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| Frances Glessner Lee working on one of her Nutshell Studies |
This blog is called Killer Crafts & Crafty
Killers, and no one personifies that category more than Frances Glessner Lee, a
Chicago heiress born in 1878. Frances wasn’t your typical cloistered society
matron, though. She had a rather unique hobby for a woman of her time. Rather
than devoting herself to the typical domestic life of well-to-do wives of her
day, Frances preferred to dabble in murder investigations. After being
introduced to forensic science by future medical examiner and Harvard professor
of pathology George Magrath, she set about creating a tool to help train
homicide investigators.
Glessner Lee enjoyed hosting dinner parties, not for
the elite of society, but for law enforcement investigators, encouraging them
to discuss the details, no matter how gory, of their cases. She learned that
crime scenes, when observed correctly, held many clues to the solving of
crimes. However, crime scenes have a limited lifespan, and evidence can be lost
or corrupted.
So Glessner Lee created “The Nutshell Studies of
Unexplained Death” to help investigators learn how to apply deductive reasoning
to assess the elements of a crime scene. She did this by recreating objective
recreations of actual crime scenes in miniature, crafting detailed dioramas
based on police reports and court records, complete down to the smallest
detail, including the dead body. Her miniature models taught investigators how
to analyze a crime scene objectively.
Glessner Lee’s Nutshell Studies now reside in the
Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office. They are not only on view to the public but
are still used to teach forensic investigation.
Does this miniature depict a crime scene? Note the
titles and name of the author of the books. Is that mystery author Lois Winston pictured
in the photo frame? But wait! There’s a gun on the rug. And is that an uneaten
dish of caviar? There’s a tale to be told here…is it a tale of murder?
