Forensic Scientist's Search For Hidden Truths

April 7, 2002 -- O.J. Simpson, JonBenét Ramsey and William Kennedy Smith all have one thing in common: America's foremost crime scene expert, Dr. Henry Lee, consulted on their cases.

The legendary investigator is known for finding the tiniest clues, and has even solved a murder without a body. Over the past 40 years, Lee has helped investigate more than 6,000 cases, including war crimes in Bosnia and Croatia, and the suicide of President Clinton's former White House attorney, Vince Foster.

But the case that made him famous was a double homicide in Los Angeles involving a man Lee said he had never heard of until then: O.J. Simpson. In his latest book, Cracking Cases: The Science of Solving Crimes, Lee reveals a critical oversight of the police investigation in that case. Investigators had missed several drops of blood on Nicole Simpson's back, which Lee noticed in crime scene photos he had examined as an expert witness for the defense.

The blood was never tested. If it had been, says Lee, and it matched O.J.'s DNA, it would have been "case already solved," says Lee. "If you found out that it was not O.J. Simpson's DNA, case also solved."

After Lee pointed out how important the blood in the photos was to the defense's case, the prosecution tried everything to challenge his credentials — even going after him because a ruler he used was a thousandth of an inch short.

At speaking engagements, Lee makes the ruler incident into a joke: "I said, 'Counselor, give me a break. $1.49. I bought it.'"

Getting His Start

Lee started his career as a police officer in Taiwan. Though he made it to the rank of captain, he didn't take to it right away.

"My first homicide case was a dismembering case," he remembers. "For a month, I didn't want to eat meat. I almost became a vegetarian."

Asked if it would have been easier to give up murder, he says, "Somebody has to do the work. Because the victim's family depends on us. Society depends on us."

Lee arrived in New York in 1965 with about $50 in his pocket and knowing about three words of English. Within 10 years he had a doctorate in biochemistry and a job at the University of New Haven running a small forensics department. Four years later, he was hired to run the Connecticut state police crime lab — which had been built in a converted men's room and had only one microscope. He helped build a new lab with millions and millions of dollars in equipment and dozens of specialists.

Early on, Lee — part cop and part forensic scientist — refused to wait for the evidence to be brought to the lab. He insisted on going to the scene of the crime himself.

Gus Karazulas, who worked with Lee at the crime lab for 27 years, said his colleague "always seems to find the truth — no matter how long it takes."

Karazulas remembers that Lee once asked him to bite his own tissue and then examine the mark to learn about the healing process. "If we had a serial killer and we did a bite mark study," explains Karazulas, "we'd want to know at what time prior to death that could have been made."

Real-Life CSI

In addition to his work at the Connecticut Forensic Science Laboratory, every year Lee is asked to investigate hundreds of cases outside Connecticut, sometimes working for prosecutors, sometimes for defense lawyers.

20/20 watched as he worked at a suspected murder scene, searching almost inch by inch using a special forensic light to illuminate tissue, blood and hair samples.

Even though police had already examined the scene, Lee, who was hired by the defense, still seemed to find tiny bits of evidence that may bear closer scrutiny.

Victims' families, he says, often expect immediate answers, which is not realistic. "They watch too many television shows," he says. "They think by the second commercial we should find something."

In reality, he says, it's not always that simple.

Helle Crafts' 1986 murder, for example, may be Lee's greatest work. Richard Crafts was accused of killing his wife, and suspected of getting rid of her body and most of the evidence by feeding her into a wood chipper.

According to the legal standard at the time, police didn't have a murder case without a body.

But Lee and his team searched the woods and the river bank, and even dragged the river. They found 56 bone chips, 2,660 hairs, a nail with pink nail polish, and a tooth. The remains weighed just 31 grams (1 oz.) — but it was enough to convict Richard Crafts of murder.

A 'Part-time' Job

Even though he's now officially retired from the state police, Lee has stayed on in what he calls a "part-time" capacity: He spends 12 to14 hours a day at work and has 800 active cases.

And of course he's on call around the clock. At 63, he shows no signs of slowing down, but he has found time for a hobby: rock collecting.

"You don't have to water it, you don't have to fertilize it," he says. "You don't have to feel frustrated about other people's rocks growing faster than your rock."

He does his best work in the middle of the night, he says. And though he doesn't solve every case, he often finds the one piece of evidence that others miss — which can make all the difference between guilt and innocence.