Louis r vitullo biography

American forensic scientist (1924–2006)

Louis R. Vitullo (July 2, 1924 – January 3, 2006) was a Chicago police sergeant and chief microanalyst at the city's crime lab.

Vitullo helped to develop the rape kit, which standardized evidence collection in cases of sexual assault. Marty Goddard, a victim advocate, had seen the need for more systematic evidence at trial, and brought her concerns and the idea for a kit to Vitullo. Vitullo helped develop Goddard's prototype. Although the resulting evidence kits were for a time called Vitullo kits, this name has more recently come under criticism as part of a general push to honor Goddard's contribution to the kits.

Death

Vitullo died at Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital in Barrington, Illinois, on January 3, 2006, after he collapsed at his home in Cary.

References

ABOUT THE BOOK

When Louis R. Vitullo started as a “beat cop” with the Chicago Police Department in 1951 he couldn’t have guessed the impact he would make on the history of forensics. As Sergeant and then Chief Microanalyst of the crime lab, he oversaw some of Chicago’s most notorious cases, which allowed him to address flaws in crime scene investigation. In 1978 he created the Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit, now known as Rape Kits, which standardized the collection of evidence in sexual assault cases.

These “Vitullo Kits” have increased the convictions of sexual offenders and improved survivors’ ability to obtain justice by challenging biases toward sexual crimes and fighting victim shaming. Additionally, they assist in exonerating the wrongly accused. However, Vitullo never imagined that over 400,000 kits would be discovered untested and collecting dust in evidence lockers throughout the United States. He had done his part to help those affected by sexual assault crimes… why aren’t we doing ours?

The Power of Truth is the story of Louis R. Vitullo and the legacy of the rape kit as told by his granddaughter, a forensic psychologist who works with sexually deviant and serial offenders, a compelling chronicle of a family legacy addressing criminal justice reform.

MY REVIEW

In the United States alone a rape happens every 98 seconds!

I receive a lot of requests from authors to read their books and when Dr. Engels asked me to review her book about her beloved and well-respected grandfather who was the man behind the creation of the Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit or Rape Kit, I was happy to do it.  

Mr. Vitullo was an Italian immigrant, World War II vet, and beat cop in Chicago.  Dr. Engels describes her grandfather as a very loving husband, father and grandfather, a funny man, a private man, and a dedicated women’s rights advocate.

In the 1970s in Chicago, Vitullo met Martha Goddard, who was a vic

When Louis R. Vitullo started as a "beat cop" with the Chicago Police Department in 1951 he couldn't have guessed the impact he would make on the history of forensics. As Sergeant and then Chief Microanalyst of the crime lab, he oversaw some of Chicago's most notorious cases, which allowed him to address flaws in crime scene investigation. In 1978 he created the Vitullo Evidence Collection Kit, now known as Rape Kits, which standardized the collection of evidence in sexual assault cases.

These "Vitullo Kits" have increased the convictions of sexual offenders and improved survivors' ability to obtain justice by challenging biases toward sexual crimes and fighting victim shaming. Additionally, they assist in exonerating the wrongly accused. However, Vitullo never imagined that over 400,000 kits would be discovered untested and collecting dust in evidence lockers throughout the United States. He had done his part to help those affected by sexual assault crimes... why aren't we doing ours?

The Power of Truth is the story of Louis R. Vitullo and the legacy of the rape kit as told by his granddaughter, a forensic psychologist who works with sexually deviant and serial offenders, a compelling chronicle of a family legacy addressing criminal justice reform.

The first rape kits were given to hospitals in 1978. Chicago was the testing ground. According to a Tribune article from the time, more than two dozen Cook County hospitals received the kits, courtesy of the Chicago Hospital Council. Police had long insisted that corroborating evidence of sex crimes was near impossible, so Bernard Carey, then state’s attorney, explained the kits would be used to create a process for establishing evidence of a sexual assault. At the end of the article, there was a name, Louis Vitullo, a Chicago police sergeant and analyst in the crime lab who specialized in microscope work. The invention of the kit was credited to him. Vitullo had made his name a decade earlier by identifying the fingerprints of mass murderer Richard Speck.

But Vitullo didn’t invent the rape kit — at least, not alone.

Neither did Carey, whose office positioned the project as a collaboration with Vitullo.

About six years ago, journalist Pagan Kennedy — who has made inventors and the development of pioneering ideas her specialty — became obsessed with knowing who did create the first kit. She suspected the answer might not be Vitullo, partly because, in the earliest reports about the kit, another name floated in the mix of Illinois activists, politicians and police commanders involved with its development: Marty Goddard, which is what everyone called the otherwise formal Chicago woman named Martha Goddard.

By the time Kennedy, who lives in New England, sorted out the actual origin of the kit — a fraught puzzle recounted with absorbing detail in her new book, “The Secret History of the Rape Kit: A True Crime Story” — she had a broader portrait of how a country, and particularly a large city like Chicago, came to change its views about sexual assault.

“The rape kit was in the news when I started, mainly because, years after it was first tested, there was a huge backlog of untested kits,” Kennedy sa