From Publishers Weekly
In the tradition of Alphonse Bertillon and Lee's close friend and contemporary Michael Baden (author of the recent Dead Reckoning), the latest from renowned forensic criminologist Lee (Henry Lee's Crime Scene Handbook) takes readers through the steps of the investigative process of five homicide cases. Lee exposes the methodologies of crafty killers an air conditioner cranked up to disguise a victim's time of death, a shooting concealed as a suicide, a corpus delecti (literally, "the body of the crime") destroyed via a woodchipper in four of the five investigations; in the fifth, he revisits the mangled O.J. Simpson inquiry. Lee takes his responsibility to the scientific method seriously (which comes through in somewhat cold storytelling) and does not hesitate to place blame where he feels it's due. Justifying his work for the defense in the O.J. Simpson case, Lee criticizes the LAPD investigation as being compromised by bumbled procedure, cross-contamination and the mishandling of crucial blood evidence. Each of the cases considered here not only provides a rousing tale of forensic work, but also details the practical techniques such as bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene photography and latent fingerprint detection through the use of alkyl-2-cyanoacrylate (Super Glue). If Lee's material has an element of the slapdash, it's probably for good reason after all, he's been a consultant to over 300 law enforcement agencies and is the editor of seven peer-reviewed journals. But attention to storytelling reveals the characters behind the cases, and supports Lee's assertion that "no one person... is responsible for the guilty being found out and successfully prosecuted." B&w photos throughout; color insert not seen by PW. (Apr.)Forecast: The true-crime crowd will consider this essential reading, and with a segment scheduled on ABC TV's 20/20, it may reach a broader audience.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Lee, a renowned forensic criminologist, reviews five domestic homicide cases that he has worked on, all of them examples of a male fatally assaulting a female to whom he was currently or had recently been married. Sketching out the scenarios surrounding each of the murders, he establishes the chronological flow of events both before and after the homicide, and he brings the personalities of murderer and victim into focus. Often, his detailed accounts of the murder scenes are horrific, bloody, frightening, and graphic. Lee separates the emotional response and focuses on the scientific skills required to ferret out information needed to solve the crimes. This sometimes leads to explanations of the equipment, procedures, chemicals, and so on needed to find and process data. For example, he details how to figure out the angle of the drip of blood drops in order to discover the angle of the blow to a body. A book for teens interested in working in forensics, police work, or true crime.Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VACopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Lee (Famous Crime Scenes Revisited: From Sacco-Vanzetti to O.J. Simpson) is a world-renowned forensic criminologist and chief emeritus in the Department of Public Safety in Meriden, CT. In his newest book (written with journalist O'Neil), he discusses the forensic findings of five cases all involving emotional and physical domestic abuse resulting in the death of the female partner. The cases are absorbing, from O.J. to the Wood Chipper, "which contributed to a change in the American criminal justice system," to police officers who believed their professional experience would be sufficient to turn forensic suspicion away from them to one very angry college professor. The manner in which some of these men decided to carry out their crimes is horrific. Lee carefully sets out the forensic evidence used at trial: DNA, blood spatters, gunshot residue (GSR), bodily injury, stomach contents, and the very important stages of body decomposition. Lee presents the cases in a straightforward manner, relating the forensic evidence and explaining in fascinating detail how the data work to exonerate or convict. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Karen Evans, Indiana State Univ. Lib., Terre HauteCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Lee is Connecticut's chief crime-scene investigator whose fame spread far beyond the criminology profession (in which he is a sought-after consultant) to the celebrity-fixated world obsessed by the O. J. Simpson trial. His report of his involvement on the defense side of that trial is one of five cases recounted here. Expert in the forensics of a crime scene, distinct from forensic pathology, Lee highlights the investigative mysteries that cases pose; in the O. J. case, it was the alleged tampering of the scene by police. Coincidentally, all of the cases recounted here arose out of marital animosity, or more truthfully, wife battering. However clinical and objective Lee strives to be, the heinousness of the crimes breaks through as he describes the victims' postures at the murder scenes. No matter how staged the bloody scene may be, Lee's exacting eye catches any discrepancies, and through various blood and blood-spatter tests, he produces evidence to back up his hunches. True-crime buffs will snap this up. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


American Scientist, January-February 2003
"[Lee's] admonitions concerning the preserving of crime scene integrity should be included in every textbook description of investigative procedure."


Science Books & Films, November/December 2002
"...a great read..."


Dallas Morning News
"doubly appealing for murder-mystery lovers. It digs deeply into real-life killings, and it offers an expert's firsthand look at forensics."


Foreword, July 2002
"...merges travelogue with autopsy report...the scientific bits add a framework seldom found in true-crime books."


Bookviews.com
"will greatly please those interested in the way science has been put to work to advance the work of police"


Book Description
Do police officers make craftier killers? Can police officers thoroughly investigate a fellow member of their force? Can a suspect be found guilty of murder without authorities ever finding a body? And what happens in a case when police detectives miss crucial evidence? CRACKING CASES takes the reader through the entire investigative process of five murder cases, with world-renowned forensic expert Dr. Henry C. Lee as your guide. Dr. Lee is considered by many to be the greatest criminalist in the world. He gained wide-spread public recognition through his testimony in the televised O.J. Simpson trial and has dedicated his life to establishing the truth at crime scenes no matter where the trail of evidence leads him and no matter which side these scientific findings eventually assist. These engaging cases include the infamous O.J. Simpson case, in which Dr. Lee's analysis of the blood evidence at the crime scene revealed that the Los Angeles Police Department had missed several blood drops on Nicole Simpson's back, a footprint belonging to a second possible assailant, and the physical improbability of Simpson's climbing a fence to return to his home. Also included are the "woodchipper murder" in which an airline pilot killed his wife and then ground up her body to dispose of the remains; the Mathison murder, in which a veteran Hawaiian police sergeant claimed he acidentally ran over his wife after she fled the family van during a dispute; the Ed Sherman murder, in which a college English professor tried to disguise the time of his wife's death by turning up the air-conditioning unit in their house and then claiming that he was away from the home sailing on the day the crime allegedly took place; and police sergeant MacArthur, who shot and killed his wife, but then tried to make it appear that she had accidentally killed herself. In each case, Dr. Lee presents an easily understood, detailed scientific explanation of how he investigated the murders, analyzed the evidence, and used forensic techniques that played a critical role in finally bringing the criminals to justice. The reader is treated to an absorbing discussion of how forensic experts examine blood-spatter evidence and use blood identification, DNA analysis, and other scientific technologies developed in the world's best laboratories. CRACKING CASES is a fascinating insider's look by an international authority into the pursuit of justice in some of the most grisly criminal cases of recent times. Anyone who enjoys reading true crime and detective stories will surely find this book captivating.


About the Author
DR. HENRY LEE is the Chief Emeritus for Scientific Services and the former Commissioner of Public Safety for the state of Connecticut. He served as that state's Chief Criminalist from 1979 to 2000 and was the driving force behind establishing a modern forensic lab in Connecticut. He has received numerous awards for his work and has helped the police around the world with over 6,000 cases. THOMAS W. O'NEIL is a professional writer and instructor of journalism at Gateway Community College, New Haven, Connecticut.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"Cracking Cases takes the reader through the entire investigative process of five murder cases, with world-renowned forensic expert Dr. Henry C. Lee as your guide. Dr. Lee is considered by many to be the greatest criminologist in the world. He gained wide-spread public recognition through his testimony in the televised O.J. Simpson trial and has dedicated his life to establishing the truth at crime scenes no matter where the trail of evidence leads him and no matter which side these scientific findings eventually assist." "In each case, Dr. Lee presents an easily understood, detailed scientific explanation of how he investigated the murders, analyzed the evidence, and used forensic techniques that played a critical role in finally bringing the criminals to justice. The reader is treated to an absorbing discussion of how forensic experts examine blood-splatter evidence and use blood identification, DNA analysis, and other scientific technologies developed in the world's best laboratories." Cracking Cases is an insider's look by an international authority into the pursuit of justice in some of the most grisly criminal cases of recent times. Anyone who enjoys reading true crime and detective stories will surely find this book captivating.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

In the tradition of Alphonse Bertillon and Lee's close friend and contemporary Michael Baden (author of the recent Dead Reckoning), the latest from renowned forensic criminologist Lee (Henry Lee's Crime Scene Handbook) takes readers through the steps of the investigative process of five homicide cases. Lee exposes the methodologies of crafty killers an air conditioner cranked up to disguise a victim's time of death, a shooting concealed as a suicide, a corpus delecti (literally, "the body of the crime") destroyed via a woodchipper in four of the five investigations; in the fifth, he revisits the mangled O.J. Simpson inquiry. Lee takes his responsibility to the scientific method seriously (which comes through in somewhat cold storytelling) and does not hesitate to place blame where he feels it's due. Justifying his work for the defense in the O.J. Simpson case, Lee criticizes the LAPD investigation as being compromised by bumbled procedure, cross-contamination and the mishandling of crucial blood evidence. Each of the cases considered here not only provides a rousing tale of forensic work, but also details the practical techniques such as bloodstain pattern analysis, crime scene photography and latent fingerprint detection through the use of alkyl-2-cyanoacrylate (Super Glue). If Lee's material has an element of the slapdash, it's probably for good reason after all, he's been a consultant to over 300 law enforcement agencies and is the editor of seven peer-reviewed journals. But attention to storytelling reveals the characters behind the cases, and supports Lee's assertion that "no one person... is responsible for the guilty being found out and successfully prosecuted." B&w photos throughout; color insert not seen by PW. (Apr.) Forecast: The true-crime crowd will consider this essential reading, and with a segment scheduled on ABC TV's 20/20, it may reach a broader audience. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Lee (Famous Crime Scenes Revisited: From Sacco-Vanzetti to O.J. Simpson) is a world-renowned forensic criminologist and chief emeritus in the Department of Public Safety in Meriden, CT. In his newest book (written with journalist O'Neil), he discusses the forensic findings of five cases all involving emotional and physical domestic abuse resulting in the death of the female partner. The cases are absorbing, from O.J. to the Wood Chipper, "which contributed to a change in the American criminal justice system," to police officers who believed their professional experience would be sufficient to turn forensic suspicion away from them to one very angry college professor. The manner in which some of these men decided to carry out their crimes is horrific. Lee carefully sets out the forensic evidence used at trial: DNA, blood spatters, gunshot residue (GSR), bodily injury, stomach contents, and the very important stages of body decomposition. Lee presents the cases in a straightforward manner, relating the forensic evidence and explaining in fascinating detail how the data work to exonerate or convict. Recommended for public and academic libraries. Karen Evans, Indiana State Univ. Lib., Terre Haute Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Lee, a renowned forensic criminologist, reviews five domestic homicide cases that he has worked on, all of them examples of a male fatally assaulting a female to whom he was currently or had recently been married. Sketching out the scenarios surrounding each of the murders, he establishes the chronological flow of events both before and after the homicide, and he brings the personalities of murderer and victim into focus. Often, his detailed accounts of the murder scenes are horrific, bloody, frightening, and graphic. Lee separates the emotional response and focuses on the scientific skills required to ferret out information needed to solve the crimes. This sometimes leads to explanations of the equipment, procedures, chemicals, and so on needed to find and process data. For example, he details how to figure out the angle of the drip of blood drops in order to discover the angle of the blow to a body. A book for teens interested in working in forensics, police work, or true crime.-Pam Johnson, Fairfax County Public Library, VA Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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