The Nutshell Studies

In the 1940s, Frances Glessner Lee reconstructed crimes in miniature. Her extraordinary creations, known as Nutshell Studies, are still used in police training  The models, known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death, occupy a unique place in the criminological history of America – and offer glimpses into the mind of wealthy socialite Frances Glessner Lee, who is widely believed to have been the inspiration for Jessica Fletcher, the character played by Angela Lansbury in Murder, She Wrote. During the 1940s and 1950s, at the Glessner's Rocks Estate in Bethlehem, New Hampshire, Lee assembled these scenes of domestic dysfunction with skill and obsessive attention to detail.