The Case of the Long-Legged Models

Foreword

For some time I have been intending to dedicate a book with a suitable foreword to Michael Anthony Luongo, a quietly competent, exceedingly thorough expert in the field of legal medicine.

I first met Dr. Luongo several years ago when I attended a seminar on homicide investigation given under the auspices of Captain Frances G. Lee of New Hampshire in the Harvard Medical School.

At that time I was impressed with Dr. Luongo’s complete intellectual honesty, his sincerity, his self-effacing devotion to his profession.

Dr. Luongo is still a comparatively young man, yet he is a senior member of the Department of Legal Medicine in the Harvard Medical School. For many years he has been a teacher in the Harvard seminars on homicide investigation. He is an associate pathologist for the Massachusetts State Police, and a forensic pathologist certified by the American Board of Pathology.

One of Dr. Luongo’s outstanding traits is his desire for truth and his refusal to be stampeded into jumping to conclusions. It is a well-known fact in police circles that when officers are enthusiastically building up a case against some defendant, Dr. Luongo is quite likely to take the other side of the argument just to make certain the police don’t get off on the wrong foot.

At such times, I am told, he presents the opposing case with a brilliance that would be a credit to any of the skilled defense attorneys who have national reputations.

One thing is certain: By the time Dr. Luongo has permitted himself to reach a conclusion, it is the result of logic, scientific reasoning, keen perception and honest appraisal of the facts.

For some years I have been watching Dr. Luongo progress in his chosen profession, earning the respect of those who work with him, and building a nationwide reputation for intellectual integrity and fairness.

Men like Dr. Luongo are pioneering a new field of forensic medicine where the expert witness, instead of being a partisan advocate for the side which has called him, appears as an absolutely impartial scientist with high ideals, representing neither the prosecution nor the defense but only Truth and Justice.

And so I dedicate this book to my friend:

MICHAEL ANTHONY LUONGO, M.D.

Erle Stanley Gardner