Night Train to Perdition, Act III

See Night Train to Perdition, Act I, for a summary of Murder on the Orient Express, and Night Train to Perdition, Act II, for a summary of related true-crime cases, including the kidnap and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.  The post you are reading details the forensic science responsible for the capture and conviction of one of the kidnappers, in particular the wood evidence provided by the ladder used in the kidnapping.

The Wooden Witness

As noted in Act II, two key pieces of evidence were discovered immediately following the crime at the Lindbergh estate: a handwritten ransom note and a custom ladder.  In their preliminary examination of the three-sectional ladder, the investigators postulated that the user was neither too tall nor too short and was left handed.  The left handedness of the user was based on the pattern of saw blade cuts in the wood as well as the placement of the ladder to the right of the nursery window, which would allow the user to navigate entry into the nursery from his left side.  The runners used in the ladders appeared to resemble wood crates that were used to protect bathtubs during transit, and police reported that the ladder was similar to those used with pipe organs.

However, these initial theories brought investigators no closer to an actionable lead.  Dr. Erastus Mead Hudson, an independent fingerprint expert and specialist in chemistry and bacteriology proposed to examine fingerprints that may have been left by the kidnapper or kidnappers on the ladder.  Instead using fingerprint powder, which was the custom practice at the time, Hudson used silver nitrate (AgNO3) to identify prints.  Unfortunately, the ladder had been handled so extensively since the kidnapping that there were approximately 500 latent fingerprints present, which could not be used to identify any criminals.

Silver nitrate interacts with salt deposits found in human sweat and shed with fingerprints, which can then be visualized with ultraviolet light.

In the middle of 1932 and still at a loss for any leads, the investigators turned to the federal government for assistance.  They sent the ladder, a chisel that was also found at the Lindbergh estate, and a soil sample to the Department of Justice.  Drawing on the expertise within various federal departments, the DOJ sent samples from the ladder to the US Forest Service, of which 7 samples were sent to the Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, WI, a joint research venture with the Forest Service.  Upon receipt, FPL Director Carlisle P. Winslow told Arthur Koehler, considered the nation’s top wood identification expert, to disregard all other projects and immediately identify the source of the wood in the Lindbergh kidnapping ladder.  To do so, Koehler would apply his specialty in xylotomy, which is the art of preparing sections of wood for microscopic examination.

The Wood Expert

Arthur Koehler had established himself as a skilled xylotomist and had been serving as an expert witness in criminal trials following his promotion to the Head of Wood Technology at the FPL.  He had recently testified in the murder trial of John Magnuson regarding the source of wood used by the criminal to encase a bomb, which led to a conviction.  Koehler had even offered his assistance to Lindbergh after the kidnapping with a personal letter:

I read further in the newspaper about that homemade ladder left behind by the fellow who had done the crime and I grew excited.  You see, that ladder, because it was made of wood, seemed just like a daring challenge.

Within a few days after that I wrote a letter to the Lindbergh baby’s father, saying I thought it might be possible to trace that ladder’s members until the wood matched up with other wood so as to compromise the man involved.  Of course, I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I have specialized in the study of wood.  Just as a doctor who devotes himself to stomachs or tonsils or human vertebrae narrows down his interests to a sharp focus on the single field of his pet passion, so I, a forester, have done with wood.

He did not receive a response from Lindbergh. 

Less than one week after receiving samples from the kidnapping ladder, Koehler had identified the various sources as Douglas fir, paper birch, Ponderosa pine, and Southern pine through comparisons with the FPL’s library of wood specimens.  After submitting his report to the Department of Justice, Koehler wanted to continue helping with the investigation, his goal to make the ladder a “wooden witness.”

The Wooden Autopsy

In early 1933, the New Jersey State Police would take Koehler up on his offer.  Koehler was given full access to the ladder, which he dismantled to perform an “autopsy.”  Each rung and rail was numbered, measured, and calipered.  Koehler identified the source for each piece and closely examined the components for marks made during the assembly of the ladder.  As relatively few sources of wood were used to construct the ladder, Koehler concluded “that the maker had a limited amount of material to choose from.”

Among all the pieces of the kidnapping ladder, Rail 16 seemed to offer the greatest potential for confirmatory evidence to match to a criminal.  Rail 16 was North Carolina pine (the same as Rails 12 and 13), but it was more knotty and had not been machine planed.  Rather, it had been hand-planed on both edges, leading Koehler to believe that the rail was worked down from a wider piece of wood:

Diagram of the Lindbergh kidnapping ladder

Why he planed both edges of rail 16 is a mystery unless it was rough edged to begin with.  The edges were not always at right angles to the face, and scratches made by the plane wobbled back and forth along the edge…the scratches left by a hand plane on both edges of this rail were exactly the same as those on one side of each of the [cleats], proving conclusively that they were made by the same plane, and presumably at approximately the same time, probably when the ladder was made.

Furthermore, Rail 16 had four nail holes that had been made by square-cut or 8-penny iron nails, which had been phased out of production by the end of the 1800s in favor of cheaper wire nails made from soft steel.  In the 1930s, square-cut nails were still used in home construction, and the regular spacing of the nail holes in Rail 16 suggested they may have come from a building.

Keen to pursue multiple avenues of investigation, Koehler also fully characterized the marks from the machine planer used on Rails 12 and 13.  He sent letters to the known manufacturers of wood planers to inquire as to which mills they may have sold the characteristic planers, and then solicited the mills for samples for examination.  From April to September 1933, Koehler sent a total of 1596 requests and received 23 samples.  Despite the small number of samples, he was able to identify Rails 12 and 13 as having been planed in a mill in South Carolina by examining the planer knife marks microscopically and measuring the marks to 1/100th of an inch.  Ultimately, Koehler was unable to trace the kidnapper(s) based on Rails 12 and 13 because the Bronx lumber yard from which it was likely sold was a cash-only business.

Meanwhile...

At the same time that Koehler was examining the wood of the kidnapping ladder, the police were actively tracing the ransom money.  The $50,000 that was paid on behalf of the Lindbergh family by the go-between John Condon primarily comprised $20 and $10 gold certificates.  Elmer Irey, an IRS accountant, proposed this mechanism to allow for easier tracing of the ransom money as the gold certificates were being phased out of circulation.  The remaining ransom money was $5 bills with red seals and red serial numbers.  All of the ransom money was printed in 1928, and a list of the serial numbers was sent to banks across the country.

Lindbergh kidnapping ransom money
1928 $10 gold certificate

Bills from the lot of ransom money would occasionally surface over the year and a half following its payment in 1932, most often in New York City.  On 17 Sep 1933, a man paid for 98 cents of gasoline with a $10 gold certificate at a gas station in Manhattan.  The station manager questioned the legitimacy of the bill and wrote down the man’s license plate number in its margin, in case the bank refused to deposit it.  The manager questioned the customer about the bill, who was reported to reply, “I have a hundred more just like it.”

The license plate number was traced to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an unemployed carpenter who was pulled over for a search shortly after leaving his house in the Bronx.  When detectives found money in his wallet with serial numbers matching the ransom money, he was arrested.

The Wooden Key

Upon hearing of Hauptmann’s arrest, Koehler suggested that investigators take note of any lumber in his house that may have been used for Rail 16 as well as for any woodworking tools.  In their first search of the house, investigators found a total of $13,750 of the ransom money and an automatic revolver concealed in wooden 2×4’s in the garage; they also found a large wooden plane with a nicked blade that could have been used in the construction of the ladder.

At the time of Hauptmann’s arrest, a news article reported that he once worked odd jobs at the National Lumber and Millworker Corp in the Bronx, where Koehler had traced Rails 12 and 13.

Attic floor of Richard Hauptmann
Missing wood from Hauptmann's attic floor (Source: Dr. Regis Miller/Forest Products Laboratory)

During a second search of Hauptmann’s attic, the investigators noted that the flooring comprised 27 pieces of 1×6 North Carolina pine.  The final board on the south side was not the same length as the others, and they were able to discern that a piece approximately 8 feet long had been removed, leaving traces of saw marks and saw dust.  A sample of the remaining board and the nails that had been used to connect the board to the joist were provided to Koehler for comparison.

Koehler observed nicks in the largest knife of the plane recovered from Hauptmann’s house that produced marks exactly matching those on Rail 16 and the pine rungs of the ladder.  He concluded, “There is no question but [that] the rungs and rail were planed with that plane.”

The nails removed from the boards in Hauptmann’s attic fit into the holes in Rail 16 precisely, which lead Koehler to conclude “the board probably was removed from some of Hauptmann’s previous work either for others or for himself.”  Koehler testified before the grand jury at the Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, to these points.  Along with testimony pertaining to the ransom note, ransom money, and various eyewitnesses, the grand jury found enough evidence to indict Hauptmann for the murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.

Meanwhile, Koehler continued his examination of Rail 16 in comparison to the wood removed from Hauptmann’s attic.  He and the investigators took Rail 16 to Hauptmann’s attic, where it fit snugly into the place of the missing board.  Koehler reflected that “Such a result could not happen as a mere coincidence.”  Koehler had calculated the probability of all 4 nail holes matching the joists in Hauptmann’s attic perfectly as 1/1016, and he dismissed the possibility that this was mere circumstantial evidence.

1/1016, or 1 in 10 quadrillion, is the probability of 2 people randomly picking the same word out of 110 billion average-sized books.

Finally, he compared the grain, which is the appearance of the natural rings of a tree when it has been cut lengthwise to form a board: 

It is a pattern that is always varied and yet the pattern of the grain in the ladder rail and floor board matched as perfectly as if the interrupted curving lines they plotted years ago had been etched within the tree just to be a trap for anyone who dared so to misuse wood as to form it into a kidnap ladder.

Rail 16 matched to Hauptmann's attic floor
The wood of Rail 16 matched with Wood from Hauptmann's attic (Source: Dr. Regis Miller/Forest Products Laboratory)

Every tree within itself has written all its history.  The growth in spring shows white and pithy, but in the summer the slower growth becomes, in most trees, darker tissue.  This is repeated year by year, and that is why these rings seem double and confuse those who try to say a tree is such and such an age.  Count the band of white and black as one year’s growth.  The board end of the piece of flooring that had been robbed to make a ladder showed its rings quite clear, and so did the ladder rail.  A gap of one and three-eighth inches had been trimmed off, yet the rings matched.

The Wooden Evidence

At Hauptmann’s murder trial, Koehler testified his findings regarding Rail 16, but he was challenged by one of the defense lawyers, who stated, “We say that there is no such animal known among men as an expert on wood.  That is not a science that has been recognized by the courts; that is not in a class with handwriting experts, with fingerprint experts or with ballistic experts.  That has been reduced to a science and is known and recognized by the courts.”  The judge allowed the defense council to cross-examine Koehler to ascertain the extent of his credentials.  At the end of Koehler’s lengthy exposition regarding his publications in the field of wood science, the judge confirmed he was indeed a wood expert.

Koehler provided the court with complete details regarding his examination of the kidnap ladder, in particular Rail 16’s nail holes and grain.  His xylotomical examination of the wood source and grain was essential to tying Hauptmann to the ladder used in the Lindbergh kidnapping.  Following the testimony, Koehler was lauded as “the only real detective (in the case)” by the Reading, Pennsylvania Times, and The New York Post wrote, 

The Hauptmann trial may go down in legal history less as the most sensational case of its time than as the case which brought legal recognition to the wood expert on par with handwriting, fingerprint and ballistic experts.

After 42 days of testimony from Koehler and others involved in the Lindbergh case, the jurors retired to deliberate on the verdict of Hauptmann.  Less than 12 hours later, the jury returned with a verdict of guilty.  The judge passed down a death sentence to the convicted murderer of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.  Koehler’s testimony stood up to several appeals by Hauptmann, and on 03 Apr 1936, his death sentence was carried out by electric chair.  Hauptmann never confessed to the crime and never indicated if other kidnappers were involved.

Koehler continued working as a wood identification expert but never in so sensational a trial as the Lindbergh case.  He died in his home on 16 Jul 1967 at the age of 82.  Although wood evidence continues to be valuable to forensic science, it has never again been at the forefront of a crime as in the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Dressed to the Strychnines, Act III

**Contains major plot spoilers for The Mysterious Affair at Styles.**

See the previous post Dressed to the Strychnines, Act I for a summary of the creation of Agatha Christie’s first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, as well as a synopsis of the book; see Dressed to the Strychnines, Act II for an in-depth description of strychnine poisoning in the context of Christie’s first novel.  The post you are reading will describe the history behind the legal concept of double jeopardy in England and the United Kingdom.

Double Sin

In addition to the poisoning discussed previously, another clever feature of The Mysterious Affair at Styles planned by the criminals but ultimately foiled by Hercule Poirot was the use of double jeopardy to prevent one of the criminals (Alfred Inglethorp) from receiving justice.  The plan, somewhat ill conceived, was for Alfred to be arrested for his wife’s murder and brought to trial, at which point he would produce a witness who would provide his alibi.  This would result in his acquittal without the possibility of a second trial due to the legal principle of double jeopardy.  This seems a very risky strategy, as was clearly shown by Poirot’s uncovering of multiple alibi witnesses before Alfred’s arrest.  Had the police uncovered such witnesses, Alfred would never have been arrested and therefore not brought to trial.

In the United States, double jeopardy is prohibited by the 5th amendment to the constitution, which states “[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb.”  In England, double jeopardy was part of the common law for centuries and was formalized after the US constitution was ratified.

Origin in Antiquity

The notion that a person should not be punished twice for the same crime was proffered as early as Ancient Greece, with the Greek orator Demosthenes stating in 355 BCE that “the laws forbid the same man to be tried twice on the same issue, be it a civil action, a scrutiny, a contested claim, or anything else of the sort.”  Even in antiquity, pleaders (precursors for barristers in the UK) sought loopholes to reopen cases upon which courts had already ruled.  In Ancient Rome, The Digest of Justinian, which was a collection of writings of the contemporary Roman legal system in 533 AD, asserted that “[t]he governor must not allow a man to be charged with the same offenses of which he has already been acquitted” and that “a person cannot be charged on account of the same crime under several statutes.”  In addition, double jeopardy was a component of Ancient Jewish law cited in the Talmud.

Pleaders have no direct corollary in the US legal system but can be thought of as legal scholars, counselors, or advocates. 

Double Jeopardy in the UK

In English history, the first recorded instance of the use of double jeopardy was in 1201.  Goscelin, the son of Walter, sought punishment via appeal against Adam de Rupe for killing Goscelin’s brother, Ailnoth.  Adam’s defense consisted of stating that Alinoth’s wife had previously brought an appeal against him for the same crime, and during that trial, “he withdrew quit therin by judgment of the lord king’s court,” ie, he was acquitted.  In Goscelin’s appeal, the court recognized this previous acquittal and also cited the fact that Goscelin was in Ireland at the time of the killing and could therefore bring no new evidence to the court.

There are three theories as to how the notion of double jeopardy was introduced into British common law: that the principle was carried over from the continent, that it arose following the disagreement between Thomas Becket and King Henry I, or that it was merely a logical progression of the law.

A Normandy Import

The first theory suggests that double jeopardy immigrated to England following the Norman conquest in 1066.  After William the Conqueror’s victory, the principle might have been introduced in England along with the other canon laws from the continent.  This theory also posits that during the process of developing common law around this time, legal scholars applied concepts from Roman law that might have been discussed during their training in the church as most common law judges were members of the clergy.

Agatha Christie, Double Jeopardy, William the Conqueror
The Norman fleet arriving at Pevensey, depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry (© Rolf Richardson / Alamy Stock Photo)

The Murder at the Cathedral

The second theory is appropriately enmeshed in an important historical murder.  After the Norman conquest, William the Conqueror appointed the Italian lawyer and theological scholar Lanfranc to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, who at the time was the head of the Catholic Church in England.  At William’s encouragement, Lanfranc established a system of ecclesiastical churches that were regarded equally with the royal courts and prosecuted all criminal and civil cases in which a cleric was accused.  This series of events can be viewed as recompense to the Pope by William for supporting his conquest of England.

After William the Conqueror’s death in 1087, a gulf began to form between the Church and the King.  This conflict culminated in the 12th century, when King Henry I moved to regain legal power from the Church, now led by Archbishop Thomas Becket.  Specifically, the King wanted the royal court to have jurisdiction over clerics who committed secular crimes.  Becket argued that such individuals could not be brought to trial in the royal courts after being convicted in the ecclesiastical courts because it would violate the maxim “nec enim Deus iudicat bis in idipsum” (for God judges not twice the same thing).  With neither man willing to compromise, the conflict escalated, and Becket fled to France. After a few years a fragile truce was reached, and Becket returned to England in 1170. Later that year, Becket began excommunicating clergymen appointed by King Henry. Upon hearing the news, Henry was reported to ask “What miserable drones and traitors have I nourished and brought up in my household, who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric?” Shortly thereafter, four of Henry’s knights brutally murdered Becket in the Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170, slicing off his priestly crown and the top of his head with it.

T. S. Eliot’s play, Murder in the Cathedral, is about the assassination of Thomas Becket. The play includes verses inspired by The Musgrave Ritual, a Sherlock Holmes story: 

Who shall have it?
He who will come.
What shall be the month?
The last from the first.
What shall we give for it?
Pretence of priestly power.
Why should we give it?
For the power and the glory. 

Thomas Becket, Agatha Christie
Getty Images

Although Henry was victorious over the late Archbishop, the changes in the law were short lived.  In 1176, the King reversed the constitutional provision that permitted a cleric to be further punished in the royal court, possibly due to Becket’s martyrdom and subsequent canonization as well as the persuasion from many of the royal judges, who were bishops and archdeacons.  At this point, a strong precedent for double jeopardy would have been established.

Saint Thomas Becket (original source unknown)

Origination Unknown

The final theory on the origin of double jeopardy in English law suggest that it was a slow, natural progression without any influence from Roman law, which could have been enacted formally at any time.  Its proponents offer as evidence that there were numerous exceptions to the rule during the first 500 years of English law.  Furthermore, a case in 1203 (very soon after the showdown between Thomas Becket and King Henry I) is described as possibly violating the principle of double jeopardy.  Following the trial of Reiner Reid for assaulting another man and cutting off his fingers, wherein Reid paid the victim 10 marks, the wronged man (surname Jordan) raised a civil appeal charging Reid with the same crime.  Reid’s defense cited the double jeopardy principle, but given that all appeals were tried in the civil courts at the time and double jeopardy only applied to criminal offenses, it was a moot point.

Any of these three theories (or a combination thereof) would be plausible to explain the origin of double jeopardy in England.  By the 16th century, a formal legal document by Sir William Staunford presented the pleas of autrefoits acquit (a former acquittal) and autrefoits convict (a former conviction) as legal principles.  In the latter half of the 17th century, the Court of King’s Bench expanded the protection afforded by double jeopardy; the Court established that a prosecutor could not raise new charges for the same crime after an acquittal and that exceptions could not be granted even if a writ of error was issued for the case.  (Typically, a second proceeding was allowed when a conviction was reversed due to a writ of error.)  In the second half of the 18th century, Sir William Blackstone, a notable legal scholar, asserted that the principle that “no man is to be brought into jeopardy of his life, more than once for the same offence” is “a universal maxim of the common law.”  In contrast to the law eventually adopted in the US, in England the scope of double jeopardy was narrow and only applied to capital cases, ie, those punishable by death.

During this time, the Court of King’s Bench also prohibited the practice frequently used by trial judges of excusing the jury when an acquittal was imminent to provide the prosecutor the opportunity to bring a stronger case in a new trial.

Back to Styles

At the time of Alfred Inglethorp’s trial—in the late 1910s had it transpired as the criminals intended—he would have been exonerated by an alibi witness and would have been protected by double jeopardy, as the murder of his wife was a capital offense.  Provided that Poirot and the police did not uncover any substantial new evidence and appeal to the courts, Inglethorp would not have been able to be tried for his wife’s murder.  In addition to the manipulation of chemistry, this scheme to exploit the English legal system is further evidence of the ingenuity of the criminals, which of course is no match for Poirot’s order and method.


Cards on the Table

After numerous campaigns by victims’ families and advocacy groups, the double jeopardy law in the United Kingdom was overturned in 2005 for serious crimes, such as murder, rape, and war crimes.  In order to bring an acquitted defendant back to trial for the same crime, a sufficient amount of reliable and new evidence not available at the time of the original trial must be presented.

This change in the law arose in part due to the case of Stephen Lawrence, who was murdered in 1993 at the age of 18 by a group of racist men.  During the first trial the subjects were acquitted, but Sir William MacPherson, a retired high court judge, released a report in 1999 that documented the institutional racism present in the Metropolitan Police during their investigation of the crime.  The report also recommended that the guarantee of protection against double jeopardy be re-evaluated. 

After the change in the law, the chief subjects were again brought to trial in 2011.  Early the following year, they were found guilty.  Several other investigations have been reopened in cases where acquittals were previously reached.  Given the storied history of double jeopardy, this recent change would no doubt have inspired Agatha Christie to formulate another clever mystery plot.

Coming Soon...

The next blog post series will examine one of Christie’s most famous and enduring works—Murder on the Orient Express—in the context of one of the most illustrious crimes of the 20th century—the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.