Edward Oscar Heinrich

Edward Oscar Heinrich, grandson of Fredrich William Heinrich (originally from Saxony) became a well-known criminologist.

The Legacy of Edward Oscar Heinrich

Edward Oscar Heinrich, ’08, Handwriting Analyst, California Monthly, University of California, Berkeley: California Alumni Association, April, 1941, p. 20.

Source: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/events/bancroftiana/124/heinrich.html

By Richard H. Walton

The advent of DNA has revolutionized forensics, resulting in recent trends to re-examine unsolved, “cold case” homicides. Similarly, the application of DNA technology has led to the reversal in over one hundred cases of wrongful convictions as the innocent have been freed from prison cells and even death row.

The public’s fascination with murder and forensics is not new, however. During the “Roaring Twenties,” otherwise common murders became national headlines as the newspapers sensationalized names like Sacco and Vanzetti, among others. Anyone with a test tube and a camera could hire out as an expert to examine evidence in criminal proceedings, and many did.

In Berkeley, the work of Edward Oscar Heinrich laid the foundation for the future of professional forensic sciences. From his laboratory, Heinrich repeatedly demonstrated the value of scientific examination of trace evidence as his meticulous inspections provided the necessary links between the crime and suspects. As a result, his work was in demand by prosecutors and defense attorneys alike throughout the West. Heinrich became the focus of numerous magazine articles, newspaper accounts, and Sunday supplements as the part-time Cal professor garnered national fame

Heinrich graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in chemistry in 1908, a long step from his arrival just a few years earlier with no high school diploma and lacking the fare to return home. He subsequently held a number of positions in various cities where he learned to combine his interest in chemistry with criminal investigation and detection.

After serving as Chief of Police in Alameda, Heinrich ultimately returned to the laboratory to pursue his chosen avocation. In October 1925, the murders of Henry Sweet and Carmen Wagner near Eureka fostered national headlines. Two local mixed-blood Native Americans, Jack Ryan and Walter David were arrested for the crime. Called “half-breeds” in the press, evidence of their guilt was lacking and the district attorney called upon Heinrich for assistance. David was released but Ryan was charged with the murder of the girl after Heinrich identified a bullet recovered from the victim and shell casings found near her body as fired from Ryan’s gun. The politics of Prohibition as well as perjury and planted evidence tainted the case, however, and a jury of 12 white men acquitted Ryan after short deliberation.

Within months, a new D.A. was elected on a promise to solve the case or resign within two years. After the prosecutor’s men purportedly tortured and murdered David, Ryan was charged with assaulting two young girls. Maintaining his innocence, Ryan pled guilty to escape Humboldt County. Following an all-night, third-degree interrogation and swift court proceedings, Jack Ryan pled guilty to the Sweet murder and was sentenced to life in prison —all within 24 hours. Ryan later repudiated his confession, but spent over 40 years in prison. He always maintained he did not commit the crimes and did not know who did.

Advertisement for Criminologist, California Monthly, University of California, Berkeley: California Alumni Association, June, 1935, p. 5.

After Heinrich died in 1953, his records and case files were donated to The Bancroft Library. These documents are a snapshot in time, a forensic treasure vault of ageless value. Included were original notes, reports, photographs, correspondence, and other evidence from Ryan’s case. They became a cornerstone for a unique investigation begun 30 years later. For over a decade, through an unofficial inquiry I tracked down original participants and buried records. This inquiry became perhaps America’s oldest active homicide investigation, revealing Ryan’s innocence while detailing the corruption surrounding his conviction and identifying the real killers. The timeless value of the Heinrich files was evidenced on April 15, 1996, when Governor Pete Wilson acknowledged California’s contrition:

“Unfortunately, we cannot do justice for Jack Ryan, the man. But we can do justice for Jack Ryan, the memory. And by doing so, we breathe vitality into our system of justice. We must remember that a just society may not always achieve justice, but it must constantly strive for justice. This means that we must not excuse the guilty nor fail to exonerate the guiltless. . . Therefore, so that justice is maintained, I grant Jack Ryan posthumously a pardon based on innocence.”

The Concise Encyclopedia of Crime and Criminals (pages 181-182)

HEINRICH, Edward Oscar (1881 - 1953), pioneer American Criminologist.

By examining a fragment of clothing, he absolved a man suspected of one of the most infamous United States train robberies; by learning Hindu dialects, he assisted Scotland Yard and American authorities in unmasking German agents who plotted an Indian rebellion in the First World War; by studying a few grains of sand on a severed ear and two torn pieces of scalp found in a California marsh, he was able to lead police to the rest of the body, hidden twelve miles away.

Such was the genius of Edward Heinrich who, in the second decade of the twentieth century, began a career of using science to combat crime. Crime detection at the time was largely a random practice. "Crime analysis is an orderly procedure," he said. "It's precise and it follows always the same questions that I ask myself: precisely what happened, when where why and who did it."

An expert in ballistics, fingerprints, chemistry, handwriting and other criminological sciences, Heinrich's fame was assured by his testimony at the trial of Dr. Chandra Kanta Chakravarty, a Hindu scholar involved in the Ghadr (mutiny) plot which, if successful, was to have diverted Britain’s First World War fighting forces to a rebellious India. Heinrich demonstrated at the trial of Chakravarty, Franz Bopp, German consul General in San Francisco, and thirty others that no two typewriters would produce quite the same impressions, that each machine had its own peculiarities, a fact used by the United States Government years later, incidentally, in convicting Alger Hiss of perjury for denying complicity in the Soviet spy ring.

So great was Heinrich's fame through the years after the war that a woman vehemently denying a charge of murdering her husband changed her plea to Guilty when she hear that Heinrich had been brought into the case. Californian officials credit Heinrich with a massive contribution in setting the pattern for traffic accident investigations in use today. It was at a trial of a man accessed of a fatal accident that Heinrich testified: "I base all of my conclusions on science, and science, you know, is never wrong.”

A powerful force in revolutionizing the art of crime detection into an exact science, Heinrich established all over the United States.

The Encyclopedia of American Crime (pages 325-326)

HEINRICH, Edward Oscar (1881-1953), Criminologist.

Known by the press as the "Edison of crime detection," Edward O. Heinrich trail blazed in the use of scientific methods in criminal detection. A criminologist in private practice and a lecturer on the subject at the University of California at Berkeley, he was utilized by police departments all over the country. Over a 45-year career, he was credited with solving 2,000 major and minor mysteries. He did so by being a master of all trades; he was a geologist, physicist, a handwriting expert, an authority on inks and papers and a biochemist. He was fond of saying that no criminal ever departs the scene of his crime without leaving several clues and that it was up to a scientific investigator to find and interpret them correctly. He proved a number of alleged suicides to be murders and a number of suspected murders to be suicides or accidents.

His work in the investigation of the 1916 Black Tom explosion, which he was able to lay at the door of a German Sabotage ring, brought him considerable fame, as did his presentation of scientific evidence in the bestial sex murder involve in the Fatty Arbuckle case.

Probably his most famous case, because it demonstrated his deductible powers so well, was the attempted robbery of a 1923 Southern Pacific Railroad mail train and the resultant quadruple murders.

• On October 11, 1923 the train with its coaches filled with passengers was moving slowly through a tunnel in the Siskiyou Mountains of Southern Oregon when two men armed with shotguns climbed over the tender and ordered the engineer and fireman to halt as soon as the engine, tender and next car, the mail car, cleared the tunnel. They followed the instructions and watched helplessly as a third man appeared outside the tunnel with a bulky package, which he carried to the side of the mail car. Running back to a detonator, the man set off an enormous explosion. The mail car and its contents were consumed in flames, which obviously ruined the robbery attempt. It also incinerated the lone mail clerk inside the car. Before the trio left, the cold-blooded shot down the engineer, fireman and a brakeman who had come forward through the tunnel to investigate the explosion. The attempted train robbery, reminiscent of the Wild West days, became front-page news as railroad police, postal detectives, sheriff' s deputies and other lawmen converged on the scene. Posses set out to track the bandits but came up empty. All that was found was a detonator with batteries, a revolver, a pair of well-worn and greasy blue denim overalls and some shoe covers made of gunnysack so caked in creosote apparently to keep pursuing dogs off the criminals' scent.
• As days and weeks passed with no discernible leads, the authorities asked Heinrich to help. He was sent the overalls for examination with information that a garage mechanic who worked not far from the tunnel had been taken into custody because his work clothes appeared to have the same greasy stains. Heinrich started out with a magnifying glass and microscopic examination of the garment and its "contents," such as scrapings of the grease stains and lint and other tiny items from the pockets. The first thing he discovered was that the garage mechanic should be released. "The stains are not auto grease," he said, referring to the overalls from the scene of the crime. "They're pitch from fir trees." Then he went on to stun detectives with a full description of the man they sought: he was a left-handed lumber jack who'd worked the logging camps of the Pacific Northwest. He was thin, had light brown hair, rolled his own cigarettes and was fussy about his appearance. He was five feet ten and was in his early twenties. All of Heinrich's conclusions were backed up with solid evidence, which he had properly interpreted.” He had quickly identified the grease as being fir stains, and in pockets of the overalls he had found bits of Douglas fir needles, common to the forests of the Pacific Northwest. The pockets on the left side of the overalls were more heavily worn than those on the right. In addition, the garment was regularly buttoned from the left side. Therefore, the wearer obviously was left-handed. From the hem of a pocket, Heinrich extracted several carefully cut fingernail trimmings. Such manicuring was somewhat incongruous for a lumberjack unless he was fastidious about his appearance. The scientist found a single strand of light brown hair clinging to one button. More than merely determining the suspect's hair coloring, however, Heinrich used his own technique s to make a close estimate of the man's age. Heinrich also found one other clue, which other investigators had totally overlooked. Using delicate forceps, he was able to dig out from the hem of a narrow pencil pocket a tiny wad of paper, apparently rammed down in advertently with a pencil. The paper appeared to have gone through a number of washings with the overalls and was blurred beyond all legibility, but by treating it with iodine vapor, Heinrich was able to identify it was a registered-mail receipt and established its number. The receipt was traced to one Royd'Autremont of Eugene, Oregon. In Eugene authorities found Roy's father who, it turned out, was worried about his twin sons, Roy and Ray, and another son, Hugh, who had all disappeared on October 11, 1923, the date of the train holdup. Inquiries (confirming Heinrich's findings of tobacco samples) and was known to be fussy about his appearance. Authorities later said Heinrich had virtually furnished them with a photograph of the suspect.
• Following Heinrich's cracking of the mystery, one of the most intensive man hunts in American history was launched. Circulars were printed in 100 languages and sent to police departments throughout the world. Records of the men's medical histories, dental charts and eye prescriptions were supplied to doctors, dentists and oculists.
• Finally, three years and six months after the crime, Hugh d'Autremont was captured in Manila, the Philippines. In April the twins were found working in a steel mill in Steubenville, Ohio under the name of Goodwin. All three were convicted and given life imprisonment.

Edward Heinrich returned to his laboratory, where he continued to supply his expertise to police forces faced with baffling crimes until his death on September 28, 1953.

The Wizard of Berkeley, by Eugene B. Block

Published in 1958 by Coward-McCann, Inc. in New York. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 58-5691.

The Wizard of Berkeley tells about the extraordinary exploits of America's pioneer scientific criminologist, the world-famous Edward Oscar Heinrich.