Pining for Expertise

"Ponderosa Pines," a painting by Marsha Hamby Savage

We live in an era that pretends to disparage expertise, largely as a way to keep the lower classes uneducated and therefore easily gulled. However, those paying attention know that expertise always comes in handy.

For example, was it the legion of police officers on the case who were effective in solving the 1932 kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby? Was it the millions of interested citizens armed with their “common sense?”

No. It was an expert on wood.

Arthur Koehler, the head of the Forest Service Laboratory of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, dismantled the homemade ladder used in the kidnapping — the ladder from which the baby fell and died on the night of the crime, a fact that remained unknown to everyone but the kidnappers for months.

Koehler identified the markings of the pine, birch and fir that made up the ladder, spotting a piece of wood that contained four nail holes unrelated to the fabrication of the ladder, a fact that indicated prior usage. Koehler thought the unweathered low-grade sapwood must have been nailed down indoors and used for rough construction, perhaps to finish a garage or attic.

The soft Ponderosa pine rungs of the ladder showed no wear, meaning that the ladder had been specifically built for the kidnapping job. The marks made by planer that dressed the wood showed an unusual combination of cutter heads. Koehler mailed a form letter querying 1,600 lumber mills on the East Coast, and 25 of them reported planer markings that matched.

Koehler requested samples, and identified Dorn Lumber Mill in McCormick, SC, as the source of the wood. A total of 25 lumberyards had received shipments of Dorn’s pine since 1929. Through further scientific investigation, Koehler was able to specify that the kidnappers bought the wood at the National Lumber and Millwork Company in the Bronx, which had received a shipment in December 1931, three months before the kidnapping.

Finally, Koehler was able to prove that the ladder came from wood removed from Bruno Hauptmann’s attic.

There’s really no substitute for critical thinking — for knowing what you’re doing.

Source: ‘Lindbergh’ by A. Scott Berg