The Nutshell Studies Of Unexplained Death

Back in 2011, I blogged about (entry here) a book featuring the beautiful photos of Corinne May Botz - The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.  This book featured the incredible works of Frances Glessner Lee.

Frances Glessner Lee (1878−1962) crafted her extraordinary ​“Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death” — exquisitely detailed miniature crime scenes — to train homicide investigators to ​“convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell.” These dollhouse-sized dioramas of true crimes, created in the first half of the 20th century and still used in forensic training today, helped to revolutionize the emerging field of homicide investigation.

Text source.

Yesterday, we took a trip to see the Nutshell Studies at its home in Baltimore, Maryland, at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.  On our drive down, we listened to a terrific podcast about these incredible dioramas and the woman who built them.  If you're curious, here's the LINK.

The exhibit was fascinating.  The detail was staggering.  The notion that each tiny scene represented actual human deaths was chilling.  I am very familiar with the gorgeous photographs in Botz's book but seeing the display in person was an entirely different experience.  There was a strong sense that you were looking into someone's hurt, a tragic moment frozen in time.  It was very comforting to know that these miniatures have been used for decades and decades to train investigators, and we wondered how many eyes have studied the tiny blood stains and splatters, the discolored corpses, and the miniscule bullet holes.  

It's hard to imagine a time when a crime scene wasn't scrutinized for clues.  I'm feeling really thankful we had the opportunity to see where this started to change.  Frances Glessner Lee's contributions to this cause have earned her the title of 'Mother of Forensic Science.'  

Below are some photos we took of the exhibit.

Beware The Carver

I feel a connection to this year's display from Tjalgahorn.  Firstly, there are wonderful scarecrows.  Then, there's their creator.  A killer.  A monster.  A "builder"...  His victims become scarecrows.  A violent, cruel, and humiliating end.  He's The Carver, and as the old verse goes:  Don't let him catch you with a shadow'd embrace... He'll scoop out your seeds and carve you a face!

I personally find peace in the thought of being turned into a scarecrow.  I just hope my murderer uses a lot of squiggly roots.

Click here for more photos.

Six-Course Halloween Dinner On Mischief Night

A very cool and dark find by Wren.  The menu offers dishes inspired by serial killers' last meals.

The Halloween feast begins with two pizza-filled "skulls" with Apothic Brew's red-blend coffee wine, followed by lobster and steak skewers paired with a Crown Apple and vanilla martini.

Next is gorgonzola and prosciutto-wrapped olives with Werewolf chardonnay from Transylvania, Romania. The fourth course features house-made SpaghettiOs with Coppola Vendetta cabernet.

For the main course, guests will be served fried chicken with spicy strawberry aioli, garlic shrimp and truffle fries, paired with "The Lethal Injection" cocktail made form Ketel One peach vodka with melon liquor and pineapple juice, served in a large plastic syringe needle. 

Dessert is pecan pie with vanilla gelato, paired with Dracula rosé by Vampire Vineyards in Napa, California.

Philadelphia's Gary Heidnik (pizza), Ronnie Lee Gardner (skewers), Victor Feguer (wrapped olives), Thomas Grasso (SpaghettiOs), John Wayne Gacy (fried chicken) and Ricky Ray Rector (pecan pie).

*****

This brings up the question:  What would YOUR Last Meal be?  When the time comes for me, I will request six slices of pizza, each from a different/favorite pizza shop.  Then for dessert, a mug fashioned from cookie dough, filled with yellow cake batter.

Click the skulls for more information...

Too Soon: The Tylenol Pill Man

Tamper-resistant packaging on modern medicine directly results from one incident, which terrified the nation, baffled law enforcement, and threatened the country’s supply of food and drugs: the Tylenol poisonings. In 1982, a still-unknown assailant spiked Tylenol capsules with deadly cyanide, leading to the deaths of several people in the Chicago area and launching one of the most significant law enforcement investigations in modern history. A man named James William Lewis was convicted of extortion for mailing a ransom letter to Johnson & Johnson demanding money for an end to the poisonings, and although he couldn’t be pinned to the actual act, many of the lead investigators still believe he was the perpetrator.

Source.

Back in 1982, I was still of trick-or-treating age when the Tylenol Murders occurred.  I recall being aware for the first time that people could be terribly cruel and, worse, that something like the orange juice I drank or the cold medicine I took, could be laced with poison.  Nothing had safety seals back then.  And I am as baffled at that fact as when my dad used to say "Back when I was young, we left our doors unlocked at night."  Like how could there EVER have been a time like that?

The first death occurred on September 29th.  And there truly was a nation-wide panic.  It was constantly on the news and it was all anyone was talking about.  It was so horrid that I am still amazed that Tylenol never rebranded.  

So Halloween rolls around and I have a memory of being in the house and getting ready to head out with my brother and my friends to trick-or-treat when a group of people came up to our house for candy.  ONE GUY IS DRESSED AS A GIANT TYLENOL PILL.  And he appeared to be the size of an adult, so it was a HUGE red and white pill.  It must have been made from a large cardboard tube with a paper mâché rounded top to make it look like the end of a capsule.  The eye hole was a six inch rectangular slit.  I have no memory of arm holes or arms hanging out of this, but there must have been, right?

I recall being very confused.  The deaths had occurred only a month prior.  And I guess that was my first exposure to bad-timing and poor taste (a skill I'd develop and master later in life).  I wonder who he was.  Was he a neighbor?  Or some tall high school kid who thought he was funny?  Or maybe someone who likes to mock Death and tell it to screw off and leave us alone?  I dunno.  Hoping it's the latter.

Click below for an interesting article about other unsolved mysteries...

But The Water Pressure Is Great

In use, the cleaver is swung like a meat tenderizer or hammer – the knife's design relies on sheer momentum to cut efficiently; to chop straight through rather than slicing in a sawing motion. Part of the momentum derives from how hard the user swings the cleaver, and the other part from how heavy the cleaver is. Because of this, the edge of a meat cleaver does not need to be particularly sharp – in fact, a knife-sharp edge on a cleaver is undesirable.

Image source.

Exhumed

In the end, a four-day rain gave up my family's secret.

Trailer: The Staircase

The Great Outdoors

Image by Spookstock.

Shoot To Kill

"Clever" chimps at Kansas City Zoo make brief break to freedom [with dreams of human mutilation].

Close Encounters Of The Fatal Kind

A crop circle researcher found floating off the coast of Portsmouth and the rapid decline of a UFO expert who believed he had found an alien skull, are the latest in what some UFO researchers claim is a ‘pattern’ of suspicious deaths of researchers into extraterrestrial sightings, stretching back to as early as 1947.

A plane supposedly shot down by the U.S. military is believed to have been carrying fragments of a flying saucer, while the death of first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, is believed to be UFO related. Some believe that victims number in their dozens. 

Click below for the article.

Chateau

Image source.