American Sherlock
Page 29
Oscar would never be fully victorious over the skepticism of forensics in a courtroom, but he had helped jurors get much closer to understanding how scientists in lab coats could protect society.
* * *
—
“Don’t know whether I’ve been tossed into the dangerous seventies as a wolf, a cripple or a eunuch,” Oscar Heinrich told John Boynton Kaiser in 1950, several months before his seventieth birthday. “The end result is promised somewhere between the first and the second condition. Can’t complain, having nearly made my allotted three score and ten.”
Oscar Heinrich had spent the two decades since David Lamson’s trials solving as many as one thousand more cases, ranging from murders, to forgeries, to fabricated wills. He watched his two children grow into strong men who still strived to impress their demanding father. Mortimer and Theodore both survived bombings and sniper fire during World War II. Mort received a Purple Heart when he took a hit during the Battle of Leyte in the Pacific campaign, and then he was awarded a Bronze Star. Theodore also earned a Bronze Star, along with other commendations. But perhaps Theo’s most impressive achievement during the war was his assignment as one of the famous Monuments Men, a group largely of art historians and museum personnel from fourteen Allied nations who identified and returned art stolen by the Nazis.
Both of his sons followed Oscar’s own career path, albeit briefly. Mortimer studied criminalistics and became a handwriting expert; father and son worked together briefly on questioned-documents investigations until Mort settled into a career at the Bank of Hawaii in Honolulu. In the early 1940s, Theo and Oscar traveled through Europe together as art authenticators, but eventually Theo became Associate Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and later became a professor of art history at York University in Toronto.
The strain between Theodore and Oscar over their mutual money problems never quite resolved itself, because even though Theo was working for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the forty-three-year-old still requested money from his father. The elderly criminalist told Theo just a month before his death that Oscar could not retire until the leaks were plugged.
“I am still waiting for you to put your financial commitments in good order, and of your own volition,” Oscar told Theo in August 1953. “There is a time when you were broke and needed much sympathy and encouragement, but those days happily should be over.”
Oscar had suffered from a serious stroke the previous October, surely a sign that scaling back would have been wise. But the seventy-two-year-old, weak from waning stamina and years of chronic hypertension, ignored the warning and continued to toil in his lab for up to fifty-five hours a week. He was forced to close his San Francisco office because of high rent. He dreamed of vacations, but he felt burdened by financial obligations. Oscar was determined to stay in the laboratory to give his wife, Marion, financial security.
“I am annoyed by nothing other than your Mother’s anxiety over the attention that I continue to give my working program,” he told Theo. “Recently I have put handrails on the steps from the lower levels to the living room level.”
As his sons continued to advance in their own careers, Oscar offered them advice he had gathered from onerous lessons, particularly those delivered by his rival experts. Time had not mended those relationships, and competition had stoked their mutual contempt.
“You will find as you grow in your field that as you meet with success there will always be some who will believe that you reached your upper level through graft and special favors rather than ability,” Oscar told Mortimer. “Pay no attention to it, just keep on growing.”
He enjoyed being a grandfather to Mortimer’s three children, and while he lamented never being a successful novelist, he did seem content with publishing useful articles and books about forensic science. Oscar absolutely adored Theo and Mortimer despite decades of complaints about their lack of financial responsibility. He was disappointed that neither son took an interest in taking over the family business, but he also settled on the idea of leaving behind a different legacy.
“I regard my greatest accomplishment to be the completed preparation of two sons, each able and willing to contribute to the welfare of the community in which they live and work,” Oscar wrote Theo. “It has been a long pull for Dad, but one in which I never for a moment have entertained a doubt as to the outcome.”
Working alone in his laboratory late at night on September 23, 1953, Edward Oscar Heinrich suffered a second stroke. He was treated by doctors for five days as his family surrounded him in the hospital. His best friend, John Boynton Kaiser, dashed off a sentimental telegram.
“Best wishes. Get well soon,” Kaiser said on September 29. “In spite of your fine achievements the world still needs you and your friends hope you will soon be adding new laurels to the record.”
But the note arrived too late—Oscar had died the day before without ever regaining consciousness. And in some ways, the legend of “America’s Sherlock Holmes” died with him. Oscar Heinrich’s fingerprints cover the history books of forensic science because so many of his techniques are still used. Experts today call Oscar “America’s greatest forensic scientist of the early twentieth century.”
“Almost single-handedly, he restored the reputation of the expert witness in the American courtroom,” wrote one forensics writer. “With uncanny feats of deduction that seemed to spring from the pages of fiction, Heinrich acquired legendary status, earning a forensic celebrity that extended far beyond his homeland.”
Oscar never pursued the spotlight—it chased him. A shining light in the dark world of crime, his amazing feats in criminal investigations were unmatched during his time, and that’s likely true today. Rarely now is there an investigator with his expertise in so many disciplines—someone who can synthesize those skills with outstanding fieldwork and deductive reasoning in the laboratory. And that’s tragic, because there might be some challenging cases, a few impossible modern mysteries, that would require an American Sherlock Holmes like Edward Oscar Heinrich to solve them.
August Heinrich and family (Courtesy: Millard F. Kelly/UC Berkeley)
Heinrich and Marion on board Conte Briancamano, 1930 (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Heinrich looking through ocular (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Allene Lamson’s body in crime scene photo (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Allene Thorpe Lamson (Courtesy: AP Photo)
Bloodstains on wallpaper (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Heinrich with two assistants inspecting a door (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Sketch of Lamson bathroom (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
Letters for handwriting comparison in Hightower case (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Close-up of knife with fiber (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
William Hightower (Courtesy: The San Francisco Examiner)
Actress Virginia Rappe in 1921 and comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle (Courtesy: AP Photo/File)
Interior of Arbuckle suite (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Close-up of handprints on door (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Wide of handprints on door (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Close-up of bullet markings in Martin Colwell case (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Portrait of Bessie Ferguson (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
Heinrich examining Ferguson’s bones (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Ripped postal ticket and ticket for American Railways Express (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
Wanted poster for DeAutremont brothers, 1923 (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
Overalls pinned to wooden door, with measuring tape (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
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br /> Interior of train car taken from mail end (Courtesy: UC Berkeley)
Police reviewing the inside of Schwartz’s laboratory (Courtesy: Reynolds, Oakland PD/UC Berkeley)
Above: Inside Charles Schwartz’s laboratory (Courtesy: EO Heinrich/UC Berkeley)
Inset: Charles and Alice Schwartz (Courtesy: The San Francisco Examiner)
Lamson faces the court as his preliminary hearing opened at the San Jose, California, Hall of Justice, June 16, 1933 (Courtesy: Associated Press)
Heinrich at work in lab, examining a gun (Courtesy: Herbert Cerwin/UC Berkeley)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
One of the most exciting things about this book, as the author, is how it was created. It nearly failed before it began. Several years ago, I read about the Siskiyou train robbery in an encyclopedia of American crime (I bet you never knew one of those existed!) and noticed Edward Oscar Heinrich’s moniker, “America’s Sherlock Holmes.” How could a true crime author ignore that description?
I was on the hunt for my second book, and writing a biography seemed intriguing. I discovered Heinrich’s collection at UC Berkeley and was thrilled to find out that it is very, very large. Too large. In fact, the university had avoided archiving it because it was so vast, so unwieldy. There was a form on the website to request a review from an archivist, sort of like a plea from the public. It required that I explain why I needed this particular collection organized and then made available. I explained that I’m an associate professor of journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and a nonfiction author. And I argued that Edward Oscar Heinrich was one of the most prolific forensic scientists in American history. He deserved to have a book written about him.
I sent the form . . . and then waited for two months. Finally, an assistant at the Bancroft Library emailed me with horrible news—they were not planning to archive Heinrich’s collection anytime soon. They were understaffed and there were other priorities. And then the assistant said something akin to: “You do realize just how big this collection is?” I did. But I just knew that this was my book. I emailed the archivist again, a few weeks later. “Will they reconsider?”
Lara Michels, the library’s head of archival processing, responded a day or two later with surprising news. “Yes. We’ll do it.” She had looked through some of the materials and agreed that Edward Oscar Heinrich was extraordinary. She would process the collection herself.
The boxes in Heinrich’s collection, more than one hundred, were all stored in an off-site facility not far from the library. Michels would dedicate one day a week for the next eighteen months to traveling there and cataloguing his collection. I was elated but also a bit worried that the process would be painfully slow. And it certainly was. But Michels’s work on Heinrich’s collection was phenomenal. She catalogued every tiny, itty-bitty thing she discovered. She meticulously read through each document; she squinted at each piece of evidence that Heinrich kept (which should have been turned over to the police by him, frankly). She dismissed nothing.
Michels would email me photographs of interesting discoveries, things that only I would appreciate, just so I could understand this man a little bit better. When she was finally through cataloguing the collection, she printed out a special guide, just for me. And she invited me to sit with her inside the off-site facility so I could get an early start on my research, something she’s never done before. She continued to organize Heinrich’s boxes as I photographed his lifelong work in criminal investigations. We talked about his family, his life, and his cases. She had advised me on which investigations to include in the book because those files were the most robust. I told her about finding trial transcripts for each of his cases. I showed her letters from Theodore Heinrich’s own collection at the University of Regina in Canada. She suggested that I search two other collections at UC Berkeley: those of John Boynton Kaiser and August Vollmer. Michels marveled at the photos of the David Lamson case that I found at Stanford University. I emailed her when I discovered August Heinrich’s suicide.
There’s no better relationship in the world of publishing, I think, than the one between an author and an archivist who both truly want a book to succeed. Edward Oscar Heinrich and his work would be lost in history were it not for Lara Michels and UC Berkeley. I am eternally grateful to both.
There are some other folks who deserve accolades:
My incredible fact-checker, Joyce Pendola, was an able safety net, as usual. Former defense attorney and law professor David Sheppard is always a fantastic listener and adviser. Outstanding reporter and good friend Pamela Colloff vetted my sections on bloodstain pattern analysis, an incredibly confusing discipline. University of Texas psychology professor Kim Fromme helped me pin down Oscar Heinrich’s odd characteristics. Daniel Wescott, who is the director of the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, advised me on the different ways that bodies can decompose (his guidance was needed in several chapters).
Drs. Jill Heytens and Steven Kornguth, both well-regarded neurologists, advised me on the Allene Lamson case. Dr. Heyens even volunteered to help me reenact Allene’s fatal accident. We decided against it. Huge thanks to Tina Shorey and Desi Rodriguez, who escorted me to a shooting range and then wisely stepped out of the way as I learned how to fire several large guns.
I would be remiss not to thank some folks at the University of Texas, particularly the dean of the Moody College of Communication, Jay Bernhardt, and School of Journalism director Kathleen McElroy. I’ve received generous funding for several years from the Maureen Healy Decherd ’73 Teaching Endowment for Journalism, for which I am grateful. I’m also so happy to see my cousin Diana Dawson right across the hall from me at UT. She inspired me to become a journalist years ago. And I’m so pleased to share students with the most talented journalism faculty in the country—their endless support is truly wonderful.
Thanks to Becka Oliver, the executive director of the Writers’ League of Texas, who was a fantastic cheerleader from the beginning—and her organization is outstanding. Emily Donohue at Stratfor has been so supportive.
I’m honored to be with G.P. Putnam’s Sons for the first time. I’m absolutely astounded by the amount of talent on this team. I’m blessed to have been surrounded with a passionate group of people who quite honestly love and support this book, particularly Ivan Held, president; Sally Kim, editor in chief; Katie Grinch, associate director of publicity; Ashley McClay, director of marketing; Brennin Cummings, assistant marketing manager; and Gabriella Mongelli, assistant editor. I will forever be indebted to executive editor and good friend Michelle Howry—a gifted editor who can help craft a narrative into something truly wonderful. I’d be lost without her.
This book would still be a sad, forgotten file on my hard drive were it not for my literary agent, Jessica Papin, with Dystel, Goderich & Bourret. There’s no one in this wild world of books whom I trust more.
To my Texas girls, my closest friends of thirty years—I continue to write books only as an excuse to throw a boat party with you on Lake Travis.
To my late father, Robert Oscar Dawson, a brilliant professor of law at the University of Texas for thirty-seven years. He taught me from an early age that one wrongly convicted person is too many.
And finally, to Jenny, Ella, and Quinn; as well as my parents, Lynn and Jack Lefevre; my in-laws, Sandra and Charlie Winkler; and my brothers-in-law, Chuck Winkler and Shelton Green—you all keep my ship sailing along.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
His upper jawbone was massive: Bessie Ferguson case, 1925, carton 24, folder 5, Edward Oscar Heinrich Papers, BANC MSS 68/34 c, Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
People with OCPD: Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders, http://www.minddisorders.com; the expertise of Dr. Kimberly Fromme, professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin.
Every conceivable type of
microscope: From a photo in 89–44, box 175, file 2291, Theodore Heinrich Collection, Dr. John Archer Library, University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Blood, Urine, Feces and Moisture: A Book of Tests: This title and other examples from Heinrich’s library come from the University of California at Berkeley library catalogue: search “Edward Oscar Heinrich.”
increased by as much as almost 80 percent from the decade before: Mark Thornton, “Policy Analysis No. 157: Alcohol Prohibition Was a Failure,” Cato Institute, July 17, 1991 (specifically the section “Prohibition was criminal”). Note: the numbers for the increase in crime are widely disputed, ranging anywhere from 5 percent to 78 percent.
Summary of crime in the 1920s: Encyclopedia.com, “Crime 1920–1940.”
The FBI was still the Bureau of Investigation: History of the FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigations, https://fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fbi/fbi_hist.htm.
especially women, whose newfound independence: “‘Sex Appeal’ Responsible for U.S. Crime Wave,” Times of India, March 22, 1926.
“Footprints are the best clue”: “Foot-Print Is the Best Clue,” Casper Star Tribune (WY), January 17, 1928.