Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, July 18, 1994 TAG: 9407180028
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Sitting at a computer terminal with a police detective by her side, the young woman recalled the man who had raped her at knifepoint at a Salem dry cleaning company. She chose from an array of facial features. She was looking for the ones that would create a man with an elongated face and dark, curly hair.
Once completed, the computer-generated composite picture was shown to Roanoke Valley police departments, which all were working on a series of similar business robberies believed to have been committed by the same man. In two cases, female clerks had been sexually assaulted.
The composite jogged the memory of a Roanoke narcotics officer, who said it resembled a Northwest Roanoke man who had been arrested in a recent drug raid.
Within days, Robert Diaz, 29, was charged in the Salem rape, an attempted rape and a series of robberies in Salem, Roanoke and Roanoke County.
The composite identification provided the first major break in a case in which detectives were investigating a total of nine robberies at area businesses, said Roanoke County Detective Rick Moorer. In each case, a female clerk was working alone.
Ultimately, Diaz was convicted of rape and robbery. In June, he was sentenced to life in prison plus 108 years.
Police use the Diaz case and several others as proof that computer-generated composites are not just high-tech tools but allow for easier and sharper suspect identifications and arrests.
In the past two years, Roanoke County and the Virginia State Police have embarked on computer compositing - the only two law enforcement agencies in the Western Virginia area to do so. They've found that the composites can be generated quickly, give a vast choice of facial characteristics and, with a laptop computer, can be brought to the crime scene.
Many police departments, including Roanoke, still use transparent overlays to compile a likeness of the suspect. But advocates of the computer-generated composites say the overlay method limits a victim's choice of facial features and requires the officer to be near a photocopier to produce the image.
Now, witnesses can select from a series of characteristics that look similar to photographs. And officers can fine-tune the features to reflect the victim's recollection of the suspect more precisely, said Special Agent Ira H. Matney of the State Police. The agency recently purchased its computer-generated compositing system - equipment and software - for $29,980.
The mobile system has traveled throughout the state and allows smaller departments to use the tool, Matney said. The computer-generated composite pictures are easier to make and can be distributed faster than the transparent overlays, he said.
In one case in which State Police lent their computer expertise, a Richmond man suspected of robbing women in a state-patrolled parking lot was identified by his composite and arrested when he appeared in court on an unrelated charge.
Roanoke County Detective Rick Moorer, who worked with the victim on the Diaz composite, said the $400 a year it costs the county to rent the software goes toward its eventual purchase. Other valley localities have access to the equipment.
Since the county began using its system two years ago, three composites have led to arrests in the Roanoke Valley, including the Diaz arrest.
Not all have resulted in convictions. In one case, a man charged with robbing Talbot's clothing store based on a victim's identification from a composite was acquitted by a jury.
Most recently, Botetourt County sheriff's deputies arrested a Glasgow man and charged him in the abducting and sodomizing of two boys on different dates in a parking lot behind a grocery store. On one of the two occasions, a sheriff's deputy and a deputy intern approached the car but left, thinking it was occupied by a romantic couple.
Isreal Alexander Lovewine was arrested after someone recognized a published composite of him drawn on the Roanoke County computer and called police.
In that case, Moorer said he did three pictures from the perspectives of three people who saw the suspect.
"You've got the victim, a kid scared to death," Moorer said. "He's not thinking, `I'm going to be talking to [police] in a few days.' He's thinking, `I've got to get away.' Then you have the deputy and the deputy intern," who are looking at the suspect through their patrol car window.
Each person had a different viewpoint of the suspect, and each person saw something different, Moorer said. While the three composites varied slightly, the main features of the man remained similar.
"Composites are not pictures of people," Moorer said. "We use them to eliminate people as suspects" and narrow the focus of a police investigation.
A composite can take from 30 minutes to three days, depending on the state of mind of the victim and how much they recall, Moorer said. Good composites come down to the witnesses, Matney said.
"The better your witness, the better the composite," he said.
by CNB