Berkeley, California, 1933. In the laboratory, jam-packed with flasks, microscopes, Bunsen burners and hundreds and hundreds of books, sits a man destined to become one of the first US forensic scientists and successfully solve more than two thousand crimes in his career. His name is Edward Oscar Heinrich, and he rightfully deserves the admiring nickname American Sherlock Holmes. Oscar Heinrich worked during Prohibition and the Great Depression. At a time when even simple fingerprinting was considered a novelty and caused great doubts in court, and crimes were investigated with the help of the mind and perseverance of the police. And only Heinrich's genius gave the police such obvious methods, it would seem, these days, such as blood spatter analysis, ballistic examination and analysis of hidden fingerprints. Before you is a documentary history of the life, activities and investigations of a person who, with his own hands, created much of what modern forensics is based on.