The Sixteenth Rail

by Adam Schrager

  “Yes,” Koehler answered, “unless it was covered up.”

  “Unless it was covered up,” Pope repeated, letting it hover with the jury.

  He segued to Koehler’s other courtroom appearances, parrying, searching for a hole to poke open further. He drew from the scientist the fact that he’d been on the witness stand in civil trials as well as the Magnuson criminal case, but he did not pursue the one case Koehler mentioned that he had lost. Koehler later wrote in his notebook, “I was skating on thin ice when Pope asked about other lawsuits and I mentioned the Cincinnati case in which I lost out.”

  After reestablishing Koehler’s tenure of twenty-one years with the Madison lab, Pope found an area to explore.

  “Now, you have never undertaken to identify chisel marks or plane marks upon lumber in court before, have you?”

  “In court? No.”

  “This is the first time you have been called upon to testify to that?”

  Koehler nodded.

  “You are shaking your head. Would you mind saying yes or no? I want it on the record, that is the reason.”

  “Yes,” said Koehler.

  “Now you demonstrated to the jury yesterday that one of the notches in the rail, notch recessed for the purpose of allowing the rung to be put in there, after being sawed down on the side had been cut out with a three-quarter inch chisel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Please, so we get it on the record. The notch referred to on the rail of the ladder could well have been made by any standard three-quarter inch chisel, couldn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “In other words, a three-quarter inch chisel is not only a common chisel, but it is one of the standard sizes, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “And whether it be a chisel made by the Stanley Company, by the Goodell, Pratt Company or one of the common cheap cast steel chisels, it is the same size and functions in the same manner?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you shown the set of Stanley chisels belonging to Mr. Hauptmann and which were in his garage at the time of his arrest?”

  “A set of Stanley chisels?” Koehler asked.

  “Yes,” said Pope.

  “No.”

  “So you don’t know then whether among the set of Stanley chisels there was a three-quarter inch chisel?”

  “No I don’t.”

  He then shifted to Koehler’s entry into the case.

  “You came into this case first in the month of May, 1932, did you not?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was nearly three months after the ladder was found?”

  “Yes.”

  “And of course you are depending entirely on what somebody else told you as to the conditions of the ladder at the time it was found?”

  “Yes.”

  “And its condition at the time it was first shown to you?”

  “That I observed myself.”

  “You do not know whether the ladder, when it was originally found, contained a piece of Douglas fir or not, in the place of the North Carolina pine?”

  “I didn’t see it when it was originally found.”

  “Would you mind showing me the rails [other than Rail 16] that are made up of North Carolina pine?” Pope asked

  Koehler stepped down from the stand to highlight the rails on the bottom section of the ladder, Rails 12 and 13.

  “It is a different quality, is it not, from the board that was found in the attic floor?”

  “It is a common grade of lumber, they are all three of them a common grade of lumber.”

  “I didn’t mean that, Mr. Koehler. I just asked you if it isn’t a different quality or a better quality?”

  “What do you mean by quality then, if you don’t mean the grade?” Koehler replied.

  “I think you lumber men do call it ‘grade’ that is the term you use. It is a better grade, isn’t it?”

  “It has no knots in it, if that is what you mean, or just a small knot, whereas the other piece has several knots in it.”

  Pope was getting frustrated.

  “Mr. Koehler, I suppose that when a man accustomed to dealing with lumber speaks of the grade or quality of the lumber that he usually has reference to its quality and its grade the same as you would if you were speak of silk or plush or wool or anything else. Now I am asking you, is not the railing that you have just shown me of a better grade of North Carolina lumber than the grade of lumber that was found on the attic floor?”

  “I will have to explain that because—,” Koehler began to answer before Pope cut him off.

  “Can’t you answer yes or no?”

  “No, I can’t because I don’t know what you mean by quality.”

  Justice Trenchard had to step in to referee this dispute as Wilentz defended his witness, encouraging Pope to let Koehler explain, and Pope demanding a yes or no answer. Counter to what Pope wanted, Koehler was given the chance to show further knowledge.

  “That word ‘quality’ covers a number of things,” he said, turning to the jury as often as he did toward Pope. “It might cover the appearance, so far as being beautiful or not is concerned, it might cover the strength of the wood, it might cover its ability to keep from warping and a number of other things. Now, the word ‘grade’ usually refers to the presence or absence of defects in the lumber, such as knots and pitch streaks and such.”

  Pope tried again to make his point. “Now, speaking as a man, for instance, who was engaged in the carpenter business and the building trade—if he went to a lumber yard and he found the two grades of lumber which you have produced here from the lumber yard, the one, the North Carolina pine flooring, underflooring, or whatever—roofers, and the North Carolina pine railing in there. Would the lumber dealer charge him more for the one grade than the other?”

  “In that case not.”

  “In that case not?” a dumbfounded Pope repeated.

  “Because they would be classified the same, although there is a variation in a grade.”

  “So that you think that the grade of North Carolina pine that you have referred to in the other rails of ladder equals to the grade of North Carolina pine that was found on the attic floor?”

  “Yes,” said Koehler, “speaking commercially.”

  “I just simply want you to tell the jury the difference in the quality,” an exasperated Pope said.

  “I can’t answer that question unless it is specific.”

  “Is there no difference in your judgment in the quality of the two pieces of lumber?”

  “In some respects there is and in some there isn’t.”

  “In any respect?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell us what those differences are.”

  “The two bottom rails of the ladder do not contain as large knots as the rail cut—as the North Carolina pine rail in the top section of the ladder.”

  “And in that respect it is better quality?”

  “For certain purposes it would be considered better when it is free from knots.”

  “Well, it is better for any purpose, isn’t it, if it is free from knots?”

  “I will have to explain again, to answer that question.”

  Koehler proved a formidable foe for a defense counsel whose hobby was woodworking. As he tried to score with the jury, Pope must have felt like a Sunday softball player trying to strike out a major league baseball player. The gap in their knowledge of the topic was dramatic.

  The intellectual thrust and parry continued until Pope finally changed the subject. “Taking the structure of this ladder as a whole would you say that that was built by a mechanic or by an amateur or even less?”

  “Do you mean by ‘mechanic’ a carpenter or a machinist?”

  “Well, I didn’t know that machinists built ladder
s, sir, so of course I am referring to a man who attempted to build a piece of, a structure out of wood and I don’t refer to a jeweler or machinist as a mechanic who would attempt to use wood,” he said. “What I want to know is do you think it was built by a mechanic?”

  “No.”

  “From your knowledge of wood, would you think that a ladder constructed as this one is, or referring specifically to this particular ladder, would hold the weight of a man 175 to 180 pounds?”

  “Yes, I think it would.”

  “And could he go up and down readily without the ladder breaking?”

  “He might.”

  “He might? The nearer the [rungs] are together, the stronger the ladder and the less likely to break under use, is that correct?”

  “No. I wouldn’t say that the distance between the rungs affects the ladder except possibly that when a man makes a long step it gives more of a jerk.”

  Next Pope tried to make hay with Koehler’s saw cut measurements.

  “The normal width of an ordinary cross cut saw before there is any set in the teeth is what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You never measured it?”

  “I never saw a saw like that.”

  “Well, how thick is the saw blade?”

  “I don’t know. It varies, of course, with different saws and it varies from front to back.”

  Pope began asking about Hauptmann’s specific saws and measurements to the thousandths of an inch that Koehler had found on one of the ladder’s recesses.

  “Now, when you speak of 35,000ths of an inch you are speaking of a width slightly less than a thirty-second of an inch?”

  “A great deal less.”

  Pope was throwing everything he had at this and couldn’t find an opening. After some discussion of why Koehler couldn’t trace the Douglas fir rails in the ladder as definitively as he did Rails 12 and 13, he tried to infer that Hauptmann, a carpenter by trade, couldn’t have created what Koehler had called an inferior product.

  “Did you find any hammer marks on the ladder over the nails, did you notice any?”

  “There were a few on the rungs.”

  “Just a few on the rungs?”

  “Yes.”

  “From your experience, a good carpenter doesn’t leave hammer marks on his work, does he?”

  “No.”

  “He drives the nail down practically flush with the work and then he uses his nail set to set it in.”

  “He wouldn’t use a nail set on 8 penny nails, as a rule, he would drive them flush and leave them there.”

  The two then sparred over the birch dowels that connected the sections of the ladder. “Now a three-quarter inch dowel pin is not a usual size, is it?” Pope asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It is sort of unusual, isn’t it, in size?”

  “No, you can buy them in most lumber yards and in some hardware stores.”

  “Well, you can buy them, certainly but a three-quarter inch is not a size that is frequently used, is it?”

  “Yes, it is frequently used for mop handles.”

  “You mean short mop handles for little sink mops?”

  “No, regular long mop handles.”

  If Pope’s goal was to fluster Koehler or break open his story, he failed. Instead, he gave the scientist the opportunity to prove even more scholarly as the cross examination continued.

  On the topic of annual growth rings, Koehler later said he was worried that “when he asked whether weather conditions didn’t determine width of rings, I thought he was going to get me to say that different trees would be affected similarly.”

  However, he didn’t. The science was new enough, it’s likely Pope was learning on the fly, throwing anything he could think of against the wall and hoping it would stick.

  Instead, Koehler was able to steer the conversation to the idea that wider rings in wood indicated favorable growth and narrower rings constituted adverse growing conditions such as crowding, not just weather.

  With nothing to be gained there, Pope turned to the machine planer marks Koehler had tracked to South Carolina and Dorn’s lumber mill.

  “If a board is run across a planer head moving with eight knives at approximately 21 to 22,000 revolutions per minute—”

  Koehler cut him off. “No, not revolutions per minute, cuts per minute.”

  “Cuts per minute, I stand corrected,” Pope said. “Thank you. 21 or 22,000 cuts per minute if it is moved at a fairly rapid rate of speed, the result will be a perfectly smooth finish on the board, won’t it?”

  “Not perfectly smooth,” Koehler said, “because of all of those cuts.”

  “Well, if it is run across the knives fast enough it will be absolutely smooth, won’t it?”

  “No. The faster it is run, the rougher the work it does.”

  “The faster, the rougher?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, in order to be rougher, the speed of the board running across the knives would have to be a little faster than the whirl of the knives and the cut, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh, it never is that fast.”

  “Isn’t it the slow motion of a board across the planer head that causes the ridges or ripples to show on the bottom of the board?”

  “No,” Koehler instructed. “The slow motion brings them close together and makes them inconspicuous.”

  And with that final correction, Pope had had enough. He thanked Koehler and sat back down, having accomplished little, except to point out that a ¾-inch chisel was common and that the kind of testimony Koehler had offered was new to him. The wood scientist’s findings and his conclusions were unchallenged.

  In his redirect, Wilentz came back to the line of questioning about whether a “good carpenter” built the ladder. “Is this the work of a carpenter of some sort or other?” he asked Koehler.

  “It might be a very rough carpenter,” Koehler said.

  “Well, a jeweler wouldn’t make this ladder, would he?”

  “No.”

  “It would have to be somebody that knew something about carpentry, isn’t that it?”

  “Well, something about it, yes.”

  He had Koehler once again look over Hauptmann’s tool chest to see if any Stanley chisels were there. He found none. They discussed the distance between the rungs of the ladder and how, for Hauptmann, at five-foot-nine or five-foot-ten, it would not be much of an imposition.

  And then Wilentz came back to where he started the day before: the definitive piece of evidence to “wrap the ladder” around Hauptmann’s neck.

  “Are you still of the opinion, Mr. Koehler that this [board from the attic] and Rail 16 of the ladder were at one time one and the same piece of wood?”

  “I am,” Koehler said, even as Pope rose to object.

  “And in answering that last question of the Attorney General, you are expressing your opinion, aren’t you?” Pope said on re-cross examination.

  “Yes.”

  “And that is all?”

  “Yes.”

  He tried again to direct attention away from Hauptmann.

  “This type of ladder, I mean this general, shall I call it plan of construction of ladder, is a general plan and type of ladder that is used quite extensively in the South in the fruit industry, is it not?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I never saw a ladder like that before.”

  “You never saw one like that before?”

  “No.”

  “Have you ever paid any attention to the type of extension ladder or sectional ladders that are used in the fruit picking areas of the South, of [the] southern United States?”

  “I didn’t know they used sectional ladders.”

  “You never noticed that?”

  “No.”

  After a
few more questions about where and when Koehler began inspecting the kidnap ladder, both attorneys had completed their questioning. Wilentz conferred with his colleagues before stating plainly, “The State rests.”

  A commotion broke out in the courtroom. Trenchard tried to gavel it down, but he’d been trying to quiet down the capacity crowds since the beginning and not with a great amount of success. He had threatened to clear the courtroom early in the trial and admonished the officers stationed throughout the room to remove those laughing, scoffing, or talking through the proceedings.

  The defense immediately moved for an acquittal. Trenchard refused.

  Lloyd Fisher, another of Hauptmann’s attorneys, subsequently delivered the opening statement on behalf of the defense. “I am fully cognizant of the grave importance of this indictment,” he began. “I shall humbly and in language as simple as I can command give you briefly the facts and the circumstances upon which we rely to gain for the defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an acquittal at your hands. That is now our responsibility. The fair presentation of all the facts and circumstances attendant to the trial of this indictment which we shall contend will preserve the life and liberty of this defendant.”

  He spoke about the alibi Hauptmann would provide, backed up by eyewitnesses, about how he was a frugal and hardworking man, and about how the defense’s own expert handwriting witnesses would reject the notion his client had written the ransom notes. Further, he listed by name the prosecution’s eyewitnesses and said the defense would highlight problems with each of their testimony.

  One individual the defense did not mention, nor criticize in the slightest, was Arthur Koehler. Still, Fisher did take aim at the integrity of the ladder.

  “I want to come down for a minute, if I may, to the manner of the conduct of the police in this case,” he said. “I want to show you what we will prove about it. We believe we will be able to show you that no case in all history was as badly handled or as badly mangled as this case. . . .

  “The ladder, we will prove to you has been torn apart, put together and replaced and torn down again. The nails have been drawn and were drawn and put back again. That ladder, we believe will show clearly, is in no more the condition than it was the day it was found on the Lindbergh estate than that chair is in the condition the ladder is now,” he said, pointing at a chair in the courtroom. “Now, if we prove those facts, ladies and gentlemen, they are essential facts in this case. If we show you that that ladder has been so handled that it would be impossible now to identify it accurately as the one which was found in the hills, then we shall expect you to disregard all this testimony about the ladder.”