Fashion Magazine ELLE Article Supports Tim McVeigh Accomplice Theory

Elle print magazine ^ | December 2001 | Sandy M. Fernandez

[MarkWar]

Drawn to Trouble
by Sandy M. Fernandez

When she listened to the victims of traumatic crimes, Jeanne Boylan "saw" something other sketch artists didn't -- and that something often helped to catch the criminal. But what was it about these terrifying cases that made her need to get involved?

[...]

Over the last twenty years, Boylan has built a storied reputation as a police sketch artist, tweezing fragmented memories out of traumatized crime victims and witnesses and spinning them into eerily accurate portraits of wanted criminals. First with the Portland, Oregon, police department and then as a freelancer hired by investigators, families, and the FBI, Boylan has been called in on someof the nation's biggest cases, including the Oklahoma City bombing, the search for Polly Klaas inPetaluma, California, and the hunt for the Unabomber -- in which her iconic portrait of Ted Kaczynski in dark glasses and a hood ended up on the cover of Newsweek. Her uncanny intuitive abilities -- and, undoubtedly, her petite, chiseled features and Barbie-doll mane of blond hair -- have won her unprecedented media attention. There are hundreds of forensic artists in the country, but by comparison Boylan is a rock star.

[...]

Las summer, with the impending execution of Timothy McVeigh -- convicted for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing -- she publicly suggested that the FBI had ignored the existence of at least two other accomplices. Based on interviews with witnesses, she had sketched the images of two men who had been seen in the company of McVeigh in the days before the event. But the FBI seemed uninterested in possible co-conspirators, leaving Boylan in possession of information she could neither use nor forget.

[...]

It's that kind of attention that drove a woman named Debbie Nakanashi to call Boylan this spring. Nakanashi was a postal worker whom Boylan interviewed in Oklahoma City after a bomb ripped through the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building on April 19, 1995. Nakanashi, who worked across the street, swore that in the days before, Timothy McVeigh had come into the post office -- accompanied by a thickly built, dark-haired man who seemed like his boss. "Debbie was such a good witness. I really believed in her." But the FBI, apparently, hadn't.

[...]

Boylan also knew Nakanashi wasn't the only one promoting the accomplice theory -- she herself had interviewed two men who swore they had seen McVeigh with companions in the days leading up to the crime (they would come to be known as John Does III and IV). And so Boylan left her safe location and used her media pull to land a string of TV interviews. "At that point, I was the only [person who'd worked for the FBI] who was coming forward and saying, 'Yes, there are different people involved in this.'" (Other former Bureau members came forth later.)

[...]

[Arabesque]

Been reading Elle since I flew for Pan Am in Europe in the Seventies...they've been around a long time (as have I) and they were always very leftist, recently pro-Hillary, frequent disparaging anti-Bush references. That is what makes this sooo interesting to me. THis is NOT their usual take on things. The evidence has to be pretty convincing for them to take this point of view. Dancer

[MarkWar]

>...they've been around a long time (as have I) and they were always very leftist, recently pro-Hillary, frequent disparaging anti-Bush references. That is what makes this sooo interesting to me. THis is NOT their usual take on things. The evidence has to be pretty convincing for them to take this point of view.

What a coincidence, I've been buying ELLE since the 70s, too. (In '75, I had a Latin test I hadn't studied for AT ALL. That morning, a girl I knew asked me to hold her stuff. Well, one of the things she had was an ELLE magazine and it sat under my desk when I took the Latin test. Incredibly, I got an A on the test. Since then, whenver I've wanted some good luck, I've picked up a copy of the magazine. Sadly, it hasn't helped me win any big lottery jackpots. But I have come to enjoy the fashion models and, occassionally, an article or two.)

Next month, I'll read the articles a little more carefully, to see if they continue to do interesting stuff.

Mark W.

[archy]

[MarkWar]

> "Portraits of Guilt : The Woman Who Profiles the Faces of America's Deadliest Criminals," by Jeanne Boylan

Thanks for the heads up. (I just won $20 on a scratch off ticket -- perhaps I'll invest in a book...)

By a seemingly pointless (but kind of scary) coincidence, just before I did the self-search and saw your post to me, I had just finished putting up ANOTHER story pulled from ELLE -- Beauty May Not Pave The Way To Success (It's not like I post stories from Elle all the time -- this was only my second one. And it comes the instant before you respond to my first one... I have no idea what this kind of synchronicity means, but it makes me nervous.)

Mark W.