Name Jeanne Boylan | ||
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Books Portraits of Guilt: The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals Similar Ted Kaczynski, Murder of Polly Klaas, Death of Molly Bish Born June 2, 1953 (age 70) | ||
Jeanne Marie Boylan (born June 2, 1953) is an American forensic composite artist who has worked with the FBI on a wide variety of major criminal cases, famously supplying composites of the Unabomber, as well as the suspects in the murders of Polly Klaas and Molly Bish. Boylan's unique approach to interviewing eyewitnesses and the startling accuracy of her composites earned her a prominent reputation, and she was a correspondent on the television series America's Most Wanted as well as being recurrently featured on Unsolved Mysteries.
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Biography
Boylan was born in Montrose, Colorado, one of six children, to Jean and Thomas Boylan. Boylan's parents were both from New York City; her father, a plumber, had grown up in the Bronx, and her mother worked for Life magazine in Manhattan. The couple, who had tired of city life, relocated to Colorado in 1947 to start a family. Boylan graduated from Montrose High School, and afterward moved to Durango, Colorado, before moving to Oregon.
She began her career in 1977, working as a civilian employee following up on investigations for the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department, and later the Portland Police Bureau in Portland, Oregon. Boyland's first case came in 1978 was a robbery suspect known as the "Waistband Bandit" in Portland, who habitually tucked a pistol into his waistband. Her facsimile of the suspect was integral in his capture.
By 1994, Boylan had become the most prominent composite artist working in criminal investigation, having supplied composites in over 7,000 crimes, most notably the Unabomber and the murder of Polly Klaas in Petaluma, California.
Unlike most police artists, Boyland does not utilize the FBI Facial Identification Catalogue in drawing composites. She has described her unconventional approach to forensic sketching as such:
I really rely on the integrity of the memory. It's very important that I don't implant any information...I'm not showing someone a selection of visual aids and saying, was it this chin, pick out a set of eyes, pick out a nose, et cetera. I'm actually working in depth -- in terms of how memories are stored under a traumatic condition, how why people remember and how to retrieve that information without distorting it.
In 2000, Boylan wrote a book, Portraits of Guilt, chronicling her work in the field.