Scene of the Crime

http://www.toronto-crimestoppers.com/pages/posters/AbuseCrimeSceneFeb05.htmlRecognize this hotel room? Then you should call the Toronto police: A 9-year-old girl was sexually abused here two or three years ago.

Even though she’s been airbrushed out of the photo, the room still has a haunted quality. The same girl was apparently photographed in an elevator, near a fountain, even in an arcade.

Stranger still are the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, dollhouse recreations of actual crime scenes. They were created in the 1930s by Frances Glessner Lee, a millionaire heiress who wanted to improve police skills in forensic pathology. Four puzzles are presented here, and the Baltimore medical examiner won’t reveal the solutions — he’s still using them in training seminars.

| Crime · Death · Society

Unusual Deaths

  • Sherwood Anderson swallowed a toothpick at a party and died of peritonitis.
  • Francis Bacon died of pneumonia after stuffing a chicken with snow.
  • Jack Daniel, the distillery founder, kicked his safe when he forgot its combination, injured his toe, and died of blood poisoning.
  • Actress Isadora Duncan broke her neck when her scarf caught in a car’s wheel.
  • Tour de France winner François Faber was in a trench in World War I when he learned his wife had given birth to a daughter. He cheered and a German sniper picked him off.
  • Jockey Frank Hayes died of a heart attack during a race in 1923. The horse finished first, making Hayes the only dead jockey ever to win a race.
  • Pope John XXI died when his scientific laboratory collapsed in 1277.

The all-time winner is still the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin, who survived being poisoned, shot multiple times in the head and torso, bludgeoned, mutilated, wrapped in a sheet and dropped in a frozen river. He was swimming to shore when he died of hypothermia.

| Death

Dead or Alive?

Dead or Alive settles bar bets and morbid curiosity. Brooke Astor is still alive at 102, and Richie Valens was only 17 when his plane went down.

The data seem pretty accurate, overall, even the strange cases. Jimmy Hoffa is listed as “missing”; Deep Throat and D.B. Cooper are “unknown.” Fifty-seven people have died in the last six months. How on earth do they keep this thing up to date?

| Death