Ellen J. Brown: Bellingham Police Department forensic artist

How did you become a forensic artist for the Bellingham Police Department?

Well my sister, Jan, was a true crime fanatic way back in the day. She had read an article in Oprah Winfrey’s magazine about a woman named Lois Gibson. Lois Gibson is a forensic artist for the Houston Police Department. Jan read the article and she said, ‘You’ve got to do this class.’ So I signed up for the class with Gibson at Northwestern University. That was about 20 years ago and the rest is getting my chops in to do the work. 

I walked into the police department one day and talked with Dave Richardson. They did a background check on me, I was fingerprinted, I took a lie detector test. I was sweating bullets. 

I didn’t know if they could use me or if they would ever need anybody. But they did. They started calling me.

How often do you get called in?

Well the COVID-19 pandemic really flatlined my law enforcement work. But they would call me maybe up to five times a year. There’s been a lot of retirements so I don’t know the younger detectives as well. I had a number of them that would call me all the time. I’m just one of the police department’s tools.

Walk me through your sketch process.

My goal is that victims or witnesses can put [the memory of the attack] on a piece of paper and we can give it to the detectives. 

I’ll introduce myself and say, “I’m really glad you stayed safe.” Then we have a very intimate conversation and the detective isn’t in the room. It’s a time when they can be really quiet, no kids or no telephones. We make sure they’re comfortable. If there’s only one comfy chair, that goes to the witness. There’ll be a lot of downtime when sketching.

We start with a general description based on how tall are you, how tall do you think the person was? Were they male or female? I’m working toward more specifics, such as how old was this person, did he have a hat on the day or glasses?

I start with a basic head shape. I rely on rulers a lot. I’ve got this book that I got in the class with Lois Gibson and it’s the FBI Facial Identification catalog. It has lots of pictures, and each photograph has a number and then a suggestion, like close-set eyes. We also have head shapes in here and we have some hair.

So we just start journeying through his or her memory and my book. I’ll do a very rough drawing — 15 minutes maybe — and allow the witness to take a look to see I’m heading in the right direction. 

How many sketches have you done over the past 20 years for BPD?

I think it’s been close to 200. Because I’m not a sworn officer or associated with any law enforcement agency, I just give the sketch to the detective and I have a record of my notes. I used to have physical copies that they made for me, but since I volunteer my time, it took a lot of pressure off to keep records.