somequestions
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Excellent description of the process and the issues. The same issues come up in reconstructions of unidentified victims. Even the best recreation is an approximation of a possible face, not a photo of what the person looked like in life.
And people like us aren't the audience for either. It doesn't matter whether we think the sketches look alike or are two different people or whatever. The important thing would be whether someone who knows the person would recognize them and be motivated to tell LE.
Someone needs to pin this to the beginning of every Delphi thread! Thank you for articulating it so well.
This is only if the person depicted in the sketch actually does cause someone to recognize them. I think the general public should disregard the sketches and focus on the phone video. There are numerous cases that are many years old where LE is still waiting on the right person to call in who recognizes the sketch put out in any given investigation. In my opinion, you cannot expect the general public to think like LE and not do side by side comparisons. I wonder how many of the tips LE has in this case that are basically useless because of this.
Like it or not, when LE put out that young second sketch that became the new "face" of their investigation. The only things I have learned is that based on the sketches the suspect is between the ages of 18-70. He may or may not have hair. He may or may not have been wearing a hat. He may or may not be local to the Delphi, Indiana area.
In my opinion, when Carter said a sketch is not a photograph he is trying to keep the descriptions as broad as possible in case the actual description of the person responsible is very different. As long as you keep things as broad as possible you can always say later that you were right. In my opinion, this is also why press conferences have stopped. Do they really need to point to another sketch and tell everyone "this is the person responsible for the murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty German"?
In my opinion, LE is chasing an unknown and hoping for the day that someone sends in the tip(based on either the sketches or video) that connects their evidence to the person tipped in. Cases like this show that you have to be able to narrow the focus of who you are looking for or you will spend years chasing down false leads and tip descriptions from people who think they have seen bridge guy. And I do not doubt that many of these sightings are genuine from people who truly want to help.
Wouldn't it be something if the right tip was submitted before either sketch press conference? And LE simply did not think the person who submitted it was correct. Often times that seems to be how cases go.