In all, from April to September, Koehler sent out 1,596 requests to lumber mills and companies on the eastern seaboard. In return, he had received twenty-three samples that met the general requirements laid out.
The width of the individual knife cuts from the Roper Brothers samples from Petersburg, Virginia, and from the Millen Lumber Company in Millen, Georgia, were close to those on measurements of Rails 12 and 13. The distance between revolution marks on the Steedman Lumber samples from Clayton, Georgia, was only .01 off from those on the rails. Lipscomb Lumber in Henderson, North Carolina, had only six knives on its cutter head, not eight as hoped for.
Koehler and Davis put each under the microscope. They measured each to the hundredth of an inch. They looked at the sides, the edges, and the faces.
And then they looked at a set of samples sent in from South Carolina. First Koehler, then Davis. Then Koehler again.
The two scientists looked at each other and knew. They had found their match.
6
Joseph Jennings Dorn removed his black fedora and wiped his brow as he climbed the steps leading up to his porch with its paired Ionic columns. He looked back at Gold Street and waved as a passing car tooted its horn and a man’s voice yelled, “Evening, J. J.”
He didn’t know who the driver was, but no matter. A lot more people knew J. J. Dorn these days than he was familiar with, due to any number of his activities, not to mention his surname.
The name Dorn in McCormick, South Carolina, in 1933 was arguably the city’s most famous. William Dorn, J. J.’s great uncle, had discovered the second richest vein of gold in South Carolina’s history in February 1852 at the site that would be called Dornsville before eventually becoming McCormick, on the Palmetto State’s western border with Georgia.
William Dorn had been a farmer who became obsessed with gold prospecting a decade earlier, testing and examining a host of nearby sites. The area included flat, sandy terrain surrounded by extensive pine forests. Dorn would convince a neighbor to allow him to prospect on his land, and in a mere eight years the mine produced more than $900,000 of gold.
Gold in that part of the country was along a geologic belt, discovered from North Carolina into north Georgia. Along his neighbor’s land, William Dorn excavated a two-hundred-foot-long trench, and with the help of slave labor, he prospered.
Williams’s brother, James, was a successful farmer himself, and his son, J. M. Dorn, was described as “one of the leading men of affairs of Dornsville,” owning a saw and grist mill and a cotton gin. However, the next generation of Dorn men would eclipse the business acumen, if not the wealth, of their great uncle.
J. J. Dorn took off his gray suit coat as he passed under his home’s open port-cochère with extended roof brackets. The two-story brick home, one of the few brick structures in McCormick, was constructed in the Colonial Revival style just a couple blocks off of Main Street. It was designed by J. C. Hemphill, who had served as a drafter for Thomas Edison.
The brick helped it stay cool during the typical South Carolina summers, of which this August of 1933 was no different. Dorn pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and dabbed his hairline, which for a man of fifty-eight was hanging in there, even as his gut was starting to hang out. He was overweight by about forty pounds, all of it seemingly showing in his stomach, leaving his tie unable to reach his belt buckle.
He began leafing through his mail. It was a nightly chore, as he received correspondence at so many places and for so many different positions.
With his brother, Martin Gary Dorn, J. J. owned more than a dozen sawmills in South Carolina, sixteen cotton gins, and the M. G. and J. J. Dorn Lumber Company. J. J.’s other activities included serving as president and treasurer of the McCormick Manufacturing Company, president of the Dorn Banking Company, a founder and vice president of the People’s Bank of McCormick, and director of the South Carolina Power Company. Plus, he ran a farm with a “fine herd of Hereford cattle.”
The diversity allowed the Dorns to survive first the boll weevil outbreak that devastated the area’s cotton crops in the early 1920s and then the Depression, which saw McCormick lose more than 15 percent of its population as jobs dried up faster than the South Carolina soil in summer.
After running the county highway commission and the city’s public works commission and serving as a trustee on the local school board and as a town councilman, J. J. had been convinced in 1930 to run for state senate. Elected as a Democrat—everyone was a Democrat in South Carolina in those days—he focused mainly on economic issues during his tenure, serving on the banking and insurance committee as well as the commerce and manufacturer’s committee.
To be civic and social, he was a member of a number of groups including the Masons, the Knights Templar, the Temple of Shriners, the Elks Club, and the Lions Club.
J. J. Dorn was a busy man.
He said hello to his wife, Honora, and inquired about his daughter, Mabel, a teacher in the rural school district where he had received his only education. Then he turned his attention once again to his mail. The pile seemed to get larger every day.
What caught his attention was another package from the government, this one from a laboratory in Wisconsin. The earlier letter had come from up north, from the Schwarzkopf fellow who was running the Lindbergh kidnapping investigation. Well, the letter hadn’t said that in as many words, but even though Dorn lived in small-town South Carolina, the local Journal and Review out of neighboring Aiken had covered Lindbergh’s plight from cover to cover, and Dorn knew that a letter from the New Jersey State Police asking about wood had to do with that ladder they had found at the scene of the crime.
The new letter hadn’t come from the authorities, though, it came from someone named Arthur G. Koehler, who ran a division at the Forest Products Laboratory called “Silvicultural Relations.” Dorn didn’t know what that meant, but he did know something about wood. He was hands-on at the lumber mill, which was located on the line of the Charleston and Western Carolina Railroad. He and his brother not only provided the locals with the wood they needed, they also shipped product all over the Atlantic seaboard.
In his letter, Colonel Schwarzkopf had asked him to send some samples of yellow or North Carolina pine to Koehler as part of the investigation. They were interested in the speed of his planer and how it dressed 1x4-inch rails in the process. Dorn had instructed his foreman to comply with the request.
Now, Koehler wrote,
Recently, I received from you, evidently at the request of Col. Schwarzkopf, two pieces of 1-inch yellow pine lumber cut from the same stick measuring 3-20/32 inches wide and three pieces cut from another stick measuring 3 7/32-inches wide. All of these pieces were cut to a length of about 9½ inches.
The pieces which are 3 20/32-inches wide have practically the identical spacing of planer marks on the faces and edges as were found on the yellow pine ladder rails under investigation, but quite different from those on the pieces 3 7/32 inches wide. Evidently the two original sticks were dressed on two different machines, or possibly the same machine but the speed of feed was faster for the narrower stock.
Before we go any farther, I wish you would send me a few more pieces of the stock which is 3 20/32 inches wide, for a further check on the planer marks. If you can find some that were dressed a year or so ago on the same machine, so much the better.
Koehler had enclosed two self-addressed government franks, so Dorn could send the samples without postage. He also asked the South Carolina lumberman whether his planer was of the “high speed type in which the stock goes through at the rate of about 250 feet per minute. It is belt driven instead of having an individual motor for each cutter head. Am I correct?”
Dorn wanted to help, but this was getting time-consuming, and he had a number of businesses to run. He set the letter aside, telling himself to come back to it.
In Madison, Arthur Koehler had been pos
itively giddy after seeing the first samples from the Dorn Lumber Company—the first to match the marks on Rails 12 and 13. On the same day he sent the letter to Dorn asking for more wood, he had sent one to Schwarzkopf updating him on his progress. “At last,” he wrote, “I received a piece of lumber with planer marks apparently identical with those on the N.C. pine rails. They were received from M. G. and J. J. Dorn, McCormick, S.C.”
He went on to comment about how few samples he had received overall. Then he expressed some doubt about the Dorn sample he had just complimented. “I might add that one of the edges of the stock from Dorn shows defects in the planing similar to, but not so pronounced as those on one edge of rails 12 and 13, although they have the same spacing,” he concluded. “I hope additional material will show these defects more definitely.”
He included a table comparing measurements from the sides and edges of Rails 12 and 13 and the two samples sent in from the Dorn mill. It was the “A” sample that best compared.
While the width of the individual knife cuts from the sides of Rails 12 and 13 was 0.117 inch, sample “A” from Dorn was 0.115 inch. The distance between the revolution marks on the kidnapping ladder rails was 0.93 inch; on the Dorn sample it was 0.92 inch. The number of knife cuts per revolution was eight in both.
On the edges, the similarities continued. The width of the individual knife cuts from 12 and 13 was 0.143 inch, and from Dorn sample “A” it was 0.144 inch. The distances between revolution marks were 0.86 inch and 0.87 inch, respectively. The number of knife cuts per revolution was six in both.
While Dorn was living his life and working his multiple businesses plus serving his constituents at the South Carolina State Capitol, Koehler was anxiously awaiting more samples.
He was also fighting a dizziness that seemed to come and go. Focusing on work helped. So did the Liggett’s milk sugar that his brother, Alfred, the doctor, recommended. It was better than the laxative and visit to the oculist that his personal physician had suggested.
When Dorn didn’t respond to his letter within a week, Koehler wrote again to remind him. He wrote him again nine days later as a second follow-up.
“Since the letters were not returned you evidently received them, but possibly on account of other work have misplaced them,” Koehler wrote, enclosing a copy of his original letter. He ended with a handwritten encouragement to the typed letter that read, “P.S. Please keep this matter confidential as far as possible. AK.”
The scientist was persistent. Dorn liked that in a man and thus proceeded to have his foreman ship Koehler four samples of 1x4-inch stock that same day.
Koehler and Edward Davis immediately put them under the microscope. Koehler briefed the New Jersey State Police the next morning. “Where these show the planer marks clearly they show practically exactly the same spacing as those on rails 12 and 13, both for revolution marks and individual knife cuts,” he wrote to Schwarzkopf before expressing some doubt.
“They do not show the peculiar planer markings as on one edge just like they are on rails 12 and 13, but they do show faint uniform intermittent marks of the same spacing as on the rails, which may or may not be due to being made by the same machine—I can not tell.
“Since the field was canvassed about as thoroughly as could be done by mail, and since these are the only samples that I received which have the same spacing of planer marks as on the rails, the lead may be worth following up further.”
Even more curious, though, the other two samples sent in the second batch from Dorn showed a wider spacing of the planer marks, indicating they were dressed on a “more rapid feed” than the wood whose marks matched Rails 12 and 13. Unfortunately for Koehler, those also did not show the distinctive “grooves” or “indentations” found on the kidnap rail.
So he suggested a trip to McCormick and a thorough “check-up of [the Dorn] stock, and particularly as to whether the defect in the planing of one edge of rails 12 and 13 could have been formed at their mill, thereby definitely pinning down the mill at which the lumber originated.”
If he could do that with any reasonable degree of certainty, the detectives could track where it was sold, thereby bringing the wood and the case closer to a potential suspect. Then again, he openly stated that his proposal, “if carried out, may prove to be a ‘wild goose chase,’ but it is the only lead that I have left, unless use can be made of the hand plane marks later if the problem gets closer to solution through other channels.”
Finally, it was out in the open. A “wild goose chase.”
That’s what the New Jersey authorities felt they’d been on since the beginning of the investigation. They expected more science—even if they didn’t understand it—and less speculation from their wood expert.
Schwarzkopf didn’t acknowledge the doubt in his reply, simply stating, “It is our wish that you proceed to [McCormick] so that nothing will be omitted on this check up.”
So Koehler plodded on, sending yet another letter to Senator Dorn, asking for more information, this time about where the mill sold its lumber and more.
“Can you let me know what your market is for 1x4 North Carolina pine, or was a year and a half ago?” he wrote. “That is, do you sell it all through commission men or do you sell it direct to box factories or such? To what part of the country did it go a year and a half to two years ago? Do you have records of your sales during the last two or three years?” He concluded his letter by writing, “I may be in your section of the country later and call on you, do not go to too much trouble now.”
Too late for that. Dorn was now fully engaged with the thought he might be helping, albeit in a small fashion, in solving the murder of the Little Eaglet.
He replied within a day to Koehler’s questions. They were selling the lumber through wholesalers and in markets from New Jersey to Rochester, New York. He had all the sales records and invoice files and said that it would likely take a day to get the files together.
“Will be glad to do this for you when it becomes necessary,” Dorn concluded. “If you are in this section will be glad for you to call by.”
In a follow-up letter to New Jersey, Koehler once again prepared the state police for the possibility he could come up empty in South Carolina—that ten months of study, nearly twenty form letters, and numerous hopes could be dashed.
Planer markings on Rails 12 and 13 led to a trip to McCormick, South Carolina, and the M. G. and J. J. Dorn Lumber Company. Koehler told Schwarzkopf that it could “prove to be a ‘wild goose chase,’ but it is the only lead that I have left.” (Courtesy: Dr. Regis Miller/Forest Products Laboratory)
“I feel encouraged in the way this matter is narrowing down,” he wrote. “Of course, I realize that even if we locate the mill that dressed the lumber there still is plenty of chance for getting stuck.”
Koehler wrote to Schwarzkopf again just a week later, once again hopeful. For a man of science, he was also being guided by emotions. “I feel that as long as I have been delegated to assist in this work I am going to do as thorough a job as possible,” he wrote. “And, as I said before, the fact that the possible origin of the North Carolina pine is narrowing down so tremendously, gives me great encouragement.”
He asked that Lamb send one of the bottom rails (Rail 12 or 13) to McCormick or cut the rail in two and send half to the Dorn mill with a letter of introduction in case his Forest Service badge didn’t cut it. Schwarzkopf responded in the affirmative on both points.
The first week of November 1933, Koehler was once again on a train heading to the unknown, excitement building with each passing mile. He wondered if the mill foreman would remember that his machine made that defect. For that matter, he wondered if it was the same mill foreman who’d been there a year and a half earlier.
He speculated about how the spacing of the planer marks on the uprights could match the Dorn samples and yet contain none of those “grooves” or indentati
ons.
McCormick wasn’t an easy place to get to. Koehler could figure out how to make it to Atlanta easily enough and even to Calhoun Falls, about twenty-five miles away, but the train didn’t go straight to McCormick. So he got off at the town along the Georgia–South Carolina border at midnight and took a bus the next morning, November 7, to McCormick.
There were at least seven structures located on the Dorn grounds. Some were simply roofs on poles, erected to cover dozens of piles of wood. Just a few trees dotted the outlying part of the complex. Thick black smoke came from a stack in one building. Koehler knew that had to be where the dressing happened, and so that’s where he went to meet Senator Dorn.
He shook hands with the portly senator in his omnipresent black fedora. Mill foreman J. P. Rush was on one knee looking at one of the wheels on the pulley he supervised when Koehler came in. Rush wore overalls, long sleeves, and a brown hat. His jacket hung on a hook attached to one of the many wood beams throughout the building.
Sawdust hung in the air and covered the unfinished floor. Over their shoulders, Koehler saw one #404B fast feed planer and matcher from the S. A. Woods Machine Company, outfitted with eight-knife round top and bottom cylinders plus six-knife round self-centering side heads.
The Dorns had bought the machine, a type “F” heavy double profiler complete with countershaft devices and spindles, and one Rogers type G-32 fully automatic knife grinder with emery wheel leather belts and an emery wheel dresser for a total of $5,447 on March 20, 1929. They had the receipts to prove it. Koehler would want to see those.
The Sixteenth Rail Page 12