- American Sherlock tells the little-known story of Edward Oscar Heinrich. Who was he?
Initially, he was a professionally-trained chemist and sanitation engineer who took an interest in criminal cases. He quickly learned that he was brighter and savvier than virtually all of the investigators he would encounter—he solved cases that they couldn’t solve. Heinrich became a detective, and a forensic scientist—a crime science investigator who could work in the field and in the lab.
- How did you first learn about Heinrich and his work?
I was thumbing through my favorite encyclopedia of American crime (I actually have several) and read about the DeAutremont brothers, the most famous train robbers who never actually robbed a train. They murdered several people during a failed heist in Oregon in the 1920s and disappeared without a trace (at least that’s what police believed). Oscar Heinrich was put on the case and he gleaned dozens of clues from one pair of overalls left behind at the scene. I’m not easily impressed by investigators but…he really impressed me.
- Your research took you deep into the unexplored archives at UC Berkeley. What did you find there?
What didn’t I find there? Oscar Heinrich was what I call a productive hoarder, which means he collected every single piece of evidence, every letter, and every diary he had over forty years. If I had any question about one of his major cases, he offered me answers in that archive. The collection was overwhelming, but digging through it was so satisfying. He has spoiled me for all other biography subjects. He stored loaded guns, bullets, locks of hair, handwriting samples, daggers, even lockets from murder victims.
- Heinrich was an unassuming man who rarely talked about his past. What aspects of his childhood do you think led him to his pioneering forensics work?
His childhood was difficult. I suspect that his father had some serious mental health issues and the family constantly suffered financially. Heinrich never felt secure with money, which drove him to develop a strong (and unhealthy) work ethic. He never stopped taking cases until they finally killed him. When his father committed suicide, a teenaged Oscar found the body and cut it down from the rafters of his workshop. It was his first experience with death and I think he had to compartmentalize that experience in order to sooth his hysterical mother. I think he used that approach during all of his investigations. Murder and tragedy never seemed to affect him.
- What was his educational background? How did he evolve into what was a previously non-existent profession?
He grew up in Tacoma, Washington but never completed high school because, when his father died, he became the family’s main provider. He was a pharmacist in his teens, then talked admissions officers at UC Berkeley to allow him to register as an undergrad without a high school degree. He eventually received a BS in chemical engineering and became a sanitation engineer in Tacoma (those skills became useful in some of his cases). He was a city manager in Colorado and then began using his skills in chemistry on local criminal cases. He became a police chief in Alameda County and eventually became an expert in forensics, bringing together all of his skills.
- How did Heinrich convince law enforcement agencies and the courts to accept his new methods as convictable evidence?
Heinrich was an excellent talker—he was compelling, convincing and confident. And his track record was impressive. Forensic experts rely on recommendations and reputation to gain clients within law enforcement and one of Oscar’s closest friend was August Vollmer (his Inspector Lestrade, if you’re a Sherlock Holmes fan). Oscar became very well-respected, very quickly because he got results—people confessed or juries convicted based on his evidence.
- Which of the many cases you detail in American Sherlock do you find the most compelling? Why?
Oh, it’s so hard to choose! I think his skills in the case of Bessie Ferguson were incredible. Without giving too much away, he used a very unusual technique to locate a body that would have likely never been discovered. I’ve always been impressed with his work on latent (hidden) evidence in the Siskiyou train robbery. The amount of concentration he must have had was astounding. He was so patient—at least with evidence…not people.
- Which case do you think was Heinrich’s greatest success? Greatest failure?
He had many incredible successes but I was only to write one book! I think that the profile he created of Father Heslin’s killer was pretty amazing, just based on his handwriting but not the discredited handwriting technique that other “experts” were using. Clearly he failed in the Fatty Arbuckle case—Heinrich helped ruin a man’s life based on dubious evidence.
- In his prime, Heinrich was something of a celebrity, at least in the tabloid crime reporting of age. Why do you think his achievements have been lost to time—until now?
Heinrich enjoyed the spotlight, but he never chased it so you’ll find him in contemporary newspapers in the 1920s and 1930s and in forensic books, but rarely in mainstream media. He never had a case that really put him on the map, like Paul Kirk who helped free Sam Sheppard. And I think that his archive was so large that no one had really bothered to dig through it. If it had been smaller, someone else might have found him before I did. As of 2019, Edward Oscar Heinrich doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, which is incredible. And very fortunate for me!
- What were some of the techniques that Heinrich promoted and used whose validity has been called into question in more recent times?
Bloodstain pattern analysis is the most dubious and most dangerous; one expert will have a very different opinion from another and that’s really risky in court. He really believed in fingerprint evidence, which is also fishy, and the lie detector, which isn’t even admissible in court.
- As an interesting side note, Heinrich had dreams of being a mystery writer. Why did that particular ambition not pan out?
Oscar Heinrich was a terrible fiction writer. Terrible. He used far too many adjectives and I think he actually thought very little of real-life detectives, which didn’t help his characters at all. They were stilted and unimaginative. I’m glad he didn’t quit his day job.
- Some forensic evidence is still controversial, despite what TV crime shows might suggest. Do you think that those shows have influenced the general public’s views on what is and isn’t possible to prove?
I think that the CSI effect is still alive and well. Juries who watch fictional forensics shows have an expectation of the real evidence that they’re expecting to be offered in court. Jurors might expect, even demand, scientific evidence in a murder case when there’s only circumstantial evidence; in many cases, circumstantial evidence is more reliable than scientific evidence. Even DNA evidence can be unreliable. That misunderstanding can be very detrimental to the criminal justice system.