A sketch to remember: RCMP forensic imaging expert says drawing perpetrators is emotional work
Alexandre L'Heureux is one of only 2 full-time forensic facial imaging experts in Canada
A sketch by Alexandre L'Heureux is often the first time a person looks at the face of someone who has harmed them – rapists, robbers, or people who broke into their home.
That's why the RCMP's forensic facial imaging expert for the Atlantic region is not surprised when people throw his sketches right back at him.
"Because they are so angry with the person, and they don't mean it, but they hate that person so much they just take the drawing and throw it," he said.
L'Heureux, who is only one of two full-time forensic imaging experts in Canada, said his sketches draw out emotions "on every level of the spectrum," and sometimes the images can be therapeutic.
Some people end up in tears, others punch the table – a few are even happy, he said.
L'Heureux said he's also happy whenever one of his drawings helps the police catch a perpetrator.
"My personal goal, the one goal I have, is to identify the person," he said. "My goal is to help the investigators find the person of interest."
Lonely job
L'Heureux has drawn forensic sketches for the RCMP since 2012.
He said it can be a lonely job, driving from town to town, meeting with the victims of crime for hours, and afterwards spending the night inside a hotel room far from his family.
The success rate of his work varies. Some months 50 per cent of his sketches lead to arrests, followed by weeks of nothing happening, he said.
But the toughest part of the job is working with the victims, he said.
"A lot of these victims that come to meet me have suffered some severe experiences," he said, adding that it takes a lot of trust to open up to a man, for example, after being the female victim of a rape.
If you have no personality and you can't get through to that person in front of you, it doesn't matter how good of an artist you are, you're not going to get a good sketch.- Alexandre L'Heureux
"It's my job to connect with those people and make sure they somewhat trust me to help them," he said.
"If you have no personality and you can't get through to that person in front of you, it doesn't matter how good of an artist you are, you're not going to get a good sketch."
Not just faces
L'Heureux said it's not always faces that he draws.
Sometimes, the victims remember a specific part of the body best – the tattoo on an arm, or even something about a person's genitals, he said.
"I will draw whatever they can remember and from there on, if it's distributable, where the person has enough detail that this will be able to be identified through the public … we do a sketch and broadcast it," he said, adding that the RCMP have even had successes in the past identifying people through their genitalia.
L'Heureux also creates sculptures of faces from badly decomposed and unidentified remains, and ages images of people who've been missing for a long time.
Pen and paper
While he may use a computer for some of that work, pen and paper remain his best tools for the sketches, he said.
A computer-generated photograph creates an immediate reaction of knowing or not knowing a person, he said.
"Whereas if we have a drawing it automatically draws attention with the public because they know it not to be a real photograph," he said.
"It could be anybody that they have seen somewhere at the mall, or walking down the street."
When he meets with people for a sketch, L'Heureux asks them to look at an album filled with images of different body features to help describe their perpetrator to him.
If something looks familiar, he starts drawing it, asking the victim to describe the features as best as they can remember.
"It's not a photograph, it's an approximate sketch. We use the sketch to sort of have a pool of individuals that will be suspects for police," he said, adding that it's often the most dramatic experiences that helps people remember a face.
"All it takes is an emotion for you to have that memory, to have that super-human ability to recognize a photograph of that person in your head," he said.
"The higher level of incident, the more they will remember."
With files from Catherine Harrop