The Sixteenth Rail

by Adam Schrager

  Hoffman asked J. Edgar Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation to reopen the investigation. He hired a detective in the fall of 1935 from a neighboring county to investigate the case.

  “I insist, and I believe that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who share my opinion,” he later wrote in a series of articles for Liberty Magazine, “that the kidnap and murder of the Lindbergh baby could not possibly have been a ‘one-man job.’” He continued,

  There were confederates, either on the inside or the outside; and no child is safe tonight as long as there is alive a single person who had a hand in this crime and who is being permitted to ‘get away with it.’

  It was said that I was casting [aspersions] upon ‘Jersey justice.’ I deny that! I wanted ‘Jersey justice’ to become just what the name implies; I did not want it to be ‘Jersey injustice.’

  I wanted, and still want, to be sure that all the participants in the crime and punished with equal vigor. I am not yet satisfied that we have done this.

  Hoffman met with the convict in his cell in October 1935, at which point Hauptmann offered a passionate defense of his innocence and an equally passionate condemnation of the prosecution’s case. Hoffman later told readers of Liberty that Hauptmann was “particularly bitter in his denunciation of Arthur Koehler.”

  He did not seem to think that there was anything particularly brilliant or impressive in Koehler’s tracing of a shipment of lumber, cut in a certain way, to a retail lumber yard in the Bronx. Many hundreds of thousands of feet of lumber cut with the same saws or knives would be produced by the same mill, he argued. Koehler himself had traced many shipments of the lumber to different cities in the country. Hauptmann claimed that if a suspect had been held in any one of those cities, say Buffalo, Easton, Richmond, it could have been said that the lumber which was milled and planed in the same South Carolina mills had been traced to a retail lumber yard in the suspect’s neighborhood.

  “Vy vould the jury believe Koehler?” he quoted Hauptmann as saying,

  “vhen he testified dot two pieces of lumber vhich vere given him in the courtroom vere from the same board? then ve show with Mr. DeBisschop, a fine witness, dot dey come from different places; von almost new—five or six years old—and the other from an old building nearly forty-seven years standing before it vas torn down. But vhen Koehler say dot two other pieces of board, von on the ladder and von vot they lie vas part of my attic floor are from the same board, he is believed. Vy?

  “‘I know vy!’” Hoffman continued.

  Hauptmann had a far-away look in his eyes, although his thoughts were probably only a few feet away, upon the cloth-covered electric chair. . . . “It is because, even though a piece is missing dot must be supplied by the mind, dey vant to believe this von thing vhich vill help take my life. Because vhen my life may depend upon a mistake of Koehler’s, dot is not important.

  “Oh, no!” he concluded bitterly. “The poor child haf been kidnapped and murdered, so somebody must die for it. For is the parent not the great flyer? And if somebody does not die for the death of the child, den alvays the police vill be monkeys. So I am the one who is picked out to die. . . .

  “Can any von honestly believe,” he asked, “dot I, vorking many times as a carpenter, vould for two years haf a plane dot vould not be sharpened and vhich vould haf today the same nicks as it would haf two years ago. Besides, even the same blade of the plane vould make different marks vhen used by different people. But Koehler, he proves dot dis plane today, by different people, makes exactly the same marks dot it made vhen supposed to haf been used by me two years ago. The ladder has been taken apart many times and handled by many people. It must be shown dot I vas not always in the Bronx, but at Hopewell—so some von, maybe the police, might run my plane on the ladder rails.”

  This idea of planted evidence, first introduced by Reilly during the trial, gained credibility with Hoffman. His suspicions were magnified by correspondence he received from “concerned citizens” who felt Hauptmann was innocent. People questioned Koehler’s testimony on the planing, on the chisel, and on the matching of Rail 16 to the Hauptmann attic board.

  “I cannot understand how Mr. Koehler could positively be certain of these facts which might be the means of condemning a man to death,” wrote Hugo Herfurth, the president of a general contracting company in Washington, DC.

  Roy Knabenshue, who worked for the National Park Service, called Koehler’s work “ninety per cent speculative” and said it “cannot be proven that he is correct. The writer is a carpenter by trade, had experience in a planing mill and also owned and operated a planing mill for years and thinks that Mr. Koehler is wrong when he says that he can identify a piece of wood by a dull knife in the planer head. I think he is also wrong when he says he can positively identify the board from the attic as being a part of the ladder.”

  Maybe Hoffman’s closest counsel on the matter, though, was Arch Loney, a Department of Interior worker who was convinced that Koehler was wrong. “Don’t become discouraged by caustic reaction as a result of your reprieve of Hauptmann,” Loney wrote to Hoffman. “The case is abundant with inconsistent testimony. . . . I can help you on the ladder angle.”

  Koehler, meanwhile, had returned to his Madison laboratory after the trial ended to a bouquet of roses as a “welcome from members of his section.” He spoke about the case two nights later at a dinner held by the lab for all staff members. More than two hundred people attended the event.

  Condon and others were traveling the country telling their stories, but Koehler told the Milwaukee Sentinel upon returning to Madison, “I know I’m not going on the vaudeville stage.”

  Everyone wanted to know what he thought of the conviction, whether there was reasonable doubt, whether Hauptmann should have been sentenced to life imprisonment or death. To a person, Koehler told them, “I’d rather not say.” However, when asked whether Hauptmann was involved, he was not at all hesitant.

  “I am surer that the board in that ladder came from Hauptmann’s attic than I would be if I had actually seen someone take a board from the attic and make a ladder,” Koehler told the Milwaukee Sentinel. “When you take the evidence of the wood itself, there’s no possibility of mistake. There’s more chance for an eyewitness to be wrong.”

  His fame landed him spots in Who’s Who in America and in American Magazine’s feature on “America’s Most Interesting People,” where it was declared “he can track down a toothpick to the very forest it came from. . . . He can tell you if your favorite pipe’s genuine brier, and where it came from: France, Scotland, or Timbuctoo.”

  He was invited to speak to Lions, Kiwanis, and Rotary Clubs around Wisconsin and the occasional out-of-town address as well, like the speech he gave to a crowd of more than five hundred people at the Baltimore Criminal Justice Commission in May 1935. Unlike others involved in the case, Koehler did not get rich as a result. As he told his brothers, he got “a lot of free meals—and the Laboratory got some publicity which is the chief reason for giving the talks.”

  His biggest financial reward came from the Saturday Evening Post article, for which he was paid $738.46. Besides that, his financial ledger shows he made $240.40 talking about his role in the case, including $10 for an appearance in front of the Elkhorn, Wisconsin, Kiwanis Club.

  Koehler had a net savings of $2,043.67 in 1934 and $1,293.18 in 1935. The drop was attributed to a trip he and Ethelyn took to Europe from August 21 to October 11, 1935, in part so he could attend a conference in Amsterdam of the International Association of Wood Anatomists and serve as a delegate to the International Botanical Congress.

  While Arthur and Ethelyn were in Europe, Ethelyn’s brother, E. Cadwallader “Caddy” Smith, and his wife, Alice, stayed with the two younger Koehler children, seventeen-year-old Ruth and five-year-old George, and experienced a scary moment in the process. On September 30, George cried out in the mid
dle of the night, claiming someone was in his room. His bedroom had a door that opened out onto a deck that was the roof of a ground-floor porch.

  “Now that our responsibility is nearly over, guess I might as well tell of an experience we had a couple of weeks ago,” Caddy wrote in a letter to Arthur and Ethelyn.

  We knew it would worry you . . . so thot best not to tell of it before this. Well, two weeks ago Monday, Florence [the live-in maid] as usual went out on the 2nd floor deck to shake her dust mop. She specially noticed everything was O.K. then. The next morning the first thing she noticed was the storm door opening into George’s room was open & swaying. She went right in George’s room and found the inner door unlocked and his play house, which stood against the door, was shoved out at an angle about a foot.

  Three times the eve before, after Geo was in bed, he cried out, and when Alice went to him he insisted he heard someone walking around, but Alice thot he was just imagining it. Well, we called the police & they sent two men out. They looked everything over & said there was no doubt an attempt had been made to get in. We spoke of the thought that had been in our minds constantly ever since we had the responsibility of the children, that some pro-Hauptmann . . . out of revenge to Arthur, would try and snatch George.

  The police agreed it was no joke, so ever since we have kept George in very close, and at night the police squad car keeps up guard. I nailed all the doors & windows tight, moved Geo and Ruth into front room & I have slept with a heavy cane side of our bed. We probably will never know just what it was all about, but it has been pretty exciting.

  The start of 1936 found Koehler working his way through “things two years old” that had been buried on his desk while he focused solely on his business out east. The new year also brought a three-month stay of execution for Hauptmann, granted by Hoffman in his continued effort to find coconspirators. With no further action, Hauptmann would be put to death in early April.

  Koehler was still publicly discussing his work in the Hauptmann case, even though “Hoffman raised so many doubts,” he wrote to his brothers, and he gave talks to large audiences in Minneapolis, New York, Kansas City, and Detroit.

  When the Koehler’s home phone rang on Tuesday night, March 24, the family had just finished dinner. It was Colonel Schwarzkopf calling. He needed his wood expert in Trenton the following night.

  Koehler packed a bag and immediately left to spend the night in Chicago. The next morning he left Chicago on an airplane at eight and landed in Detroit an hour and a half later. He boarded another plane and arrived in Newark after lunch, “a half-hour early.”

  “The weather was fine,” he wrote Ethelyn, describing his flying experience, which relatively few Americans had experienced in 1936, “except the last half hour was a little bumpy and cloudy in spots below us. We were up 10,000 feet most of the time. We went through and over southern Canada and right over Niagara Falls. There was snow on the ground east and west of Buffalo and the rivers were high. Detroit was our only stop. I had breakfast and lunch in the air.”

  He was met by Detective Bornmann and Lieutenant Keaten and taken to Schwarzkopf’s home in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. Wilentz was there too. They were talking about Governor Hoffman’s latest actions regarding the Hauptmann case.

  Roughly two months earlier when he had issued the stay of execution, Hoffman had ordered the New Jersey State Police to renew their investigation of the Lindbergh baby case, specifically to find Hauptmann’s accomplice.

  “I am not satisfied that the execution of Hauptmann will be a complete punishment for the crime,” he had written in a letter to Schwarzkopf that announced his decision. “The ultimate fate of Hauptmann is almost the least important feature of this case. There is evidence, ample evidence, that other persons participated in the crime and there is absolutely no reason why our law enforcement agencies should regard this case as closed. . . .

  “As Governor I direct you, with every resource at your command, to continue a thorough and impartial search for the detection and apprehension of every person connected with this crime.”

  He laid out multiple questions about the case that he wanted answered, questions of John Condon, Charles Lindbergh, and the authorities. As a member of the New Jersey Board of Pardons, Hoffman had Hauptmann’s fate in his hands. He’d already stayed the execution once and was now seeking advice to see if legally he could do it again.

  Hoffman demanded regular reports from his New Jersey State Police commander on the investigation’s progress. Both Schwarzkopf and Wilentz were seething privately, but publicly they declined comment.

  In a note dripping with disdain, Schwarzkopf wrote both NYPD Commissioner Joseph Valentine and J. Edgar Hoover at the Federal Bureau of Investigation that “in an effort to cooperate with his Excellency to the fullest extent, I am inclosing herewith a true copy of the Governor’s letter together with the addenda for your perusal and consideration.

  “It is respectfully requested that you again cooperate with me and my department and assist us in a coordinated and cooperative effort to carry out the Governor’s instructions to me.”

  Schwarzkopf had gathered his team together to discuss the status of the case after receiving Hoffman’s instructions. They agreed they had convicted the right man and that the governor was in essence a publicity hound, seeking to overturn the rightful conviction by a jury of twelve conscientious citizens.

  The first report Schwarzkopf sent to Hoffman detailed that meeting and the letters he had sent to his peers in New York and Washington. He provided no specific answers to Hoffman’s questions, only a renewed declaration that Hauptmann was guilty. Schwarzkopf’s letter was met with anger, as the governor insisted its contents had been leaked to the media before he had a chance to review it.

  “I am not interested in receiving further weekly reports simply indicating that the usual conferences are being held,” Hoffman wrote in a letter back Schwarzkopf. “If you feel that the Lindbergh case has been completely solved and that no persons other than Hauptmann, now under sentence of death, were involved, it is your duty to so advise me, and to give your answers to the questions I submitted in my [earlier] letter. . . .

  “The Lindbergh matter is quite generally referred to as ‘the most bungled case in police history,’ and it is to your interest and to the interest of all members of your organization, as well as in the public interest to work sincerely and effectively to bring about its complete solution.”

  The next correspondence between the two men came on March 23, when Hoffman requested that Schwarzkopf provide him access to Rail 16 for inspection and Bornmann for questioning at ten the following morning at the State Police Training Center. He instructed Schwarzkopf to inform Attorney General Wilentz, but no one else. The governor wanted “no publicity.”

  So that Tuesday morning, March 24, Bornmann, Keaten, and Schwarzkopf found themselves in a room at the training center with Hoffman, his secretary, a stenographer, and a private investigator named Leon Hoage. The sixty-year-old Hoage specialized in solving robberies and insurance cases before offering his services in writing to Hoffman in connection with this case. On the governor’s request, Hoage had visited Hauptmann’s attic a week and a half before to do some measuring himself.

  Empowered by the state’s chief executive, Hoage asked numerous questions of Bornmann regarding the condition of the Lindbergh nursery when he was the first officer on the scene on the night of March 1, 1932. They wanted to know whom Bornmann had seen, where he had found the ladder, and “if there’d been marks of a man’s knee in the dust on the inside window ledge of the nursery window.”

  Bornmann said he “could not recall clearly the conditions exactly as I had found them that night” but told the men he was answering to the best of his knowledge.

  Then Hoffman asked that the ladder and the attic floor board be brought into the room. As Bornmann would later write in his report, the governor and Hogue pep
pered him with more “questions about the board and the conditions under which I had first found it, who was present, the date, etc.”

  The governor was not satisfied with Bornmann’s answers. He said he wanted to see the attic in person, to see the board’s original position in the floor. He told the group he would make accommodations with the prosecutors to ensure that Rail 16 and the attic board would be brought to Hauptmann’s former home in the Bronx and that he would have a stenographer present to take notes. Hoffman wanted to make this visit the following day, but on Schwarzkopf’s request they were delayed until Thursday, March 26.

  Hauptmann’s execution was set for only eight days later, April 3, adding a layer of intensity to the proceedings.

  That’s what led Schwarzkopf to call Koehler. If the governor was going to challenge the wood evidence from the trial, the prosecution’s wood expert —or “Wood Wizard,” as he had been called by some reporters—should be there to explain it and defend it. Wilentz, though, wasn’t sure that was the best strategy.

  “[He] didn’t know that [Schwarzkopf] had ordered me to come and didn’t like it at first,” Koehler wrote to Ethelyn. “He wanted to see what the Governor would pull off in the attic and then get me to come if desirable, but he changed his mind before the day was over and they were all glad I was there.”

  One of Hoffman’s questions concerned Abraham Samuelsohn, who told New Jersey authorities a week after Hauptmann was arrested in 1934 that the accused had given him a “piece of drawing paper with measurements on it” in February 1932 and hired him to buy the lumber. Samuelsohn said a woman was with Hauptmann and that a few days later the lumber in question was picked up by two other men.

  The New York cabinet shop owner said at the time the men picked up the wood, he asked them what “they were going to use the lumber for, and they said for a certain purpose.” He told Corporal Samuel Leon with the New Jersey State Police that “he could identify this lumber by the grooves on the long pieces.” When he was brought to the Police Training School in late September 1934, his story about the grooves changed, and now he “stated that he only put it on one or two.” Further, he said the lumber had been recut since he sold it.