Oscar pulled the note to his face as he rubbed the paper between his fingers—nothing distinct about its composition. The kidnapper’s claims were horrifying if they were credible or creative if they proved to be fiction. Oscar looked at the space left after “Father.” Clearly Patrick Heslin had not been the specific target, but this crime was certainly premeditated. The kidnapper was likely a very clever man, or insane. Or both.
The note warned that Father Heslin would die if the police were called—he would burn to death, shackled in that bootleg cellar. The kidnapper’s rambling note was menacing, and his military background, he claimed, had prepared him to be an assassin.
“I had charge of a machine gun in the Argonne, and poured thousands of bullets into struggling men, and killing men is not novelty to me,” the letter read.
The remainder of the note read as if penned by a villain in a dime-store detective novel. The kidnapper ordered the archbishop to quickly prepare the money in a sealed package because he would soon receive driving instructions.
“Get out with the money, leave the car and follow the string that is attached to the white strip [on the road] until you come to the end of the string,” read the letter. “Then put down the package and go back to town.”
Oscar stood nearby as the archbishop explained how he had waited faithfully for driving instructions that had never arrived. In the meantime, San Francisco’s chief of police authorized an aerial search for automobile wreckage along the foggy coastline. Hundreds of volunteers led by bloodhounds fanned out along the route toward Salada Beach and Pedro Mountain in the direction where the stranger’s car had headed. Investigators peered over cliffs hanging above the ocean as a tantalizing mystery in California quickly became a national spectacle.
Newspapers across the country immediately caused confusion by printing baseless conspiracy theories. “Was Priest Kidnaped to Wed Pair?” asked the Oakland Tribune. San Francisco detectives had refused to release many details of the case, but one officer did offer the press a small clue: “Someone needed a priest and needed him badly.”
“This significant statement,” wrote the reporter, “could only mean the performance of a marriage, perhaps under duress.”
Investigators might have been amused by the ridiculous speculation, but protecting genuine clues was challenging because the town of Colma, a speck on the state map, was now infested with reporters. Newspapermen relentlessly harassed Marie Wendel, the priest’s housekeeper, as journalists accused her of being an accomplice in the kidnapping.
“I have nothing further to say,” Wendel screamed to a crowd of journalists. “I have been widely quoted with statements which I have never made at any time.”
“Why did you not report the disappearance of Father Heslin’s automobile?” snapped a reporter.
“The automobile was not missing!” she replied.
Father Heslin simply had it sent to a local repair shop. But still, misinformation and rumors about the case proliferated. Three different neighbors agreed that the car’s driver “did not appear to be an American,” and now every newspaper claimed that a foreigner had snatched the beloved priest. The absence of information sent reporters into a frenzy, stoking the already xenophobic atmosphere in the predominately white town.
Detectives were stymied, and the only lead they had was the peculiar ransom note. They hired three renowned document experts, analysts who would compare the printing or handwriting on documents to either link or eliminate someone as the source. They each claimed to be able to reveal alterations, additions, or deletions of characters; they used chemical analysis to connect the ink on a letter to a specific pen.
One expert was Oscar Heinrich, whose lab was already gaining some fame in the discipline of questioned documents by 1921. Another expert was a man who would become Oscar’s longtime nemesis, a painful thorn in the investigator’s side. The case of the missing priest would spark a horrible, sometimes shameful rivalry that concluded only when one of them suddenly died almost fifteen years later.
But what clues were these men looking for in the ransom letter? A few things. There were two disciplines in the field of handwriting detection: handwriting analysis and graphology. Even today they’re often lumped together, but they’re actually quite distinct.
Handwriting analysis has a long and storied history. It was developed as early as the third century, when judges in Roman times compared signatures and other lettering in documents to determine forgeries. While much of the analysis was based on mere guesswork, by the late nineteenth century, formal educational classes in handwriting analysis were starting to be offered to the public. But the “experts” who claimed to understand handwriting analysis were generally self-trained and self-certified, and the quality of their analysis varied greatly.
By the early twentieth century, experts in forensic handwriting analysis were frequently called to testify in the cases of forged documents. Just a few months before Father Heslin’s disappearance, Oscar had worked with another forensic document expert on a forged will case in Montana, a dispute over an estate worth more than $10 million. They were able to prove that the will’s signature was a forgery, a celebrated but modest legal victory. Slowly, handwriting analysis was gaining respectability and acceptance in the legal world. And these handwriting analysts weren’t just relegated to matters of wills and estates, either. More and more, as the twentieth century progressed, they were starting to find their way into criminal courts. Lawyers and juries became enamored of the idea that certain pieces of evidence, such as shoe impressions, fingerprints, bullets, or bite marks, were unique, individualized. If handwriting analysis was admissible in a civil investigation, why shouldn’t investigators start using it as a tool in more serious crimes, too?
The idea behind handwriting analysis was that only one person could make those exact letters in that precise way; therefore, a signature or a longer written passage would identify an individual as clearly as a fingerprint might. Today we know this isn’t true—handwriting style can vary widely depending on the author’s environment, his writing tools, his age, or even his mood. Our handwriting is too unpredictable, so the forensic technique is mostly unreliable.
A 2009 landmark study by the National Academy of Sciences, which investigated and evaluated an array of forensic science techniques, determined that some handwriting samples aren’t unique enough to determine fabrication. “Some cases of forgery are characterized by signatures with too little variability, and are thus inconsistent with the fact that we all have intrapersonal variability in our writing,” read the report. In other words, since one’s signature can vary by day, depending on a whole variety of factors, signing a name to a document isn’t equivalent to, say, leaving a fingerprint behind.
But the committee agreed that there was some scientific value to handwriting analysis, especially in the case of comparing clear, well-constructed words with specific attributes. Longer passages of handwritten text could show repeating characteristics, and there were clues to be found in comparing lengthier samples of writing. But it was often inconclusive. Bottom line: handwriting analysis can sometimes be used to support an investigation, but never to close one. Yet back in the early 1920s, expert testimony involving handwriting analysis was starting to be deemed admissible in criminal courts—Oscar’s business as a questioned-documents expert was flourishing.
Alongside the study of handwriting analysis was another much less reputable discipline: graphology. Some said that graphology was to handwriting analysis what astrology was to astronomy—more art than science. Whereas handwriting analysis dealt in matching characteristics of two pieces of text to each other, graphology, its practitioners insisted, would illuminate the personality of an author—the psychology behind his handwriting strokes, like rudimentary criminal profiling. Graphologists claimed to be able to predict the suspect’s state of mind at the time of writing a note. For example, graphology experts claimed that
a person who had nothing to hide would likely leave a small gap at the top of the letter O. An author who closed the oval loop in his lowercase g might lack confidence in sexually intimate situations.
Graphologists weren’t particularly well respected, and forensic graphology (the modern term) has been considered a pseudoscience for more than one hundred years. Oscar Heinrich was not a graphologist, to be sure, and he even ridiculed the practice in a handwritten letter to his best friend, John Boynton Kaiser. In it, Oscar performed a bit of self-analysis based on his own pen strokes.
“Notice how mine goes over the top . . . now, up as in ambitious flights of optimism,” Oscar quipped. “Now down, the picture of pessimism. Don’t be alarmed. I have merely been writing over my wife’s billowy desk blotter.”
Oscar knew that graphology was nonsense and even dangerous because investigators might ignore relevant clues if they depended too heavily on an inaccurate psychological profile of a suspect. But the public and the police demanded answers, and in the case of Father Heslin, the graphologists’ insights offered hope. The police brought in two graphologists to examine the ransom note, and Oscar firmly disliked both of them. Carl Eisenschimmel was a German whose work Oscar found to be careless. The other was Chauncey McGovern, a local expert who Oscar considered not just dotty but dangerous. The forty-eight-year-old was destined to become a scourge on Oscar’s professional reputation, but for now he was simply an irritant.
Oscar was dismayed that the police required anyone else’s opinion, but as usual, he was forced to muster some diplomacy. He was still early on in his career, after all, so good customer service was imperative. Oscar shook hands with the other men and stood to the side.
Eisenschimmel and McGovern concluded that the mysterious author of the note was likely an ex-soldier, a military typist. A boldly specific claim, to be sure . . . except that the writer himself had mentioned his time in the army. Hardly groundbreaking insight, thought Oscar.
The experts went further: based on the shape of his letters and the generally schizophrenic nature of the note, Eisenschimmel and McGovern were certain that the kidnapper was insane.
“The writer is demented,” concluded McGovern with confidence. “The style of the printed ‘H’ and ‘A’ is that of a deranged person.”
Carl Eisenschimmel, the other expert, quickly agreed: “The block printing at the bottom of the ransom letter is a script often used by demented persons.”
Oscar sighed. Those conclusions weren’t very helpful—they weren’t specific enough. They were wasting time, as usual. Eisenschimmel was an old curmudgeon, a disagreeable egotist. And despite a few high-profile gaffes in his career (his ego had led him astray a few times, often disastrously and in open court), the seventy-five-year-old German was still held in esteem by jurors and investigators he testified in front of. With his full white mustache, immaculate three-piece suits, and thick accent, Eisenschimmel oozed professional gravitas, something that Oscar clearly envied. He had testified as an expert witness on forged documents for decades, since Oscar was no more than a teenager. And on this investigation, the German criminalist was tapped as the lead expert, while Oscar was relegated to second, even third chair. Oscar was miffed over being forced to offer deference to the elder expert, an insult for a sensitive genius whose own ego was building with each successful case.
“I am expected to do all of the heavy work of preparation,” he complained bitterly to John Boynton Kaiser, “wheedle the old man into the belief that everything is being done according to his suggestions, and probably let him take the credit for the case.”
It was infuriating for a man of his rigorous methods to play second fiddle to an expert whose approaches and science were so suspect. Eisenschimmel was inept. But Oscar labeled the other expert, Chauncey McGovern, as worse: smug, pompous, and even derelict. He was convinced McGovern was a quack, and his unreliable methodology was a noose around the necks of legitimate handwriting analysts. McGovern, too, had some unsavory aspects to his résumé, and Oscar worried that his uneven (even unethical) record might discredit the whole field of handwriting forensics for good.
Almost twenty years earlier, attorneys representing the American government had arrested McGovern for perjury, accusing him of exaggerating his credentials during his expert testimony in a different case. The United States Supreme Court eventually cleared him of those charges, but his reputation was still tarnished. Yet during the nascent era of forensics—where just about anyone could claim to be an expert in any discipline—McGovern was considered a safe bet for prosecutors because of his composure on the stand. These two “experts” were Oscar’s primary competitors: a dunce and a liar, according to him.
Throughout Oscar’s long career Chauncey McGovern would solidify his role as “chief antagonist.” But he was just one of many forensic experts who tried to discredit Oscar on the stand during public dustups, and the criminalist would do the same to them. Their vicious duels in court would embarrass the field and confuse jurors. But for now, Oscar Heinrich and Chauncey McGovern were both being paid by the prosecutor to identify a kidnapper using the man’s own hand. U.S. Postal inspectors handed Oscar the ransom letter. He glanced over it one last time.
“There’s at least one thing I can tell you about this right now,” he told the investigators. “Whoever wrote that letter revealed his trade.”
“What do you mean?” one asked.
Oscar peered through his spectacles.
“The writer of that letter is a baker,” Oscar replied.
The investigators snickered. “Just what do you mean by that?”
“This is cake baker’s lettering,” Oscar explained, “the kind that all master bakers learn.”
The postal inspectors seemed to stop smiling.
“Examine closely the concave uprights of the A and the H,” he replied, “the down curving crosses of the T, the square bottom of the U. That’s the style bakers use in writing on cakes. Look at the frosted lettering on your next birthday cake.”
The investigators were incredulous, but Oscar had not been hired to placate skeptical cops—he was ordered to remain impartial, to follow the evidence.
“But there are a good many bakers in town,” the detectives argued.
Oscar smirked—just as he suspected: the police were likely to get in his way. In early criminal investigations, most profiles were completed after the suspect was in custody, usually to establish sanity. Oscar wanted to discover the identity of the suspect before he was caught, a new approach. He focused on clues that revealed habits, an early form of criminal profiling—like nothing seen before in America.
Offender profiling had been used sporadically in history, beginning in the Middle Ages with “experts” trying to identify heretics. The first well-known psychological profiling in a criminal case involved inspectors at Scotland Yard in 1888, who hoped to glean information about Jack the Ripper from his letters and the condition in which he left the bodies. Most investigators in America wouldn’t use profiling until the mid-1950s, and it wasn’t until the 1970s that the FBI would establish its Behavioral Science Unit. But Oscar was a man ahead of his time; from the beginning of his career, he believed he could reconstruct a crime scene by visualizing the habits and actions of the criminal.
“I do this by using the evidence that the criminal leaves behind,” he explained.
McGovern’s and Eisenschimmel’s claims of determining the sanity of the author were ludicrous, according to Oscar. All criminals have habits, he argued, that were inescapable, hidden even from the killer. And those habits would give away his identity. A baker who committed murder remained a baker, which was why the ransom note was written with unusual lettering. His actions were habitual, almost uncontrollable, and they would help establish a profile. Oscar firmly believed that investigators should study the evidence to solve the criminal’s identity before settling on a motive, but the proof would be in his
results. As detectives continued their search for a devil somewhere in the hills near Colma, California, Oscar made them one promise.
“Your man is a baker.”
* * *
—
The case was a nightmare for the archbishop in San Francisco, who prayed each night that Father Heslin would be found safe. But it was already August 10, eight days after the priest had gone missing. A new ransom note, slipped under the door of the archbishop’s residence overnight, promised that the priest was still alive—for now. And it was even more peculiar than the first—a rambling narrative loaded with mysterious clues that seemed designed to lead investigators into more blind alleys.
“Fate has made me do this,” wrote the author. “Sickness, misery, has compelled my action. I must have money.”
The kidnapper issued his new terms, which included a $15,000 ransom, more than double the initial amount.
“Father Heslin is safe and says for you to help him,” the note read. “You will hear from me very soon.”
The sheriff called back the two other handwriting experts, McGovern and Eisenschimmel. Oscar wasn’t consulted; perhaps his earlier analysis wasn’t what the investigators wanted to hear. The pair of experts enlarged the note, illuminated it with a lamp, and determined once again that the author was certainly a lunatic and a coward.
“The handwriting shows the writer to be a jellyfish,” was McGovern’s official report.
The expert’s conclusion was yet another useless observation—there were certainly loads of insane criminals in Northern California. Pointless, scoffed Oscar.
In the meantime the unfounded rumor of a third letter, secretly delivered by a detective to police headquarters, piqued the interest of a cub reporter with the San Francisco Examiner named George Lynn. With few fresh leads and a slew of eager readers waiting for new details, Lynn’s editor dispatched the journalist to the archbishop’s home in the hopes of a new scoop. Lynn was about to become the envy of every newspaperman in the state.
American Sherlock Page 6