00:00:14
So we live in what I think of as a CSI age
00:00:18
where we take for granted
00:00:20
that scientists are going to work together with the police,
00:00:23
help them solve crimes,
00:00:25
map fingerprints,
00:00:26
analyze poisons,
00:00:27
but in fact, this is really a very new idea.
00:00:31
We only actually started training scientists and forensics
00:00:34
in this country in the 1930s.
00:00:36
So as a writer interested in chemistry,
00:00:39
what I wondered was,
00:00:41
"What was it like before scientists knew
00:00:44
how to tease a poison out of a corpse,
00:00:47
before you could actually catch a killer that way?"
00:00:49
And it won't surprise you to learn
00:00:51
that the answer is pretty dangerous.
00:00:53
And in fact, in 1918, New York City issued a report
00:00:58
admitting that smart poisoners could operate
00:01:01
with impunity in the city.
00:01:04
This is a 1918 crime scene photo from Brooklyn,
00:01:08
and at this time, the coroner system was so corrupt
00:01:12
that you could literally buy your cause of death.
00:01:15
Often coroners didn't even show up at crime scenes.
00:01:18
And if you go back and you look at the death certificates of the time,
00:01:22
I found one that read,
00:01:23
"Could be an auto accident or possibly diabetes."
00:01:28
And another, which involved a man who shot himself in the head,
00:01:33
said, "ruptured aneurysm".
00:01:35
So you find, not surprisingly, the police saying,
00:01:39
"We're going to look a lot smarter
00:01:40
if we stay away from the science side of the story."
00:01:45
But, in 1918 New York City appointed
00:01:48
the first trained medical examiner it ever had.
00:01:51
That's the gentleman sitting down there.
00:01:53
And he hired the first forensic toxicologist ever
00:01:57
attached to an American city.
00:01:59
And together, these two men,
00:02:00
Charles Norris, the medical examiner,
00:02:03
and Alexander Gettler, the chemist sitting next to him,
00:02:05
rewrote the rules of crime detection in this country.
00:02:10
And that wasn't easy because poisons were everywhere.
00:02:14
If we take this one, arsenic trioxide,
00:02:17
arsenic trioxide's probably the most famous homicidal poison in history
00:02:22
and it was in every home.
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Anyone could go to the grocery store or the pharmacy and buy it.
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It was in every kitchen because,
00:02:30
believe it or not, it was used to color food.
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It was in medicines
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and it was in cosmetics
00:02:37
in ways that prevented people from really understanding
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