Starred review from October 14, 2024
Journalist Kennedy (Inventology) offers an exhilarating biography of Martha “Marty” Goddard (1941–2015), the inventor of the rape kit, whose contributions were downplayed in the historical record until Kennedy resurfaced her story for a 2020 New York Times Magazine article. Working at a nonprofit in 1970s Chicago, Goddard threw herself into fighting for the rights of rape victims, pushing and pestering local detectives and nurses into explaining to her why it was so difficult to prosecute rapists. Discovering a lack of standardization in how physical evidence was collected, she landed upon the idea of a box, or kit, that contained every tool needed to collect and preserve evidence of a rape. She sold the Chicago police department on the idea, though the head of the CPD’s crime analytics lab, Louis Vitullo, after making some final adjustments to the contents of the box, insisted the kit be named after him. By 1979 the kits had become widely used in Illinois. After Justice Department officials heard Goddard speak at a conference, the federal government briefly funded her ongoing activist work advocating for their use. However, Goddard’s subsequent career consisted of low-paid nonprofit work supporting women victims of sexual violence, and she died in poverty and obscurity. Part historical detective story and part vivid character study of a pioneering feminist, this is a page-turner.