American Sherlock Kate Winkler Dawson

Good afternoon everyone and welcome to another edition of The Avid Reader. Today our guest is Kate Winkler Dawson author of American Sherlock: Murder, Forensics, And The Birth Of American CSI published this month by Putnam.Kate has been in television news for almost a quarter of a century. She’s worked at WCBS, ABC News Radio and Fox. Her first documentary film was “La Candelaria” followed by “Breaking the Barrier," “Grass Ceiling” and “The Long Haul”.She’s also written The Digital Reporter and her debut non-fiction book was “Death In The Air: The True Story Of A Serial Killer, London’s Great Smog And The Strangling Of A City”, which has been optioned for TV.American Sherlock is the story that none of us has ever heard. But today we WILL hear a lot about it. The story of Edward Oscar Heinrich, born in 1881, died in 1953. After you listen to this broadcast or podcast, look him up on Wikipedia for more information. Good luck with that, because of today he has no Wikipedia entry. He shares that distinction with me. But he should be there. In fact that says a lot about this book. The research behind it is fortuitous, copious and fascinating.Heinrich—America’s Sherlock, although he pooh-poohed the comparison, invented what we can now see, for good or bad, very night, various incarnations of CSI.Rather than relying on hunches which Heinrich abhorred, he used scientific methods to ferret out motives, methods and identification.Without him, there probably would be no forensics as we know it, because Heinrich based his examination on education, hard work, microscopic attention to detail and obsessive note taking and lucky for us, hoarding.Kate uses the treasure trove of information and documentation that she discovered about Heinrich and weaves a story of a life that is fascinating in its success and even in its failures and we are the more knowledgable about the study of crime and criminals than we were before reading the book. And isn’t that what writing is all about?Welcome Kate and thanks so much for joining us today.