2. The Socialite Who Pioneered Modern CSI
Chicago society dame Frances Glessner Lee (1878 – 1962) had an unusual hobby for women of her era: solving crimes and helping advance the science of forensics. She developed a training system for homicide detectives, parts of which are still in use today. She is considered the godmother of forensic science. The daughter of an industrialist who became fabulously wealthy from investing in International Harvester, Frances got hooked on Sherlock Holmes stories as a young girl. She dreamt of growing up to become a crime solver, and wanted to go to college, but her family would not allow her. She was also discouraged from pursuing her interests in forensic pathology. However, her dream refused to die, and after the deaths of her father and then her brother, she inherited the International Harvester fortune at age 52. Now a millionaire heiress and society dame, Frances could do whatever she wanted.
She did not splurge on lavish parties for debutants, tycoons, and other society types. Instead, she made a sizeable endowment to the recently established Harvard Department of Legal Medicine – the country’s first such institution. She also hosted week-long seminars for homicide detectives, prosecutors, and other investigators, to train them on crime investigation techniques. Her methodology, Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths, consisted of 20 true crime scene dioramas, that she personally reproduced in painstaking detail on dollhouse scale. Her dioramas were complete with working doors, windows, lights, and minute details all the way down to tiny food cans and miniature mousetraps. Students were given 90 minutes to study the scene, then try and solve the crime based on their observations. For her efforts, she was made an honorary captain in the New Hampshire State Police. 18 of her dioramas are still used for training.
