Dr. Katherine Ramsland teaches forensic psychology at DeSales University, and has published 24 books, including The Forensic Science of CSI; The Criminal Mind; and The Science of Cold Case Files. She writes for Court TV’s Crime Library and co-wrote The Unknown Darkness with Gregg McCrary (ret'd FBI). 

Inside the Minds of Mass Murderers: Why They Kill; Cold Case Files; and A Voice for the Dead are Dr. Ramsland's most recent books. Dr. Ramsland's 25th book, the entire history of serial killers, will be published in October.

See Archives for Web Mystery Magazine articles by Dr. Ramsland.

Her website is katherineramsland.com. Direct correspondence to Editor.

            One of the breakout books of 2003 was Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City, a historical nonfiction narrative.  Posing the tale of a notorious scammer and serial killer, H.H. Holmes, against the ambitious construction of the 1893 World’s Fair, he develops momentum to transform an account of the Gilded Age into a page-turning thriller.  We’ve seen the story of Holmes before, but never in this historical milieu.  Showing just how this man repeatedly got away with murder in the chaos and confusion of the times places his abominable ventures beyond mere true crime. In the hands of Larson, Holmes becomes a well-defined historical figure.  Larson’s feat is a lesson for historical researchers everywhere, and it’s one from which I learned a great deal.

             At the end of the book, Larson discusses his research methods, and what stands out is his drive for total immersion. “The more I read about the fair,” he writes, “the more entranced I became.”  This is often a foundation to good historical research  – falling in love with the subject in such a way as to feed the desire to go deeper and deeper.   And the more one knows, the more the possibilities emerge for discovering something unique.  Others have written about H.H. Holmes.  Only Larson saw the intriguing parallel between constructive pride and destructive evil as revelations of the human soul.

             Like all good researchers, he went to archives in various institutions for information, from the Chicago Historical Society to that city’s art institute.  But he didn’t stop there. He also traced resources to the Library of Congress and other places.  He found that he had to decipher hard-to-read handwriting and to look into many fringe subjects that would give his primary focus better atmosphere.  He read guidebooks and biographies, and even visited cemeteries.  He most definitely went to the places about which he was writing, both to see them and to absorb them, even though a century later they had changed dramatically.

             Larson admittedly encountered some difficulty with the character of H.H. Holmes, since his trial transcripts were limited to those crimes he had committed in Philadelphia though he had performed the greater part of his monstrousness elsewhere.  Larson found that many of the sources about this scoundrel were inconsistent, as well as interlaced with Holmes’ own fantastic embellishments.  At times, only Holmes knew what he had actually done.  Larson describes how he agonized over recreating murders to which there were no witnesses, and he admits that even with all of his research, he still did not know by the end what had motivated Holmes to kill.  Yet he does point out one real advantage to this work:  “One of the most striking, and rather charming, aspects of criminal investigation in the 1890s is the extent to which the police gave reporters direct access to crime scenes, even while the investigations were in progress.”  Thus, they acquired fantastic details, which they passed on to anyone who cared to take a look.

             Significantly, Larson notes that he did not use the Internet for research and did not employ researchers.  “I need physical contact with my sources,” he wisely writes.  He understood that as a historical researcher, he was also a detective, seeking those small sparks in the archives that might ignite for the one developing the historical gestalt and provide heat for some past incident.  Immersion means that the researcher will be the avid discoverer because the researcher sees the whole picture as it develops.

             I, too, have written about historical crimes, from Locusta the serial poisoner in ancient Rome to Lizzie Borden’s situation in 1892 to the 1949 murder spree of Howard Unruh, America’s first mass murderer.  Among my favorites was the 1850 trial for John Webster’s murder of prominent Boston citizen George Parkman.  If not for the killer’s sudden uncharacteristic gesture of friendliness toward a janitor, this murder might have gone undetected.

             Murder trials during the nineteenth century were often a form of entertainment, and the media coverage reflected that with sensationalistic descriptions.   They were allowed to cover every detail, and they did, so the researcher acquires not only the facts but also the anxious flavor of the times.

             During that era, the legal process was just beginning to acknowledge that criminal investigation should involve scientific techniques.  Thus, dentists and physicians were allowed to testify in this trial as to the identification of the remains, and unbelievably, three physicians actually testified for both sides!  This was permitted because of the belief in those days that scientific testimony is neutral and therefore does not take sides – not a phenomenon we would witness in U.S. courts today.

             To recap this incident, George Parkman, 59, went off one day to collect his rents, including money he had loaned to Professor John Webster at Harvard Medical School.  He entered the building but no one could report seeing him leave. Webster then began to act strangely, which inspired the school janitor to sniff around.  He opened up a wall of Webster’s privy in the lab and found a pelvis, dismembered thigh and part of a leg.   When the lab was searched, a large chest revealed a human torso hollowed out to contain another thigh.  In the furnace were charred bones, including a jawbone with artificial teeth.

             At this stage in forensic science, it was difficult to prove who this person once had been (no DNA or blood typing), as well as to determine the cause of death.  An anatomist actually drew a life-size picture that approximated Parkman’s build and he showed how the measurements of the decomposing parts that were found would fit.  Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Dean of the Medical College, testified that someone with knowledge of anatomy and dissection had done the dismembering. He was asked about the expected quantity of blood from stab wounds (since no blood was found), but he admitted he was no expert on the matter.  (He provided names, but those experts were not called.)

             The real prize for fledging forensic science goes to the dentist, Dr. Nathan Keep, who insisted that the false teeth found in the furnace were Parkman’s.  At an earlier time, he had made a wax mold of the man’s peculiar protruding jaw and he used this to show the jury how the jawbone fit it.  Another dentist challenged him, saying that this was “class” evidence – other people’s jaws might fit this mold – not evidence unique to an individual.  Two more dental experts insisted that a dentist knows his own handiwork.

             The judge apparently instructed the jury (some say erroneously) that in the absence of an obvious corpse all they needed to make a decision was reasonable certainty that the victim was Parkman and that he had been murdered.  On the same day they went to deliberate, the jury found Webster guilty.  He did confess and said that he had done it in self-defense, but he was hanged that same year.

             Whether one approaches this incident from the context of the history of legal proceedings, the context of budding forensic science, or simply a study of nineteenth-century Boston incidents, the nitty-gritty of historical research is the same: getting through media sources to get at the facts.   Even with inquest and trial transcripts available for many historical cases, the researcher still needs background, and that comes mainly from reporters contemporary to the incident digging around.  Yet the researcher must take care to discern when a description is a sensationalistic embellishment and when it genuinely adds something to the case.  If possible, comparisons should be made to other reports, and no researcher should be swayed by a report being in a prominent publication vs. a lesser-known one.  (The award-winning account of Howard Unruh’s spree is the one most often cited, but the reporter who penned it was from out of town and facts that later emerged and were reported in the local papers righted some wrong impressions  – but only for those researchers who go beyond the prestigious essay.)

             In light of these cases, let me list what I view as the basic benefits and drawbacks of historical research in criminal cases:

Pro:

•    Sense of discovery from primary sources that have not yet been mined;

•    Getting perspective on history – new technologies and developments show us errors of thinking as well as how people often did the best they could with what they knew;

•    Correcting historical errors – facts interpreted with less knowledge than we now have may be skewed and new research can correct this;

•    Learning how investigators with limited resources detected crimes and caught criminals;

•    Appreciation for what they could do and for how they developed foundations for today’s new technologies and databases.

Con:

•    Primary sources can be hard to find or read; newspapers, for example, sometimes were laid out without clear headlines on some cases;

•    Poor record-keeping, which often means that getting closure involves some speculation;

•    Sloppy documentation – mistakes get made and carried through decades of research, which results in erroneous claims being made;

•    Limited number of sources – often there is only the newsprint medium;

•    Unavailability of living witnesses – for crimes dating back a long time, there may be no one around who can answer unanswered questions.

Copyright 2005 by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D.
Professor of Forensic Psychology, DeSales University