The Backstory: The last thing they saw

Criminal forensics has seen some pretty amazing advances over the past decade. But less than a century ago, investigators were attempting to nab killers through "optography," a process that involved dissecting a murder victim's eyes to harvest an actual image of the last thing the victim saw.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Imagine you're searching for a killer, and all you have
to do is peer deeply into the eyes of the
victim to see the image of the murderer. I'm Patty Steele,
the last thing they saw next on the backstory. The
backstory is back criminal forensics trying to find evidence that's

(00:21):
gonna help convict a murderer or some other kind of
criminal is a fairly new science, believe it or not.
But what if the eyes of the victim held a
tiny imprint of the last thing they saw before dying,
almost like a camera shot. Okay, it's eighteen seventy six,
early in the advent of camera technology, and people were
well aware of the similarities between the eye and a camera.

(00:44):
So at that point, to them, it didn't seem very
far fetched that the eye could actually retain some sort
of image. Now to us these days, it kind of
sounds a little ridiculous, right, Well, it was kind of
a big deal from eighteen seventy six all the way
up until nineteen twenty four. In fact, it was even
used on at least one of the victims of Jack

(01:06):
the Ripper, with investigators hanging on to the victim's eyeballs.
It's called optography, and it all came about when a
German scientist discovered a light sensitive substance in the eyes retina,
which he called visual purple. He and a colleague even
managed to capture images from the eyes of an unlucky
rabbit acting as a test subject. The rabbit's head was

(01:29):
covered for three minutes in total darkness so that the
visual purple could accumulate. It was then held in place
staring at a window for another three minutes before it
was killed. Immediately afterward, the eyes were dissected, and the
captured image does show a fuzzy but pretty obvious window. Now,
the problem is it seemed to work on some animals,

(01:51):
particularly rabbits, but not so much on humans, because the
focal point of the human eye is a whole lot
smaller than a rabbit's. They had even tested a human
subject who'd just been executed. They dissected the man's eyes
in an attempt to capture the last image they knew
he'd seen before death. The result a blurry, indistinct shape, unclear,

(02:13):
but enough to keep the possibility alive in the scientific community,
even if it wouldn't have been clear enough to take
to court. In fact, with that limited success, a lot
of folks believed that optography would be the future of
forensic investigations. A forensic scientists felt that as technology advanced,
they get a much better image. The news cycle also

(02:36):
played a big role in keeping the belief in optography alive.
For decades, people claimed to use the technique successfully, at
least according to newspapers in those years. Some of the
headlines photos show killer's face in retina and slain man's
eye shows picture of a murderer. In another case, in
nineteen fourteen, the Washington Times ran a headline that said,

(02:59):
in image on her retina may show girl's slayer. The
story goes that a twenty year old woman had been
beaten to death, and when police found her body, her
eyes were still open. Her family hoped that the last
thing she saw may be the face of her murderer,
and that it would be imprinted like a photographic negative
on her retinas. Well, apparently not. While the optograms were

(03:22):
entered into evidence, the accused killer was tried twice and
found not guilty. Anyway, As decades went by, advances in
technology seemed only to further debunk the use of optography
for criminal forensic purposes, but believe it or not. As
recently as nineteen twenty four, forensic optography was admitted as

(03:43):
evidence after a guy in Germany was charged with killing
eight members of his family and household staff. According to
the scientist in charge, images from the retinas of two
of the victims showed what he said were images of
the murderer's face, as well as an act used to
kill the gardener. The killer was tried, convicted, and executed,

(04:05):
with the optographic images included along with the rest of
the evidence in the case. Newspapers said that the killer,
when told about the incriminating optagrams, confessed to the murders.
But finally, in twenty eleven, a German legal publication looked
at the case and called the optograms that had been
used absurd forensics. This almost sounds like the Twilight Zone, right,

(04:30):
Imagine if you will, a world where the final sight
of a murder victim could solve the crime. It intrigued people,
and the idea wove its way into detective stories and
criminal chatter. At the time. There were books and short
stories from writers like Jules Vern and Rudyard Kipling that
used optography as key plot points, and in movies and

(04:51):
later TV shows, it was also used. Some of the
films include in nineteen thirty six Bela Lagosi and Boris Karloff.
Flick called The invisib the nineteen sixty four fantasy The
Eyes Have It, and others. From the nineteen seventies right
through twenty thirteen, TV shows like the RoboCop series, Fringe
and Wild Wild West all used optography to solve murders

(05:15):
and finally, music legend Jim Morrison wrote about the optographic
experiments on rabbits in his text Jim Morrison Raps in
nineteen sixty eight. Now, at the end of the day,
optography is all about human curiosity and our sort of
relentless pursuit of scientific advancement, not just at that point
in time, but constantly over human experience. It reflects our

(05:39):
fascination with the unknown and our desire to see the unseeable.
I'm Patty steel The Backstories a production of iHeartMedia, Premiere Networks,
the Elvis, Duran and Steel Trap Productions. Our producer is

(06:03):
Doug Fraser. Our writer Jake Kushner. We have new episodes
every Tuesday and Friday. Feel free to reach out to
me with comments and even story suggestions on Instagram at
real Patty Steele and on Facebook at Patty Steele. Thanks
for listening to the backstory with Patty Steele, the pieces
of history you didn't know you needed to know.