A00020 - Henry Lee, Chinese-American Forensic Scientist and Biochemist Who Testified for the O. J. Simpson Defense
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Henry Lee | |
|---|---|
| 李昌鈺 | |
.jpg) Lee in 2013 | |
| Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Safety | |
| In office 1998–2000 | |
| Governor | John G. Rowland |
| Personal details | |
| Born | November 22, 1938 Rugao, Jiangsu, China |
| Died | March 27, 2026 (aged 87) Henderson, Nevada, U.S. |
| Citizenship |
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| Spouses |
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| Education | |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Biochemistry Forensic science |
| Thesis | A new function of Escherichia coli elongation factor G in chain initiation (1975) |
| Doctoral advisor | Sylvia Lee-Huang |
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Henry Chang-Yu Lee (Chinese: 李昌鈺; pinyin: Lǐ Chāngyù; November 22, 1938 – March 27, 2026) was a Chinese-American forensic scientist and biochemist.
Early life and education
Lee was born in Rugao, Jiangsu, China, on November 22, 1938,[1] the eleventh of thirteen children. His family moved to Shanghai in 1942,[2] and then moved to Taiwan at the end of the Chinese Civil War. His father, who was traveling separately from the rest of the family on the Taiping, disappeared when the passenger ship sank in 1949.[3]
In 1960, Lee graduated from Central Police College with a Bachelor of Arts in police administration. He became a police officer in the Taipei Police Department, where he rose to the rank of captain at age 22, the youngest captain in Taiwan's history.[3]
Lee relocated to the United States with his wife in 1965.[4][5] He re-enrolled in college to study forensic science in New York City, where he graduated from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice with a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) in forensic science 1972. He then earned a Master of Science (M.S.) in 1974 and his Ph.D. in 1975, both in biochemistry from New York University. His doctoral dissertation, completed under his sister, Professor Sylvia Lee-Huang,[1][6] was titled, "A new function of Escherichia coli elongation factor G in chain initiation".[6]
Career
Lee was chief emeritus for the Connecticut State Police from 2000 to 2010, commissioner of Public Safety for Connecticut during 1998 to 2000 and Connecticut's chief criminalist and director of the state police forensic laboratory from 1978 to 2000.
In 2004, a crime documentary series hosted by Lee, Trace Evidence: The Case Files of Dr. Henry Lee, aired on the then Court TV network (now truTV).[7] He appeared on Chinese television and online programs such as KangXi Lai Le in Taiwan, and Voice and Beyond the Edge in China Central Television on mainland China.[8][9]
His biography, True Crime Experiences with Dr. Henry Chang-Yu Lee, was authored by attorney Daniel Hong Deng of Rosemead, California.
He was the founder of the Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science, affiliated with the University of New Haven.[10]
Famous cases
 | This section needs additional citations for verification. (March 2026) |
Lee worked on famous cases such as the JonBenét Ramsey murder case,[1] the Helle Crafts wood chipper murder (the first murder conviction in Connecticut without the victim's body,[11]) the O. J. Simpson and Laci Peterson cases, the 9/11 forensic investigation, the Washington, DC, sniper shootings and reinvestigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy.[12]
He investigated the March 19, 2004, shooting incident of Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Lu.
Following the O. J. Simpson case, Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr hired Lee to join his investigation of the death of Deputy White House Counsel Vince Foster in Fort Marcy Park on July 20, 1993.
Lee also was consulted on the 1991 death of investigative journalist Danny Casolaro, who died in a West Virginia motel room. Initially, Lee said the evidence presented to him by police was consistent with suicide. A few years later when more evidence from the hotel scene was revealed to him, Lee formally withdrew his earlier conclusion and stated, "a reconstruction is only as good as the information supplied by the police".[13]
He was consulted as a blood spatter analyst for defense during the trial of Michael Peterson, a fiction writer and politician from North Carolina who in 2003 was convicted of the murder of his wife, Kathleen Peterson.
In 2007, Lee testified as a prosecution expert witness at the first trial of Cal Harris, an upstate New York car dealer accused of killing his wife on the night of September 11, 2001. Since no body has ever been found, the state's best evidence of foul play was some medium-velocity castoff impact blood spatter on the walls of the house's garage and kitchen. Lee told the jury that it could only have come from someone lower than 29 inches (740 mm) above ground. Harris was convicted at that trial and a retrial after new evidence emerged,[14] but ultimately acquitted at a fourth trial after his conviction got overturned on appeal.
In 2008, Lee was involved in the early stages of investigation in Orlando, Florida for the missing toddler Caylee Anthony.[15]
Phil Spector trial
In May 2007, California Superior Court Judge Larry Paul Fidler, the judge in the Phil Spector murder trial, said that he had concluded Lee hid or destroyed a piece of evidence from the scene of actress Lana Clarkson's shooting. Lee denied the allegation and testified that he was astonished and insulted by claims by lawyers that he had collected an object that was not turned over to prosecutors as required by law. University of Southern California law professor Jean Rosenbluth said that Judge Fidler's ruling was "very narrow" and noted the judge had made no finding that Lee had lied on the stand or acted maliciously.[16]
Allegations of error
In June 2019, the Connecticut Supreme Court concluded that Lee had erred in the murder trial testimony of (then) teenagers Shawn Henning and Ralph Birch;[17] Lee said a towel tested positive for blood, but he had not tested it at all. Later tests found no blood. The Daily Beast questioned additional cases in which Lee had testified.[18] At a June 17 press conference, Lee said that he had tested the towel, adding that chemical screening tests for blood had been done at the crime scene on the date of the homicide.[19][20]
In July 2023, a federal court found that Lee had fabricated evidence in the Henning–Birch trial. Henning and Birch spent 30 years in prison before being cleared of the crime.[21] In September 2023, the state of Connecticut agreed to settle Henning and Birch's federal wrongful conviction lawsuit against Lee, eight police investigators and the town of New Milford for $25.2 million.[22]
Personal life and death
Lee held dual Taiwanese and U.S. citizenship.[23] Lee resided in Connecticut, where he lived with his wife Margaret Lee, whom he married in 1962, until her death on August 1, 2017. His wife worked as a teacher and then a researcher for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center in West Haven, Connecticut.[24] He had two children, Sherry and Stanley, with her.[1]
He remarried on December 1, 2018, to Xiaping Jiang, CEO of Jiadi (Hong Kong) Co., Yangzhou Jiadi Clothing Co., Ltd, and Yangzhou Jiadi Senior Care Center.[25]
Lee died after a brief illness at his home in Henderson, Nevada, on March 27, 2026, aged 87.[12][26]
Legacy
On November 5, 2016, the Henry C. Lee Museum of Forensic Sciences (Chinese: 李昌钰刑侦科学博物馆) was opened in his hometown of Rugao in Jiangsu, which is the first forensic science museum in the world. The new site opened in November 2023.[27][28]
References
- Longman, Jeré (March 28, 2026). "Henry C. Lee Dies at 87; Forensic Scientist Testified in Defense of O.J. Simpson". The New York Times. Retrieved March 28, 2026.
- "我和上海｜上海是我的第二故乡". China News Service. October 22, 2025. Retrieved March 28, 2026.
- "Mayor honors forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee". Taipei Times. December 21, 2004. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
- "Letting the Evidence Speak". Taiwan Today. April 1, 2015. Retrieved January 20, 2018.
- "About Central Police College". Central Police University. October 15, 2008. Archived from the original on October 23, 2008.
- "A new function of Escherichia coli elongation factor G in chain initiation" (PDF) (PhD Thesis). 1975. Retrieved August 13, 2025 – via ProQuest.
- "Court TV Collects Trace Evidence". Multichannel News. September 18, 2003. Retrieved June 19, 2024.
- "开讲啦视频". CCTV-1. CCTV. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
- "挑战不可能第二季首页". CCTV. Retrieved December 11, 2017.
- "Front Page". The Henry C. Lee Institute of Forensic Science. Retrieved January 25, 2020.
- The Woodchipper Wife Killer. Crime Stories. 2008.
- "Internationally Acclaimed Forensic Scientist Dr. Henry C. Lee Dies, Leaving Remarkable Legacy". University of New Haven. March 27, 2026. Retrieved March 27, 2026.
- John Connolly. "Dead Right". Spy. No. Dec 1992–Jan 1993.
- People v. Harris, 2011 NY Slip Op 6045 (N.Y.A.D 3rd 2011).
- "Casey Anthony defense team files expert witness list". Orlando Sentinel. December 1, 2010.
- "Spector murder trial: Misstep could haunt renowned scientist". CNN. December 31, 2007.
- Robinson, C. J. (June 14, 2019). "SHAWN HENNING v. COMMISSIONER OF CORRECTION (SC 20137)" (PDF). Connecticut Law Journal. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
- O'Neill, Natalie (June 24, 2019). "How Many Murder Cases Did Celeb Forensic Scientist Henry Lee Botch?". The Daily Beast. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
- Zaretsky, By Mark (June 17, 2019). "Forensic scientist Henry Lee: No false testimony in murder case". New Haven Register.
- "Judge finds forensic scientist Henry Lee liable for fabricating evidence in a murder case". AP. July 21, 2023. Retrieved August 3, 2023.
- "U.S. Court: Forensic scientist Henry Lee liable for fabricating evidence that sent two teens to prison for murder". Hartford Courant. July 22, 2023.
- "Connecticut agrees to a $25 million settlement in the Henry Lee evidence fabrication case". Connecticut Public Radio. September 20, 2023.
- 陳, 重生 (November 21, 2018). 表態挺侯後返美!李昌鈺下月再婚新娘是中國企業家蔣霞萍. Newtalk News (in Chinese (Taiwan)). Retrieved January 2, 2025.
- "Wife of Dr. Henry Lee Mourned". Patch. August 4, 2017.
- "Judge Gill back in courthouse to conduct a wedding". Litchfield.bz. December 3, 2018. Archived from the original on December 9, 2018. Retrieved December 9, 2018.
- "Famed forensic scientist Henry Lee dies at 87". Taipei Times. Associated Press. March 29, 2026. Retrieved March 29, 2026.
- "李昌钰刑侦科学博物馆揭牌 "华人神探"回乡捐赠毕生心血". China News Service. November 5, 2016. Retrieved March 28, 2026.
- 刘孝斌 (March 28, 2026). "江苏如皋李昌钰刑侦科学博物馆正常开放，正在布置悼念场地，游客可以前往献花，李昌钰生前一直说：我是中国江苏南通如皋人". Jimu News. Retrieved March 28, 2026.
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Henry C. Lee Dies at 87; Forensic Scientist Testified in Defense of O.J. Simpson
The Times called him “the world’s most highly regarded forensic criminologist,” but later in his career he faced accusations that he had hidden and fabricated evidence.
Henry C. Lee, a renowned forensic scientist who testified in numerous high-profile criminal cases, most notably the 1995 murder trial of the former football star O.J. Simpson, died on Friday at his home in Henderson, Nev. He was 87.
His death, following a brief illness, was announced by his family and the University of New Haven in Connecticut, where he was a professor for more than 50 years.
Dr. Lee served as a consultant to some 600 law enforcement agencies and testified more than 1,000 times in criminal and civil court in the United States and abroad, the university said. In 2000, The New York Times called him “perhaps the world’s most highly regarded forensic criminologist,” though his reputation was called into question later in his career.
Many of his cases were widely publicized, but none drew more attention than the Simpson case, which became a deliberation about race in America. Dr. Lee testified for the defense, saying that there was “something wrong” with the way the Los Angeles Police Department had handled the blood that was collected as evidence.
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His testimony supported the defense team’s suggestion that the evidence could have been tampered with and that officers might have planted Mr. Simpson’s blood at the crime scene. Mr. Simpson was acquitted of the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, his former wife, and her friend, Ronald L. Goldman.
Dr. Lee served as a consultant on other cases that drew extensive public attention, including the 1996 killing of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado and the 2007 murder trial of the record producer Phil Spector.
But it was in 1986, when he identified a murdered woman based on the fragments of bone, teeth and fingernails he was able to find after her body had been put through a wood-chipping machine, that he began to make a name for himself. He helped to convict her husband in what became Connecticut’s first murder conviction without a corpse.
Dr. Lee also once managed to have 11 miles of one of the nation’s busiest highways shut down overnight to recreate a shooting on the New Jersey Turnpike. His career, The Times wrote in 2000, “tipped the balance in favor of crime-fighting as science rather than art.”
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He did not, however, hesitate to use theatricality in the courtroom when he considered it necessary. He dropped red ink from a fountain pen held at various heights and angles to show jurors how blood splatters could reveal the way a crime had been committed. He used ketchup and mustard as props to demonstrate how a sequence of multiple stabbings could be determined.
He also used his dry wit on the witness stand. In 1991, he testified for the defense in a sexual assault trial that resulted in the acquittal of William Kennedy Smith, a nephew of former President John F. Kennedy.
When asked by the prosecution why he had used a silk handkerchief to rub on the grass in front of the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach, Fla., to see if the grass would have left stains on the accuser’s panties, Dr. Lee replied, “Usually, I do not carry panties. I carry handkerchief.”
Henry Chang-yuh Lee was born on Nov. 22, 1938, in Rugao, China, northwest of Shanghai. His father, Homing Lee, and mother, Annfu Wang, were business owners. The family fled to Taiwan in the 1940s, during a period of conflict between the Nationalists and the Communists in China.
While traveling separately to meet the family in Taiwan, his father was killed in a shipwreck, and his mother had to raise 13 children alone, Dr. Lee said in 2016, during an appearance at a Connecticut high school.
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Their once-affluent family was left with little money. As a child, he owned one pair of shoes, he said, and he took them off during his two-mile walk to school to keep them from wearing out.
His mother, who lived to be more than 100 years old, pushed him to succeed, spanking him when he didn’t do his homework. “Today, they would call it child abuse,” he said. “But I thank her for it.”
After finishing school, he enrolled at a police academy, one of the few opportunities available to him, and became a captain with the Taipei City Police Department. He married Margaret Song in 1962, and in 1965 they left for New York at the urging of his sister Sylvia Lee-Huang, a biochemistry professor at New York University.
At the time, he knew four words of English, he told The Times in 2000, and worked as a waiter, groundskeeper, stock boy and martial arts instructor while attending the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in forensic science in 1972. He went on to earn a master’s degree in biochemistry in 1974 and a doctorate in 1975, both from New York University, before joining the University of New Haven, where he founded the forensic science program.
From 1978 to 2000, Dr. Lee served as the chief criminalist for the State of Connecticut and the director of the state’s Police Forensic Science Laboratory. From 1998 to 2000, he also served as commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Public Safety and the Connecticut State Police.
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Dr. Lee’s first wife died in 2017. He is survived by Xiaping Jiang, whom he married in 2018; two children, Sherry Hersey and Stanley Lee, from his first marriage; two stepsons, Yan Liu and Tianchen Liu; four grandchildren; and his sister Sylvia.
In the mid-1980s, in the so-called preppy murder case, Dr. Lee was hired by the team defending Robert E. Chambers Jr., who was accused of murdering Jennifer Levin in Central Park. Dr. Lee was never called to testify because he told Mr. Chambers’s lawyer, Jack Litman, that his client was “guilty as hell.” Mr. Chambers pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 1988.
Later in life, Dr. Lee faced scrutiny himself, as his work on two cases and his reputation were challenged.
In 2007, the judge in the murder trial of Mr. Spector ruled that Dr. Lee, a consultant for the defense, had removed something from the crime scene and hidden it from the prosecution.
Prosecutors contended that it was a piece of fingernail that would have shown that the actress Lana Clarkson had resisted having a gun placed in her mouth before being shot at Mr. Spector’s California home. The defense claimed that she had shot herself.
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The judge did not hold Dr. Lee in contempt, and Dr. Lee denied taking anything from the crime scene. After the first trial ended in a hung jury, Mr. Spector was convicted of second-degree murder in 2009.
In 2023, Connecticut’s attorney general agreed to a $25 million settlement with two men who had spent three decades in jail after being convicted of murder. Those convictions, which were overturned in 2020, had been based in part on testimony by Dr. Lee regarding the supposed presence of blood on a towel. A federal judge ruled that Dr. Lee had fabricated the evidence, saying that there was no corroboration that he had conducted any blood tests on the towel.
Dr. Lee defended himself in a statement, saying, “I have no motive nor reason to fabricate evidence.”
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