Capturing on Canvas the Downfall of Wall Street’s Criminals

Bernard L. Madoff was handcuffed and whisked into a cell. Michael R. Milken, head in palm, wept. Martha Stewart simply stared straight ahead.

If not for one person, these moments might be lost to memory. But when the mighty stumble, the court illustrator captures it forever. For Elizabeth Williams, who has spent more than three decades depicting criminals in court through her drawings, the job is a study of character.

Ms. Williams has covered the trials of terrorists and murderers, but she finds white-collar criminals the most fascinating. “I think it’s the greatest soap opera there ever was,” she said.

Ms. Williams has drawn notorious Wall Street criminals, including Ivan F. Boesky, one of the world’s most powerful financiers in the 1980s, who was convicted of masterminding Wall Street’s biggest insider trading scandal at the time, and Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager and Sri Lanka’s richest man, who was at the heart of a network of insider traders in the 2000s.

“To get so far in life, you’d think these fellows have to be really smart â€" and then they do these things that completely defy what they are about,” Ms. Williams said.

Her drawings are often the only recorded images from these trials. Federal courtrooms are one of the few places left where, until recently, cameras were not allowed. A few courts have experimented with allowing cameras, but most trials remain closed to photographers.

Together with Sue Russell, Ms. Williams has written “The Illustrated Courtroom: 50 Years of Court Art,” which brings together the work of five courtroom illustrators who chronicled famous trials of the last half-century, including those of David Berkowitz, the so-called Son of Sam; Charles Manson; the Watergate burglars; and O. J. Simpson. The artists â€" Howard Brodie, Aggie Kenny, Bill Robles, Richard Tomlinson and Ms. Williams â€" have brought financial chieftains, psychopaths and petty criminals to life for the world outside the courtroom. Some of their work from the book will be on display at the World Trade Art Galleryin Manhattan from April 22 to April 29.

Ms. Williams started her career as a fashion illustrator, working for Hollywood designers like Michael Travis, who made Liberace’s feather capes. The work paid little, and she soon turned to court sketching at the suggestion of a teacher. In a chance meeting, Ms. Williams met Mr. Robles, already a well-known courtroom illustrator, at a trial and he gave her the introduction she needed.

The Wall Street soap opera witnessed by Ms. Williams over the years has been filled with a colorful cast of defendants, including beauty queens, domestic divas and presumed upstanding community leaders. Consider Danielle Chiesi, an analyst who was caught on tape by the F.B.I. passing on illegal tips to Mr. Rajaratnam.

“Being in her presence is memorable,” Ms. Williams said, recalling the former beauty queen’s pink silk sleeveless dress, matching pink pumps and pearls that she wore on the day of her sentencing. “It was so out of place for court.”

Ms. Chiesi is best remembered for comparing the feeling of passing on illegal information to an orgasm. “It’s mentally fabulous,” she told the jury during her trial.

Ms. Williams also captured the moment when Robert W. Moffat Jr., one of Ms. Chiesi’s lovers and a former senior executive at IBM, sobbed as he was sentenced to six months in prison while his disabled wife and children looked on.

“You can’t be faint of heart in this job â€" you’ve got to get these moments,” she said.

On March 12, 2009, in the split second after Mr. Madoff admitted to running a $65 billion Ponzi scheme, the judge remanded him, and courtroom guards swooped in to handcuff him and take him away. Ms. Williams was the first to catch it on her canvas. Later, outside the courthouse, she ran into one of Mr. Madoff’s victims, a woman in her late 30s, who kissed her fingers and touched the image, telling Ms. Williams, “That’s just what I wanted to see.”

Then there are the brief instances when Wall Street titans, caught at their most vulnerable, strike an image incongruous with their usual demeanor. Ms. Williams recalled the day when Michael S. Steinberg, a portfolio manager at the hedge fund SAC Capital Advisors, was brought before a Manhattan judge to be read the insider trading charges against him.

The police escorted him into the Lower Manhattan courthouse through the main elevators rather than the usual back way leading into the courtroom. When Mr. Steinberg emerged from the main elevators, there was a look of utter shock on his face.

“Being caught is so out of their wildest dreams,” she said.

Martha Stewart, the entrepreneur, remained aloof during her insider trading trial. Every day, she would glide into the courtroom flanked by bodyguards, called Team Martha. She rarely interacted with anyone but her lawyers. But one day, Ms. Stewart brought a duffel bag to court and handed out homemade seat cushions to each of her courtroom supporters.

There is one character who still baffles Ms. Williams â€" the one who commits a crime for no financial benefit. Rajat Gupta, the former global chairman of McKinsey & Company and a former director of Goldman Sachs, was sentenced to prison for tipping his friend Mr. Rajaratnam off about a $5 billion investment that Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway planned to make in Goldman. Mr. Rajaratnam pocketed $900,000 from trading on the tip.

For his crime, Mr. Gupta received two years in prison. “He didn’t do it for money,” Ms. Williams said. “How do you wrap your head around that?” In her collection of drawings is an image of Mr. Gupta embracing his wife and four daughters after the jury announced its guilty verdict.

Then there are scenes that never make it into the papers or onto a canvas. Etched in Ms. Williams’s memory is the testimony of Lloyd C. Blankfein, the former chief executive of Goldman, at Mr. Gupta’s trial.

He was funny and engaging, captivating the jury with his charisma, she recalled, but he was also maddeningly difficult to draw because he never stopped moving. During part of his testimony, he played with a rubber band, rolling it around his fingers, until he noticed Ms. Williams drawing him. He smiled and stopped.

Then during a long sidebar, when the lawyers were conferring with the judge, he turned to the microphone. He tapped it a little, then he tapped it some more before finally in one dramatic gesture, he pulled off the foam cover, releasing a sudden “whoam!” The room went silent.

Flipping through the three decades of courtroom drawings by Ms. Williams, one gets the sense that history repeats itself. The actors change, but the characters stay the same.

“These guys get up on the stand and say how hard they worked,” Ms. Williams said. But then they throw it all away, she continued, adding, “What does it all come to?”