The Beautiful Kind

The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death takes two of my favorite things and combines them - dollhouses and true crime. Frances Glessner Lee, a rich grandma, built miniature death scenes for the local police department as a teaching tool. These little houses have blood splattered on the walls and girl dolls thrust headfirst under the frozen running water, stiff legs in the air.

Lee knit stockings with needles the size of straight pins, and constructed tiny nooses. Most of the items in the dollhouses are actually functional - the pencils can write, the knives can stab…

Many of the scenes portray adultery gone wrong, such as the log cabin scene, where a man is found facedown, a gun, his hat, and cigarettes scattered around his body. Did his lover do it, or was it suicide?

Some people speculated that Lee took her dislike of women out on her dolls by “murdering” them. So odd that she spent HOURS working on these models, a rich woman recreating lower class tragedies in miniature. A crush she had on a charming young medical examiner is what inspired her to follow her tiny life of crime.

Though she went through life eschewing religion, towards the end, Lee converted to Catholicism.