I loved Quincy as a teen and for years I said that instead of law school, I should have gotten the certifications to run a crime lab. (That is also the wrong answer, by the way - when I realized I didn't like my lab job I should have entered the regulatory affairs program I'm graduating from next month. Better late than never, right?) When I looked through the Free Library of Philadelphia's ebooks, American Sherlock was an automatic pick.
E.O. Heinrich invented forensic science, and his work led to the world where we emphasize expert testimony. More than we should - some techniques such as bite analysis are completely useless and in 2004 a man was executed for the arson murder of his children un unreliable evidence and posthumously cleared of the crime. Even the reliable disciplines of DNA and toxicology are subject to contamination if samples are improperly collected or stored. Still, it's better than eyewitness testimony which is as unreliable as it is compelling
Incorrect eyewitness identification factored into one of Heinrich's cases, the kidnapingand murder of a priest. The priest's housekeeper identified a short, dark, "foreign" man but the kller was a tall Texan Heinrich used psychology and the now-partially discredited science of handwriting analysis to identify an eager witness as the killer. By examining a pair of overalls, he identified the three men who killed a train crew in a botched robbery. His knowledge of chemistry told him that a murder victim wasn't a pioneering chemist but the victim of a con man with a sham lab.
Heinrich also played a role in two high profile hung juries. We may never know how Virginia Rappe developed peritonitis, but her chronic bladder condition is the likely cause. Confusing and conflicting testimony and moral crusades against the then new motion picture industry led to three trials against Roscoe Arbuckle. Heinrich produced physical evidence, including handprints and analyses of smears on a doorjamb, but Arbuckle was eventually acquitted (although never cleared in the public's eyes). The case shows how evidence we trust can be misleading - while clear, well collected fingerprints are identifying, reading a smudged partial print is an art of interpretation and extrapolation.
Walsh begins and ends the book with the death of Allene Lamson and her husband David's trials. Did he beat her to death in the bathtub, did she fall and hit her head, or, improbably, did a stranger slip in while David was doing yard work? Heinrich testified for the defense and sowed enough doubt for an overturned conviction and two hung juries. The science behind his blood splatter work is now questioned, but gave the jury enough doubt to free David Lamson from death row and let him live to become a best selling author.
So what kind of man ws Heinrich? He was driven by OCD and the childhood poverty that led to his father's death by suicide (teenage Heinrich found his father's hanging corpse). This led him to drop out of school and work in a pharmacy where he discovered chemistry. Eventually earning a degree fro Berkley, he transitioned from water treatment to forensics, and from public service to a private lb. always anxious and unsatisfied but always convinced he was right. His OCD may have worked to his advantage in the lab but ld to professional fuels and fraught relationships with the sons he loved (the elder of whom became one of the WWII Monument Men). Walsh does a better job of describing his professional life than integrating his personal life into the narrative (while interesting, the transitions into the personal vignettes are awkward). With that minor exception, I highly recommend American Sherlock.
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