Meet the 'World's Greatest Forensic Artist': A murder attempt was behind her career choice

Rock legend John Lennon had once said, "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

This rings so true in the case of Lois Gibson, who has been called the 'World's Most Successful Forensic Artist' by Guinness World Records.

On an unfortunate day in 1971, a stranger had attempted to strangle Gibson to death, which she thankfully survived and this incident spurred the idea of becoming a forensic artist in her.

An Instagram account called 60secdocs has released a video on Gibson, in which she says, "someone tried to kill me for fun" and that she was subject to 25 minutes of torture.

"I knew what it felt like to be killed," Gibson added. When she first approached the police to let her become a skecher for them, Gibson says that they authorities thought she would not be able to live up to what she was asking for.

"But I proved them wrong," she declares.

Regarding the first sketch she made for the police, Gibson told GWR, “So, the first time I worked a murder for the Houston Police Department, and it was a crummy, pitiful, sketchy sketch, but when I realized that pitiful piece of art could stop a murderer who killed the same way I almost got killed – somebody tried to kill me – I stopped someone who tried to do that in our Memorial Park."

Gibson claims that every third sketch that she would do would end up assisting in solving a crime. Among them were serious offences like rapes, murders, robberies, and stabbings.

She further claims that her sketches have helped identify more than "1000 of the worst felons."

The official website of the Guinness World Records reveals that Gibson's sketches have helped identify around 1,313 criminals.

Gibson finds her job as a forensic sketch artist to be therapeutic, since helping other victims get justice helps her get over the trauma of her own attack.