Berkeley, California, 1933. In a laboratory crammed with flasks, microscopes, Bunsen burners and hundreds and hundreds of books, sits a man destined to become one of the first forensic scientists in the United States and successfully solve more than two thousand crimes during his career. His name is Edward Oscar Heinrich, and he rightfully deserves the admiring nickname American Sherlock Holmes. Oscar Heinrich worked during Prohibition and the Great Depression. At a time when even simple fingerprinting was considered a novelty and raised great doubts in court, and crimes were investigated with the help of the intelligence and tenacity of the police. And only Heinrich’s genius gave the police methods that seem obvious these days, such as blood spatter analysis, ballistic examination and latent fingerprint analysis. Here is a documentary history of the life, activities and investigations of a man who, with his own hands, created much of what what is modern criminology based on?