The Case of the Fabulous Fake

Foreword

For many years, my Perry Mason books have been dedicated to leaders in the field of courtroom medicine. For the most part, these people have been forensic (courtroom) pathologists (experts in disease and injury), whose skill in determining the cause of death helps convict the guilty and protect the innocent.

Cause of death is always a medical question.

Manner of death, on the other hand, is never a medical question. If, for example, the cause of death is a bullet through the head, the manner of death is whether it was self-inflicted, accidental or fired by another person in the commission of a crime.

Jack Cadman, Director of the Orange County Sheriff’s Criminalistics Laboratory in Santa Ana, California, is an expert investigator in determining the manner of death.

One of his early cases dealt with a young woman who had been fatally shot in the back with a shotgun. There were two prime suspects, the husband and one of his friends. Cadman asked for the clothing that each was wearing the night of the shooting. He found microscopic droplets of flesh and blood embedded in the sweater of the boy friend, the man entered a plea of guilty, and the case was solved without even the necessity of a trial.

A short time later, a proverbial “hired” man was found dead in a barn. His crushed head looked much as if he had been kicked by a horse. Jack Cadman examined the man’s hair and scalp, and discovered tiny fragments of dust and a few wood splinters. This initiated a search through a huge wood pile for a two-by-four which, Jack suggested, “...may be three feet long.” It was found, and examination under the microscope disclosed fresh depressions caused by the head hairs being pressed into the compressed wood. Hairs and micro droplets of blood from the victim’s head confirmed that this was the weapon that had caused the death.

A suspect was found; robbery was the motive; and another guilty plea to murder resulted.

Jack Cadman is internationally known for developing the Cadman-Johns method for detecting alcohol in the blood stream through the use of the gas chromatograph. This method is perhaps the most accurate one developed to date. A test can be completed in fifteen minutes, whereas other methods require from one to four hours.

Cadman is in great demand as a lecturer at scientific meetings and at universities throughout the West.

He has just moved into a modern and well-equipped crime laboratory which is a real show place, illustrating what science can do in evidence that will tie a criminal to the scene of his crime.

“The solution of the crime problem has to be the field of science,” Cadman said, as he surveyed his stereoscopic and ultropak microscopes, his refractometer, search and sweep tables with their vacuum attachments, and a dozen other new crime-fighting tools. “This is the space age, but crime-fighting has not kept pace with other scientific developments since World War II. Any time the American people are ready to give the problem sufficient attention and priority, we can raise the present ‘solved’ and ‘conviction’ rates from maybe 10 percent to 90 percent. When it becomes unprofitable for a criminal to commit a crime, he’s going to think twice or three times about doing it. When he knows that the odds are nine to one that he’s going to get caught and going to jail, crime will lose a lot of its appeal. But until that happens, why shouldn’t people continue to commit crimes? It’s quite a profitable trade!”

Therefore, I dedicate this book to an outstanding leader in the field of forensic science:

JACK CADMAN

Director, Orange County Sheriff’s Criminalistics Laboratory

Santa Ana, California

ERLE STANLEY GARDNER