Something terrible happened in these dollhouses. Maybe a suicide. A murder. A stabbing with an adorable knife. These dollhouses are part of Frances Glessner
Lee’s Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, which she made in the 1940s and early 50s. They’re in the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian
American Art Museum for a reason. They’re incredibly detailed — these cans are all labeled. Accurately. And
these dollhouses are used by law enforcement to train and to develop analytical capabilities. But these artful dioramas actually contain
two mysteries: What happened in these houses? And why did Frances Glessner Lee spend her
time, and part of her fortune, making them perfect? This is “three-room dwelling,” and it’s
a dollhouse murder showstopper. There are 19 of these dioramas and each one
comes with a backstory, drawn from composite real crimes. In this one, Robert, Kate, and baby Linda
Mae Judson had a nice porch where the milkman stopped by. They were living the American dream until
the murders happened. “As you start to sort of investigate the
evidence... the first time I approached this case, I looked
at it for a couple of hours, I took tons of pictures home and I analyzed them for hours,
trying to figure this out, because it doesn’t seem like things add up. There’s a bloodstain that’s in the baby’s
room but it’s just a blood pool, and there doesn’t seem like there’s any kind of
trail from it, it’s just sitting there. We don’t know what had happened there. There’s bloody footprints that are leading
into the bedroom, the husband is lying on the ground on some of the bed coverings, we
have no idea how he died, he’s covered in blood all over his pajamas, so it’s very
hard to tell.” Three-room Dwelling’s morbid details come
from the same mind that crafted incredibly delicate ones. “There’s this little eggbeater down under
the cubbard here that I like to point out, and this was apparently originally a solid
gold charm from a charm bracelet. The Nutshells themselves are lit as the rooms
would be, the flashlight helps you find the evidence. There’s quite a lot of evidence in these
pieces that you would probably never discover without it, so it’s a fun thing to have
in the exhibition, but it’s also a real training tool for really systematically looking
through these pieces.” And you notice the fabric on a chair, the
blocks scattered on the porch, and the blood spattered on the baby’s wall. Because law enforcement still use these to
train, it’s tempting to play CSI with these murders. But notice that Atkinson only broke down the
nutshells, she didn't didn’t give away any solutions. That's partly because the solutions are still
kept secret for those in training. But mostly, it’s because the mystery serves
a purpose. “The point of the nutshells is not to solve
them. The point is to collect detail.” Erin Bush saw the nutshells in their home
before the Renwick gallery — the Maryland Medical Examiner's office, where they're used
for training investigators. “The goal of the nutshells is to train your
eye to see small, minute, seemingly insignificant details that stand out. So the kitchen:
It’s Spring, 1944 — Robin Barnes is a housewife. Fred Barnes, her husband finds her. And the story is, he’s out of the house
to run an errand. He comes home, he looks through the kitchen
window and he sees her laying on the kitchen floor. He can’t open the door, the door is locked
from the inside, the window is locked from the inside. So he calls the police, the police break the
door down. So this is what we know when we arrive. She was clearly in the middle of something. She’s clearly preparing a meal. There’s a pie in the stove, there are potatoes
in the sink. You don’t commit suicide if you’re in
the middle of dinner. And I think, if you look very closely at the
stove, and if you can recognize a 1940s stove, you will see that all the gas jets are on. There are a lot of weapons in the room. There’s a rolling pin, there’s an iron,
there is a knife, on the chair. It’s very possible someone hit her over
the head. If you look very closely at the door, it’s
stuffed with newspaper. So now we’re back to suicide. The point, of course, was to recognize these
details and to teach investigators how to recognize these details. It was a very different way to investigate
crime than they were used to.” Frances Glessner Lee was an heir to International
Harvester, a company that produced farm equipment and other machinery. Her family made a fortune, a part of which
she eventually used to fund miniature crime scenes. She endowed Harvard’s Department of Legal
Medicine, the first of its kind, and became an honorary police captain. Her artistic obsession helped detectives become
more attentive to crime scenes, relying on evidence instead of hunches. “For me, as a historian, when I look at
them, I don’t think who did it, I think my God why is she inventing this scene the
way she’s inventing it, you know, what’s in her head, and to me that’s fascinating.” Lee's nutshells are as complex as the scenes
they depict. They overflow detail: the magazines crumpled
on the floor; the apples that will never be eaten; the body that will never move but is
so vividly rendered that you can imagine it once did. “On the one hand, she was the young Frances
Glessner who was this philanthropic lady who was brought up in a fine household,
and the other half of her personality was Captain Lee, and those two things did come
together sometimes.” Lee wrote a 1952 article in the Journal of
Law and Criminology. “Some years ago, the writer was greatly
surprised to learn that nowhere in America was Legal Medicine, as thus described, being
taught. The writer has for many years worked sporadically
at miniatures, hence these presented themselves as the solution.” Frances Glessner Lee died in 1962 of natural
causes. “It must be understood, these models are
not ‘whodunits’ - they cannot be solved merely by looking at them. They are intended to be an exercise in observing,
interpreting, evaluating and reporting-- there is no ‘solution’ to be determined.” This toy’s only approved for ages...dead
and older. “YEAAAAHHHHHHH!!!”
One of the many moments that led me to believe that my now wife was a keeper, was when I found “The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death” on her bookshelf the first time I was invited to her apartment. Our copies rest next to each other in our rouge’s gallery bookshelf.
Outstanding submission.
My cousin used to make car and truck accident dioramas. A Studebaker wrapped around a telephone pole. A school bus and a semi in a head-on. A bridge collapse onto a car. Very detailed, and very gory.
This was AWESOME but the number of times they had to say "the idea isn't to solve it" drove me insane
You should x-post this to /r/LPOTL
ok so....what happened to the house with the dead baby inside? anyone knows the story behind it?
really wonderful and an unexpected addition to my night. thank you.