Henry Lee

Henry Chang-Yu Lee was born on 22 November 1938 in Rugao, Jiangsu Province, China, the eleventh of thirteen children. His family moved to Shanghai in 1942 and, at the end of the Chinese Civil War, to Taiwan. His father travelled separately aboard the passenger steamer Taiping and disappeared when the ship sank in 1949, leaving his mother to raise the children. Lee later credited his older sister, Dr. Sylvia Lee-Huang, for supporting him throughout his studies and career, once saying: "Without the support of Dr. Sylvia Lee-Huang, there would be no Dr. Henry Lee."

Lee graduated from the Central Police College (now Central Police University) in Taiwan in 1960 with a Bachelor of Arts in police administration. After moving to the United States he enrolled at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, earning a Bachelor of Science in forensic science in 1972. He then studied biochemistry at New York University, receiving a master's degree in 1974 and a PhD in 1975. His dissertation, supervised by his sister Sylvia Lee-Huang, was titled "A new function of Escherichia coli elongation factor G in chain initiation". He later received about 30 honorary degrees, including two from the University of New Haven (1991 and 2010).

After graduating in 1960 Lee joined the Taipei Police Department. He rose to captain at the age of 22, which the University of New Haven and the Taipei Times describe as the youngest in Taiwan's history. In 1964 he left Taiwan with his wife Margaret to pursue further study in the United States.

Lee joined the University of New Haven in 1975 as an assistant professor and received tenure as a full professor three years later. From 1978 to 2000 he was chief criminalist for the State of Connecticut and director of the Connecticut State Police Forensic Science Laboratory, building it into a widely consulted lab. Governor John G. Rowland appointed him Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Safety, overseeing the state police, from 1998 to 2000. He then served as chief emeritus of the state's Division of Scientific Services from 2000 to 2010. Retired Connecticut state's attorney Mary Galvin told The New York Times in 2000 that his work had "changed the face of forensic knowledge among police officers and other criminal justice professionals."

At the University of New Haven Lee founded the forensic science programme, which the university says grew from a small classroom equipped with a single fingerprint kit into one of the nation's best-regarded forensic science departments. He taught there for more than 50 years and sat as an emeritus member of its Board of Governors for nearly 30 years. In 1998 he founded the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science; in 2010 the university opened a three-storey, 15,000 square foot home for the institute with a crime scene centre and crisis management centre. The university's Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences is named after him. He gave commencement addresses at the university in 1991 and again in spring 2025.

Lee became internationally known after testifying for the defence in the 1995 O.J. Simpson murder trial, where he questioned how blood evidence had been handled and told the court "something's wrong". A juror later said the panel saw him as the most credible witness of the trial.

He also worked on the 1986 Helle Crafts wood chipper murder, which produced Connecticut's first murder conviction without a victim's body; the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey; the Laci Peterson case; the death of Chandra Levy; the kidnapping of Elizabeth Smart; the forensic investigation after the 11 September 2001 attacks; the Washington, DC sniper shootings; and a reinvestigation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr hired him to review the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster. He testified as a blood spatter analyst for the defence in the trial of novelist Michael Peterson, as a prosecution witness in the 2007 trial of Cal Harris in New York, and was involved early in the Caylee Anthony case in Florida. In April 2004 he travelled to Taiwan to analyse the shooting of President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu.

According to the University of New Haven, he worked in all 50 US states and more than 46 countries, lectured in more than 70 countries, consulted for about 600 law enforcement agencies and testified more than 1,000 times.

Lee wrote or co-wrote more than 40 books. They include Forensic Science: An Introduction to Criminalistics (1983, with Peter R. De Forest and R. E. Gaensslen), Famous Crimes Revisited (2001, with Jerry Labriola), Henry Lee's Crime Scene Handbook (2001, with Timothy Palmbach and Marilyn T. Miller), Cracking Cases: The Science of Solving Crimes (2002) and Cracking More Cases (2004, both with Thomas W. O'Neil), Blood Evidence: How DNA Is Revolutionizing the Way We Solve Crimes (2003, with Frank Tirnady), Dr. Henry Lee's Forensic Files (2006) and Shocking Cases from Dr. Henry Lee's Forensic Files (2010). At his death he was finishing a book on missing-persons investigations.

In 2004 he hosted the Court TV (now truTV) documentary series Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee. He was a familiar face on Chinese-language television, including Kangxi Lai Le in Taiwan and CCTV programmes in mainland China, where he was popularly called the "Chinese super detective" (華人神探). A biography, True Crime Experiences with Dr. Henry Chang-Yu Lee, was written by attorney Daniel Hong Deng.

Lee preached persistence and optimism. His personal slogan, according to the University of New Haven, was "Make the impossible possible", and at the 2025 commencement he told graduates that "there is no obstacle that cannot be overcome if you persist and believe." He saw forensic science as a global, collaborative effort, saying at the 2010 opening of his institute that it would help make the world "a small community engaged in fighting crime." He also stressed the limits of the discipline, observing after the Danny Casolaro case that "a reconstruction is only as good as the information supplied by the police." He donated speaking honoraria and major gifts to education over the years.

In May 2007 Judge Larry Paul Fidler, presiding over the Phil Spector murder trial, concluded that Lee had hidden or destroyed a small piece of evidence from the scene of actress Lana Clarkson's death. Lee denied it and said he was astonished and insulted by the claim.

In June 2019 the Connecticut Supreme Court found that Lee had given erroneous testimony in the 1989 trial of Shawn Henning and Ralph Birch, who were convicted of the 1985 killing of Everett Carr in New Milford. Lee had testified that a towel bore stains consistent with blood, but later tests showed it was not blood. The convictions were vacated in 2020 after the men had spent decades in prison. On 21 July 2023 US District Judge Victor Bolden ruled Lee liable for fabricating evidence, writing that the record contained no evidence the test was performed. Lee denied wrongdoing, telling reporters at a press conference: "In my 57-year career, I have investigated over 8,000 cases and never, ever was accused of any wrongdoing or for testifying intentionally wrong." In September 2023 Connecticut agreed to a 25.2 million dollar settlement of the wrongful conviction lawsuit against Lee, eight police investigators and the town of New Milford. The Daily Beast and others also questioned other cases in which he testified.

Lee married Margaret Lee in 1962. She worked as a teacher and later as a researcher at the US Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Haven, Connecticut, and died on 1 August 2017. They had two children, daughter Sherry Hersey and son Stanley Lee, and four grandchildren. On 1 December 2018 Lee married Xiaping (Angel) Jiang, a businesswoman who heads clothing and senior care companies in Yangzhou and Hong Kong; she has two sons, Yan Liu and Tianchen Liu. Lee held both Taiwanese and US citizenship. He lived for decades in Connecticut and spent his last years in Henderson, Nevada.

Lee received about 30 honorary degrees, according to the University of New Haven, including degrees from the University of New Haven, the University of New Hampshire and American International College. Both the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science and the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Sciences at the University of New Haven bear his name. In 2004 the mayor of Taipei honoured him, as reported by the Taipei Times. On 5 November 2016 the Henry C. Lee Museum of Forensic Sciences opened in his hometown of Rugao, described as the first forensic science museum of its kind, and it moved to a new site in November 2023.

Lee died peacefully at his home in Henderson, Nevada, on Friday, 27 March 2026, after a brief illness. He was 87. His death was announced by his family together with the University of New Haven; the specific illness was not made public. University president Jens Frederiksen called him "a remarkable individual" whose contributions were "extraordinary and unmatched." Lee had asked that no memorial service or celebration of life be held, and on 5 April 2026 his family asked that this wish be respected, inviting people to honour him through learning, mentorship and the pursuit of justice. Donations in his memory were directed to the Friends of Dr. Henry C. Lee Fund at the University of New Haven. The forensic science museum in Rugao set up a space where visitors could lay flowers in his memory.

Lee helped turn crime scene reconstruction into a public science, both through high-profile courtroom work and through the generations of students and police officers he trained in Connecticut and around the world. The Associated Press said he helped bring modern crime scene investigation into the public spotlight. His legacy is also a cautionary one: the Henning and Birch ruling became a widely cited example of how the authority of a celebrated expert can contribute to wrongful convictions. Supporters remember the Taipei police captain who arrived in America with almost nothing and built an institution; critics remember the cases where his testimony did not hold up.