Evening Star Newspaper, September 14, 1930, Page 95

| o m———— / THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, SEPTEMBER 14, 1930. 5 —3 - 'War Against Organized Crime in America vestigated the Clark street massacre, the for- mer serving as foreman. “It was the consensus that the laboratory should be set up as & part of & university, Ar- rangements eventually were made with North- western for the establishment not alone of the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory, but of a chair of forensic ballistics, with Goddard oc- cupying the latter. Much of the credit for bringing these things about must be given to Mr. Massee and Mr. Olson, who have assisted liberally in the financial plans.” A VISIT to the university’s unique depart- ment of criminology is a novel experi- ence. There is nothing quite like the labora- tory on this side of the Atlantic, and few, if any, places comparable to it abroad. Goddard has visited most of the European laboratories and has patterned his own establishment after their good points. He has incorporated in the Chicago laboratory not only the advancéed ideas of an experienced Old World technique, but the several criminological arts in which, be- Yieve it or not, the United States is beginning o show the way to others. ‘The laboratory is rather exclusive. One is admitted by invitation, Here is one place where the gate-crasher will meet his Waterloo. One either enters through approved channels, or one brings down upon his head all sorts of disaster. The burglar who succeeds in break- ing into this place must perform miracles. Every square foot of the walls, windows and dJdoors of tha crime laboratory is criss-crossed with concealed wires, the least disturbance of which spreads a general alarm. Even though an intruder should, somehow, gain entrance, he would stumble into other traps—trip wires and the like—that woulgd announce his presence to guards and police. 3 .. .. Why all these precautions? Becayse within the confines of the laboratory there are today, and there will continue to be from time to time, grim bits of evidence that criminals would risk their lives to obtain. Evidence that may mean the lives of certain underworld fig- ures when the time comes for dispensing justice. A tiny, misshapen leaden slug, bearing telltale “fingerprints” of a suspected gangster's gun. An innocent-looking letter with an ineriminat- ing double message in “invisible” ink. A smudge of dust on a niece of clothing, ready to proclaim to the microscopist a marvelous record of its owner’s recent movements. A plece of caked mud from a suspect’s shoe—as valu- able to the modern scientific detective as it was to Sherlock Holmes, August Vollmer, special police expert of President Hoover’s Commission on Law En- forcement and Law Observance and professor of police administration at the University of Chicago, who is an associate member of the staff of the Scientific Crime Detection Labora- tory, tells this story to illustrate how science is out-Sherlocking the great Sherlock: “SEVERAL years ago a number of sticks of dynamite were found close to a residence in Berkeley, Calif. The explosive was deliv- ered intact to Dr. Albert Schneider, director of the Berkeley police laboratory, who care- fully removed the burlap and paper in which the dynamite was inclosed. A piece of cotton twine bound the second layer of paper. The twine was removed, immersed in distilled water and shaken violently. Later the water was syphoned out of the vial and the precipitated material subjected to careful microscopic ex- amination. “The scientist reported, as near as I can re- call from memory, that the twine had come from a farm upon which would be found a swift stream of water, pine trees, several va- rieties of designated shrubs, black and white & Dead men are made to tell tales, through use of “moulage,” The moulage department of Neorthwestern University’s crime detection laboratory. Inspector Watzek is shown with subject about to have his features recorded in plaster. rabbits, a bay horse, a light cream-colored cow and Rhode Island Red chickens. “Through the number and date of sale found on the dynamite it was possible to trace the explosive to a dealer in Novato, Calif, from whom it was learned that three sales of dyna- mite to different persons had been made on the day in question. Detective Capt. A. S. Woods located the purchasers and was amazed to learn that the farm adjoining that of one of the purchasers tallied exactly with Dr, Schneider’s description in his report on the twine. To make a long story short, it was found the dynamite had been stolen from its original purchaser, who suspected tenants on the next farm. The tenants, however, had dis- appeared and search for them was fruitless.” Prof. Vollmer declares he could cite similar cases by the score in support of the value of science in police work. “Every young intelligent policeman should know that the most valuable and convincing factors may be invisible without the aid of the miscroscope or chemical analysis,” he says. “Often the most damaging evidence lurks in obscure and unlooked for places. Thus in crimes of violence the telltale elements may appear under the finger nails of the victim. Scrapings from the nails may reveal hair, fibers, skin, blood, dust or other particles tend- ing to shed light on the crime and lead to the culprit. Stains, smears, dust, mineral deposits found in or on the clothing, instruments or weapons left at the scene of crimes, innumer- able other articles often have narrowed the new criminologiral art perfected by Inspector Ferdinand Watzek, who is shown with cast of uni- dentified dead man’s face for [uture reference. » Dr. Clarence W. Muehlberger, profes- sor of toxi-wlogy, Northwestern Uni- versity, and head of poison research for crime laboratory. scope of investigation and facilitated capture of the guilty. “Studies of fur-bearing animals show that hairs of all animals differ greatly and may be classified according to type. Science has shown not only how sex and age may be determined from a fragment of human hair, but also how we may discover whether the hair came from the face, arm, hand or leg. Even race and probable color of the eyes may be determined in this manner. Every class or kind of vege- table fiber differs in size, form and chemical composition as well as tensile strength. Hence minute particles of cotton, linen, hemp or silk easily may be identified under the microscope. “Dust, as Edmund Locard of France has shown, holds information hitherto unbelievable. Microscopic particles of organic or inorganic matter have supplied the scientific investigator with the key to solution of many crimes. Sand, clay, iron, soot, spores, pollen, bacteria, yeast cells, moth scales tell their own story, including time and place of origin. Pollen grains found in dust recovered from the pocket knife of a suspect proved conclusively he had traveled through the Rocky Mountain region. A small amount of soil, found on an ear detached from the body of a woman, made it possible to state definitely that the ear had been previously buried in a district 10 miles distant from the place where the organ had been found, and a few days later the remainder of the corpse was found in the area designated by the expert. “We have always had scoffers, and scoffers will be with us in the future; but the scien- tific approach to criminal investigation is here to stay, regardless of what the scoffers may say. Scientists have aided investigators for centuries, and the literature in this field in voluminous. We confidently look forward to the rapid development of scientific investiga- tion in all police departments of the large cities of this country.” COL, GODDARD has met scoffers in his own field of ballistics and he meets them still. They are less frequent and less demonstrative than they were a few years ago, when the term “forensic ballistics” had not yet been coined to fit what Goddard characterizes as “a new and exact science.” Note models of hands on cabinet in background. Seated in his modest office at the new labo- ratory, the quiet-mannered criminologist point- ed to his specially designed comparison micro- scope, on a small bench beside his desk, and said: “There is the instrument that has made gun identification a science as dependable as fingerprint identification, within certain limi- tations. That microscope, the development of a former colleague, Phillip O. Gravelle of South Orange, N. J., has proved that no two guns in the world fire bullets exactly alike. Each barrel leaves individual ‘fingerprints’ on the bullet passing through it, and each firing pin and breech mechanism stamps its own mark on the shell. “Some years ago, at the Springfield Armory, I had six barrels made with the rifling as nearly alike as it was humanly and mechani- cally possible to make them. Four of the barrels were made on one machine and two on another machine. In my absence, shots were fired from each of the barrels and the bullets were secretly marked so that only the person firing them knew from which gun each had emerged. Then the barrels and bullets were scrambled and given to me for microscopic study. It required but a short time to designate accurately the barrel which had fired each bul- Jet, the secret markings leaving no doubt as to the correctness of the microscopic findings.” More recently, a similarly conclusive test was conducted at the United States Bureau of Standards, with the co-operation of a leading firearms manufacturer. Two revolvers were made by the same workman on the same ma- chine and with the same tools. Infinite care was taken to see that the rifling of the two barrels was “identical.” The rifling tools were examined after each cutting, resharpened fre- quently and reset to preclude discrepancies from wear, The workman, veteran expert of the factory, challenged even a microscopist to find any differences in the guns. Dr. Wilmer Souder, Uncle Sam’s recognized authority on ballistics, accepted the challenge. Using a Gravelle microscope like that in God- dard's laboratory, the Federal scientist had no difficulty whatever in determining that a bullet shot from one of the test guns could not have come from the other, and vice versa. Only recently the reputed dependability of ballistics in police investigations was put to & critical test, with Col. Goddard and Dr. Souder playing major roles in the experiment. Dr, Souder had identified the revolver of an Arling« ton County, Va., real estate man as the one used by the murderer of Mary Baker, Navy Department clerk in Washington, who was at= tacked in her parked automobile within sight of the White House last April by a man who later dumped her brutally assaulted body into a culvert near Arlington National Cemetery. The owner of the gun, Herbert M. Campbell, had turned the weapon over to police volun- tarily with a fantastic tale of his ‘“suspicions” that a painter had stolen it from his house and used it to kill the girl. The painter was ap- prehended in Montreal and he proved his in- nocence. With the gun branded as the fatal weapon by the Government expert, Campbell admitted his previous statements had been *all lies” concocted to give himself a “thrill” and the police “some excitement,” but steadfastly maintained he did not kill Mary Baker. Nevera thless he was charged with the murder. A bitter legal battle ensued, with Campbell and his counsel insisting Dr. Souder had made a mistake in identifying the realty operator's revolver as the one which fired the two bullets removed from the slain girl's corpse. In order to.remove all doubt, the Department of Justice, a party to the three-sided investigation of the extraordinary case, decided to send the gun and bullets to the Scientific Crime Detection Continued on Twenly-first Page