Private Eyes and People's Trash

We all know that TV, movie, and mystery novel detectives often solve cases by going through people's trash. This is not surprising to crime fiction folks, but here's a good article about true life detectives and trash on Atlas Obscura --"Private Eyes Tell Us Abouot Digging Through People's Trash" by Dan Nosowitz.

It’s a staple of the detective montage on TV and in movies: an investigator takes a suspect’s trash, dumps it on a table and starts going to town. Often the results pay off handsomely: On a Columbo called episode “Agenda For Murder,” for instance, Columbo solves the case by stealing some gum from the murder’s garbage can and then by matching the murderer’s bite marks on a piece of cheese with teeth marks on that gum. In Sue Grafton’s I Is For Innocent, her detective, Kinsey Millhone, figures out an equally ridiculous murder weapon while digging through the victim’s garbage: a pastry baked with poisonous mushrooms.

Read the rest of the article HERE.