A renowned retired forensic sketch artist formerly with the Houston Police Department has provided one very important piece of a 187-year-old puzzle.
Lois Gibson sketched the face of a defender of the Alamo using a partial skull fragment excavated from the battlefield in 1979.
Gibson has helped identify more than 751 criminals during her career as a sketch artist and was named “The World’s Most Successful Forensic Artist” by Guinness World Records.
Employing these prized skills, Gibson was able to reconstruct the Alamo hero’s face on canvas through the meticulous two-hour inspection of the skull fragment in San Antonio.
These remains showed he had been struck by both a bullet and a blow from a heavy blade.
Despite these challenges, Gibson managed to sketch a full facial rendering of the Alamo defender.
“The opportunity to look into the face of an Alamo participant was one of the most moving moments of my life,” explained Lee White, president of the Alamo Defenders Descendants Association and at the helm of this effort to identify the fallen hero, according to KHOU.
The artistic rendering is but one part of the identity search. Next, the skull fragment will be sent for DNA testing, and perhaps some of the hero’s descendants will be found.
“I know I’m close,” Gibson said. “If I can get this guy identified, this is like throwing the touchdown pass at the Super Bowl if you’re an artist.”
The 13-day siege of the Battle of the Alamo saw the deaths of nearly all of those fighting to defend it against a far more numerous unit of Mexican soldiers. Some legendary defenders of the Alamo include James Bowie, William B. Travis, and David Crockett.
“Whoever this skull is, we need to find peace for him,” White said.
Forensic sketch artists like Gibson have helped crack an array of cases, whether the subjects are victims or perpetrators. Yet sometimes they don’t yield immediate results.
As recently reported in The Dallas Express, a sketch made by Gibson in 2001 while working with the Huntsville Police Department to identify the suspect in a brutal rape case led to an arrest 22 years later.
Patrick Daryl Smith, 51, was taken into police custody last Christmas Eve on charges of aggravated sexual assault. DNA evidence later helped firm up these charges and attain a formal indictment.
Noting that the text she received saying police had apprehended the suspect came out of nowhere, Gibson told WFAA that her sketch at the time had been quite accurate.
“It’s pretty good; the mouth is almost perfect, the hair is almost perfect,” she remarked.