'm so glad we finally
Speaker 2: get to meet in person. It's great. Let So, I
Speaker 2: like to start off my interviews just trying to get
Speaker 2: a basis of how people got into their field and
Speaker 2: what their life has been like, their whole entire life,
Speaker 2: not just their career. So for me, people always think
Speaker 2: that I was this. They look at me and they
Speaker 2: think I have tattoos and I was some goth kid
Speaker 2: that just was obsessed with death and slept in a
Speaker 2: coffin or something, and I obviously I wasn't. Do you
Speaker 2: when people find out that that you work with human
Speaker 2: skulls for a living, do they ever ask you if
Speaker 2: you were obsessed with death when you were a kid
Speaker 2: and grown up?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like, well, oh my god, how did you
Speaker 1: get that job? And yeah, you know were you were?
Speaker 1: You wearing black all the time and you know all
Speaker 1: that dothor. I was the absolute opposite. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: always drawing as a kid. I loved artwork, but I
Speaker 1: was painfully shy, Like just everybody ignore me. I would not.
Speaker 1: I was painfully shy. So and I didn't like anything
Speaker 1: blood cuts and gore and anything gross. So it was
Speaker 1: kind of surprising like some of the things that I've
Speaker 1: seen in my life then, But yeah, I was complete
Speaker 1: opposite this. Any anybody that knew me as a kid
Speaker 1: would be like, what it's like, you up. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: even dissect I couldn't dissect the throb and science class.
Speaker 1: I have my partner that.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting though, because I'm starting to ask this
Speaker 2: question to funeral directors and other people that kind of
Speaker 2: work in a similar feel to ours, and everyone says
Speaker 2: the same thing. They they weren't. They weren't into it.
Speaker 2: There was no there was no indication that this is
Speaker 2: what they were going to do when they grew up.
Speaker 2: So you're saying that you were artistic when you were
Speaker 2: a kid, were you Were you also interested in science?
Speaker 1: Now, well, I hated science. I did. I did everything
Speaker 1: to get No.
Speaker 2: This is great to hear because kids get frustrated in
Speaker 2: school because they don't they don't understand science, or they're
Speaker 2: not good at math. And then you look and see
Speaker 2: these adults became scientists when they got older, So it's.
Speaker 1: A good stalory. Yeah. I was absolutely anytime I could
Speaker 1: make a science project into an art project, I would
Speaker 1: do that. So I was a kid who was building
Speaker 1: volcanoes with baking soda instead of writing on a report
Speaker 1: about volcanoes. So yeah, I was completely not interested in science.
Speaker 1: But well, one thing, if I can say this, I
Speaker 1: remember when I was about thirteen fourteen, I used to
Speaker 1: watch all the police shows with my dad and so on.
Speaker 1: One of them, maybe it was Quincy, they had somebody
Speaker 1: doing a facial approximation, and I thought that is so cool.
Speaker 1: I would love to do that. But this was the
Speaker 1: seventies and nobody knew how you would go about that,
Speaker 1: and then or would be really cool to be a
Speaker 1: composite artists. You know, I watched you know, I'm aging
Speaker 1: myself the WI five things like that, so so that
Speaker 1: would be the coolest job on earth. But nobody knew.
Speaker 1: This was way before computers, and even if I had
Speaker 1: been computers there at that time, there's very little information
Speaker 1: about how to become a friends of artists. It's a
Speaker 1: very odd ball, niche field. So it's really kind of
Speaker 1: odd that all these years later, it's exactly what I
Speaker 1: ended up doing. I wasn't aiming for it. It was
Speaker 1: living my life doing you know, joining the Navy, all
Speaker 1: those things that I guess we'll talk about. I ended
Speaker 1: up unwittingly being perfectly prepared to be a friends of
Speaker 1: artist at the FBI. When when I saw the job posting,
Speaker 1: it was like they had my resume was crazy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was crazy.
Speaker 2: That's that's awesome. So let's let's first talk about the military,
Speaker 2: because I want everyone to get an understanding of how
Speaker 2: you ended up at the FBI as a forensic artist.
Speaker 2: So you come from a family that is military, correct,
Speaker 2: And so when you were growing up, was that just
Speaker 2: like I'll be joining the military when I get older
Speaker 2: or when did you decide you were going to join
Speaker 2: the military.
Speaker 1: I figured when I was about seventeen, that's probably where
Speaker 1: it's going to go. There were five kids in our family,
Speaker 1: and college was just never talked about, like there are
Speaker 1: It was like that was something the officer's kids went
Speaker 1: to college. Like, you know, my dad was a master
Speaker 1: sergeant wonderful gem you know dad. So yeah, I have
Speaker 1: the best father in the world. I have to have
Speaker 1: the best father anyway. So college just wasn't an option.
Speaker 1: So it was like there was nothing in Dove I
Speaker 1: lived in. You know, that's for the Dover Air Force
Speaker 1: Space in Delaware. That's if people have heard of that.
Speaker 1: That's when they bring the remains from my proceeds of soldiers.
Speaker 1: They had the more there out of Dover Air Force Space,
Speaker 1: and there was just really there were no other There
Speaker 1: was really nothing there. So the military was really the
Speaker 1: best option to get out and get the job, be
Speaker 1: trained in something, get college benefits, and it was the
Speaker 1: best thing for me. I mean, I stopped being shy.
Speaker 1: I learned how to stand up for myself because if
Speaker 1: you don't, you'll get loaded down. And obviously the militarians male,
Speaker 1: male dominated, you know, And but it was the best
Speaker 1: thing for me. So best thing for me.
Speaker 2: And you're so your dad in Air Force twenty six
Speaker 2: years and and what made you decide that you were
Speaker 2: going to go into the me.
Speaker 1: So my dad was in the Air Force, my mother
Speaker 1: was in the Women's Army Air Corps in the fifties.
Speaker 1: My oldest brother and my sister were in the Air Force,
Speaker 1: and another brother was in the Marines. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I have to do the maybe so I can, you know,
Speaker 1: round it out, And they honestly and please take my
Speaker 1: agentto account. I was eighteen. They had the cutest uniforms,
Speaker 1: So that was serious. Serious, that's what eighteen year olds
Speaker 1: think about. It's like, oh my god, it's uniforms. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it just appealed to me. It just appealed to me. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So when I don't I'm not one hundred percent familiar.
Speaker 2: I know, I sound like an idiot to people that
Speaker 2: are in military families. I just don't. I'm not familiar
Speaker 2: with how it works really. So you join the Navy
Speaker 2: and while you're there, what what are you doing as
Speaker 2: a job?
Speaker 1: Do you do?
Speaker 2: They try to find something that you're good at, or
Speaker 2: they just give you any kind of task and you.
Speaker 1: Have you, uh, you figure out what you want to
Speaker 1: be before you join. So you take a test which
Speaker 1: is a general Placement test kind of you know, sort
Speaker 1: of an IQ. But so you get a general placement
Speaker 1: test and then they take out this you know, big book.
Speaker 1: They're they're the recruiters trying to get you to join
Speaker 1: something that they need. Like they tried to talk me
Speaker 1: into becoming going to nukes, and I was like, I don't.
Speaker 1: I don't do nath, I can't into news. And I
Speaker 1: guess I scored well enough for the intelligence field. And
Speaker 1: so one of the recruiters said, wow, I ought to
Speaker 1: be a linguist and I'd never taken a language before.
Speaker 1: So eighteen years old, I joined as a Russian linguist
Speaker 1: and they But so the thing is any military kid
Speaker 1: noses you do not join the military unless you have
Speaker 1: a guaranteed school, because otherwise you were at their mercy
Speaker 1: and they can do whatever they want with you. So
Speaker 1: when you join, you join you go through your boot
Speaker 1: camp and then you go to your school. And I
Speaker 1: was immersed in Russian for eight hours a day, forty
Speaker 1: five days a week, forty seven weeks. And that was
Speaker 1: just the one part of school. And there was another
Speaker 1: section after four more months. But if I had, if
Speaker 1: I had flunked out of that, then they could have that.
Speaker 1: I'd be chipping paint. I'd be peeling potatoes. They can
Speaker 1: do they can do anything they want with you, well,
Speaker 1: whatever they need. It's true. I mean, it's it's true.
Speaker 1: And so I joined as a Russian linguist and had
Speaker 1: no idea, but and I was, you know, they would say,
Speaker 1: oh my god, you're can have to study four or
Speaker 1: five hours a night. There's a fifty percent nutrition rate,
Speaker 1: and I don't know. I took to it like a
Speaker 1: duck to water. It was no problem. It's I think
Speaker 1: it's an artist and a visual To me, Russian was
Speaker 1: a very organized language and it made sense to me.
Speaker 1: And I could just see the words, so I couldn't
Speaker 1: think of a word. I would remember seeing it in
Speaker 1: my textbook and then I would go, oh, okay, I
Speaker 1: could read it in my mind and answer, so that's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, My girlfriend, And how long did you do that?
Speaker 2: How long did you do that?
Speaker 1: Seven weeks. That was in Monterey, California, a beautiful place
Speaker 1: to be stationed, by the way, it's gorgeous.
Speaker 2: So you're in the Navy doing this as a career
Speaker 2: for her.
Speaker 1: I ended up doing six years. The typical endlessman is
Speaker 1: four years, but because my school was basically a year
Speaker 1: and a half, they wanted you to have It wasn't mandatory,
Speaker 1: but they all for a bonus if you extended for
Speaker 1: two years. So that's what I did. So I was
Speaker 1: in for six years total. That was the perfect time,
Speaker 1: a correct amount of time because I was ready to
Speaker 1: get out.
Speaker 2: And from there, you started working at Johns Hopkins, right,
Speaker 2: And what did you do there?
Speaker 1: I did administrative work. I was a contractor there at
Speaker 1: the Applied Physics Laboratory. Because the one great thing is
Speaker 1: I had a very high clearance, so I was very
Speaker 1: marketable in the DC area. Data processing. Hated it to
Speaker 1: the depth of my soul. I am, I hate it,
Speaker 1: hate it. But they had a really good education program,
Speaker 1: so that's when they started. I had gotten some college
Speaker 1: credits while I was in the Navy, and then I
Speaker 1: just started going to college part time while work in
Speaker 1: full time. And I did that for a total of
Speaker 1: seven years. It took forever. And then a positioned open
Speaker 1: Nuxbroo graphic artist at Hopkins, and I lied and I
Speaker 1: got it and it was just a trans So when
Speaker 1: I was, you know, doing the data processing, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so I heard about an opening and that's how I
Speaker 1: that's how I transition. It's like all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I was, I was a graphic artist and I loved it.
Speaker 1: I loved it.
Speaker 2: So you're working as a graphic artist and you what
Speaker 2: kind of graphic art were you doing for the for
Speaker 2: the hospital or the.
Speaker 1: School since this is for the Applying Physics laboratory, which
Speaker 1: is ironic because I hated physics in high school. But
Speaker 1: you know, they were they called them Beltway bandits. But
Speaker 1: all the contractors that worked for the military, for Washington
Speaker 1: d C. I mean, they're they're based Hopkins is based
Speaker 1: in Maryland, but you would have, like I worked in
Speaker 1: the Submarine Technology department, so some of them would be
Speaker 1: you know, scenarios of you know, here are you know,
Speaker 1: planes flying and they're shooting was radar and so or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's very technical and all I had to do is illustrated.
Speaker 1: So we're using these three D software and Soto Shop
Speaker 1: to basically do like the artist depiction of technology that
Speaker 1: they wanted to get funding for. That was part of it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that was part of it. It might be
Speaker 1: doing doing an illustration of something that somebody was inventing
Speaker 1: and the and it wasn't even actually all military because
Speaker 1: in the sudden wing technology, they were using that technology
Speaker 1: for for medical for like, uh, heart problems. I won't
Speaker 1: be able to speak intelligently about it because I'm.
Speaker 2: No, but the brother laws. It's cool though, because I
Speaker 2: a lot of people don't think about all those different
Speaker 2: things that go into college programs and things that there's
Speaker 2: artists that are helping out with that, and that's really cool.
Speaker 2: So how did you hear about this job that came
Speaker 2: up at the FBI? And what was it?
Speaker 1: As an illustrator? So it was they had what they
Speaker 1: called GS levels in the federal government. So this was
Speaker 1: a GS ten, which is a good but you know,
Speaker 1: a good kind of rank, and it was an illustrator.
Speaker 1: I was, actually I was. I loved my job at Hopkins.
Speaker 1: I loved everybody I worked with, but I just happened
Speaker 1: to be at the dunkin Donuts looking through a Washington
Speaker 1: Post that somebody had left on the table, and I
Speaker 1: looked flipped up in the classifieds and I saw an
Speaker 1: FBI seal and I was like, what's that? And then
Speaker 1: I read it and I was just like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: oh my god, oh my god. And this sounds so cool.
Speaker 1: And there was nothing in that because it was a
Speaker 1: junior position, nothing about skulls or anything then. But it
Speaker 1: was doing demonstrative evidence for courtroom trials, you know, things
Speaker 1: like that and composite sketches that you could work your
Speaker 1: way into if you got promoted. So I didn't think
Speaker 1: I would get it. I thought there's going to be
Speaker 1: hundreds of people applying for this. I don't have a chance.
Speaker 1: But maybe I'll get to see the inside of the
Speaker 1: FBI because they'll have to interview me. Because literally they
Speaker 1: wanted and this actually I want to remember this for
Speaker 1: for later in the conversation, but they wanted be able
Speaker 1: to like draw with kencil, no computers, no three D software,
Speaker 1: no design software, and my degree was in design, so
Speaker 1: they wanted they wanted everything. And at Hopkins, I did
Speaker 1: all that. I did design I did three d illustrations
Speaker 1: and stuff. So I applied and this was before this
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety seven, so it was I nailed in
Speaker 1: my resume, you know paper I sent up FedEx because
Speaker 1: that was terrified it would get lost. And I heard
Speaker 1: nothing for like six months or something, and I thought,
Speaker 1: well they I thought they felt like everybody asked, you know,
Speaker 1: my sister would ask me was like, I guess somebody
Speaker 1: else got it. And then one day I was working
Speaker 1: on a rest job and I got a phone call
Speaker 1: and somebody said I'm from the FBI, and my heart
Speaker 1: stopped and he said, we've got trapplication. We'd like to
Speaker 1: interview you. So, oh my god, I loved I slipped.
Speaker 1: So we said it's down to you and three other people,
Speaker 1: and I had a phone interview. A couple of days later.
Speaker 1: I thought that was the preliminary interview. It wasn't. It
Speaker 1: was the interview. So a couple of days after the
Speaker 1: phone interview, he called me back at work and he
Speaker 1: said the job is yours if you wanted, and lost
Speaker 1: my mind. I nearly lost my mind. Yeah, that was so.
Speaker 2: How So, from the time you sent in your resume
Speaker 2: until the time you got the job. How long was
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: An unusual situation. It was three years, and so it
Speaker 1: was during Okay, I applied to ninety seven, so they
Speaker 1: were trying to get me in before a rumored hiring freeze.
Speaker 1: And you know, September the end of the fiscal year,
Speaker 1: so September thirtyth yes, hiring freeze. Congress couldn't decide on
Speaker 1: the budget, so all hiring has stopped. So then for
Speaker 1: two years sitting around going you know, somebody like approve
Speaker 1: of the budget. And this was during the Bush and
Speaker 1: War presidential thing, and nothing could get figured out. So
Speaker 1: it was finally in. It was September two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: I remember the day. It was a Friday, and the
Speaker 1: agent came into the office and said, everything's done. Welcome
Speaker 1: to the FBI. But I didn't get to. I didn't
Speaker 1: start till two months later.
Speaker 2: So you get So you get hired in September of
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and then what happens four days
Speaker 2: after you get hired.
Speaker 1: I still wasn't in yet. Like I was hired. They
Speaker 1: I had the offer letter, I had everything, but there
Speaker 1: was still you know, the wheels of the government most slowly,
Speaker 1: so of course when nine to eleven happened, I thought
Speaker 1: I was desperate to get in there because the artists
Speaker 1: there were working twelve hour shifts, were just working around
Speaker 1: the clock, and it still took some time. So I
Speaker 1: wasn't able to actually physically walk in the door until November,
Speaker 1: until two months later. But still they were back to
Speaker 1: a normal schedule, and I was still working on everything
Speaker 1: for you know a lot of things for nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: So there is this act, So what kind of things,
Speaker 2: like what kind of things would a person in your
Speaker 2: position do as it relates to nine to eleven?
Speaker 1: Okay, what did we do? Oh? So we had to
Speaker 1: We scanned, you know, all of the Dictum's photos. You
Speaker 1: would think that they were the most beautiful digital copy somewhere,
Speaker 1: but again it's two thousand and one. Not everybody had
Speaker 1: all that stuff. So we were scanning, scanning, cleaning up
Speaker 1: photos of all the victims. We were making presentations for
Speaker 1: Director Molar and for the White House of We were
Speaker 1: doing interactive presentations, like one of the ones I was
Speaker 1: there was a lead artist because I was brand new,
Speaker 1: but some of the senior artists would be doing you know,
Speaker 1: layout diagrams of the planes and where every person was
Speaker 1: sitting and there would be a link to the voice calls,
Speaker 1: like some of the phone calls from people. It was
Speaker 1: it was trust me, it was something to walk into.
Speaker 1: And actually one of when on a co worker, but
Speaker 1: a scientist that had worked at Hopkins was actually killed
Speaker 1: during during that. I found that out the day later,
Speaker 1: the day after, so when I went, when I was
Speaker 1: at the bureau, it was just very surreal. It's like
Speaker 1: un scanning pictures and then there's a picture of the
Speaker 1: person that I knew, Like I know, many people after
Speaker 1: nine eleven is like they wanted to do something like
Speaker 1: what can I do? And at least I felt like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm doing something, you know, helping with the
Speaker 1: presentations for it because they were gonna, you know, the
Speaker 1: prosecuting Zacharias Masali. So I worked on some of those
Speaker 1: presentations of courtroom things. Uh. So it was it was
Speaker 1: anything related to eleven that took up the bulk of
Speaker 1: my time the first year.
Speaker 2: What are some things when you started working there that
Speaker 2: a regular person would kind of be surprised by because
Speaker 2: obviously you walked in there and you didn't really know much.
Speaker 2: You just supplied for some job in the newspaper and
Speaker 2: you're like, cool, I'll be doing some kind of art
Speaker 2: for the FBI. And you walk in after one of
Speaker 2: the biggest investigations in United States history, like what what happened?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: What are some things that kind of blew your mind
Speaker 2: that you didn't really realize happened Behind the scenes?
Speaker 1: It was on some well, my my supervisor was walking
Speaker 1: me through the office and he had a he said,
Speaker 1: this is where we keep all the skulls. And I
Speaker 1: was like, you have skulls in there. That was because
Speaker 1: that was not in the job description, which was fine,
Speaker 1: but that kind of blew me away. Just seeing the
Speaker 1: real work. You've seen things on TV, you know, you're
Speaker 1: you're you're watching police shows and everything, and then going
Speaker 1: inside the FBI and going, oh my god, this is
Speaker 1: really where it really hap happens. And seeing people working in,
Speaker 1: you know, scraping clothing for for hairs and fibers and
Speaker 1: and things like that. It was It was surreal, It
Speaker 1: is all I can say. It was surreal to be
Speaker 1: there because everybody's normal people. They're just walking around like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is their job. But to be on
Speaker 1: the in, to be on the inside, it was it was, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was surreal, Like I was. I kept pinching myself.
Speaker 1: I was like, I can't believe them here. It was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was thrilled. It was absolutely thrilled.
Speaker 2: Do they have like one central office or are there
Speaker 2: other branches throughout the country that do this work as
Speaker 2: well or is it one place?
Speaker 1: Okay, So the way the FBI is organized, there's the
Speaker 1: FBI headquarters in Washington, DC, and then they have field offices.
Speaker 1: So every state has a every state, most every state
Speaker 1: has a field in field office. So you could say
Speaker 1: that the most of the case work is done by
Speaker 1: the agents and the field offices. So even though the
Speaker 1: Washington even though the FBI headquarters is in Washington, d C,
Speaker 1: there's also WFO, the Washington Field Office. So and then
Speaker 1: they have legal attaches all over the world. So the
Speaker 1: but the forensic art we were actually our division was
Speaker 1: the FBI Laboratory. So you can imagine the organizational tree
Speaker 1: of the FBI goes on forever. So so I was
Speaker 1: part of the SBI Laboratory division and we eventually moved
Speaker 1: down to Quantica. Yeah yeah, oh okay, cool.
Speaker 2: So when you when you started, you they knew that
Speaker 2: you had some kind of a background in art, but
Speaker 2: you weren't specifically trained to do what you ended up doing.
Speaker 2: So when you started working there, did they require you
Speaker 2: to go to art school or did someone teach you
Speaker 2: like on the job training or was it a combination.
Speaker 1: It was a little combination. I mean they you know,
Speaker 1: I said, non of a portfolio, so they saw my
Speaker 1: drawing ability, the and all that. It was basically learning
Speaker 1: how to apply those skills to forensics. So I had
Speaker 1: done plenty of floor plans and diagrams and things at Hopkins,
Speaker 1: but this you had to think of it as it
Speaker 1: going to a courtroom, and so how to make sure
Speaker 1: that this information is presented in a way that the
Speaker 1: jury can understand so it's clear and unbiased. So I
Speaker 1: would shadow sometimes, like shadow and other artists, just so
Speaker 1: that they would be working on a case and I
Speaker 1: would see, you know, see what they were doing. That
Speaker 1: Also they had the big thing was the FBI Forensic
Speaker 1: Facial Imaging class, and that was three weeks long, and
Speaker 1: that was training in composite drawings and age progressions and
Speaker 1: facial approximation. So that was my first time. That's when
Speaker 1: I fell in love with skulls. And facial approximations. During
Speaker 1: that class, I thought, this is this is the best
Speaker 1: thing ever. And because I was, because I'm still a
Speaker 1: new hire, you know, I wasn't able to do facian
Speaker 1: props right away and then you have to kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, work up to that. But that's when I
Speaker 1: fell in love with it. And from then on I
Speaker 1: was just I learned. I did everything I could learn anything,
Speaker 1: everything about facial approximation because I want because I wanted
Speaker 1: to do it later when I want to go.
Speaker 2: Isn't it kind of cool when you look back at
Speaker 2: your childhood and you said that you did see an
Speaker 2: episode of Quincy and you saw them doing that that
Speaker 2: if the Internet maybe existed, because because think about this,
Speaker 2: if you were if you were a fourteen year old
Speaker 2: kid and you saw a TV show that did that,
Speaker 2: all you'd have to do on Google is you know,
Speaker 2: what job can I get where I do this and
Speaker 2: it'll pop up. But when I mean the same thing
Speaker 2: happened with me. There was no Internet when I was
Speaker 2: trying to figure out what I was doing with my
Speaker 2: life either. So it's it's like kind of cool how
Speaker 2: people got their story without having that at their fingertips
Speaker 2: and got to where they were. Did you when you
Speaker 2: started working at the FBI over twenty years ago, did
Speaker 2: you were you one of the only women working there
Speaker 2: or what or do you think that there was a
Speaker 2: lot of women working there at the time or has
Speaker 2: that changed over the course.
Speaker 1: As far as well, there's as far as the FBI overall,
Speaker 1: it depends between agents and support personnel. So I was
Speaker 1: a support personnel. So in our the graphic unit where
Speaker 1: I worked, and that it's not the official name. I
Speaker 1: don't I'm not getting official names, so that that FBI unit,
Speaker 1: it's just anybody's worried about it. So in the graphic unit,
Speaker 1: they're about have you know, fifty fifty men and women,
Speaker 1: and our official title was Visual Information Specialists. But not
Speaker 1: everybody in there. Would you composits or age progressions or
Speaker 1: facial approximations. Some did more crime scene like going out
Speaker 1: diagramming crime scene is doing video, you know, more of
Speaker 1: the more of the technical aspect than others. So every
Speaker 1: every artist in there have kind of there's actually we
Speaker 1: had to be able to do everything at least at
Speaker 1: a base level, but then people kind of fall into
Speaker 1: what they're best at. And thankfully the supervisors. Then they
Speaker 1: saw that and they're like, Okay, well Lisa love Skalts
Speaker 1: and she's putting in the work. So that's the direction
Speaker 1: I went. Others just had very amazingly technical minds and
Speaker 1: were able, like especially on for the Masai trial, some
Speaker 1: of the presentations they did were just remarkable, remarkable things
Speaker 1: that maybe with the software now might be a town easier,
Speaker 1: but in two thousand and one, it's incredible that they did.
Speaker 2: I think it's cool that you're talking about trials that
Speaker 2: we're all familiar with hearing in the news and everything.
Speaker 2: Working in the hospital, we have to comply with HIPPO regulations,
Speaker 2: which is to protect patient privacy. Is there something similar
Speaker 2: in the FBI where you're kind of you're allowed to
Speaker 2: talk about stuff, but you really can't talk about too
Speaker 2: much so you can't figure out exactly who you're talking about.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean we all have. We have the highest
Speaker 1: of the clearance, so top secret. I had what's called
Speaker 1: top secret with the sci special compartmented, so it was
Speaker 1: kind of up there. But because I had been in
Speaker 1: the military, it was The FBI is not like the military,
Speaker 1: but it was the same thing. It's like you're working
Speaker 1: in law enforcement, you have a clearance, you keep your
Speaker 1: mouth shut. That was just security was drooling a dirt.
Speaker 1: Hence all the time, it's like, keep your mouth shut.
Speaker 1: So you don't go out and talk about work out
Speaker 1: in the bar or something. You just you just do it.
Speaker 1: And you know, they didn't have a rule against identifying
Speaker 1: yourself as an FBI employee online, but I never did.
Speaker 1: I mean some people would go, I'm an f be
Speaker 1: a friends of artists and have it all over their
Speaker 1: social media, and I never did that. I'm hardly on
Speaker 1: social media now and I never put that I was
Speaker 1: at the FBI. I just you know, like, why bring attention?
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't see anything. Yeah, it was goodly
Speaker 1: to of this, so yeah I did.
Speaker 2: So you said that you they've picked up that you
Speaker 2: specialized in skulls, So just can you I first I
Speaker 2: want to know, like what what's your work schedule? Do
Speaker 2: you go to work just nine to five Monday through Friday?
Speaker 2: Is it part time? Are you on call? And then
Speaker 2: secondly I want to know when you walk into work
Speaker 2: every day and this might change from day to day,
Speaker 2: but like what what do you sit down and do?
Speaker 2: Do you sit at a desk, you stand in a lab, like,
Speaker 2: give us some explanation of what a typical work.
Speaker 1: Day would be. So I would say that, well, the
Speaker 1: first half of my career it's basically nine to five.
Speaker 1: You can you can slide the schedule a little bit,
Speaker 1: like sixty three thirty. You can slide that a bit,
Speaker 1: but it's very disappointing to anybody that sees all the
Speaker 1: awesome sets. Like on cssig and Bones, we do not
Speaker 1: work in cool offices. They're they're Cuba goles, cubicles, fornchs old.
Speaker 1: That's that's just what it's like. So when my career
Speaker 1: can basically be divided into nine year blocks, you know,
Speaker 1: the two blocks. So the first half, yeah, you just
Speaker 1: you walk in, you sign in, you get coffee, you
Speaker 1: check your email, and you just That was before I
Speaker 1: was working on skulls and the supervisor has a number
Speaker 1: of cases assigned to you and you just sort of
Speaker 1: juggle them based on court dates. And then the prosecutor
Speaker 1: might call up and say, guess what, we're going to
Speaker 1: court a month thoroughly, and then you have to swap
Speaker 1: things around, so sometimes you're juggling. We were not on
Speaker 1: call on call employees I don't know a lot about this,
Speaker 1: but you know there would be a schedule, so you
Speaker 1: knew when you were on call. And I guess there
Speaker 1: was some a different pay, pay structure or something. I'm
Speaker 1: not too familiar with it, but I know it exists.
Speaker 1: But you were expected if there was, you weren't. You
Speaker 1: didn't want to say no. Guy says, you know, we
Speaker 1: really need you to get on a plane tonight and
Speaker 1: go somewhere. You're like, okay, I will, So you're not
Speaker 1: you're not technically on a call, but yes you. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like the military. I was used to that.
Speaker 1: I mean, the military only owns you twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: You might work a five day and we can get
Speaker 1: a weekend. But if you get a phone call that
Speaker 1: you need to go somewhere, then you go somewhere, Like
Speaker 1: do you. I don't know if you remember it was
Speaker 1: all the shootings on the East coast with not the
Speaker 1: member's name, the sniper shootings, if you remove that vaguely.
Speaker 2: Yeah, funny because I was just talking. I was just
Speaker 2: talking about that today. Actually. It's it's so funny how
Speaker 2: you don't talk about things for years and then today
Speaker 2: I was just talking to my husband this morning about
Speaker 2: the DC sniper and stuff, and now you're talking about it,
Speaker 2: which is interesting. So what involvement did you have the kis.
Speaker 1: The first night I was thalm and said, somebody, somebody
Speaker 1: saw something. There's a presentation in the morning, you have
Speaker 1: to go into work, and so it's ten o'clock that
Speaker 1: night and not driving tech borders or I remember. It
Speaker 1: was like something some information came in. You need to
Speaker 1: do a presentation, you need to whatever. So that yeah,
Speaker 1: that was. That was for anybody that worked in the
Speaker 1: DC area. It was It was scary because at that time,
Speaker 1: you know, I took the bus into DC, so you're
Speaker 1: standing in a long bus line and all you can
Speaker 1: think of is like, I'm a perfect target because this
Speaker 1: guy's still on the loots. You know. Turns out it
Speaker 1: was too but you were just it was. It was scary.
Speaker 1: It was like, oh my god, I joined the FBI
Speaker 1: and now now this now now there's you know, snipers
Speaker 1: and everything.
Speaker 2: So oh, I yeah, my husband what what? What my
Speaker 2: husband and I were talking about this morning actually was
Speaker 2: what a crazy time period that was, because it was
Speaker 2: like nine to eleven happened and then didn't the sniper
Speaker 2: thing happen at the same time time as Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 2: I feel like it was like all within a couple
Speaker 2: of months, like just craziness and you're just like and
Speaker 2: then an antracks, Yeah, oh, an Anthrax, so of course, yeah,
Speaker 2: that was just like a crazy things like that.
Speaker 1: Like you know, even with those Anthrex letters, you know,
Speaker 1: we would might get those in and scam them and
Speaker 1: they would be in part of a presentation. We would
Speaker 1: give one fun thing I got to do. I shouldn't
Speaker 1: call it fun, but it was kind of cool. So
Speaker 1: during the trial for the sniper shooting, the model unit
Speaker 1: they took you know, they they would hide in the
Speaker 1: trunk and they drilled the hole and they were shooting people.
Speaker 1: They were inside the trunk and then shooting with the
Speaker 1: rifle out. So, uh, the model shop got a car,
Speaker 1: cut it in half and they restructured that to use
Speaker 1: in court so they could show exactly, you know, how
Speaker 1: how they would like fimb into the climb into the trunk.
Speaker 1: And there another coworker and I was the lead artist.
Speaker 1: We went over to the driving training that they have
Speaker 1: for agents where they get to drive fast and chase
Speaker 1: bad guys, and so we were having to measure one
Speaker 1: of the identical cars to use that for the present
Speaker 1: for the courtroom h courtroom exhibits. So that was you know,
Speaker 1: I've got to work on that a little bit. It
Speaker 1: was interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's us. I know, it doesn't it's it
Speaker 2: sounds kind of weird to say it's cool, but scientifically
Speaker 2: and just to be involved with a case like that,
Speaker 2: I think it's okay to say that it's cool. I would.
Speaker 1: I think I'll Actually I've completely forgotten about that. I
Speaker 1: just completely dropped. It's like, oh yeah, it's sometimes I
Speaker 1: forget some of the things I've done and I'm like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and You're like I've done all this cool stuff
Speaker 2: and it just it's every day of your life, right,
Speaker 2: So what when you say composits, sketch and all these words,
Speaker 2: that's like, did you explain what some of those things are?
Speaker 2: What you would actually do sitting there as an artist
Speaker 2: to come up with that stuff, Like how do you
Speaker 2: do a composite sketch? Do you have to interview people
Speaker 2: to get that information? So you personally would interview them?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was okay, And fifty years ago it was
Speaker 1: it was different. The FBI agents would do the interview.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other story, but yes, we would. We
Speaker 1: would go in, we would have a book of facial references,
Speaker 1: so we interview the person. But you're just basically trying
Speaker 1: to talk to them and get to relax. We're not
Speaker 1: in any uniform, so you're just you know, you're just
Speaker 1: doing get a person, which you know, somebody's been through
Speaker 1: something horrible. I mean, I didn't use sexual assault cases,
Speaker 1: and it was just it was very hard for me
Speaker 1: just I didn't want to say anything. I didn't want
Speaker 1: to say anything wrong. And this person's just had the
Speaker 1: worst moment of their life, you know. So so it's
Speaker 1: not like a police interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you don't want them to be visualizing it
Speaker 2: right like you feel bad, but they try trying to
Speaker 2: help them. You have to look at it that way.
Speaker 1: Then exactly exactly, it's like they're trying to forget that face.
Speaker 1: On one hand, they want to forget it. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, they want a representation that it's something you go, see,
Speaker 1: this is what that I said. They looks like nat
Speaker 1: boat get them. I mean that it was I don't
Speaker 1: want to get ahead of myself. So yeah, so we would.
Speaker 1: We would just free recollection, like tell me what you remember.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't always just facial features. Sometimes it could
Speaker 1: be you know, something they smelled or or anything, because
Speaker 1: it can all it can all tie together, and then
Speaker 1: we have sacial records. So they let's say they sit
Speaker 1: that's I can't speak. Let's say the witness describes he
Speaker 1: had a really long face and a big nose and
Speaker 1: big bushy eyebrows. By the way, that would be a
Speaker 1: wonderful compassage to do, because average looking people are the
Speaker 1: worst to try to draw. If somebody says, well, it's
Speaker 1: like then you feel like you're ending up drawing Charlie
Speaker 1: Brown because everything is just so nothing. So they said
Speaker 1: a really long face. We had a catalog goes there
Speaker 1: were the rest photos that had been organized, so then
Speaker 1: there's you know, headshape, and then what was most similar.
Speaker 1: And it's a composite because you're piecing it together. Somebody
Speaker 1: called it once like mister potato head, which is friends
Speaker 1: of artists hate that, but there is a little bit
Speaker 1: of truth into it that you're basically piecing things together.
Speaker 1: So we develop we developed a general sketch, just keeping
Speaker 1: it rest and then show it to and is this
Speaker 1: on the right track? Do you would you recognize this person? Like,
Speaker 1: what do we need to do? So then it's then
Speaker 1: it's constant erasing and moving and the eyes need to
Speaker 1: be closer together digit and it's uh yeah it ta.
Speaker 1: It's like two to three hours too generally. And when
Speaker 1: I started, we were doing a pencil and paper. I
Speaker 1: don't know if they still are, but obviously now with
Speaker 1: you know, digital pads and everything. Just my opinion, that
Speaker 1: is a way to go. There's no reason I don't
Speaker 1: think to be using pencil on paper in a situation
Speaker 1: like that, And you could much more easily draw it
Speaker 1: on a pad and then instead of having to erase
Speaker 1: an eye and move, it happen and you just set
Speaker 1: it up with the cursor, the you know, moss a
Speaker 1: layer a little bit. That's my opinion unpopular in some corners.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and plus you could probably, yeah, like easily show
Speaker 2: it on a screen better and everything like that. How
Speaker 2: often when you do these kind of drawings, do you
Speaker 2: you ever get to see the person that gets arrested?
Speaker 2: Are you ever, like Dann I did a good job,
Speaker 2: like they they look exactly like the telling. Does that
Speaker 2: happen often or not really.
Speaker 1: It's it's kind of a crapshoot, and in those instances
Speaker 1: you really have to say, and this is not this
Speaker 1: is not like oh being humble. But the witness is
Speaker 1: the most important person. There's like a train of side
Speaker 1: in Friends of Guard that you could have a fabulous
Speaker 1: artist and a bad witness, and a great witness and
Speaker 1: a bad artist, and a bad artist will produce a
Speaker 1: better drawing because if you have a great witness, the
Speaker 1: quality of the drawing is is important as the features
Speaker 1: that are being described. So sometimes, like you know, an artist,
Speaker 1: you could do portrait level work. It's a terrible listener
Speaker 1: and it's not paying attention to what the witness wants.
Speaker 1: And they make a beautiful drawing, but it doesn't look
Speaker 1: like what was in the witness's head, and that does
Speaker 1: nobody any good. So having a good witness is gold.
Speaker 1: And a witness says, I don't remember his nose. I
Speaker 1: don't remember, I don't remember. It was average. That's like
Speaker 1: pulling teeth and it's hard for everybody. It's hard for everybody.
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Speaker 2: when you're off work, like I know, for example, for me,
Speaker 2: I'll just be it just happened to me a couple
Speaker 2: weeks ago. I'm just sitting there with one of my friends,
Speaker 2: and I notice pathology on people all the time, and
Speaker 2: it's hard for me to like shut that off. I
Speaker 2: feel bad about it because I just can't shut it off.
Speaker 2: If I notice someone has like a weird bomb or
Speaker 2: something's going on with them, I can't.
Speaker 1: Shut it off.
Speaker 2: So the fact that you look at skulls for a living, right,
Speaker 2: do you just kind of dissect every single person you
Speaker 2: look at and think about like what their skull looks like.
Speaker 1: Yes, in a word, yes, that's a joke between me
Speaker 1: and my husband that I'll hee. We'd be sitting there
Speaker 1: talking and I he would notice that my gaze was off,
Speaker 1: and he was you're looking at my skull, aren't you?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm sorry, but just trying to
Speaker 1: figure things out, you know, trying to figure out like, Okay,
Speaker 1: there's a feature, how would it translate in flesh? And
Speaker 1: the funniest thing is to get a group of friends
Speaker 1: of artists together. What time there was a group of
Speaker 1: us at a conference and our waiter just had the
Speaker 1: most unusually shaped face and we were all just like,
Speaker 1: it's like star starings not staring because we just we
Speaker 1: were curious. We're curious that it's one of those things
Speaker 1: because it's a fascination. How does the skull translate to
Speaker 1: the face, what causes that? It's like a puzzle, and
Speaker 1: so that just kind of appealed to me.
Speaker 2: It's really cool though, because I don't know if you've
Speaker 2: ever been to the Modor Museum in Philly, but they
Speaker 2: have a whole wall of skulls and you just look
Speaker 2: at them and you're like, oh my god, this this
Speaker 2: really could show that how people look so different. But
Speaker 2: I think when you're a regular person and you just
Speaker 2: see a skull, like on TV or whatever, you don't
Speaker 2: really realize how many differences there are just with the
Speaker 2: size and with the orbits and everything, and how it
Speaker 2: changes between cultures. Is that something that you had to
Speaker 2: learned too about Is this person from European descent or
Speaker 2: Asian descent like things like that.
Speaker 1: Well, the antipologists would do that because they have an
Speaker 1: artist has no way near the training that would take
Speaker 1: to be able to determine things like that. So the
Speaker 1: antipologist sees it one way. They see it, of course,
Speaker 1: in the scientific way, and they will say, you know,
Speaker 1: the high Sex age stature ancestry. As an artist, when
Speaker 1: I first started, I thoughts looked alike. And of course
Speaker 1: as soon as you see two skulls together, you're like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I couldn't have been more raw. And
Speaker 1: the first time I went to the body of farm
Speaker 1: saw twenty doll in a row, and I also was
Speaker 1: like a kidney candy store it was. And I've been
Speaker 1: to the mutter and it was just fascinating. And yes,
Speaker 1: you're standing there going, okay, I'm putting a face on
Speaker 1: in my head, but yeah, it's that's the key to
Speaker 1: why we look the way we do is it's all
Speaker 1: starts with a skull, and you know people people think, oh,
Speaker 1: how can they do that? Like you're just making things up,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, there's a lot of information from
Speaker 1: gesture skull. You know, there's there's some things that you
Speaker 1: know are more leveled up to artistic interpretation. But I
Speaker 1: would say that you have to make you have to
Speaker 1: downplay what you don't know and play it when you
Speaker 1: do know. So, as the anthropologist says, this person broke
Speaker 1: their nose and it didn't heal right, and it was
Speaker 1: really crooked. So really emphasized that Orere, I could just
Speaker 1: look at the skull and no, it's like, well they
Speaker 1: have close set eyes far apartized. So it's it's the
Speaker 1: it's the overall look of the face. It's the head shape,
Speaker 1: where the features are. See, we don't know everything. We
Speaker 1: don't know a lot of things with a facial approximation,
Speaker 1: but we know where the features are. We can determine
Speaker 1: some things like the shape of the nose, the length,
Speaker 1: things like that, and you can never get I've had
Speaker 1: some that were like scary clothes that were really like wow,
Speaker 1: you know, the anthropologist and I were very happy with.
Speaker 1: But you can't get perfection, and that's actually not necessary
Speaker 1: because in a facial approximation, you're looking for recognition from somebody,
Speaker 1: a family member that is looking for that person. You
Speaker 1: could do a facial approximation, it's gonna look like fifty people.
Speaker 1: It could be fifty different people. But if a family
Speaker 1: member is looking for their missing brother and they see
Speaker 1: that sculpture, you just they could key on it and go, Okay,
Speaker 1: that looks like my brother or that's familiar. That's what
Speaker 1: we're going for.
Speaker 2: It's just so interesting to me. I'm reading a book
Speaker 2: with my daughter right now, a National Geographic book about
Speaker 2: Mommy's Oh Okay, and they're talking about how they found
Speaker 2: this one on Mount Everest. I think he was labeled
Speaker 2: the Iceman or something. But they were showing how they
Speaker 2: took his skull and they recreated it to what he
Speaker 2: would look like. And you know, my daughter's ten, so
Speaker 2: she was just like, well.
Speaker 1: How did it?
Speaker 2: Was cool? They were I think in the book they
Speaker 2: said that you couldn't really tell from the nose and
Speaker 2: the ears maybe as much what they would look like,
Speaker 2: but the they the guy was from European descent, and
Speaker 2: they were able to do the what is it called
Speaker 2: the facial approximations or whatever based on that, like how
Speaker 2: thick this soft tissue would be in certain areas of
Speaker 2: the face and stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so we we generally saw a we have
Speaker 1: tissued up tables just as as a guideline. Uh. Ears
Speaker 1: ears are just we know where they are, but they
Speaker 1: don't really They're not important for identification because if somebody
Speaker 1: had big ears, you're not going to know that from
Speaker 1: the skull. Things like the nose as long as the skull,
Speaker 1: as long as the nose is fairly intact, we can
Speaker 1: tell a lot of it. We could tell if somebody
Speaker 1: has a long, crooked nose that points up and goes
Speaker 1: to the left. The problem is in the forensic world
Speaker 1: is that a lot of them are homesides. So if
Speaker 1: they were shot in the face or or beat up,
Speaker 1: or you know, the skull has been out in the
Speaker 1: elements for how many years, little tiny bones get eaten up.
Speaker 1: So the nasal spine, which you know, is one of
Speaker 1: one of the features that we look at to determine
Speaker 1: the position of the nose, that the direction up or
Speaker 1: down or average that is I would say nine times
Speaker 1: out of ten that was gone by the time it
Speaker 1: got to me. Because you know, skull had been out
Speaker 1: there five to ten years and you know, a squirrel
Speaker 1: shoot it off or something, or it had been you know,
Speaker 1: the person had been you know, do trauma or something.
Speaker 1: So the skulls that forensic artists get are they've been
Speaker 1: through a lot. They've they've been through a lot by
Speaker 1: that name.
Speaker 2: They're not like texts.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, so that was that was part of
Speaker 1: the reason why I went to the body flarm. Not
Speaker 1: to jump ahead, but that was part of the reasons
Speaker 1: to try to learn more about what this nose looks like,
Speaker 1: you know, the nasal aperture, and then how might that
Speaker 1: look in lives and yeah, so the so that's the
Speaker 1: difference between you know, the forensic ones and the historical ones.
Speaker 1: You know, sometimes historical ones are in great shape either,
Speaker 1: but you're not. You're not looking for an ID. So
Speaker 1: it's not like there's anything on the line. It's not
Speaker 1: because they yeah there's yeah, there's there's no it's not
Speaker 1: a high stakes thing, and.
Speaker 2: It's just it also see what the guy might have
Speaker 2: looked like.
Speaker 1: But it's it's fascinating.
Speaker 2: It's let's get on to talking about so you your
Speaker 2: book it comes out today, which is it's awesome. I
Speaker 2: read it and so did my daughter, but loved it.
Speaker 2: What made you decide that you were going to write
Speaker 2: a book or write a book about this topic? Like,
Speaker 2: what is your book about? Is it about your life?
Speaker 2: Is it about a combination?
Speaker 1: It's it's about my time in the FBI. And I
Speaker 1: can honestly say that I was never going to write
Speaker 1: a book just I was an artist and was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not an author. I am not going to write
Speaker 1: a book. However, after what happened to me, there's it's
Speaker 1: sort of somebody asked me to describe the book, and
Speaker 1: I said, well, it's kind of a cross between Bones
Speaker 1: and Aaron Brockovich because it's it's my career. But then it's,
Speaker 1: oh my god, the battles that you have to fight
Speaker 1: when there's discrimination and harassment, and the crazy links that
Speaker 1: can go.
Speaker 2: Let's get into talking. Yeah, yeah, let's talk about that.
Speaker 2: So you had your career, you obviously have a strong
Speaker 2: passion for it, and you decided to create a website.
Speaker 2: What exactly did you do on this website? Was it
Speaker 2: to kind of teach others about forensic art?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was purely that I'm going to make this
Speaker 1: point because I'm probably a forensic artist that I know.
Speaker 1: I was listening to this and make it clear. So
Speaker 1: in the FBI you need permission for pretty much everything.
Speaker 1: So I had permission to you know, you get permission
Speaker 1: to run a website. I chose to keep it anonymous
Speaker 1: because I didn't want to have FBI blare it everywhere
Speaker 1: and that I don't have that website up anymore. But
Speaker 1: it was called asked the Friends of Artists because I
Speaker 1: was getting like phone calls and emails from people, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to be a friends of artists how to
Speaker 1: do it? And there was no source out there, just
Speaker 1: like when I was twelve or thirteen and saw there
Speaker 1: was no resource. So I wanted to create a resource
Speaker 1: for people who wanted to be a friends of artists
Speaker 1: to help them get in the field, which is which
Speaker 1: is yeah, that was That was my whole thing. So
Speaker 1: I still actually have I could push a button and
Speaker 1: make the website lie it again, which I might do.
Speaker 1: You know, you should, but it was everything was like,
Speaker 1: you know, what what training do I need? Do I
Speaker 1: need a degree? You know, where are the jobs handing
Speaker 1: get into it? It was it was purely educated and
Speaker 1: I don't know. I just I'm the kind of person
Speaker 1: if I find out something cool, I want to like
Speaker 1: grab the first person out go this cry I found out,
Speaker 1: like you know, I look, you know, did you know
Speaker 1: what happens when the skull does this? It's just I
Speaker 1: don't know, It's just kind of my nature. I just
Speaker 1: I loved it so much that I just kind of
Speaker 1: wanted to share it. And like I said, literally I
Speaker 1: would get phone calls and emails people not true me,
Speaker 1: but my name got my name got associate with the
Speaker 1: FBI because sometimes they would happens to interviews and everything.
Speaker 1: And then I was getting phone calls and emails like
Speaker 1: how can I be a friends of artist at work?
Speaker 1: And I was like, I'm sorry, I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: sit here and tell you how to be a friends
Speaker 1: of artists. So that was part of it too, to
Speaker 1: put the information out there.
Speaker 2: And what happened. So you have this website and it's
Speaker 2: it's awesome for people that want to learn about your
Speaker 2: profession and what happened.
Speaker 1: Oh, you mean the co plane.
Speaker 2: So someone that was an if former FBI employee complained
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: No, she had taught we would have guest instructors at
Speaker 1: the FBI Academy. So for the facial levaging course, they
Speaker 1: would have you know, FBI people teaching, but then also
Speaker 1: there would be guest instructors. So she had taught at
Speaker 1: the academy. And I got called into my boss's office
Speaker 1: one day and she saw my website and she didn't
Speaker 1: like it, and she decided to write a complaint letter
Speaker 1: to somebody way up in the FBI. And I got
Speaker 1: called on the carpet and I actually didn't get in
Speaker 1: trouble for that. I mean, I had to explain myself.
Speaker 1: I didn't feel like I was in trouble at the moment.
Speaker 1: It turns out I didn't. I didn't know it was coming.
Speaker 2: But you had permission to do it, right, Yeah, So
Speaker 2: now all of a sudden it was a problem.
Speaker 1: It was for me. It was why is this person
Speaker 1: doing this? Because what did I induced for her? And
Speaker 1: I am not doing anything wrong. And you know, I
Speaker 1: just spoken to my super like they knew I had
Speaker 1: a website. I believe I still have the email in
Speaker 1: case it's like this is not bad memory. So my
Speaker 1: SuperM sent me the email, so it was it was
Speaker 1: a complaint letter. I think this is unprofessional. And then
Speaker 1: there was a ps the bloggers and FBI employed and
Speaker 1: it's like, well, I didn't have that on my website
Speaker 1: on purpose, and I guess that was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a zinger. And I don't know. I all I can
Speaker 1: say is I mean, I was devastated. I was devastated
Speaker 1: because it was like, I'm not. All I'm trying to
Speaker 1: do is you know, educate bat friends of art. I
Speaker 1: guess I only can say is there are you know,
Speaker 1: some people women who support other women and others should don't.
Speaker 2: And I've had the same exact things happened to me,
Speaker 2: trust me, so I one hundred percent understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Actually, when my daughter read your book, she was like,
Speaker 2: this lady has your exact life, Like yeah, she she
Speaker 2: just said it was it was crazy and because she
Speaker 2: had read it first and she's just like, you just
Speaker 2: won't believe it. She just went through the same exact
Speaker 2: stuff that you go through, you know. Yeah, And it's
Speaker 2: and it's always just I think that people are jealous
Speaker 2: because they didn't have the idea first or something. I
Speaker 2: don't know, just haters, people that are bored. I don't
Speaker 2: know what it is, but there's there's people that will
Speaker 2: use all of their energy to try to destroy you.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's really it's really crazy what.
Speaker 1: You can't do. It is it's it's I don't understand.
Speaker 1: It's like you know, the what is it, the crabs
Speaker 1: in the barrel, you know that, you know, trying to
Speaker 1: drag you in the person down. It's like, I don't
Speaker 1: get it. I don't understand. And you know it's like
Speaker 1: I'm no competition. It's like but then people are like,
Speaker 1: well you were at the FBI. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: she has an awesome career, Like I don't get it.
Speaker 2: But you know, how did so did she somehow know
Speaker 2: that you were running the site? Because if you were
Speaker 2: anonymous on your site, like, how did right? How did she?
Speaker 2: How would she know to say, oh, this person's an
Speaker 2: employee the FBI. If you never said that you were.
Speaker 1: Oh my god. The fact that you asked this, Like
Speaker 1: I said, we were friends slash acquaintances, like I met
Speaker 1: her in person many times. She wrote to me and
Speaker 1: she said, oh is this your is this your website?
Speaker 1: I see this new news? Asked a friend saith artist,
Speaker 1: is that you? And I went I remember writing back
Speaker 1: you Sly Fox you figured it out like thinking it
Speaker 1: was fun and guinn It's like, oh, I'm figured out
Speaker 1: it was mek God. And then literally like two days
Speaker 1: later they called into the office and that is the
Speaker 1: hand to got what happened. And that's why I was like,
Speaker 1: I was like, damn it, she fooled. Like it's like
Speaker 1: I didn't know it was you, but now you just
Speaker 1: confirmed it. So yeah, that was yeah, and I just
Speaker 1: I've happened anonymous a weirdo.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just you know, so after that your
Speaker 2: work found doubt about it, things started getting bad for you.
Speaker 1: Things things were turning because there was a lot of
Speaker 1: transition during that time. So it was like in the
Speaker 1: summer of twenty two thousand and nine, like everything there
Speaker 1: was reorganization and new supervisors and so it was kind
Speaker 1: of like the perfect storm of things. And my new supervisors,
Speaker 1: one in particular just did not like friends of artists,
Speaker 1: and you know, he had he was a photographer, he
Speaker 1: about hey ran the Puto group, and he had friends
Speaker 1: of artists stuffed in his lap and he didn't like it.
Speaker 1: And he was very open about the fact that he
Speaker 1: did not like having friends of artists in unit. So
Speaker 1: he had an asta grind, you know, and especially against me.
Speaker 1: I don't know. People asked me, why was he picking
Speaker 1: on you? And I said, maybe sun Redhead in his
Speaker 1: childhood like made him. Man. I don't know, there was
Speaker 1: there was just some people that twins tail of Taylor Smiths.
Speaker 1: Some people are just mean. But yeah, I was like
Speaker 1: I had a I have a target on my back
Speaker 1: and that kind of guy. I think that gave him
Speaker 1: a foothold because from the moment we were put in
Speaker 1: the unit, he was trying to get us out. I mean,
Speaker 1: that was common up. He told us, he said, I
Speaker 1: don't want you in this. You know, there's myself and
Speaker 1: several other friends of artists, and because he had lost
Speaker 1: several photographers, there was like a swap of personnel, so
Speaker 1: he wanted his photographers back. He didn't want us, and
Speaker 1: that was just the first thing he could latch onto,
Speaker 1: like that letter to upper management, because I didn't go
Speaker 1: to him, and it went like several levels above him,
Speaker 1: and so he got called into somebody's helf as like,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess what this friends of artists did
Speaker 1: even though I was doing nothing wrong.
Speaker 2: But do you think there's a possibility that someone at
Speaker 2: the top was like, we need to get rid of her, like,
Speaker 2: no matter what, this is not good that because she's
Speaker 2: like willing to talk publicly about No.
Speaker 1: No, I mean the person I knew, the person that
Speaker 1: she sent it to, and actually she wouldn't be surprised
Speaker 1: to know that I was on good terms with him,
Speaker 1: So he didn't have a problem with me. So it
Speaker 1: People complain about the FBI all the time, Like if
Speaker 1: my in my book that I felt my former supervisor Gary,
Speaker 1: if that had happened with Gary, he would have laughed
Speaker 1: his butt off and said, oh my god, you know,
Speaker 1: and he would he would have laughed at all. He
Speaker 1: would have taken it like not seriously at all, because
Speaker 1: he had the same thing happened to him, you know,
Speaker 1: when he was coming up and everything. Like people, people,
Speaker 1: they try to bring you down. So but this so Gary,
Speaker 1: the previous supervisor, never would have been an issue. It
Speaker 1: would have been like because he knew her, he knew
Speaker 1: how she was the new supervisor. Because he wanted friends
Speaker 1: of guardists out of the unit. That was kind of
Speaker 1: like the first little chip that he could try to
Speaker 1: get a toe hold on. So it didn't do the
Speaker 1: trick as far as up upper management, you know, giving
Speaker 1: me the sting guy, but it didn't have my supervisor
Speaker 1: because he thought he had something on me.
Speaker 2: It was also, yeah, there's always like some man troll
Speaker 2: that's trying to get I had this. I had the
Speaker 2: same thing, just like some what the one female doctor
Speaker 2: at my work used to call them man child like
Speaker 2: just trying to get rid of me and felt so
Speaker 2: threatened by me, even though they were in a higher
Speaker 2: position than me.
Speaker 1: It was so weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So when you were working there at the FBI,
Speaker 2: so I a couple of months ago. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you heard my interview with doctor Daniel Wescov, but
Speaker 2: he is a forensic anthropologist. Yeah, I love him. He
Speaker 2: was awesome. He's a forensic anthropologist that and professor at
Speaker 2: the body Farm at Texas State University. And he talked
Speaker 2: about the body farm. So I was interested to learn
Speaker 2: that you went there as part of your job as
Speaker 2: the FBI. So could you explain to us what you
Speaker 2: were doing there, because this was all around the same time.
Speaker 1: Actually went I went to two different body farms. So
Speaker 1: I went to the first body farm that you know,
Speaker 1: the original at University of Tennessee. I went there six times.
Speaker 1: And so that was a research project that I started because,
Speaker 1: like I said, you know, we were trying to I
Speaker 1: wanted to know, like, what does this not look like
Speaker 1: give real life and forensic artists. We did not have.
Speaker 1: We didn't have any you know, proof, We didn't have
Speaker 1: a skull. In the perfect world, you would have a
Speaker 1: photo of a skull on a photo of the person
Speaker 1: in life and you go, oh, okay, like start drawing
Speaker 1: some correlations. And we didn't have that. So when I
Speaker 1: read Death's Sake gre throwing a second time, and when
Speaker 1: I found out that they had, I was going to
Speaker 1: donate my body. So this is how it started is
Speaker 1: I saw that they were selecting, and this is how
Speaker 1: it all began. I saw that on the application they
Speaker 1: were asking for a driver's license photos and then it
Speaker 1: was like the cartoon light bulb over my head. I
Speaker 1: was like, oh my god, they have photos and these
Speaker 1: are donors. So the FBI laboratory being a laboratory, they
Speaker 1: do research, and so we were, you know, and this
Speaker 1: is my previous bossons I run up a research project.
Speaker 1: Let's go to the body farm and get all the
Speaker 1: donors they have that have life photos and all three
Speaker 1: d scan them and then put together a reference collection
Speaker 1: Sir forensic artists, and so we went there six times.
Speaker 2: So that's so cool.
Speaker 1: It was I just gave myself goose bumps. It was
Speaker 1: was rewarding. It was just like, oh my god. It
Speaker 1: was like I'm starting to sound like a goofball right now.
Speaker 1: But it was so exciting. It was like we had
Speaker 1: we collected over one hundred skulls. We had their skulls,
Speaker 1: we had their life photos, we had like the basic
Speaker 1: an you know, we had their anthroological information. So you know,
Speaker 1: I started putting together you know, I wanted to put
Speaker 1: together together a reference guide and you know that of course,
Speaker 1: you know obviously need to protect the privacy and the individuals,
Speaker 1: but because they had been donated and they donated themselves,
Speaker 1: it was allowed to be used for law enforcement for research.
Speaker 1: So my goal with that was to put to gather
Speaker 1: just like the composite catalog has facial references, my goal
Speaker 1: was to put together a catalog of Stouttal references to
Speaker 1: have the skull and the face. That was my goal,
Speaker 1: which didn't pan out for you know, reasons that became
Speaker 1: clear later in the book, but that was my goal.
Speaker 1: So then friends of artists could say on this knows
Speaker 1: that I'm working on as similar, you know, they could
Speaker 1: have some sort of guideline to look for. Everything else
Speaker 1: is pretty much anecdotal. And then after that project ended,
Speaker 1: another there was another research project going on, and so
Speaker 1: it kind of intertwined with ours. So we went to
Speaker 1: the Texas Bodies r and then we scanned a number
Speaker 1: of skulls there too, And I'm pretty sure I met
Speaker 1: doctor Westcott. He has a really big deer. Now. I
Speaker 1: was there turnament when I was there easily ten years ago,
Speaker 1: so I'm pretty much I'm pretty sure that's.
Speaker 2: Because I think he's been there for a while. So yeah, yeah, there,
Speaker 2: it seems like he's been there. That's so cool. It
Speaker 2: sounds like you were on the brink of you know,
Speaker 2: because a lot of people don't realize that when you're
Speaker 2: working with skulls, it's it's a face, and a face
Speaker 2: is considered an identifiable feature, so you would have to
Speaker 2: get permission. And the problem is is that the person's dead,
Speaker 2: so you can't really get permission from them anymore. But
Speaker 2: when they did give permission to donate their body towards
Speaker 2: these types of things, it sucks that you weren't able
Speaker 2: to follow through with that. You were talking earlier about
Speaker 2: you guys used like a sketch pen, and you weren't
Speaker 2: a patent paper to sketch, and you were talking about
Speaker 2: technology that exists on with computers and things like that.
Speaker 2: I guess you could use like a program even on
Speaker 2: an iPad or something to do drawings at this point,
Speaker 2: but while you were there, because now, for example, well
Speaker 2: even in this Mommy book that I'm reading with my daughter,
Speaker 2: which is already probably dated at this point a couple
Speaker 2: of years old, they show that they use AI and
Speaker 2: they're using scanning of skulls a lot and stuff as
Speaker 2: opposed to using the typical clay to do a sculpture
Speaker 2: or to use drawings. Did you see any of that
Speaker 2: before you had left the FBI, that they were moving
Speaker 2: over to more advanced technology as far as using those
Speaker 2: identifying features rather than using the traditional art materials.
Speaker 1: That. Yeah, Actually, I probably six months before I retire,
Speaker 1: I was going to transition to digital sculpting because it
Speaker 1: was the way things progress. That we always used to
Speaker 1: do two D approximations in the FBI, and the treaty
Speaker 1: came along when the group got a scanner, so we
Speaker 1: had never done treaty. This is about a point I
Speaker 1: need to make as far as working with clay and skulls,
Speaker 1: as you never put clay on the skull because the
Speaker 1: skull is evidence. Never never, never, So that's why we'd
Speaker 1: scan the skull, make a copy, and put you know,
Speaker 1: sculpt with clay on the replica. And then when we
Speaker 1: were doing that before they were like off the shelf
Speaker 1: three D sculpting programs. You know, there were three D
Speaker 1: sculpting programs out there, but they cost fifty thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So that's why we did clay on replicas. And then
Speaker 1: as I'm not gonna be able to think of the name,
Speaker 1: I think I'm not gonna be able to think of
Speaker 1: the name of the software. But now there are even
Speaker 1: five years ago, off the shelf three D sculpting software.
Speaker 1: So I was I had ordered a new computer, so
Speaker 1: I had a great, big news souped up computer. I
Speaker 1: had ordered this, I got the software in and I
Speaker 1: was transitioning to sculpting digitally, which to me, it's it's
Speaker 1: better on it's it's better all around. I mean, it
Speaker 1: would be faster. There's no need to print a skull.
Speaker 1: You can see through the into the skull. So that's
Speaker 1: where I was going. And just as all that was
Speaker 1: coming together, I forced the naybe decide to retire or
Speaker 1: I retired. Yeah, that that's kind of explained in the book.
Speaker 1: It was just I guess to be like long, long
Speaker 1: story short. It was by then I was in a
Speaker 1: new unit with a fabulous supervisor, and things are really
Speaker 1: pretty great, and it was just sometimes I never thought
Speaker 1: I would leave friends of art, but just after a
Speaker 1: while it was like, I, yeah, some things you just can't.
Speaker 1: There's only so much stress to put up with. Because
Speaker 1: there was it was never I understand that it was
Speaker 1: never gone. The threat was always back there, like the
Speaker 1: threat that the not so's ailed threat was taking my clearance.
Speaker 1: And without a clearance you're dead meat. You can't work anywhere,
Speaker 1: and you're your debt. So so when I when I
Speaker 1: when those storm clouds started, I was like, you know what.
Speaker 1: And then also you know I had lost the just
Speaker 1: less than the year before. You know, my mom and
Speaker 1: my brother died within two months of each other, and
Speaker 1: that was like, yeah, no, that's that's that's fine. I mean,
Speaker 1: but you know, things like that, you know, you start
Speaker 1: sessing your life and you look around and you go,
Speaker 1: why am I, Why am I doing this? Why am
Speaker 1: I putting up with this? And what else can I do?
Speaker 1: And you know, after something like that, you know, you
Speaker 1: start thinking. And that's when that's when I was like,
Speaker 1: you know what I was. I was planning on retiring
Speaker 1: at sixty two, and when I was fifty eight, it's like,
Speaker 1: I'm eligible. Let's and my husband and I were like,
Speaker 1: let's just do something completely and utterly different, and that's
Speaker 1: what we did. We moved to Vegas.
Speaker 2: He was probably, yeah, I was going to say, like
Speaker 2: he was probably because when when I was working at
Speaker 2: the hospital and they were giving me a hard time,
Speaker 2: there were a few times that I would just come
Speaker 2: home and cry every day, like over over some bullshit, right,
Speaker 2: And my husband finally was just like, I can't have
Speaker 2: you like this anymore, you know, And it sucks because
Speaker 2: when you love your job so much, and it's not
Speaker 2: that you don't love your job. You love your job,
Speaker 2: it's just the people are making it absolutely brutal to
Speaker 2: work there. Well, so I have kind of like a
Speaker 2: juicy question. Okay, when I interned at the when I
Speaker 2: interned at the Philly M's office. I remember one day
Speaker 2: I was up in the offices and I saw these
Speaker 2: giant posters that were black and white and it had
Speaker 2: this really disturbing looking child on it that was dead,
Speaker 2: like looked like he was around five years old. And
Speaker 2: I was like, what is this. I said to the
Speaker 2: medical examiner that I was interning with, what the hell
Speaker 2: is this thing doing in the closet? And he was like, Oh,
Speaker 2: that's the boy in the box case, and I was
Speaker 2: I didn't know anything about it, and when I learned
Speaker 2: about it, it was crazy. It was a very high
Speaker 2: profile case that happened in Philadelphia where a young boy
Speaker 2: was found dead in a box and they recently have
Speaker 2: just figured out who the kid is, which is crazy.
Speaker 2: But I thought it was so cool that there was
Speaker 2: this old It wasn't the actual boy in the box
Speaker 2: in the closet, It was just these posters that they
Speaker 2: had made up at the time that said, you know
Speaker 2: who this is because nobody knew who this kid was
Speaker 2: and nobody had reported that a kid was missing, so like,
Speaker 2: five year olds don't just appear dead that nobody knows
Speaker 2: that they were missing.
Speaker 1: Right right?
Speaker 2: And I thought that cool piece of Philadelphia forensic history.
Speaker 2: Was so cool that it was just in the closet
Speaker 2: there because the office was old. As you were saying
Speaker 2: with says I and everything. There was a Philadelphia forensic
Speaker 2: show that was on at some point that would show
Speaker 2: with the Medical Examiner's office in Philadelphia, and it was
Speaker 2: all shiny and stainless steel, and I thought, like the
Speaker 2: Medical Examiner's Office. Well, I think that they move since then,
Speaker 2: but at the time it was very seventies wood paneling,
Speaker 2: just old building cubicles, all that fake wood stuff. But anyway,
Speaker 2: I thought it was really cool that that there was
Speaker 2: this this old Philadelphia forensic history there at the office
Speaker 2: when you and you said, when you started working at
Speaker 2: the FBI, they said, oh, here's our room of skulls
Speaker 2: or whatever. Were there some cases that were there that
Speaker 2: you were familiar with that that you couldn't believe you
Speaker 2: were seeing the actual real evidence in front of your
Speaker 2: eyes that they still had there.
Speaker 1: Yes, it was older cases. What was the book? Was it?
Speaker 1: Jeffrey Jeffrey McDonald's. He was a doctor and he was
Speaker 1: convicted of killing This was like during the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies killing his wife. His wife and his kids and
Speaker 1: he was a military doctor. Fatal Fatal Vision. That was
Speaker 1: the book I remember reading Sadal Vision before I ever
Speaker 1: thought of being in the FBI. And then in the
Speaker 1: archives there were just like these big, you know, gray drawert,
Speaker 1: gray cabinets that had lots of case work, lots of
Speaker 1: exhibitits from years before. So I saw, you know, the
Speaker 1: crime scene photos from that Jeffred McDonald case, and it
Speaker 1: was like it was just it was I'm glad they
Speaker 1: were black and white at that, you know. Now, you know,
Speaker 1: within a few months, I was looking at a lot
Speaker 1: of gory things. But yeah, I remember seeing the trial
Speaker 1: work for the Jeffer McDonald case. That was the first
Speaker 1: thing that stuck in my mind. Was like I know
Speaker 1: this one. So that was and I kind of feel
Speaker 1: like an insider, like ooh, I saw this, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's just kind of like everyday work at the FBI.
Speaker 1: It's like, yeah, you know, yeah, I worked on this.
Speaker 1: That's not like blase or anything. But me, I was
Speaker 1: completely new and peeked out, like I'm going through this
Speaker 1: like it's a treasure trove, like just look throwing the files.
Speaker 1: And some of the other artists were like why do
Speaker 1: help it that for It's like because it's very interesting.
Speaker 2: It's yeah, is it hard when you're sitting around, like
Speaker 2: especially during the nine to eleven time?
Speaker 1: It was horrible.
Speaker 2: I mean I was I was in my early twenties,
Speaker 2: but I vividly remember everything that was going on at
Speaker 2: the time. Like you're sitting around at a dinner party
Speaker 2: or something, and everybody knows you work there, and they're
Speaker 2: you know, they're people are trying to talk about how
Speaker 2: are they how they figure out who the hijackers are?
Speaker 2: How do they figure out this? How where are all
Speaker 2: these people that are missing? And stuff? People have questions?
Speaker 2: Did did? How? Is it hard for you to just
Speaker 2: keep like keep that in, you know, just because you're
Speaker 2: saying it was very emotional, so you know, sometimes it
Speaker 2: feels better when you could talk about stuff when it
Speaker 2: upsets you, but you didn't really have anyone to talk It.
Speaker 1: Was Yeah, I wouldn't ever and I didn't want to
Speaker 1: talk about it. Like later, my husband and I weren't
Speaker 1: married that point, you know, so I would call him
Speaker 1: and you know, he you know, he noticed that I
Speaker 1: was down. It was just like at that point that
Speaker 1: was during you know, scanning all these photos and everything,
Speaker 1: and but the photos we were scanning, they were all
Speaker 1: like birthday parties and graduations and all these happy events.
Speaker 1: And then but you're knowing that this person is gone.
Speaker 1: So that was you know, you start, you know, you
Speaker 1: look at pictures of people smiling and happy and you go, oh,
Speaker 1: that's really nice, and then you go then you remember
Speaker 1: why you're scanning the picture and this person is gone.
Speaker 1: So it was yeah, so I didn't want to talk
Speaker 1: about it. I didn't want to talk about it later.
Speaker 1: It was like I just tried to, you know, try
Speaker 1: to try it. Yeah, and you know some of the yeah,
Speaker 1: I had to had to do some child a ducta
Speaker 1: Oh my god, some PEDOPHI don't take those. Yeah, those
Speaker 1: those you have to yeah before yeah, before that. I
Speaker 1: normally we wouldn't do that. There's like tesks Force, your
Speaker 1: special team at the FBI and at other agencies like
Speaker 1: at the National Center Missing Exploited Children that will look
Speaker 1: at these photos and then they try to sanitize them
Speaker 1: so they can you know, figure out, can they figure
Speaker 1: out what motel this is based on the bedspread and
Speaker 1: the curtains and things like that. So you know, I did.
Speaker 1: I did a few of those, not many that was enough.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you just I've actually talked to one of
Speaker 1: the FBI psychologists. She was a psychologist at the Academy,
Speaker 1: and just in a discussion, not anything formal, said, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to look at these photos. I
Speaker 1: know they're coming in and I don't want to look
Speaker 1: at them, and how do I handle it? And you know,
Speaker 1: she's like just trying to compartmentalize it, and I just
Speaker 1: had to kind of disassociate and go, it's pixels out
Speaker 1: of screen, like zooming way in they would you know
Speaker 1: that it's just all these little pixels and stuff. Just
Speaker 1: trying to put it aside, and yeah, I'm I'm very blad.
Speaker 1: I only had to do a few of those. And
Speaker 1: actually I found out just by chance it one of
Speaker 1: one little girl was recover just one of the photos
Speaker 1: I worked on. And it's a huge team of people
Speaker 1: doing these things. It's not it's not like, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: I did this photo and she was found, but it
Speaker 1: was just I was on a tour of the National
Speaker 1: Center and this image comes up and they said she
Speaker 1: was recovered. I was like, oh, I know her, that's
Speaker 1: you know, one of the you know, how you had
Speaker 1: the boy in the box and this was like, you know,
Speaker 1: boots are you know she wore cowboy boots or something,
Speaker 1: So it was just that was nice. It's like, okay,
Speaker 1: you know I had to see this. But then later
Speaker 1: yes there was a happy ending. She was found and
Speaker 1: she's safe and recovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so does that happen that when I guess that's
Speaker 2: the question, like the follow through do you Cause a
Speaker 2: lot of times I'll do an autopsy or something. Well,
Speaker 2: it's it's better now when I was working at the
Speaker 2: hospital and I was so in depth, But sometimes I
Speaker 2: do like per dam autopsies, and I'll do it and
Speaker 2: then I submit the slides and everything, and then I
Speaker 2: really don't know, Like I kind of think, what I
Speaker 2: know how the person died, But then I don't really
Speaker 2: ever hear the follow through of the case, which I
Speaker 2: love like a full circle thing. So do your bosses
Speaker 2: sit down with you and say, like, hey, this case
Speaker 2: we've been working on was solved or is that something
Speaker 2: like you heard on the news.
Speaker 1: No, I mean some of the things that wouldn't make
Speaker 1: the news like we did. Usually the way I found
Speaker 1: out and you would never you didn't always find out
Speaker 1: It would basically be if the agent, like if I
Speaker 1: went out and I remember it did some you know,
Speaker 1: some cleposit sketches and then you know, the agent emailed me.
Speaker 1: Was like when we got and we got them, and
Speaker 1: this was something that didn't go and didn't make the news.
Speaker 1: It was a different thing. And I would I would
Speaker 1: have the capability because the FBI has, you know, the
Speaker 1: whole database that you know, I could probably have gone in,
Speaker 1: looked up and found out. I mean I could have
Speaker 1: called the agent after, you know, because I worked with
Speaker 1: a lot of agents, I could have called the detective
Speaker 1: to go, hey, what happened, But I guess I didn't
Speaker 1: want to annoy them. I thought, you know, I did
Speaker 1: my job. That was a tool for them to do
Speaker 1: their job, and then now they do their work. And
Speaker 1: I just was never comfortable calling them back and going like, hey,
Speaker 1: what happened? Did it work? And you know, lots of
Speaker 1: times things did, and they might you know, sometimes they
Speaker 1: would call like really or email like really ecstatic, like
Speaker 1: you know, oh my god, this is great. And sometimes
Speaker 1: you'd never hear and then you'd find out later that
Speaker 1: you know, you'd find out like I saw things. I
Speaker 1: would see things in the newspaper, like you know, if
Speaker 1: Pedophile it was a restaurant. I was not. Oh I
Speaker 1: worked on that, and oh this is funny. Went up
Speaker 1: my girlfriend Liz Heilinds. She called me one time and
Speaker 1: she said, oh, I just saw this one approximation and
Speaker 1: this person was ID and you know, did you work
Speaker 1: on that? And I was like who what? And she
Speaker 1: sent me the link and I was like, oh, I, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is mine. I had no My girlfriend found out
Speaker 1: she was ID before I did, and I worked at
Speaker 1: the end of the I Liz thought that was hysterical
Speaker 1: before I did. Yeah, I just I soon have probably
Speaker 1: kept track of like everything I did, and I kept
Speaker 1: good notes and I kept good records and everything. But
Speaker 1: I don't know. I kind of it's like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: did the work that and I would put it sign
Speaker 1: and go on to the next thing.
Speaker 2: I know I should. I always think about that too.
Speaker 2: I get so many because people say, like, how many
Speaker 2: autopsies have you did? Did you do this? And I
Speaker 2: have a pretty good recollection of like what I've seen,
Speaker 2: But I really wish that because sometimes it just want
Speaker 2: to pop in my head and I'll be like, oh
Speaker 2: I yeah, I did that, like I wish I wrote
Speaker 2: down more. You know. Yeah, it's just like I feel
Speaker 2: like you would do that now, But it's just like
Speaker 2: back then, you just go to work and do your
Speaker 2: thing and you just you know, I try to just
Speaker 2: take in as much as I can in my memory,
Speaker 2: and that's it. But so let's I don't I don't
Speaker 2: want to get into why exactly you left and everything,
Speaker 2: because we need to leave some stuff for your book.
Speaker 2: But since you you did leave now and you're not
Speaker 2: doing that anymore, so are you still interested in the
Speaker 2: whole like true crime world?
Speaker 1: Are you?
Speaker 2: Do you listen to podcasts and TV shows or things
Speaker 2: like that, or are you kind of like I'm over
Speaker 2: that part of my life and I'm just doing something
Speaker 2: else completely.
Speaker 1: Now For the most point, I'm over it, But I
Speaker 1: mean I'm still interested in it and the truth crime
Speaker 1: things that I'm interested in. I just watched this one.
Speaker 1: You might have heard of it. They called it mostly Harmless.
Speaker 1: It's about a hiker. It's on Netflix. It's a great documentary.
Speaker 1: But that was you know, that was a body that
Speaker 1: had been out of the woods, and you know, the
Speaker 1: internet was trying to trying to identify him. So I'm
Speaker 1: interested in things that are like the investigation part. I
Speaker 1: don't want to read about or see horrible murders like
Speaker 1: the This is a joke between me and my husband
Speaker 1: that the true crime stories out watched are more like
Speaker 1: the husband wives killing each other short of thing rather
Speaker 1: than home invasions, because it's like, I know my husband
Speaker 1: slept and kill me, so I'm safe there. So I
Speaker 1: know that sounds terrible, but I just you.
Speaker 2: Know, it's you're just you're like justin. Yeah, it does
Speaker 2: to me too, because I would be like watching forensic
Speaker 2: files all the time. My husband's a firefighter and he
Speaker 2: doesn't sleep at home sometimes, and then I would be
Speaker 2: so freaking scared at night because I would be like, oh,
Speaker 2: my god, like I saw this case last week and
Speaker 2: the guy broke in the house and he didn't even
Speaker 2: know who she was, like something that I could say, Oh,
Speaker 2: that could happen to me exactly. And then I wouldn't sleep.
Speaker 2: I'd be up all night, like scared to death. I
Speaker 2: had even when they when the girls, my girls were younger,
Speaker 2: I would have them sleep in bed with me because
Speaker 2: I was so scared. And then I and then I
Speaker 2: was like I can't watch this stuff anymore. I just can't.
Speaker 2: I can't do it until he's retired. Maybe I'll start
Speaker 2: watching it again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't either. I'm with you there. It's like,
Speaker 1: like I said, I know it sounds Terrible's like's if
Speaker 1: it's a husband wife thing. You know that's you know
Speaker 1: that I can watch, but you know that I'll be
Speaker 1: gone in the dark. Do you like? That just terrified me.
Speaker 1: The the Golden State said, the Golden State Killer, the
Speaker 1: one that they identified through the genetic geno.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Michelle, Yeah, that one's really Yeah.
Speaker 1: That was Yeah, that was brutal.
Speaker 2: I wonder if it's like because for me and you,
Speaker 2: like I've been at the Medical Examiner's office and I've
Speaker 2: seen people, like with my own two eyes, multiple people
Speaker 2: that have been murdered. It's real for me and the
Speaker 2: same with you. You've seen all these skulls with people
Speaker 2: that have been killed. I wonder if it makes it
Speaker 2: even more scarier for us, because it's not just we're
Speaker 2: not some girl that works in the office and is
Speaker 2: watching this on TV and doesn't really know how horrible
Speaker 2: and gruesome it could be and how scared it is. Right,
Speaker 2: there's that element of the realness.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know what's really comical. This is this
Speaker 1: is this is funny? Is that you know I've been
Speaker 1: I've been to the Body of Barn and I've seen
Speaker 1: you know, horrible d comp and been right next to it,
Speaker 1: and you know that I can do it because it's
Speaker 1: fascinating and it was like it was interesting. But if
Speaker 1: there's this really bloody movie on TV, I can't watch it,
Speaker 1: like torture, Like I never watched Dempster and I knew
Speaker 1: they were bad guys. He's only torturing mad dies. But
Speaker 1: some stuff just it stays in my brain and I can't,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't get it out of my brain.
Speaker 1: I don't want that in my brain. Like at the
Speaker 1: if I can tell you this real quick, at the
Speaker 1: FBI Academy, they had in the behavioral Science unit, the
Speaker 1: one basically for the Silence of the Lands, that was
Speaker 1: that unit. So yeah, so yeah, so that's they're literally
Speaker 1: like three or four floors like the third or fourth basement.
Speaker 1: They're really down there. So they had the psychologists I
Speaker 1: was telling me about. She had all the drawings and
Speaker 1: notebooks of like set of sam like all the drawings
Speaker 1: they did so all these serial killers and all of
Speaker 1: their artwork, and she, you know, it was like a
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime thing because these things are not
Speaker 1: open to the public, and so she had them all
Speaker 1: out and she's explaining things, and it's like, I can't
Speaker 1: I can't have these drawings in my head because these
Speaker 1: men were drawing these things in prison, basically, you know,
Speaker 1: reliving the murders they had committed. And I don't want
Speaker 1: what was in their head in my head. I walked
Speaker 1: down the hallway we had a class. It was one
Speaker 1: of a facial facial imaging classes, and they were fascinated
Speaker 1: and I was like, I'm done. I don't don't want
Speaker 1: it in my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I understand that, because I feel the same way
Speaker 2: about a lot of that. It's scared. Like when when
Speaker 2: that guy, the guy killed the college student in Idaho.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know if you've heard of it. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard.
Speaker 2: About that case. It's just like I don't know when,
Speaker 2: especially it freaked me out when it happened. But then
Speaker 2: when they released his photo and video of him being arrested,
Speaker 2: his face like scared the shit out of me, Like
Speaker 2: his eyes are so creepy, and I just I just
Speaker 2: it like shook me. You know, I don't know these people,
Speaker 2: I don't know, I don't know anything about it, but
Speaker 2: something about it I just was like, especially because, like
Speaker 2: you said, when it's a husband and wife, you could
Speaker 2: see they get in fights all the time and they
Speaker 2: and they kill each other in the passion. And but
Speaker 2: when it's strangers and people don't know that they're being
Speaker 2: stalked and all this stuff, it's just so scary to me.
Speaker 2: All Right, sing a little bit more cheery. Let's talk
Speaker 2: about your personal life. So you talked about your husband
Speaker 2: a couple of times. When so at what point of
Speaker 2: your whole career and transition from Navy and to FBI
Speaker 2: every end? John Hopkins too, when did you meet him?
Speaker 2: How'd you meet him? And when did you guys get married?
Speaker 1: Uh So, we met when I was waiting to go
Speaker 1: into the FBI. So it was a sure thing that
Speaker 1: I was, well, you know, I was going, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: me start that over. We met when I was waiting
Speaker 1: to go on the FBI. I'm sorry, my brain, and
Speaker 1: we met and we actually met in person at the
Speaker 1: lunch and I I was recently divorced and so I
Speaker 1: was he and it was just like just friends, like
Speaker 1: I don't I don't want anything to do with men.
Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm done, i'm done, got my cat and
Speaker 1: I'm done, and you know, but we just started talking.
Speaker 1: It was like this guy's really just wonderful and we
Speaker 1: were we were friends, and then I just fell in
Speaker 1: love with a guy because he's amazing and he's wonderful
Speaker 1: and he's going to be embarrassed at this, but I
Speaker 1: don't care. So yeah, so.
Speaker 2: He how does he feel about what does he do
Speaker 2: for a living?
Speaker 1: Well, he uh, he's a he was ah and he's
Speaker 1: still doing it. A videographer and producer. So he worked.
Speaker 1: He also worked for the federal government, so he was
Speaker 1: he was making kind of like news stories, you know,
Speaker 1: things they would have a news channel sort of about
Speaker 1: in some of the the work and events that these
Speaker 1: military agencies would do. And he would go out. One time,
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he was on the back of an airplane.
Speaker 1: It was they had the back open and he was
Speaker 1: showing me video and he's like, why are the hardest on?
Speaker 1: I was like, I'm so, I'm so glad you didn't.
Speaker 1: He was like it was so cool. I missed lying
Speaker 1: on the back of this and it was open and
Speaker 1: all I have is a artist. I'm like, thank you
Speaker 1: very much. But yeah no, so yeah, I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you only showed me up after Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So he's very creative.
Speaker 2: What's he think? Yeah, so that's cool to be because
Speaker 2: my husband's also very creative. It's good to like live
Speaker 2: a house that because sometimes I have like outrageous ideas,
Speaker 2: and you know, when you have an artist that's a
Speaker 2: husband too, then you can express those in your house
Speaker 2: or any they understand that you say, oh I completely
Speaker 2: hate this, I need to change it or whatever. He's
Speaker 2: how's he feel about you? Like knowing that you're you're
Speaker 2: handling human skulls all day at work and stuff. I
Speaker 2: mean he was just pretty cool with it obviously.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He was like, well, sometimes I would come home
Speaker 1: and say, oh my god, we got this one skull
Speaker 1: in our own you know, this is this one thing
Speaker 1: in this decomp by son. He's like, I want to know,
Speaker 1: Like I don't want to know, and I was like, no,
Speaker 1: it's really not fun, it's really not that cross and
Speaker 1: he's like no, no, like, don't tell me, don't topping.
Speaker 1: So it was funny. I can tell you this was
Speaker 1: this was funny one time somebody frown. We had one
Speaker 1: of the anthropologists fround a bodyth arm count and teaching
Speaker 1: our class and she had to transport some skulls in
Speaker 1: and she didn't want to leave them an air hotel overnight,
Speaker 1: so we had a because we had an alarm, So
Speaker 1: she said, can I store them at your house? I said, well,
Speaker 1: let me ask my husband. So I was like, how
Speaker 1: do you feel about having some human skulls in the den?
Speaker 1: And he was like, let me think about it. And
Speaker 1: then I was like that okay, and I said it
Speaker 1: won freeky out and he goes as long as you
Speaker 1: jump though, like you know, and like scare me with
Speaker 1: a skull. And after he said it and it's just
Speaker 1: really like my opening, he said, it's just that's just
Speaker 1: what you end up as you know. It wasn't spooky,
Speaker 1: it wasn't scary, it wasn't gross. It was just you're
Speaker 1: just you're just skulls in a box, you know. That's
Speaker 1: what we all end up, as you know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he's he's had skulls in.
Speaker 2: His dead so it's like he's he probably has a
Speaker 2: bunch of like one liners of what husband hears this
Speaker 2: question from their wife? Can just store these ten skulls
Speaker 2: in our house overnight? Just cauld we put the alarm on.
Speaker 2: You don't care that there's like ten dead people downstairs
Speaker 2: while we're sleeping, right, Yeah, you can't be like that
Speaker 2: in this field, thinking there's ghosts and stuff. Yeah, exactly,
Speaker 2: Like what if you had like a reason, like I
Speaker 2: don't know, if fire or something in the middle of
Speaker 2: the night and they show up, they'd be like, what's
Speaker 2: happening here?
Speaker 1: Said? I promised they were aside from.
Speaker 2: I know, right, Yeah, so we know that you're not
Speaker 2: doing the forensic art anymore. But I mean you're an artist,
Speaker 2: So what are you doing? What are your other interests
Speaker 2: besides being interested in forensics? Like do you garden?
Speaker 1: Do you draw?
Speaker 2: Do you still do art and stuff?
Speaker 1: I am doing anything that's not a skull so right now, evantually,
Speaker 1: So don't tell my husband. No, I'm working on a
Speaker 1: painting right now, which is just new territory for me.
Speaker 1: I've tried to I just jumped into a big project
Speaker 1: and I'm not going to say exactly what it is
Speaker 1: because my husband's going to hear this and like, I
Speaker 1: want to be able to finish it. But I'm actually
Speaker 1: working on like a big thing, So I've anything that's
Speaker 1: I don't see. I don't like creepy stuff. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like some things in my cop you know there
Speaker 1: there's there's a there's a level of creepiness that I
Speaker 1: really like, but it depends. It's like I have to
Speaker 1: see it. So I like, I like humor and just
Speaker 1: like a little bit of creepiness. So that's hard to explain,
Speaker 1: but I like humor and art and I like something
Speaker 1: things that are surprising. So like you might look at
Speaker 1: look at a painting and go, oh, that's a really
Speaker 1: nice painting and you look really close and there's like
Speaker 1: a cows lying in the background, like obscurely. Just things
Speaker 1: that are silly or maybe a bit surreal that surrealism.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I'm just I'm trying to figure out
Speaker 1: when I'm I'm trying to I'm figuring it out. It's
Speaker 1: this is a time where I get to I get
Speaker 1: frustrated because I'm like, I can't do this, I can't
Speaker 1: do that. My husband's like, this is the time where
Speaker 1: you get to play and do whatever. You want so
Speaker 1: just play and have fun. And so I'm like, okay,
Speaker 1: So after being so work boring and for so long
Speaker 1: where you have a deadline, it has to be done
Speaker 1: and it has to be right. It's like, this is artwork.
Speaker 1: You're allowed to god to big mistakes. You're allowed to
Speaker 1: a couple up faper through away. So that's what I'm
Speaker 1: learning now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that it does seem like a weird transition to
Speaker 2: just turn it from what you were doing.
Speaker 1: It is.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks so much for being here with us today.
Speaker 2: Everyone needs to get your book. It's called Clay and
Speaker 2: Bones and it's available now. Do you have while you
Speaker 2: are going to reactivate your website? I hope, because I
Speaker 2: bet you a lot of people listening to this today
Speaker 2: are interested.
Speaker 1: You know I do. I do have a website. It's
Speaker 1: for the author website. I actually did rehost Things of Friends.
Speaker 1: It's a forensic one on one about how to how
Speaker 1: to become a friends of artist. So I actually did
Speaker 1: put that on my current site, my author's site. So
Speaker 1: I will put some things back up. That is the
Speaker 1: one thing I did put out because some wretch to
Speaker 1: me on Instagram says they want to be a friends
Speaker 1: of artists, and you know, she said, oh that in
Speaker 1: high school, I asked some friends of artists and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't give me the time of the day. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna put that on my website, so I did so. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that kind of stuff makes me mad when
Speaker 2: people aren't willing to help the next generation of people.
Speaker 1: My girlfriend here, do they have car? Oh well no,
Speaker 1: my girlfriend here she puts it. She's like, you know,
Speaker 1: women need to support women. And she's like, send the
Speaker 1: elevator back down when you make it to the top,
Speaker 1: hit the bottom of like help somebody else on their
Speaker 1: way up, you know. And it's like, yeah, like I
Speaker 1: don't understand exactly.
Speaker 2: I don't. Yeah, I don't either. That's it's it's really
Speaker 2: upsetting when I hear stuff like that. Do you think
Speaker 2: that there's college I mean, I don't even know anything
Speaker 2: about this, but I feel like there must be some
Speaker 2: kind of college programs at this point that are geared
Speaker 2: towards people that want to do.
Speaker 1: Stuff like for forensic ard. There really isn't. And let
Speaker 1: you create your own creat slam And I only know
Speaker 1: of one artist as far as you did that, and
Speaker 1: she her name is escaping me because she's wonderful. But
Speaker 1: she went to the University of Tennessee and so she
Speaker 1: created because it's the body of our she was able
Speaker 1: to create a forensic art program. And there's actually Friends
Speaker 1: of Art master's program, and I think Dundee Scotland or something,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure was a wonderful program, But there's because
Speaker 1: of the nature of friends of art, there's no it's
Speaker 1: not like being a doctor or something where you need
Speaker 1: to have certain credentials and a piece of paper that
Speaker 1: you are now you know you are now in friends
Speaker 1: of artists, that doesn't that doesn't exist in friends of art.
Speaker 1: It's just one of those jobs that for in most
Speaker 1: for most friends of artists, most friends of artists work
Speaker 1: in law enforcement agencies like state sheriff's office, you know,
Speaker 1: count of city police, things like that, and they're mostly
Speaker 1: doing composites and it's an adjunct it's a collateral duty.
Speaker 1: So it would be friends of artist's shonage. It would
Speaker 1: be just too narrow a pool to have a college program,
Speaker 1: I believe, And there's just not the jobs.
Speaker 2: And that's something that's something important to say too, because
Speaker 2: you were saying you only worked with a few people
Speaker 2: right that did your job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the full time positions. And I believe
Speaker 1: this is on this is in my post on my website,
Speaker 1: is that the full time friends of artists there are
Speaker 1: various few, maybe under fifty. Nobody really knows. Not many.
Speaker 1: We work at the state, et cetera level. So those
Speaker 1: are like where the full time friends of art positions
Speaker 1: are the other friends of art positions, Like you said,
Speaker 1: they're collateral duties. They're done by people in law enforcement, detectives,
Speaker 1: crime scene texts, whatever. A person in law enforcement who
Speaker 1: had artistic talent and their boss said, hey, you can draw,
Speaker 1: You're going to be our friends of artists down or
Speaker 1: they had the gumption to say, and I want to
Speaker 1: do composite sketches, and they create the job. It's there's
Speaker 1: no money in law enforcement. There's no money to hire
Speaker 1: friends of artists. So it's one of these collateral duties
Speaker 1: where somebody who is very motivated, and this is usually
Speaker 1: where it happens. You have a motivated person in law
Speaker 1: enforcement who can drow that says this is what I
Speaker 1: want to do, and they volunteer their services as need
Speaker 1: that they're not get extra. They do it because they have.
Speaker 2: It's really important to note because it's like, because I
Speaker 2: feel like I'm an artist too, and it's a scientist too.
Speaker 2: I feel like I would be actually interested in that
Speaker 2: to that kind of job and just but people need
Speaker 2: to understand that you really have to kind of make
Speaker 2: it happen for yourself in a way. It's not as
Speaker 2: easy as just going to school to be a nurse,
Speaker 2: go to school, get a job, get high exactly, although
Speaker 2: they have to be good too, it's just in a
Speaker 2: different it's in a different kind of way. And it's
Speaker 2: it's the same could be said like every every painter
Speaker 2: isn't going to be Pocrasso, right, Like, yeah, it's just
Speaker 2: it's just the way it is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it just it just pains me when
Speaker 1: you know, I hear people they want to be a
Speaker 1: friends of artists and you know they're they're taking classes,
Speaker 1: like you know, there's lots of commercial classes out there.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, that's great if you want to you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn about it and everything. But
Speaker 1: it's just there's no jobs. There's very very few jobs,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority of them are in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: I've got grief for this, but it's the truth because
Speaker 1: skulls are evidence of composite drawing is evidence. You're dealing
Speaker 1: with evidence. So it's only that that's out. It is
Speaker 1: what it is, you know. It's sorry. Yeah. So, but
Speaker 1: someone that's motivated, some with artistic skill, they can be
Speaker 1: in in academia. Is anything that might cross pass this
Speaker 1: law enforcement, you would have the potential to be able
Speaker 1: to do like a facial approximation. It's if you work
Speaker 1: at a university and you're in anatomy or anthropology. Guess
Speaker 1: what if you put forth the athlete, you could probably
Speaker 1: do some facial approximations for the medical examiner. It's completely possible. Absolutely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's great advice.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. Again, it was awesome talking to you.
Speaker 1: This is a thrill. This is great.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to mother nos death. As a reminder,
Speaker 2: my training is as a pathologist's assistant. I have a
Speaker 2: master's level education and specialize in anatomy and pathology education.
Speaker 2: I am not a doctor, and I have not diagnosed
Speaker 2: or treated anyone dead or alive without the assistance of
Speaker 2: a licensed medical doctor. This show, my website, and social
Speaker 2: media accounts are designed to educate and inform people based
Speaker 2: on my experience working in pathology, so they can make
Speaker 2: healthier decisions regarding their life and well Beeing. Always remember
Speaker 2: that science is changing every day, and the opinions expressed
Speaker 2: in this episode are based on my knowledge of those
Speaker 2: subjects at the time of publication. If you are having
Speaker 2: a medical problem, have a medical question, or having a
Speaker 2: medical emergency, please contact your physician or visit an urgent
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