On This Day In History - November 24, 1932 - The FBI Crime Lab opens its doors for business

FBI.Gov - Harrington Fitzgerald, Jr., a mental patient in a Pennsylvania veterans’ hospital more than one hundred miles away from his nearest relatives, opened and quickly sampled the box of chocolates from “Bertha.” Perhaps he thought the November 1933 delivery was an early Christmas present, if so, it was the last one he received. Fitzgerald died soon after eating the first poisoned treat. As the crime occurred on federal property, agents of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation [the FBI’s predecessor] investigated. Mr. Fitgerald’s sister, Sarah Hobart, quickly became the primary suspect and so agents solicited samples of her handwriting. These samples along with the package’s wrapper and card were sent to Headquarters for analysis in the Bureau’s new Technical Laboratory.

There, Special Agent Charles Appel, a balding, meticulous investigator, received the evidence and began to compare the handwriting samples to the note card. He reported that the note from “Bertha” and the Hobart samples revealed no match. More analysis could be done, he suggested, if the investigating agents would obtain samples from Hobart’s husband and track down the family’s typewriter. Diligent detective work led Philadelphia agents to a typewriter Mrs. Hobart had conveniently sent in for repair at a local shop. Using samples of type from the Hobart machine, Appel quickly determined that it was the machine on which the mailing label on package of poisoned candy was typed. Confronted with the evidence, Sarah Hobart confessed.

At the time Special Agent Appel solved this case, he was the Bureau’s only scientist and its Technical Crime Laboratory had been in operation for little more than a year. Its official birthday was set as November 24, 1932; the date was arbitrarily decided because the founding of the lab took place over several months during the summer and fall of 1932. Whatever its birth-date, by 1935, the lab was a key component in both the work and the image of the G-Men of the FBI and an important force for the professionalization of American law enforcement. Read the full article at FBI.Gov