Forensic Pseudoscience

Omaha Steaks Ad

0:00It's time to bust out the tongs and enjoy USTA Certified Tender Steaks, Juicy Burgers, and more from Omaha Steaks. And you can get 50% off site-wide at omahasteaks.com. Plus, you get an extra $35 off with promo code YUM at checkout. Terms apply. See site for details. There's nothing like firing up that grill for the first cookout of the summer. And with so many protein options, you're bound to be able to make something for anybody. What better way to honor the Memorial Day holiday than with a meal from America's original butcher?

0:31Every entree is flash-frozen, vacuum-sealed, and ready for when you want to grill. Omaha Steaks removes the guesswork by delivering expert-crafted beef with guaranteed quality and consistency. Start your summer off right with Omaha Steaks. Visit omahasteaks.com right now for 50% off site-wide during the Memorial Day sale. And for an extra $35 off, use promo code YUM at checkout. That's omahasteaks.com with promo code YUM at checkout. Terms apply. See site for details.

Weight Watchers Ad

1:00This is the new Weight Watchers. Built for real life and real results, no matter what mode you're in. Maddie went all in for her big day and lost 33 pounds. Emily lost 85 pounds and hit her goal while still living her life. Weight Watchers gave me the tools and I feel amazing. Join the millions of members and lose weight with the number one doctor-recommended weight loss program. Lose more at weightwatchers.com. At six months, participants in a clinical trial of Weight Watchers program lost an average of 12 pounds.

Mona Lisa Theft

1:31The policemen lost all hope when they found the empty wooden frame. Until that moment, they still believed that perhaps this was all a misunderstanding, that perhaps she had simply been misplaced. But the empty frame, discovered in a stairwell at the Louvre, dashed that hope. The Mona Lisa had indeed been stolen. It was a stifling hot day in August 1911. The head of the Paris police force, Louis Lapine, nodded grimly at the empty frame.

2:02Then he ordered someone to summon his top detective, the man that Sherlock Holmes, in a story, once called the greatest detective in Europe, Alphonse Bertillon. Between them, Lapine and Bertillon were the top crime-fighting duo in the world for a simple reason. They harnessed the power of science. They used forensics and psychology, transforming detective work by focusing on evidence and eliminating blind spots. But if anything, the Mona Lisa case exposed their own blind spots.

2:34And the science that made them so famous, so formidable, would humiliate them in the end.

Louis Lapine and Alphonse Bertillon

2:40This is The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Keen, a topsy-turvy, science-y history podcast, where footnotes become the real story.

3:04Louis Lapine was short and slight, with a trim white beard. He often wore a bowler hat atop his bald head. Lapine transformed police work by introducing a new dimension, forensics. No longer would detectives just follow hunches. They had to hunt for clues and analyze crime scenes, preferably using science. Lapine also introduced psychological profiling. You had to think like a criminal, get inside their minds. And because each crime was unique, so was each psychological profile.

3:36Lapine took the fictional idea of Sherlock Holmes-style detection and made it a reality. Perhaps most famously, Lapine championed the use of fingerprinting to identify people. Now, fingerprinting is not perfect, but it can be valuable if done correctly. And it sure beat what came before, which was mostly guesswork and relied heavily on faulty eyewitness testimony. Lapine's reforms led to the solving of some amazing cases. Consider one from Lyon. Several wealthy families there had had jewels stolen from their mansions in the middle of the day.

4:11The thief had somehow climbed in through open windows on the highest floors. There were no signs of ropes or ladders, and no footprints. Equally mysterious, the thief stole just one jewel at a time. The detective working the case found some odd fingerprints. They were tiny, almost childlike, with unusual patterns. He was baffled. But he suddenly had a flash of insight one day. Who knows where it came from? Perhaps just strolling through a park. But he summoned all the organ grinders in Lyon to the police station.

4:44You've probably heard organ grinder music before. Like this. Organ grinders typically stand in parks or on street corners. They turn a crank on a box that plays tinny tunes. To draw a crowd, many organ grinders have a little monkey on a leash that dances around.

5:16It's pretty silly. Anyway, the detective in Lyon brought in all the organ grinders in town for fingerprinting. But he did not fingerprint the men. He fingerprinted their monkeys. And before long, he found the monkey thief, whose owner had trained him to steal jewels. The organ grinder went to jail. The monkey went to the zoo. The case wowed the public. And it showed how powerful Lapine's new forensic approach to police work could be. The top forensic detective on Lapine's staff was Alphonse Bertillon.

5:49Bertillon had a pointy beard and tired eyes. Frankly, he was not a pleasant person. He was sarcastic and moody. Growing up, he got expelled from three different schools. Once for starting his desk on fire. Unable to find work elsewhere, he became a policeman. Specifically, he worked in the bureau that handled the case files for convicted criminals and criminal suspects. At the time, these files were all but useless, mostly because they were laughably vague. One actual, verbatim report described a suspect as follows.

6:22With every passing day, Bertillon grew more frustrated with the files. So, he developed something better. First, he began forcing policemen to take mugshots of suspects, a visual record. He also standardized mugshots. Before this, the police just snapped any old photo they felt like.

6:53Bertillon introduced the idea of the suspect facing forward one-shots, then turning to the left. Still, mugshots have shortcomings. People can change their looks, shave their head, grow a mustache, dye their hair. So, Bertillon also introduced another identification method, based on body measurements. He would take people and record how long their ears were, the length of certain fingers, the dimensions of their noses, and dozens of other points. It's hard to hide or alter such measurements, and enough of them together could uniquely identify someone.

7:27Bertillon developed his system around 1880. It gained momentum slowly, but finally proved its worth in another wild crime. Around 1900, a detective in Paris named Marie-Francois Guerron was looking into a case of swindling. His investigation brought him into contact with a wealthy financier named Charles Vernet. Something about Vernet looked familiar to Guerron. After a few days of thinking, he had it. Years before, Guerron had worked a murder case where a man named Simon stabbed and robbed his friend.

8:00Simon was sentenced to 20 years' labor on Devil's Island, which sits 10 miles off the north coast of South America. Devil's Island was supposedly impossible to escape, but Simon and another prisoner managed to. Not long after, a dead body washed ashore. The face was bloated and unidentifiable, but he was wearing Simon's prison jacket with his ID number. The other escapee never turned up. Suddenly, though, Detective Guerron began to wonder. What if Simon had killed his partner and switched jackets?

8:33It seemed ludicrous, a bad trick in a pulp novel. But the financier Charles Vernet looked so much like Simon that Guerron could not shake the thought. So, Guerron laid a trap. He got himself invited to a party that Vernet would attend. There, Guerron broke out the equipment that Alphonse Bertillon had developed to measure criminals' bodies. Calipers, a tape measure. Guerron pretended it was a party game and asked the guests if they wanted to pretend that they were criminals and get measured. Most of them did. It sounded like fun.

9:04But Guerron noticed Vernet trying to sneak out of the room. In a joking voice, Guerron called out, told him to come back. Vernet froze and grimaced. He said he had seen the equipment used before, and it wasn't all that amusing. Guerron kept the game going. He instructed two young women to fake arrest Vernet and march him over. They giggled and did so. Vernet had no choice now, and after a few measurements, Guerron nailed him. Vernet went back to prison on another murder charge.

9:36So those were the two lions of the French police force, Louis Lepine and Alphonse Bertillon, the geniuses who had revolutionized detective work. Still, each man was dogged by controversy. Although Lepine considered himself an enlightened reformer, he was also notorious for turning the police loose on crowds. And he encouraged blunt force. Fists, truncheons, clubs. His nickname was the little man with the big stick.

10:06Bertillon had scandalized himself during the infamous Dreyfus affair. In short, a Jewish military officer named Alfred Dreyfus was accused of selling military secrets to Germany. The evidence against Dreyfus was sketchy, but he got convicted anyway because he was Jewish. French society then was horribly anti-Semitic. The conviction rested in large part on the testimony of Bertillon. He compared Dreyfus' handwriting to that on a secret document someone had sent the Germans. Bertillon measured the curves and heights of the letters in the same way he measured the curves and heights of human beings.

10:41He insisted the handwriting matched. The problem was Bertillon had no expertise in handwriting. He just thought he was a genius at all forensic science. Handwriting analysis is largely bogus anyway. After his conviction, Dreyfus got shipped off to Devil's Island. Meanwhile, in France, new evidence turned up that exonerated him. In addition, the Germans kept getting military secrets even after Dreyfus' conviction. So, Dreyfus got shipped back to France to stand trial again.

11:12And once again, Bertillon testified against him. In fact, Bertillon was more adamant than ever. In court, he fumed, the proof is there and it is irrefutable. Unbelievably, Dreyfus got convicted again. He was eventually freed, but the controversies surrounding the case tore France apart. And the affair bruised Bertillon's reputation. He didn't lose his job, but he was widely denounced. As a result, Bertillon was looking for a way to redeem himself in the public eye.

11:45And in 1911, when the Mona Lisa was stolen, he saw his chance. The theft happened on a scorching August morning in 1911. The painting just disappeared from the wall at Duluth. There were no witnesses, no leads, nothing. After arriving on the scene, the police shut the museum down and had a hundred policemen searching. Within an hour, they found the painting's empty frame in a stairwell, ditched by the thief. With no leads, the scientifically-minded Bertillon tried an experiment.

12:15Paintings at the Louvre were hung on fat nails in the wall. But there was a trick to removing them, for security. The backs of the frames had brass loops mounted on them. So to remove a piece, you first had to lift it straight up and then pull it out from the wall. Otherwise, it would not come free. For his experiment, Bertillon got a replica frame with a wooden back. More to the point, it had the same nails on the back that the Mona Lisa had had. Then he called in two policemen and asked them to remove it from the wall. They could not.

12:46They struggled for five minutes, banging it around and making a terrible racket. Had the real thief done that, someone would have caught them. Bertillon then brought in some maintenance workers from the Louvre who knew the trick with the nails. They had the frame off the wall in five seconds. This told Bertillon something important, that the theft was an inside job. Meanwhile, Bertillon searched around for fingerprints. He knelt before the empty Mona Lisa frame with a magnifying glass, scouring the surface inch by inch.

13:17Suddenly, he stopped. He pulled a camel hair brush from his pocket, dusted it with granite powder, and voila, a left thumbprint. So right away, Bertillon and his boss Lapine had two big clues, a print and evidence of an inside job. The case was right there for the solving. And these two scientific-minded geniuses would blow it completely. If you felt stuck trying to lose weight, you're not alone.

13:50Enter Weight Loss by HERS. It's designed to support you in reaching your goals. And HERS now offers access to an affordable range of FDA-approved GLP-1 medications, including the WeGovi pill and the WeGovi pen. With WeGovi at HERS, lose up to 20% or more of your body weight when combined with diet and exercise. It helps you regulate your appetite, eat less, and keep weight off. Plus, WeGovi is the first GLP-1 available in a pill, so there are no needles needed. Everything is 100% online through HERS.

14:22You'll connect with a licensed provider, who will determine if treatment is right for you. If prescribed, your medication is delivered right to your door. No insurance necessary. And it doesn't stop there. Weight Loss by HERS goes beyond medication by offering access to 24-7 messaging with your care team and tons of in-app lifestyle and nutrition tips, like recipes, meal plans, fitness videos, sleep content, and more. Even better, with a range of affordable GLP-1 options, HERS makes it simple to find an approach that fits your needs and your budget, if eligible.

14:57You'll get a treatment plan personalized to you and unlimited dosage changes as needed. It's weight loss designed to work with your life. Ready to reach your goals? Visit ForHERS.com slash women to get personalized, affordable care that gets you. That's F-O-R-H-E-R-S dot com slash women. ForHERS.com slash women. Weight Loss by HERS is not available in all 50 states. WeGovi is the registered trademark of Novo Nordisk AS. To get started and learn more, including important safety information,

15:31WeGovi clinical study information, and restrictions, visit ForHERS.com. This year, experience the NHL playoffs your way. Want to watch a single? Do or die Game 7. A full week of heavy hitting back and forth series. Then check out Sling's 1-3 and 7-day passes. Watch the chase for the cup on ESPN and TNT, starting as low as $4.99. No long-term contracts or overpaying. Just live hockey at home or when you want it.

16:03Sling lets you do that. Visit Sling.com to learn more.

Mona Lisa Case Mistakes

16:09Both Lapine and Bertione deserve equal blame for bungling the Mona Lisa case. Bertione was an expert on taking fingerprints, given his job as a detective. But he actually despised the entire practice of fingerprinting. Why? Because he saw fingerprinting as a rival. It threatened to eclipse his beloved system of measuring body parts. Now, as a good foot soldier, Bertione always took the fingerprints of suspects and filed them away in a database. But he did so only grudgingly.

16:39Moreover, he never developed a comprehensive way to search the database. Other countries did have search systems for their fingerprint databases, based on loops and whirls. These systems were slow and cumbersome. But the method worked. If you found a print, you could search your files for a match. In contrast, Bertione's system was less sophisticated. Worse, it was only half complete, because you could search for fingerprints only from the right hand. Overall, the Paris police had 750,000 sets of prints on file.

17:12And they were utterly useless for the left thumbprint on the Mona Lisa frame. Yet the case still might have been solved, if not for Lapine's mistake. Again, based on Bertione's experiment, he knew the case was an inside job. Only a Louvre employee could have removed the painting from the wall quickly, without anyone noticing. Accordingly, Lapine and his deputies interviewed everyone who worked there. This included maintenance workers and janitors, who had the most daily contact with the art.

17:42But after the interviews, Lapine got to thinking. Or really, overthinking. Again, he loved analyzing crime scenes and using psychology. The Mona Lisa theft had been quick and elegant, almost surgical. And to Lapine's mind, that meant the thief himself had to be refined and elegant. In other words, he figured some lowly maintenance worker could not be the robber. The real culprit had to be some sort of gentleman thief, or perhaps an artist. At best, the thief had conned a Louvre employee into revealing the trick about removing the

18:16frame. But that was the extent of the employee's involvement. A mere laborer could never appreciate art, never possess good enough taste to steal a masterpiece like the Mona Lisa. This theory was blatantly snobbish and blatantly wrong. But that is the track Lapine followed. He focused his investigation on artists, gentlemen, and connoisseurs. At one point, he even arrested Pablo Picasso and accused him of stealing the Mona Lisa. But nothing came of this arrest, or of Lapine's theory overall.

18:48He hit a dead end. At this point, given the fingerprint and the evidence pointing to an inside job, you might think that Bertione and Lapine would try something different. Like, I don't know, fingerprinting every Louvre employee and comparing their prints to the one on the frame. But that never happened. Lapine was so enamored of his psychological theories, and Bertone was so contemptuous of fingerprinting that they never made any progress. In fact, the case never would have been solved if the thief had not gone public.

19:20I actually go more into this case in my new book coming out September 15th, The Museum of Lost Things, about the greatest lost treasures in history. But here's a preview. In December 1913, a man named Vincent Perugia showed up in Florence trying to sell the Mona Lisa. He had been keeping it in his apartment in Paris. After Perugia's arrest, it emerged that he had indeed worked at the Louvre after immigrating from Italy to France. He made glass panels to protect paintings. He also had a criminal record.

19:51He had been arrested once for robbery and once for possession of a knife during a fight over a prostitute, which meant that the Paris police had his fingerprints on file. But because of Bertione's resistance to building a proper, searchable fingerprint database, those prints on file proved useless. And it gets worse. It turned out that Louis Lepine had interrogated Perugia in the days after the theft. Twice. And once in Perugia's apartment, just steps away from the hidden Mona Lisa.

20:21And during these interviews, Lepine had picked apart Perugia's alibi for the mourning of the theft, catching him out in lies. But Lepine then dismissed him as a suspect because he was too lowly to steal a masterpiece, a mere immigrant. As one writer noted, if Perugia had snatched a purse or stolen jewelry from someone's home, like a trained monkey, he probably would have been caught within days. But Lepine was too blinded by his psychological theories to see what was right in front of him. Overall, their ineptitude on the Mona Lisa case proved another black eye for both Lepine

20:56and Bertione, further damaging their reputations. To be fair, the forensic reforms they championed did make police work better overall. We are far better at solving crimes now thanks to them. But not even these pioneers could overcome their own blind spots. They were so enamored of their methods, they forgot that police work, which involves all the messiest aspects of human life, will always be as much an art as a science. This is the Disappearing Spoon Podcast.

21:31If you like the show, please subscribe, leave a five-star review, or tell friends and family. Reviews, subscriptions, and word of mouth really do help. Also, please support the show at patreon.com slash disappearing spoon. It costs as little as seven cents per day for ad-free shows. You can also get bonus episodes and signed books. You can find more incredible stories in my books. Check out samkeen.com. You can also inquire about booking me as a speaker at your school or event.

22:02This episode was written, edited, and produced by me, Sam Keen. Thanks for listening.

22:15If the world were like a Sleep Number mattress, everything would adapt for your comfort. Because as your life changes and your body changes, Sleep Number mattresses adapt and shift to give you personalized comfort night after night. And now everything's on sale during our Memorial Day event. Save up to $1,200 on mattresses for a limited time. To experience a whole new world of comfort, visit a Sleep Number store or go to sleepnumber.com. Sleep Number, to a good life's sleep.

22:49This year, experience the NHL playoffs your way. Want to watch a single? Do or die Game 7. A full week of heavy hitting back and forth series. Then check out Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Watch the chase for the cup on ESPN and TNT, starting as low as $4.99. No long-term contracts or overpaying. Just live hockey at home or when you want it. Sling lets you do that. Visit sling.com to learn more. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes.

23:20Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes. Slings 1-3 and 7-day passes.