Over
the years of working on several different film projects on Frances
Glessner Lee, I've become the unofficial keeper of her history. And I'll
keep her history until history stops forgetting her. A few years back, I made the documentary film Of Dolls & Murder
about Frances and her extraordinary Nutshell Studies of Unexplained
Death. I was so captivated by this woman who is as mysterious as her
Nutshells.
The one and only Frances Glessner Lee
Her imagination. Her talent.
Her sheer genius. How could the world not know about her? Sadly, I think
I know the answer. From the 1930s until her death in 1962, a relatively
small group of people respected and acknowledged her enormous
contributions in early forensic science. And those people were the men
who attended HAPS (Harvard Associates in Police Science)
- the seminar series she created to help foster relationships between
law enforcement and the medical community in the pursuit of justice. Everyone
else generally dismissed Frances. Especially her colleagues at Harvard.
A lot of people placated her only because she donated so much money to
the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard - where she was generally
viewed as a meddlesome old woman with money and not enough to do. (Her
words) She was a truly woman ahead of her time and this
threatened people. She never gave up and this irritated people. Things
were rarely good enough for her and people resented her for it. And
when she died, the forensic academic community - the community she
helped pioneer - allowed her name and contributions to fade away because
they simply didn't think she was worthy of credit. HAPS
members, however, are another story. They keep her memory alive. But
memories aren't quite enough for a screenwriter and documentary
filmmaker like me, are they? I needed photos, documents, newspaper
articles, letters, and interviews with family members and people who can
speak to her impact on criminology. When my filmmaking partner and I made Of Dolls & Murder,
we had to partially abandon our original vision because we could not
find enough of the kind of information I listed above. We were proud of
what we created but regretted that we couldn't find enough details about
Frances Glessner Lee's life. So I started to fantasize
about the Hollywood version of her life - staring some amazing actress
like Cate Blanchett as Frances Glessner Lee. So I wrote the screenplay,
Dollhouse of Death and
it turned out better than I could have ever imagined. If this film ever
gets made, there is no way history could ever forget about Frances
Glessner Lee again. And now we are almost done with our follow up documentary Murder in a Nutshell because we were lucky enough to unearth some pretty compelling new material about Frances Glessner Lee. Her
story just keeps getting better and better. Frances spoke so eloquently
for the dead and I feel privileged to speak eloquently for her.
One of the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death by Frances Glesssner Lee - photo by Susan Marks
It almost goes without saying that most of the research on the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death and Frances Glessner Lee cannot be done online, but every now and then you can find a little gem, like this one from the Harvard Crimson. Make sure you read the last few lines. So dark.
Parsonage. Photo by Susan Marks
A Colloquium on Violent Death Brings 30 Detectives to Harvard
Each of the studies shows the victim in exact
scale, one inch to one foot, and they are accurate down to the smallest
detail, even to the wool stockings...
On Monday morning,
August 19, 1946, at about 11, a high school girl named Dorothy Dennison
left her home to buy some meat for dinner. A few hours later, when she
still had not returned, Dorothy's mother telephoned the butcher. He
told her he had sold Dorothy a pound of hamburger shortly before noon,
but that he had not seen in which direction she was headed.
Police
Lt. Robert Peale received a call from Mrs. Dennison at 5:25 p.m. that
day and began investigating at once. A careful and systematic search
revcaled no trace of Dorothy until Friday, August 23, when Peale entered
the deserted home of the town parson -- who had been on vacation for
several months -- and found the missing girl.
Flat on her back in
the middle of the living room, her head resting in a pool of blood,
Dorothy's eyes were open, but surrounded with black stains. Her right
car was completely covered with blood. Her dress was ripped down to her
waist, exposing her mutilated breasts. Her skirt was also torn and a
large red bruise was visible on the inside of her right thigh.
It
was a shocking crime, though not an especially difficult one to solve.
The murderer was apprehended and the case forgotten -- but not before
it came to the attention of Harvard's Department of Legal Medicine,
which carefully researched the crime, then constructed a miniature
replica of the room in which the body was found. Not A Museum Piece
The
Department was not putting together a museum piece. It needed the
replica as a principle tool for perhaps the most unusual course offered
by the University.
Since the mid-1930's, the Department of Legal
Medicine has twice each year held a seminar on violent death, a seminar
open only to qualified police detectives with extensive experience in
the investigation of homicide.
The seminars are based on more
than 20 "nutshell" studies. Each is based on an actual murder, like the
Dennison case, or is compiled from details of several unrelated
murders. Each -- with one exception -- has a known solution and is
designed to illustrate principles which are discussed in seminar
lectures.
The studies require an attention to minute details that
would have put Sherlock Holmes to shame. The Dennison replica, for
example, has tiny marks, meant to represent hammer dents, in the floor.
Though they are easy to miss, they are essential clues to solving the
murder.
Last month, 31 detectives from across the country, most
of them state police, spent a week at Harvard, using the studies in
connection with discussions of everything from abortion and infanticide
to gunshot wounds.
The police officers were paired and each pair
assigned a different nutshell study. They had two or three days to go
over the models and accompanying, background information. At the end of
the week, sitting around a table in Building E-1 at the Med School,
each pair had to describe how they would have gone about solving their
crime and give a reasonable explanation of it. Parker A. Glass, of the
Department of Legal Medicine and chairman of the session, sat at the
head of the table, a large loose-leaf notebook with information on all
the cases opened before him. He cross-examined the detectives as they
presented their theories, asking an unexpected question or pointing out
some obscure, overlooked detail.
Pick the Butcher
The
detectives who studied the Dennison case told the group they had
concluded that the butcher had forced Dorothy to the parsonage, where he
killed her.
Glass, however, reminded them that the temperature
had fluctuated between 86 and 92 degrees during the week that Dorothy
was missing, and that humidity had remained extremely high. These
conditions, he said, would hasten the deterioration of the body, yet the
body was very well preserved when the police finally discovered it. He
pointed out that the replica showed the package of hamburger which
Dorothy had purchased the previous Monday was covered with maggots.
"Have
any of you ever seen a dead body left standing for four days in that
kind of heat and humidity?" he asked. A few of the detectives grunted.
They had seen such bodies. They realized that Dorothy could not have
died as early as Monday and that Glass had destroyed the detectives'
hypothesis.
Who, then, did kill her? She was found in the
parson's home, Glass said; the seminar should begin with that fact. He
then led the group, step by step, to the solution. (He later asked that
it not be made public, for fear that detectives who will be attending
the seminar in the future might read it.)
The other nutshell
studies illustrate almost every conceivable variety of death: murder,
suicide and accident. They depict hangings, drownings, knifings and, in
a few cases, heart attacks.
All of them were built by Mrs.
Francis Glessner Lee, a wealthy widow from Chicago, and a cabinet maker
she hired. Although the cases are permanently sealed shut to protect
the contents, Mrs. Lee insisted that every one be a working model, with
miniature doors that open and shut, lights that go on and off, windows
that go up and down. Each of the studies shows the victim and his
surroundings in exact scale, one inch to the foot, and they are accurate
down to the smallest detail, even to the wool stockings that Mrs. Lee
knitted herself.
Mrs. Lee did more than construct the replicas.
She was also responsible for the creation of the Department of Legal
Medicine itself.
A very close friend of Mrs. Lee's brother was
Dr. George McGrath, professor of Legal Medicine at Harvard (before the
department itself was created), and medical examiner for Boston.
Through her brother, Mrs. Lee became interested in McGrath's work,
especially in his belief in medical examiners as opposed to coroners.
The
medical examiner has no judicial power; the coroner does. The coroner,
who in many parts of the country is an elected official, can, after he
has investigated a case, select a jury, call witnesses, and advise the
jury on its verdict as to the manner of death. Furthermore, in some
areas the coroner is not required to be a physician, and undertakers
have, on occasion, assumed the position. A medical examiner, on the
other hand, must be a doctor, and has no independent authorities. He
can only report his findings to the district attorney.
At the
turn of the century, Massachusetts established the first medical
examiner system in the country. New York City followed soon afterwards.
For many years, the two areas were alone.
Then Mrs. Lee decided
to promote medical examiners by giving Harvard $250,000 to establish
Legal Medicine as an autonomous academic department. (The Cleveland
pathologist who was chosen to head the department had to spend two years
in Europe studying Legal Medicine before he could assume the post,
since there was no school in this country which could teach it to him.)
In succeeding years she continued to donate money, much of it going to
the department's library--still the best library of Legal Medicine in
the country.
The seminars in homicide investigation were also Mrs.
Lee's ideas. She hoped to bring detectives from around the country and
convince them of the need for medical examiners.
She designed
each of the nutshell studies to illustrate some aspect of that basic
proposition and, at the same time, to acquaint police officers with a
few basic medical principles. One, for example, demonstrates the
principle that blood will always settle in the area of the corpse which
is closest to the ground at the time of death. Thus, if a person dies
while lying on his back, gravity will draw the blood to that area and
lividity (an easily observable, red discoloration) will set in. The
study shows an apparent suicide, lying face down, yet with obvious
lividity in the lower back--demonstrating that someone turned it over
after death occurred.
Mrs. Lee attended every seminar, displaying
and explaining the studies, until her death. She always hoped that
after seeing the advantages of the medical examiner system, the
detectives would return to their states and fight to get the coroners
replaced. For the present, however, she has failed; there are still
coroners in more than 40 states.
