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The heiress at Harvard who helped revolutionize murder investigations

Frances Glessner Lee didn’t want to be known as a “rich woman who didn’t have enough to do.” In her 60s, she became a pioneer of forensic science.

Lee wanted it to replace the patchwork system of coroners, typically funeral directors, political appointees, or elected officials with no medical training making critical decisions about causes of death. The minutely detailed models didn’t portray the elegant spaces of Lee’s own life — the mansions, the Ritz, the Chicago Symphony — but environments where working-class people lived and died, predominantly women. Lee’s files at Harvard are full of letters from medical examiners and police officers from across the country, saying they are deeply indebted to her for making them more observant detectives, even as the field of forensics has come to include DNA analysis and other advances she never could have dreamed of.

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