Pen & Paper | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

News Anchor: The murder trial of John Gacy did indeed get underway today with opening
statements from the prosecution and the defense. Vivian Rosenberg is covering the trial.
Vivian Rosenburg: Security was tight at court today, and some people coming in had more
than a passing interest in the case. Trial Attendee: What are my feelings? I'd like to see them do something to him besides put him in an institution.
I'd like to see him being, well, killed if I got my feelings to say. Vivian Rosenburg: Prosecutor Robert Egan described Gacy as rational, premeditated, and evil,
who killed his victims like flies when they got in his way, carefully planned murders
that resulted in bodies and bodies and bodies. Day after day after day. Defense attorney Robert Morra countered to the jury that by any standards,
Gacy is insane. He sleeps with corpses in a house where bodies have been buried for years.
Can that be normal? What kind of a mind is that? Phoebe Judge: John Wayne Gacy's trial began on February 6th, 1980, in Cook County, Illinois.
He was being tried for 33 murders. One of the first people in the courtroom was a young woman named Andy Austin.
And she had one job: to get John Wayne Gacy to look her straight in the eye. I'm Phoebe Judge.
This is Criminal. [Piano music.] Andy Austin: I started in 1969 and I worked in the courts for another 43 years in Illinois.
And once I went to California when a Chicago real estate owner's wife was kidnapped and
tied to a cactus. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin is a courtroom sketch artist. Andy Austin: I usually don't like covering murder cases.
Not because people are dead. I mean, that would certainly be a good reason. But because they're boring, and they don't have the passion that, say, a bankruptcy case
has. Phoebe Judge: Wait, why? Andy Austin: Because everything's over and done with and the evidence is technical.
It's about bullet trajectories. And the person who is killed is obviously not there, and the murderer is not allowed
to speak, so you don't know much about him. However, with John Wayne Gacy, you had a real phenomenon as a human.
He was so complicated, and his defense had these witnesses, like his own mother, like
his ex-wife, and they gave evidence that showed that John Gacy was in some ways a really good
guy. And that was enormously upsetting. When that came after the evidence from the mothers, the mothers identifying their sons'
pictures and we had, oh, I don't know, maybe 20 of them that took the stand for two days.
They had to say that their son was dead. They had to identify pictures of the son.
And then when they saw the pictures, they almost always burst into tears. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin drew everyone in the courtroom — the victims' mothers, the
lawyers, the witnesses — to try to capture the mood so that Chicago's ABC News Channel
7 would have visuals for their stories every night. Andy Austin: And at one point, the reporter I was working with said she needed a sketch
of him smiling. And I said, "Well, I'll do my best, but he doesn't smile all the time."
And she said, "Well, just make it up. Just go for it." And I can't make things like that up, so I had to make John Gacy smile.
So the way I did that, and I'm a bit ashamed of this, but I started smiling at John Gacy
and he started smiling back. And so we have this smiling thing going on and he poked his lawyers, pointed at me, and
I kept smiling. And that's how I got a sketch of him smiling. Phoebe Judge: We've been using courtroom sketch artists in this country since the Salem witch
trials. Today, obviously news outlets do sometimes take photos and record video in the courtroom.
Ted Bundy's trial was televised nationally in 1979. Court TV broadcast the OJ Simpson trial.
In 2010, 2.3 million people live-streamed the guilty verdict against Lindsay Lohan.
Most states have said media cameras are allowed in the court if the judge says it's OK, but
there's a strict rule prohibiting journalists from taking photos, video, or making audio
recordings of criminal proceedings in federal court. That's why the Boston Marathon bombing trial was reported with drawings.
So even today, there's work for an artist like Andy Austin. It's a strange job, because no one thinks about you or the many, many decisions you're
making when you draw. Andy Austin: I was often teased, particularly by men, that I had made them too ugly.
I was once told by someone who had a massage parlor, in tears, "Please don't show my sketch.
My wife doesn't know." I was threatened by Jeff Ford, a gang leader, by his henchmen, that if I drew Jeff's wife,
they would break my legs. I was jokingly threatened by a mobster that if I didn't make him handsome, he would get
the entire weight of organized crime against me. Phoebe Judge: I went to meet Andy Austin at her apartment on the South Side of Chicago.
I grew up in Chicago, and I wanted to see her drawings for myself. Andy Austin: Chicago has always been called a great news city.
It's got wonderful politicians. It's got bad crime. It's got just normal people who get themselves in trouble.
Phoebe Judge: Her apartment is big and open and filled with antiques and books. You would never guess that the woman who lived here spent the majority of her life in a courtroom,
except for the fact that her main hallway is filled with sketch after sketch from her
career. Her favorite pieces for more than four decades, in frames and on display.
This is interesting. This is a guy asleep. Andy Austin: This is a typical courtroom sketch where there's more time to finish it and less
pressure. And this is a narcotics card. Phoebe Judge: Why did you like the work so much?
What kept you doing it for 43 years? I mean, what was it about the courtroom that you liked so much?
Andy Austin: The courtroom is an amazing place. Almost everything ends up in court.
You see human nature here at its worst, at its best, at its most intelligent. I don't know how I could have seen so much of the world without being in harm's way myself,
except in a courtroom. And I loved the work. I loved being there. I loved being part of it.
I love drawing. It was an absolutely perfect job for me. Phoebe Judge: It was the perfect job that she never saw coming.
After graduating from Vassar with an English degree, she was thinking about a career in
journalism. A newspaper reporter told her, "Everybody can write, but not many people can draw."
Andy Austin: It was a very interesting time. It was the '60s and there was a lot of protesting, and there was going to be this trial.
The charges were conspiracy to incite riot, and they came from the 1968 Democratic Convention.
And I decided to go to that trial. Phoebe Judge: Before Andy had a job as a sketch artist with ABC in Chicago, she just started
showing up to trials and drawing. And one day she was told by the Marshals that she wasn't allowed to draw in the courtroom
unless she was seated in the press section. Instead of leaving and going home or just putting away her sketchpad, in what seems
like a rather bold move, she started pestering the judge. Andy Austin: I would call him.
I would write him. I would try to see him. And then somebody suggested that I write him a telegram, that it would have more force.
And so I wrote him a telegram telling him that I was a journalist, which was not yet
true, but I wanted to cover the trial on a freelance basis. And he let me in. I was surprised and I got permission to go there every day and sit wherever I wanted.
Phoebe Judge: So when you first got there, I mean, you had kind of finagled your way
into the press box and you liked to draw, but how did anyone start to see your drawings?
Andy Austin: One day after court, I overheard a local reporter complaining that he wouldn't
have an artist the next day. And so I went up to this guy and I said — I don't know what I said, but I said I could
do it, that they should hire me. And they did. So I got my life's career in about three seconds in the courtroom on that day.
Phoebe Judge: She was now a credentialed courtroom artist with a paycheck, and she'd go on to
become a staple in courtrooms all over Chicago. Murder trials, mob trials, small claims court cases, which she says she liked the best.
People fighting over stolen lawnmowers, that's where you find the most passion. She began drawing in ballpoint pen, but soon the news stations were asking her for color
drawings for color TV. Andy Austin: So I just splashed water colors in the backgrounds, which was not very successful.
And over the years, I managed to learn how to work with these watercolors, though most
courtroom artists I believe use chalk or colored pencils, which I've never liked.
And so my sketches come out — are very different from theirs. Phoebe Judge: She showed me tons of her sketches.
She's started to scan some of them. And so after we talked for a while, she took me in the back office where she has a couple
of computers. [to Andy] Can you double click it? There it is. What is this? One of my favorites was of John Wayne Gacy's mother.
Andy Austin: It doesn't do her justice. She really didn't look like this. She was a really nice lady, sort of short, fat, earnest, very — trying so hard to be
helpful. Obviously, couldn't get her mind around the fact that her son killed people.
And she adored her son. I remember her walking down the steps of the courthouse in the snow after she testified
and all these guards and policemen helping her, and her being so nice to them and so
gracious. And I guess we were all stunned that John Wayne Gacy had this lovely mother.
So you're going to be — Phoebe Judge: I can do whichever way is easiest for you.
Andy Austin: Profiles are easiest. Phoebe Judge: Oh, OK. So I'm just going to go like this.
After lots of prodding, I convinced Andy to draw me. Andy Austin: I've found that starting somewhere around the nose is best, because the sketch
is going to go from there. Phoebe Judge: Is there a difference in drawing guilty or innocent people that you can tell
by the way they look on the stand or just watching them so closely? Andy Austin: No, and I'm not sure what guilty looks like.
Phoebe Judge: Tense, I guess, maybe. Andy Austin: I know people often ask if I could make somebody look guilty and I show
my opinion of him or something, and I just don't even know how that would happen.
Phoebe Judge: I don't know either. Make them uglier I guess. Andy Austin: Yeah. Phoebe Judge: Someone you didn't like or thought was a real jerk or a bad guy, put 10 pounds
on them, I guess you could do. [Laughing.] Andy Austin: I only did something like that once.
Phoebe Judge: What did you do? Andy Austin: And I'm kind of ashamed of it and I wouldn't have done it to anybody important,
but it was in a small courtroom. And this woman was sitting where I wanted to sit, and I asked her, I said, "Come on.
Can't you just move over an inch?" And she said, "No." She would not. She would not even give me an inch so I could sit down and do my work.
She was just a spectator, I thought. Later, they put her on the witness stand and I drew her and I thought, "Wow, now I get
my revenge." And I didn't make her look that bad, but I didn't make her look great.
She asked to see the sketch afterwards and she had a fit, of course. And I said, "All I wanted was an inch."
[Laughing.] Phoebe Judge: That's a good story. [Plucky guitar music.] Andy Austin: Now we had the most recent governor in Illinois that was put into jail, Rod Blagojevich.
Everyone thought he'd be wonderful to draw. He's wonderful to cartoon. He has lots and lots of hair, kind of chipmunk eyes.
And I had a terrible time drawing him. I almost never got his expression right. I have no idea why.
Women, on the whole, are more difficult to draw because you don't want to slash around
on their faces and give them wrinkles that they don't really have. Men, ugly old people are the easiest to draw.
It's very hard to predict, but when you find somebody that you do like to draw, it's just,
there's an enormous enjoyment involved. Sometimes they look at you in this evil way, trying to intimidate you.
That can be great fun, because then you get that expression, and I'm never the first to
look away. I don't care how terrible this murderer whoever it may be is, I just look them down.
I'm armed, in a sense, and they're not. Phoebe Judge: Andy Austin retired in 2012.
She says that after so many years, she started to lose the feel for it. And anyway, more and more state judges are agreeing to allow cameras into the courtroom.
As for federal court, there's a pretty robust debate going on. Some argue that video recordings are not only educational, but they improve the public's
confidence in the judicial system. Otherwise, the argument goes, we learn about the legal system by watching Law and Order.
But others worry that cameras turn a trial into a spectacle where defendants become celebrities,
jurors get distracted by how they look on TV, and that emotional testimony becomes that
much harder when a witness knows they're being broadcast. Andy Austin: OK. I think I've done enough.
Phoebe Judge: When she finished drawing me, I packed up my things and we called it a day.
Hey, that's great. Can I keep this? Andy Austin: Sure. Phoebe Judge: Great. It's kind of nice to think that for now, some things still have to be done with pen and
paper, by law. [Plucky guitar music fades out.] [Percussive, upbeat music.] Criminal is produced by Lauren Spohrer and me.
Audio mix by Rob Byers. Special thanks to Alice Wilder and Chelsea Korynta. Julienne Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal.
You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And if you'd like to see the picture that Andy Austin drew of me, we've got it up on
our site, along with some of her other drawings. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.
We're a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of the 13 best podcasts around.
Radiotopia from PRX is supported by the Knight Foundation and MailChimp, celebrating creativity,
chaos, and teamwork. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Jingle: Radiotopia. From PRX.

As a young woman in Chicago in the 1960s, Andy Austin pulled off becoming a courtroom sketch artist by talking her way into a job she held onto for 43 years. Now she's our guest on this episode of the Criminal Podcast to talk about her work sketching high profile figures like John Wayne Gacy and disgraced former Illinois governors. Andy is also someone not to mess with as she opens up about that one time she made someone look bad in her sketches.

See more of Andy Austin’s work in her book, Rule 53: Capturing Hippies, Spies, Politicians, and Murderers in an American Courtroom. http://www.lakeclaremont.com/#!rule-53/c162j

Music in the episode: “Down Along the Volga” by Podington Bear “Taking Dark Matter Lightly” by Alan Singley “Smolder” by Podington Bear “People Like You” by Weinland “Climbing the Mountain” by Podington Bear

Brief Summary

The episode discusses John Wayne Gacy's trial and courtroom sketch artist Andy Austin's experiences capturing the emotional atmosphere.

Key points

John Gacy's Trial Begins. The trial of John Gacy, accused of 33 murders, opens with intense emotions.
Andy Austin's Unique Perspective. Courtroom sketch artist Andy Austin shares her experiences and challenges in capturing trials.
The Art of Courtroom Sketching. Andy Austin discusses her journey and techniques as a courtroom artist over 43 years.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was so complicated, and his defense had these witnesses.

Andy Austin reflects on Gacy's complexity during the trial.

2:26WatchNov 11, 2022

Tension

60/ 100Some tension

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