"There’s no doubt the dead are talking, we’re just not listening."

-Our Wildest Dreams

Remember when we didn’t know DNA from the NBA? And “forensics” was rarely uttered, let alone the focal point of television shows and courtroom dramas?

Those days are far behind us. In fact, it looks suspiciously like we can’t get enough of crime investigation. Top-rated television shows feed into our insatiable appetite for forensic justice with programming like CSI, NCIS, Criminal Minds, Without a Trace, Cold Case, 48 Hour Mystery, Bones and Law & Order.

But it wasn’t TV alone that made forensics so hot that it’s the fastest growing college major in the United States. The stage was set back in the 1930s. And if it wasn’t for one extraordinary woman and her penchant for making miniature murder scenes, we might still be pinning all our hopes on dusting for prints.

The new documentary film, Our Wildest Dreams, explores our collective fascination with forensics while unearthing the criminal element that lurks in one particularly gruesome collection of dollhouses. Rather than reflecting an idealized version of reality, these surreal dollhouses reveal the darker, disturbing side of domestic life.

Created strictly for adults, these dollhouse dioramas are home to violent murder, prostitution, mental illness, adultery and alcohol abuse. Each dollhouse has tiny corpse dolls, representing an actual murder victim. In one bizarre case, a beautiful woman lays shot to death in her bed, her clean-cut, pajama-clad husband lies next to the bed, also fatally shot. Their sweet little baby was shot as she slept in her crib. Blood is spattered everywhere. And all the doors were locked from the inside, meaning the case is likely a double homicide/suicide. But something isn’t right. The murder weapon is nowhere near the doll corpses – instead the gun was found in another room.

"Convict the guilty, clear the innocent, and find the truth in a nutshell."

-Police Mantra in Our Wildest Dreams

Why would anyone create such macabre dollhouses? And why would anyone re-create crime scenes with such exquisite craftsmanship that artists and miniaturists from around the globe clamor (unsuccessfully) to experience this dollhouse collection in person?

Our Wildest Dreams investigates these haunting “Nutshell Studies” dollhouses and the unlikely grandmother who painstakingly created them – Frances Glessner Lee. Known as the Patron Saint of Forensics, Lee didn’t let gender biases and prescribed social behavior of a wealthy heiress keep her from pioneering the new arena of “legal medicine” in the late 1930s and 1940s.

To train investigators, Lee created 18 dioramas (20 actually, but two are missing) for detectives to study crime scenes from every angle, including the medical angle. She used only the most mysterious cases (cases that could have easily been misruled as accidents, murders, or suicides) to challenge students’ ability to interpret evidence. Almost 70 years later, Lee’s dollhouses are still relevant training tools because all the latest technological advances in forensics do not change the fact that crime scenes can be misread, and then someone will literally get away with murder. But the story does not end with Lee and her dollhouses of death.

The nation is obsessed with forensic justice television, and why? Why do we love to watch a skewed reality of crime-fighting forensics? The answer lies somewhere with the need we have to entertain ourselves with stories about our fear of untimely, brutal death. The societal truths about how loved ones often murder one another is far too wicked to face, let alone change. Instead, we prefer to escape into a safe haven where solving murders easily wraps up in under one hour.

This documentary is currently in production, with 25 hours of interviews and b-roll shot. Key interviews include a Glessner Museum historian, the Chief Medical Examiner of Maryland, several homicide detectives in Baltimore, and state morgue staff. Our most recent shoots include the FBI training facility, “The Body Farm” – a forensic anthropology site at the University of Tennessee, and an interview with Naren Shankar, an executive producer of the television series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.

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