Hello, everyone. Can you hear me okay . Okay, im trying not to be in the view but by the end of this we will be behind the curtain. Welcome to kate dawsons book events. My name isto becca oliver and im the director of the writers of texas and we are the largest Literary Arts Organization in texas and we support writers and one of the things we love to dor is have the opportunity to talk to published authors about ther most recent book but also to dig in a little more than i think we get to as often as we would like to add book events which has a craft talk. Talk more aboutut what craft wet into creating the book and especially for the book were talking about today, american sherlock, there are so many interesting things that kate can share that would be applicable to any writer that happens to be here. Who here is a writer . Who here writes but did not raise their hand . Yes, there are always a few of you. [laughter] we will make sure we get to conversation about craft as well. I just want to say quickly before we start a big thank you to book people. We are so lucky to live here in austin and have a lot of wonderful literary communities and one ofe at the big hubs of t is this bookstore so thank you very much for having us here tonight. I hope you will enjoy the conversation and go downstairs and get a book and bring it up to be signs because i think we all know the best way to support writers is to either books. Yes, we will encourage you to do that tonight too. Finally, i wanted to read kates bio and then she will read a little bit from the book and then we will dig into the conversation. Kate Winkler Dawson is a seasoned documentary producer whos appeared atha w cbs news, abc news radio, fox news channel, united press international, pbs news hour and night line, just a few and you probably have not heard of any of those. They sound small. Shes the author of destiny air, true story of a serial killer, the great london smog. In addition to the book we will talk about tonight and she teaches journalism at the university ofto texas at austin. Please welcome kate Winkler Dawson. [applause] im a multitasker so one of beccas first questions will be where i found the subject of the book. And so [laughter] the expert is im picking this for two reasons. It fits perfectly with that in too, because the reading ive done in the past involved a lot of body parts in my 210 yearold daughters are here so we will go with a little more vanilla of a section. So, the setup for this is how its the case that i read and how i discovered Edward Austin heinrich. Its why he became called american sherlock homes. When i found him he was mentioned in a case about a botched train robbery in oregon and it was four people dead and the robbers that were not robbers because they did not walk away with anything were in the wind and the only real proof they had were a pair of overalls. The federal agents, so, the government sent down the postal agent and Southern Pacific Railroad agent and that was the extent of federal agent investigators. Ci they did what federal agents do is go through with a fine tune tooth comb to find everything and the only thing that came up with was on one of the pockets was some grease, mechanics grease. They arrested a mechanic who was a neerdowell and this guy is in jail and the sheriff is nervous and so he says lets call in heinrich and see what he thanks that he had been known for a few cases before this. So, heinrich at this point had the fantastic photo of him penned up the overalls on a door that he hung from the ceiling so he can look at it and put a pair of shoes which look odd to me underneath as this invisible man hanging from the ceiling wearing his overalls. Wh oscars gaze traveled up the garment and he stared at the engine oil on the left pocket and evidence that had convinced federal agents that a local mechanic was the killer. Oscar scraped off some of the dark sticky glue, spread it across the glass slide, and placed it underneath the microscope. He adjusted the oculars and rotated the magnification dial. It wasnt grease, he was sure because he hadad not spotted any of the standard components. No oil, vegetable oil, mine but he dripped a reagent on the slide and watched the Chemical Reaction for the gout was a purely organic substance. With his pencil oscar in the most Important Note of the case, a scribble on the back of an old envelope that would save the mechanics life. Hitch. Not oil on left pocket. The grease and the overalls came from a tree, not a vehicle. Osoon oscar would determine tht the pitch actually came from a douglas for, a tree found in western oregon in the same type of naturally occurring sticky resin used to caulk the seams of wooden sailing ships for centuries. Oscar turned out to the pockets of the overalls carefully as little chips caught in the fiber reflected the light of the small flashlight. No larger than a half size of ap he wrote but the pockets carried tiny chips, earth debris and mechanical debris the cure nearer thehe western washington and western oregon forest. The suspect lived in the western part of oregon he concluded. Oscar understood human nature. A manss habits reflected his personality also. Now we are schoonover to the federal agents are finally tired of all these notes and want answers. They come down to his lab which is in berkeley and theres one federal agent, one from the u. S. Postal and another federal agent and so they say to him, who is it and what is this guy because we have this mechanic we are ready to put him to death for this . He said no. Its a lumberjack. The wearer of the owner was a lumberjack employed in a fur or spruce logging camp, a white man not over 510, probably shorter, wait not over whethern to stay 5 pounds, probably less. Not so fast, professor said the postal agent. You mean to say that you found all of this out merely from examining those overalls. Oscar explained this is the razzledazzle part to me. Oscar a plane that he could estimate the weight of the owner because lumberjacks frequently bought their overalls and a larger size so they had room to shrink in the wash. Those overalls appear to be new. The special shoes at his assistant retrieved earlier were walking shoes and when he placed them underneath the overalls cuff they were the perfect length for a longer hoping to keep his clothes from being ruined by climbing trees. Lumber man where their pant legs turned up in a deep cuff about halfway between angle and their cath and outside the boot. Oscar noted that. He measured the distance from the cops creases to the shoulder straps to estimate the wearers height. He also knew the owners Left Shoulder was three force of an inch higher than the rights how the straps were adjusted. They were handled exclusively on the lefthand side. That meant he might have been left handed. The suspect was caucasian, according to the chart that oscar used to classify two strands of hair. While he was not able to use the hair to conclusively identify the suspect his assertion of the ethnicity of the owner was scientifically valid. He created a physical sketch of a killer and incredibly accurate profile based on a single pair of overalls. Oscars description tallied perfectly with roy [inaudible], [inaudible] deputies released the mechanic from jail and now special agents focused their search on a lumberjack from oregon. [applause] thank you. Kate, how did you find oscar . But once you found him and there is more to that story, right . But once you found him how did you know that he was worth finding . What did you discover . As you have said, there is not a lot was known about him in basic searches. Right . Right. When i was done with my first book which was about a london air pollution disaster and a serial killer caught in it along with a lot of other people i felt like i wanted to go towards forensics. My father was a law professor at the university of texas and we talk about forensics a lot. I was on the search for forensic scientist. So, you know i got this book and i found this case and found this american sherlock label and you are right, i was attracted to the name and the man and when i found out how significant he was that he was a pioneer for forensics it was very exciting. Theres so many other steps to writing what i think is a compelling narrative nonfiction book. This is just for me. Number one, i like to write about people who are relatively unknown trade im not going to write about jfk. I want the unknown person. I want someone who has made history and this is someone who has made history. I want a time that i feel like im excited about and the older the better for me. My first book was based in 1952 and heinrich work between 19101953. That is for fantastic decades and so much happened in that time that is exciting for me and food, music, culture, crime and corruption in politics and all that stuff is important because usthats how you can build a really good story. I really wanted a great locatin and i love San Francisco and lived in San Francisco and he worked out ofd berkeley so that was important to me. The biggest thing for me, well, there is one thing. Besides making history what he did to make history which is advancing forensics, what does that tell us about now . That pertinent now. Is on sick important now . It is. Se really, finally, the big thing for heinrich that i think was in favor for military was that his collection at uc berkeley was enormous. That was a really good thing in a really bad thing because it was an excellent thing because it gave a huge amount of sources and it was excellent because it scared everyone else away. When you say enormous 120 boxes and that does not even count the letters he had. In a been closed for 65 years but i think when he died in 63 his youngest son, mortimer, basically got whatever 1965 equivalent of a uhaul is and dumped it at uc berkeley, his entire lab because everything was there. Uchi berkeley, like many other archives, libraries is understaffed. And so, when you do the search, usually as a researcher, i go to world cap. Org or i tire of grid and put in these aims and those websites will tell you if the person has a collection where the question g is and if they he multiple collections. If you type in Benjamin Franklin hes at 12 different locations. I put in heinrich and he was at uc berkeley but then it said closed collection so that meant researchers cant go in. So, i read more about him and him i had put together a good case and theres a form you can fill out and it basically says i know is closed and i know its a big deal and let me explain why it should be opened. Im an established author, and with a Real Publishing company, putnam, anda this is why this n is significant and why you need to take the time to open up the collection. I got an email back from the assistant to the archivist who eventually said good luck because it will probably not happen but we are so understaffed and this is the collection and is closed for reason because its so large. Two days later her boss, laura michaels, email me and she said we will do it. She said you are right, hes great and he taught here for 40 years and we should open up the collective but she said it will take two years and i will work one day a week on it. I said great, i will take it. All of that, that leads me to not only identifying someone who i think is worth a book with compelling cases but having to take a step insane this is why you need to open this and its worth it. Lets talk a little bit about what was in those boxes because if you dont mind, i will read this paragraph to give folks an idea. Oscar faithfully, meticulously filled out several pages of his large field journals every day of the week, even on the weekends and holidays. He chronicled specific times for every appointment, phone call or scientific tests and noted the case involved in the margin. Also he noted when he awoke in the morning, when he fell asleep, when he required his afternoon nap, almost daily and even journaled when he journaled. This marked out what a fastidious man he was. [laughter] you hit the jackpot in terms of and also i imagine [inaudible] so talk about that. I know he had a lifelong friend that he wrote a lot of letters to. It was completed because like i said, the reason everybody asked me how come nobody has done anything on american sherlock homes, Oscar Heinrich and his if you saw the boxes you would know why. Its overwhelming. This is what toomey makes it so much incredible book that was so unbelievably time consuming. Oscar had about three secretaries and had them typed all his letters out. If it was really private he would handwrite them andnd thank god he had a nice handwriting but everything was typed which was incredible. He kept all his letters and frequently kept letters that he sent out. His son, theodore, became a really big deal in the museum world and his best friend, john kaiser, who is his watson character is a big deal in the Library World and cop sidekick [inaudible] was a police big deal and they all had collections and kept each others letters. I think for somebody doing this type of book was so incredible important and i think unusual because there is a point where ive got two screens and i worked everything digital for me. I got two screens and theodore, his sons letters from january 121933 and his letters to theodore, generate 12, 1933 and can create conversations literally. I have three weight conversations at some point betweenon these different people that have these credible collections and so having that rich of an archive is amazing and somebody asked me the other night how i picked the cases and was embarrassed because my editor was sitting there and i said i asked the archivist for the biggest file and give me the ten biggest criminal caseus fils you have and i dont even care what they are because i wanted that information and of course, i adjusted and some worked and some did not but i was looking for not just compelling cases but a lot of information and when i mean information i mean in one of these we will bring this up. One of the cases is scotty arbuckle if you are of a certain age you might know of scotty arbuckle who is if brad pitt were still relevant he would be the brad pitt of 1928. [laughter] [inaudible conversations] so, he would beat the brad pitt of 1921. He was a film star who was accused of assaulting and killing a beat list Movie Actress and the things that were in the file were like the archivist and i put up a lock of hair and i said what is this and she said that thet actresses hr who he supposedly killed. It was just laying in his file which is incredible. He kept all his evidence that he should not have had good there were loaded guns, loaded pistols and they had at Uc Berkeley Police had to come out and remove a firing pin. Just to stop bad things from happening. He had bomb parts and he removed the bullet from a womans heart and then filled the heart up with wax to take a wax cast of it so he could match it later on and i found that in it was pretty incredible thehe things that were in their. [inaudible question] he did chartism your levels and i thank you wanted to do something with dialysis and that is the interesting thing about Oscar Heinrich, he wanted to do so much. He was interested in his own Forensics Lab and interested in chemistry and in starting multiple businesses and wasnt justch solving crime but so many other facets to him. His friend he mentioned who was the librarian would also [inaudible] that would help him further his own science. He was his watson. Where you begin . You five decades of material i know you said and you have zeroed in on the files that were the largest and you have this true crime aspect and narrative that you are weaving together and this book is wonderfullyou written. It so beautifully written and i want to read from the star review because no one needs to take my word for it and i will tell you what they said. Entertaining, absorbing, accommodation a biography and true crime and many true crime books suffer from failed pros dawsons writing is remarkable and never uses ball suspense but doesnt skimp on valuable details. I think some of that comes from the fact that you had a lot of great information but how did you begin to think of how youut would craft this narrative . Its hard. Of obviously you want to start and for me i started learning about his life and chronology and where did you go and what cases did he do and how did he develop all of these incredible tools and so once i started with an outline and what is his life story and what are the key points and where does he get married and where did he grow up and where did he go to school and then i can fill in where these cases are and it is overwhelming though because i wanted to really look at where he was in his life as these cases progressed so you are doing three things thatwa you ae looking at the narrative arc of the story and thinking about the story from his life at least from the beginning of what he is learned and who he is to the end of his life and what he has achieved and where he is in his personal life but then i got these individual cases that have their own little arcs within them and have to keep an eye on the world of forensics. Hes worried about bloodstain pattern analysis and then where are we in that and you really have to just make sure that your whole world continues to move forward all based on what he is learning and what they are proceeding to learn. It was difficult at times because oscar had the same level of insecurity throughout his entire life which he did not show often except i dont think he showed it to his wife, marion. I think he showed it to his best friend who was this watson character. I think that he really felt li like, you know, over time he was Getting Better and he was speaking to juries and weight that made understand and that was his struggle and thats a struggle with experts now and how do you take the chemicals that are 12 letters long and explain this intricate process that you spent four years or eight years learning in school and translate that to somebody who likely in the 1920s barely even has a High School Education if that sitting on a jury. That was a lifelong struggle for him and i was always looking for these ways to bring in his progress and he has a lot of progress over the years and it was cool to see it. For the csi fans in the room can you talk about the 1920s and those decades but really a lot of what happened in the book took place in the 20s, right . What are those abandonments we sought because it seems like so much of the pioneering in the field happened around that time . Ng in the fiel