In Jazz Age Brooklyn, police arrested dockworker Francesco Travia as he dumped a bulky, wrapped lump into the river. His shoes and socks were caked in blood. And, in his apartment, they found half of a dead woman.
But Francesco Travia wasn't guilty of murder, writes Deborah Blum, In a story taken from her book, The Poisoner's Handbook, she recounts how a smart investigator and the early techniques of forensic science saved an innocent man.
The New York City medical examiner, Dr Charles Norris himself, was on call the night of the Travia arrest. He followed the policemen up the wooden stairs to Travia's apartment, walked over to inspect the dismembered corpse.
His thick eyebrows drew together. The blood pooled around the half-body was a bright cherry-red. He bent to look closer at the woman's face. It was flushed pink, despite the massive blood loss. … Norris's reaction to the corpse came from a simple fact: people killed by the poisonous gas carbon monoxide tend to flush pink, the result of a chemical reaction in the blood. A murder victim who bleeds to death would have been porcelain pale. … Their dismembered corpse had been dead before Travia picked up the knife.
The Guardian: Forensic Science Was Not Always CSI-Style Teamwork
