About this item

Luke S. May played a significant role in the development of scientific methods of crime investigation. Although basically self-taught in scientific matters, May spent over a half century practicing scientific crime detection and built a solid reputation among police agencies and attorneys in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada as a serious and effective scientific investigator. This reputation as "America's Sherlock Holmes" also led to his being consulted on the establishment of the first full service public American crime laboratory at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, and on a laboratory for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.When May began, few people, anywhere, used scientific tools to investigate crime.