truepenny | UBC: Schrager, The Sixteenth Rail

The Sixteenth Rail: The Evidence, the Scientist, and the Lindbergh Kidnapping by Adam Schrager

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm wary of books about the Lindbergh kidnapping, but this one is focused on Arthur Koehler (pronounced KAY-lerr), who is rightly called the father of forensic botany, and his work on Hauptmann's terrible ladder. The way Koehler worked backwards from the finished ladder to the origins of the rungs and rails is fascinating, especially--of course--the 16th rail, which is the one that came from Hauptmann's attic.

Schrager is honest about the inconsistencies between Koehler's reports and his trial testimony (could he or could he not determine that it was a three-quarters inch chisel, for example) and the opinions of modern tool mark experts that Koehler couldn't have known with certainty the things he claimed he knew. I'm a little dubious about the tool mark experts, because if Koehler COULDN'T follow the trail left by the tool marks in the way that he did, then there are some whopping coincidences involved in getting him to the right answer (I'm willing to believe Hauptmann wasn't the only kidnapper, much less willing to believe he was an innocent framed lamb, And Schrager does convince me that Koehler would not have participated in a frame-up.)

This is not a great book--it's hagiographic and the prose is not better than adequate--but it was well worth the read.

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