18 Tiny Deaths, page 22
Lee was uncertain at first. “I thought it over for a long time, for I have strenuously avoided inviting outsiders,” she told members of the HAPS board. “But, I thought he might do some good.”25
Gardner was invited to attend the homicide seminar in October 1948. Learning the modern methods of scientific death investigation was an eye-opener for him. “He was the most interested, and the most deeply affected person by the group of men he met,” Lee said.26
Lee challenged the author about his Perry Mason books. “Your stories are formulaic,” she complained to Gardner. “The police are portrayed as uneducated fools who are bettered by a defense lawyer who acquits his client based on mistakes that never should have happened. Why don’t you write stories that depict the police accurately?”
“If I told the truth,” Gardner said, “the book would end after a page and a half.”27
“I just can’t believe this is the kind of people that make up the State Police,” he told Lee.
“They are,” she said, “and the sooner you get through writing about Perry Mason and the police going around in circles about him, the better.”28
During the week of the homicide seminar, Gardner happened to be finishing a Perry Mason novel—The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom. During breaks in the sessions, Gardner dictated the novel by telephone to his secretary in Temecula, California.
Gardner’s impression of Lee was memorable. She was “a perfectionist in every sense of the word,” he said. “When she gave her banquets…she gave hours of careful consideration to the seating arrangements, the floral decorations and to the program. I don’t think there was any detail too small or insignificant to be given careful consideration.
“Because she had an orderly mind and a logical mind,” Gardner said, “she was able to comprehend police work in a way that enabled her to make a shrewd and accurate appraisal of individual cases as well as overall planning of what was being done and an accurate estimate of what should be done.”29
Sold on the importance of legal medicine, Gardner telephoned Harry Steeger, publisher of Argosy and another member of the Court of Last Resort expert panel. Steeger traveled to Harvard from New York City for the last day of the homicide seminar. Afterward, Gardner and Steeger discussed a book, perhaps a series featuring a state trooper or medical examiner who used the latest scientific tools to solve murders.
The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom was dedicated to Captain Lee. In the foreword, Gardner wrote:
This book was written under rather unusual circumstances. The last part of it was dictated while I was in Boston attending a seminar on Homicide Investigation at the Department of Legal Medicine of the Harvard Medical School.
I had for some time heard about these seminars, which are sponsored by Frances G. Lee of New Hampshire (a Captain of the New Hampshire State Police). Invitations to attend are as sought after in police circles as bids to Hollywood by girls who aspire to be actresses…
Back of all this, and as the guiding spirit, is Captain Frances G. Lee. I don’t believe she has ever overlooked a detail in her life. Captain Lee has reconstructed in small scale (one foot to the inch) some of the most puzzling crimes which have been encountered by police…
This is a marvelous work that Captain Lee is doing… I have dedicated this book to her as an expression, in some measure, of my appreciation; and in admiration of the manner in which her mind, working with the accurate precision of a railroad watch, has brought into existence the over-all plan of a course in training that is helping to make the competent state police official as much a professional man as the doctor or lawyer.30
Gardner autographed the first copy of The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom off the printing press and sent it to Lee. He also sent autographed copies to each officer attending the homicide seminar.31 Lee wrote to Gardner’s editor at William Morrow & Company with an unusual request for one uncut sheet from the printer, called a signature, with the first thirty-two pages of The Case of the Dubious Bridegroom. “I want to have it photographically reduced to my scale and use it in a tiny book for one of my Nutshell models,” she explained. “I hope this is not asking too much. And I also hope for permission to reproduce that much of the book—of course not for sale! And please don’t tell Mr. Gardner.”32
An enthusiastic convert to legal medicine, Gardner promised Lee a “book in which a state police organization is shown to an advantage.”33 This proposed book could appear under his own name or one of the numerous pseudonyms he used, including Charles J. Kenny, Carleton Kendrake, and A. A. Fair. But he had one favor to ask of Lee—her assistance in getting authentic background experience with state police. He wanted to spend time with police to glean realistic details for his stories, to follow the progress of actual murder cases. Names and other details would be changed to avoid violating privacy or risking a lawsuit, fictionalized for the purposes of Gardner’s story. “One of the things that I do want is to see some organization of state police working on a difficult murder case—watch the way the whole thing is handled, and pick up on my background from seeing the machinery in operation,” he told her.
Lee believed that Gardner could be useful for the advancement of legal medicine and cultivated her relationship with him. With Gardner’s name, a book that was authentic and favorable to police would be tremendously valuable to bringing legal medicine to the general public. “A lively correspondence with Erle Stanley Gardner has developed,” she told Moritz. “I fancy we can swing him to write just about anything we want.”34
Contacting her state police friends in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, Lee arranged a road trip for Gardner. She told Woodson, head of the Virginia State Police, that Gardner admitted that he had been “taking the wrong attitude towards the police, tending to belittle them in favor of some amateur detective hero, and he intends writing a book using a trooper as the star performer. I believe he can do the police much good if he will write from their angle, provided he gets the background complete and accurate, and this is most important.”35
Gardner attended a second homicide seminar, held during the last week of April 1949. This time, he was accompanied by Argosy publisher Harry Steeger and other members of the Court of Last Resort panel—LeMoyne Snyder, private detective Raymond Schindler, and lie detector expert Leonard Keeler.36 Immediately after the homicide seminar, Lee and Gardner spent two weeks traveling from state to state, from Boston to Richmond, driven by Lee’s chauffeur. Gardner brought along cameras and dictation equipment, working while on the road.
In Baltimore, Lee and Gardner met with members of the Maryland Post Mortem Examiners Commission at the Elkridge Country Club. Dr. Howard Maldeis, who had been chief medical examiner since the system was created a decade earlier, unexpectedly fell ill and died in January. Maryland was in need of a new chief medical examiner.37
Maryland’s medical examiner was under the authority of an independent commission, with laws that ensured their independence and autonomy. There were two well-regarded medical schools in Baltimore—Johns Hopkins and the University of Maryland—and the city was positioned to take a lead role as a nucleus of legal medicine.
Lee told the commission members that Russell Fisher was Moritz’s brightest prospect. Fisher had completed his pathology training and a three-year research fellowship. Young and ambitious, Fisher had missed his opportunity to return to Richmond as chief medical examiner for Virginia. Lee recommended Fisher highly for the position in Maryland.38 Gardner vouched for Fisher as well, assuring the commission members that the pathologist was smart and had the strength of character to resist attempts at political influences.
In September 1949, Fisher was appointed chief medical examiner for the State of Maryland.39 Within a year, he began a fellowship training program. The ultimate vision for the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner was an Institute of Legal Medicine like at Harvard.40
Back at Harvard, the Magrath Library of Legal Medicine, which was the largest of its kind in the world when founded with one thousand books, grew through Lee’s diligent acquisitions to a collection of three thousand books and periodicals. Included in the library’s holdings were numerous rare and valuable texts, Magrath’s case files, one-of-a-kind documents, and what is the most comprehensive collection of documents related to the Sacco and Vanzetti case in the United States.
In early 1949, the head of the medical library once again approached Moritz with the idea of consolidating the department’s books with the central library. “I am reluctant to give you a verbatim copy of that part of Mrs. Lee’s personal letter to me of November 15, 1938 that pertains to the Magrath Library,” Moritz responded. “I can assure you, however, that she was firmly opposed at that time of a transfer of any of the library from this department and I have no reason to believe that she has changed her mind.”41
The Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio was interested in doing a different kind of motion picture, a film done in a documentary style, telling a fictionalized true story. The appetites of American film audiences had changed since World War II. They wanted motion pictures that were more realistic, less idealized reflections of everyday life. Crime stories and mysteries were perennially popular genres, but legal medicine presented an untapped approach.
“Our belief is that a very effective story can be developed from this material,” read an MGM report. “The most interesting thing about it is that the detective in the case is not the usual Dick Tracy type, but a doctor—a Medical Examiner—for a refreshing change. As a matter of fact, the Medical Examiner is involved in real police cases, yet for some reason or other he has never, or rarely at least, been used in pictures.”42
MGM forged an agreement with Moritz to develop a motion picture tentatively titled Murder at Harvard. The story writing assignment was given to Leonard Spigelgass, who most recently had cowritten the screenplay for I Was a Male War Bride. The studio agreed to pay $10,000 to Harvard University in return for the cooperation and assistance of the Department of Legal Medicine. Moritz would be given final word on the script to ensure technical accuracy.
University officials were unsure about the propriety of lending the Harvard name to an endeavor in popular entertainment. Burwell, the medical school dean, pressed the case to the Harvard Corporation. Legal medicine had been hampered by archaic laws and a lack of financial support, he argued. This wouldn’t change until the general public was aware of the need for improvement. “I am of the opinion that a good motion picture might do more good on behalf of public enlightenment as to the need for improvement in the practice of legal medicine than thousands of pages written for medical journals and thousands of speeches made before medical societies and bar associations,” Burwell wrote in a letter to the Harvard Corporation secretary.43 In the end, the Harvard Corporation allowed MGM to use the university’s name.
Spigelgass drafted a ten-page synopsis for Murder at Harvard that opened with the various experts involved in the investigation of suspicious and violent deaths sitting around a conference table in the Magrath Library. “Mrs. Lee has in the meantime joined the group,” Spigelgass wrote. “The conference is adjourned and we cut to Mrs. Lee’s most recent contribution to the teaching collection of Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Deaths. Until now Mrs. Lee’s presence at the conference has been unexplained. She is obviously an anomalous figure in the cast. Until now the story has not had a principal character nor has it had cohesive action. It has been a documentary account of a joint enterprise between university and state law enforcement agency depicting the nature and magnitude of the problem presented by obscure deaths and the surprises that come when expertness is applied to its solution.”44
As Spigelgass envisioned it, the camera would close in on the Burned Cabin diorama and fade into a flashback of George Burgess Magrath’s investigation of the Florence Small murder and arson. From there, the film would tell the story from the founding of the Department of Legal Medicine to the present day. Lee told Spigelgass that she did not desire personal publicity but wanted popular attention focused on the field of legal medicine. She recommended that he base his story on the Irene Perry murder.
Spigelgass wrote Lee out of the story. Due to her desire to focus public attention on the field of legal medicine rather than herself, Lee’s role in the development of forensic science was marginalized. Her contributions as a reformer, educator, and activist were largely lost to history.
Shortly after Lee reviewed the film script, Scientific Monthly, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, contacted Moritz about writing an article about scientific crime detection techniques. Moritz suggested that the magazine ask Lee to write the article, which they did.45 For an organization like the American Association for the Advancement of Science to consider seeking a contribution from a person who essentially didn’t even have a high school diploma, much less a professional credential, was astonishing.
Lee thought so too. “I would like to accept your offer,” she replied to their inquiry, “but…I am totally unqualified to write such an article as you suggest.”46
She also didn’t have the time to do it. Aside from a full schedule of meetings and giving talks to community groups, Lee was busy editing a collection of papers based on presentations to the homicide seminar for Charles C. Thomas, publisher of Snyder’s Homicide Investigation.
January 31, 1949
When Howard Karsner retired as director of the Pathology Institute at Western Reserve University, Moritz jumped at the chance to take the position he had long coveted. Lee was not surprised that he chose to leave Harvard. Moritz had had to be coaxed and prodded along the way into legal medicine, making no secret of his preference for clinical pathology and research. Legal medicine was still in adolescence, not yet accepted as a legitimate field of medical practice. It was a sordid and tawdry business, doctors playing cops and robbers, and never warmly welcomed in the refined environment of the Harvard campus.
“Members of the faculty of the Harvard Medical School looked down upon Legal Medicine,” Lee said. “They felt that when Dr. Moritz, a pathologist of note, had been willing to take a position as head of the Department of Legal Medicine, that it was a step down or several steps down.”47
Moritz felt that he had done what he had been asked to do— develop an academic medical department—and it was time to turn his attention to his own interests. He explained his motivation in a letter to Lee:
I am not unmindful of my obligations to you, to Harvard University and to the Rockefeller Foundation. I am not unmindful of the many persons in this department who may be disturbed to a greater or lesser degree by my leaving. However, I have devoted twelve years, which is approximately one-third of the productive period of my life, to legal medicine and I am now faced with the crucial decision of what I want to do during my last fifteen years. I have decided to turn to something that will probably be less important from the standpoint of social welfare but will undoubtedly give me more pleasure in the doing.48
By then, the relationship between Moritz and Lee had cooled but was still cordial. Moritz bristled at Lee’s meddling in department affairs and continual demands for her seminars. For her part, Lee felt that Moritz was always more interested in his own career than the field of legal medicine. In time, Lee had come to learn that he could be duplicitous, taking credit for her work while saying things behind her back to undercut support for her ideas.
On the heels of Moritz’s departure, medical school dean Sidney Burwell announced his retirement. Like sand shifting beneath Lee’s feet, everything was uncertain—the book Lee was working on, Murder at Harvard, the homicide seminars, even the Department of Legal Medicine itself.
11
THE DECLINE AND FALLS
February 28, 1949
MORITZ’S DEPARTURE THREW THE DEPARTMENT of Legal Medicine into turmoil. After a decade of his leadership, with Lee in the background, everything that had been built to date was threatened unless a strong successor could be found to carry its mission forward. Without a department head with the stature of Moritz, there was concern that other personnel might leave for more secure and rewarding situations.
“We will be sunk if any or all of them should leave us at this time for self-protective reasons,” Lee told her friend, the internist Dr. Roger Lee. “If you will think with me of the seriousness of our predicament: if we lose the only people who are trained for the special work they are doing, it would set us back tremendously as there is no outside field from which to recruit other workers.”1
Moritz nominated Dr. Richard Ford to replace him as head of the Department of Legal Medicine. Ford had graduated from Harvard Medical School and did a surgical internship at Boston City Hospital before spending three and a half years in the Pacific during World War II. He had served in combat with a portable surgical hospital, and for the last eighteen months of the war, he had commanded an airborne hospital. He was commissioned as a major before returning home in 1945.2 After his fellowship training in the Department of Legal Medicine, Ford was appointed Leary’s successor as medical examiner for the Southern District of Suffolk County. Ford was a first-rate forensic pathologist, dedicated to his work as medical examiner. Within pathology, his main interest was trauma—the types of injuries he had treated during the war.
The war seemed to have affected Ford deeply. He had a dark side with a tendency for outbursts of a fiery temper. Visitors to his office were often disturbed by grisly crime scene and autopsy photos on display. Despite his personality issues, Ford’s abilities as a forensic pathologist and medical examiner were unquestioned. Lee was willing to give Ford the benefit of the doubt and work with him in the Department of Legal Medicine. “The more I see of Doctor Ford the more highly I think of him,” she told Dr. Lee.3
