Alexander O. Gettler

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Gettler in his laboratory on the 3rd floor of the Bellevue Hospital

Alexander Oscar Gettler (born August 13, 1883 in Galicia , † August 4, 1968 in Yonkers , New York ) was an American biochemist and pioneer of forensic toxicology . He was the first forensic toxicologist to be hired in this capacity by a city in the United States. That of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences awarded Alexander Gettler Award is named after him.

Private life

Gettler was born in 1883 to Jewish parents in Galicia in what was then Austria-Hungary . At the age of 7, he immigrated to the United States with his father and sister , where he grew up in Brooklyn .

In 1912 he married Alice Gorman, a Catholic school teacher of Irish descent.

Training and initial work experience

After attending school, Gettler studied at the City College of New York , where he received a bachelor's degree in 1904 . In 1912 he received his PhD in biochemistry from Columbia University .

Gettler found a job as a chemist at Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan . There Charles Norris , the first chief medical examiner in New York, hired him in 1918 for the Office of Chief Medical Examiner of the City of New York (OCME), which he co-founded .

Activity for the OCME

Bellevue Hospital in 1950

Compared to Europe, forensics in the United States was still in its infancy around the First World War . The jury had yet to be convinced that science could make a decisive contribution to establishing the truth. Gettler was instrumental in this development. In many cases he himself appeared as an expert witness in court and over time gained the reputation among defense lawyers that they could not win a case if Gettler appeared as a witness for the other side.

As part of his work, Gettler had to continually develop new methods to detect the most varied of toxins in the body of deceased people and to determine their amount. In addition, for use in court it had to be proven that the substances did not enter the body after the death of the person concerned. Gettler also published his research results in numerous articles in specialist journals.

In several cases, the trials in which Gettler appeared as an expert represented milestones in the field of occupational health and safety , for example in the proceedings against the Standard Oil Company and the United States Radium Corporation described below .

In 1921, Gettler developed a test that could determine whether a deceased submerged in the water was still alive or not at the time. To do this, he compared the salt content of blood plasma from the left and right ventricles . In people who are still alive at this point in time, the water in the lungs changes the salt content of the blood, which is then transported into the left ventricle - the concentration drops in fresh water and increases in salt water. If the salt concentration is the same in both heart chambers, the person was already dead at the time of submersion.

During Prohibition in the United States , Gettler supported Charles Norris in the fight against contaminated alcohol. Among other things, he developed a rapid test for the detection of methanol in illegally distilled spirits .

In 1935, Gettler became the first scientist to use a spectrometer for forensic purposes. A family man named Frederick Gross was accused of poisoning his five children with cocoa ; four of them died. However, Gettler was able to prove that the alleged thallium found in the cocoa was actually copper . This came from the tin in which the cocoa was packed. The man was acquitted.

With a special permit, Gettler was allowed to work at the OCME beyond the age of 70, the statutory retirement age for city officials. He did not retire until a good five years later on January 1, 1959. According to his own estimates, he had examined over 100,000 bodies by then.

Tetraethyl lead

The Standard Oil Company operated a facility for the production of the anti- knock agent tetraethyl lead in a refinery in Bayway (New Jersey) in the early 1920s . Soon the workers involved in the production began to behave strangely, so the building was nicknamed The loony gas building among the workers . In the autumn of 1924 the condition of the workers deteriorated rapidly. 32 of the 49 workers were hospitalized, 5 of them died. The OCME was commissioned with the investigation. Gettler was able to detect very high concentrations of lead in the bodies of the dead - so the cause of death was ultimately lead poisoning . This led to a temporary ban on leaded gasoline additives in New York City, New Jersey and Philadelphia , among others , which was lifted by the federal government in 1926.

The Radium Girls

In Orange, New Jersey , the United States Radium Corporation had been operating a factory since 1917 in which the dials of clocks were painted with radioactive luminous paint. The young workers, who later became known as Radium Girls , were contaminated with large amounts of radium due to the complete lack of protective measures and some of them suffered severe damage to health, a number of them even died. After Harrison Stanford Martland , chief medical examiner in Essex County , found the radioactive noble gas radon (a decay product of radium) in the air the Radium Girls breathed , he turned to Charles Norris and Alexander O. Gettler. In 1928, Gettler succeeded in detecting a high concentration of radium in the bones of Amelia Maggia, one of the young women, even five years after her death. He used the radiation emitted by the bones to expose photo paper through an opaque protective cover .

The trials of Fanny Creighton

In the spring of 1923, the brother of Mary Frances "Fanny" Creighton (* July 29, 1899, † July 16, 1936), who lived with her and her husband, died under unknown circumstances. Arsenic was found in the brother's body after an exhumation . A search of the Creightons' home found a cosmetic product called Fowler's Solution containing arsenic . Fanny was charged with murder, but she managed to portray the death as a suicide out of lovesickness. She was acquitted.

Meanwhile, however, prosecutors had begun investigating the deaths of Fanny's in-laws, who had died a few years earlier. After her exhumation, four times the lethal amount of arsenic was found in the corpse of the mother-in-law with the help of the Reinsch test . The day Fanny was acquitted of the murder of her brother, she was charged with the murder of her mother-in-law.

Fanny's attorneys turned to Alexander O. Gettler. He initially carried out the same test and came to the same conclusion. However, through another experiment, Gettler was able to prove that the alleged arsenic was in fact mostly bismuth , which the later deceased had taken with a drug. Gettler testified as a witness at the trial, and Fanny was acquitted again.

In the fall of 1935, Ada Applegate died in Baldwin, Nassau County, New York ; her death aroused no suspicion at first. However, the police became aware of the deaths twelve years earlier through an anonymous letter with newspaper clippings and confiscated Ada's body immediately before the burial. Since no specialist was available on site, Alexander Gettler was entrusted with the investigation. He found four times the lethal amount of arsenic.

The police interrogated Fanny Creighton, who lived in the same house as the Applegates. Fanny admitted to murdering her brother in 1923 over $ 1,000 life insurance. However, after the acquittal at the time, she could not be tried a second time.

The police initially suspected that Fanny Creighton and Everett Applegate had been dating and that Fanny had murdered her lover's wife. However, it turned out that Everett had been dating Fanny's fifteen-year-old daughter, Ruth. Fanny would have been happy to be able to hand over responsibility for her child to Everett Applegate if the two had married.

In January 1936, Fanny Creighton was charged a third time with murder. This time Gettler testified against them as a witness. He was able to prove that the poison and other accompanying substances in the victim's stomach were identical to the ingredients of a rat poison that Fanny had bought shortly before. Fanny and Everett were sentenced to death and died in the electric chair in Sing Sing seven months later .

Teaching

Before joining the OCME, Gettler taught biochemistry at the New York University School of Medicine . In the 1920s, he became a professor of chemistry at Washington Square College of New York University . He was also given a teaching position at the New York University Graduate School . In 1935 he founded a course in toxicology at this graduate school .

When Gettler reached retirement age in 1948, he stopped teaching.

literature

  • Deborah Blum: The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York , Penguin Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0143118824
  • Colin Evans: Blood On The Table: The Greatest Cases of New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner , Berkley, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0425219379
  • Michael Newton: The Encyclopedia of American Law Enforcement , Infobase Publishing, New York 2007, ISBN 978-0816062904

Web links

Commons : Alexander Gettler  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e The Poisoner's Handbook (copy of a documentary broadcast on PBS )
  2. ^ Colin Evans: Blood On The Table: The Greatest Cases of New York City's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner , Berkley, New York 2008, ISBN 978-0425219379
  3. ↑ Deborah Blum: Looney Gas and Lead Poisoning: A Short, Sad History
  4. ^ William G. Eckert: Dr. Harrison Stanford Martland (1883-1954) , The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, Vol. 2 No. March 1, 1981
  5. ↑ Irving Sunshine: Dr. Alexander O. Gettler's documentation of a radiation hazard , The American Journal of Forensic Medicine and Pathology, Vol. 4 No. December 4, 1983
personal data
SURNAME Gettler, Alexander O.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gettler, Alexander Oscar (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American biochemist and forensic toxicology pioneer
DATE OF BIRTH August 13, 1883
PLACE OF BIRTH Galicia
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1968
Place of death Yonkers