Inspired by her brother’s classmate and future chief medical examiner of Suffolk County, George Burgess Magrath, Mrs. Frances Glessner Lee dedicated her life to the advancement of the forensic sciences and is allegedly the inspiration for Jessica Fletcher of “Murder, She Wrote.” With Lee’s help, the Harvard Department of Legal Medicine was created in 1931, and through donations of manuscripts and money, it became the Magrath Library of Legal Medicine in 1934, an unprecedented compendium in the field of forensics. Lee’s greatest contribution, however, was her 18 perfectly proportioned dioramas based on real-life crime scenes which she donated to the department in the 1940s. These painstakingly crafted dioramas include functioning locks and lights and details such as overturned cups, bullet-holes, and boxes of chocolates as well as miniature corpses in a variety of macabre positions.
