ASAC_Vol102_02-Goddard_100008.qxp 2/17/11 11:58 AM Page 11 Editor’s Note: Thank you to Lieutenant Kline for his presentation and sharing two of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre guns with our group. DR. CALVIN GODDARD CSI: ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE Presented by: 102/11 Reprinted from the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 102:11-20 Additional articles available at http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/resources/articles/ ASAC_Vol102_02-Goddard_100008.qxp 2/17/11 11:58 AM Page 12 Goddard’s work that he enlisted support from Walter Olson, president of the Olson Rug Company, and they used their own funds to hire Goddard’s services. He immediately left his private laboratory in New York in the hands of two colleagues* and began set- ting up an even more elaborate lab in Chicago to work on the Massacre. At Coroner Bundesen’s sug- gestion—because the police themselves were still sus- pects—a Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory was soon established under the auspices of the Northwestern University Law School, between Chicago’s famous “Water Tower” (a souvenir of the Great Chicago Fire) and the Lakefront. Goddard’s was a full-service laboratory, pat- terned partly after a lab set up five years earlier by August Vollmer in California, and partly after labora- tories long-established in several European countries. The Europeans were far ahead of the United States in Figure 1. most areas of forensic science; where they came up The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre exceeded any gang- short was in ballistics. land killings before or after February 14, 1929, throwing the Their specialists (and Vollmer’s as well) had a basic city into a frenzy of police activity, awakening the Chicago understanding of the rifling marks on bullets, but for evalua- Crime Commission, and dismaying civic-minded business- tion they still were wrapping slugs in tinfoil and trying to men who were tired of hearing their city called the world’s match them by studying the patterns with a magnifying “gangster capital.” Coroner Herman Bundesen (Figure 1), glass. Goddard employed a new split-image comparison wielding more authority than any medical examiner before microscope (Figure 2) developed by Philip Gravelle, which or since, virtually took charge of the case and immediately actually was a pair of microscopes linked to a single eye selected a “blue-ribbon commission” of leading citizens who piece and had two independently rotating posts instead of a became part of a special grand jury that would attend a mirror-and-plate arrangement that would normally hold a slide. year’s worth of hearings. Bullets mounted with wax on each post could be The hearings accomplished as little as the police inves- slowly turned until the nearly-invisible striations perfectly tigations, except in one respect. Bert Massey, vice-president matched up. Or failed to match up, the bullets came from of the Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company, had heard of a New different guns. York “criminalist” named Calvin Goddard who had tried to Goddard also used a “helixometer” (Figure 3), newly introduce the new science of forensic ballistics into the developed by John Fischer based on the medical cytoscope, court case of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the self- which could optically examine the interior of a gun barrel described anarchists accused of a 1920 payroll robbery in for residue, confirm its caliber, and determine the pitch of South Braintree, Massachusetts, killing a paymaster and a the rifling. Rifling differed among manufacturers and usually guard in the process. Microscopically examining the smallest was unique to a particular brand, model and caliber. striations on the death bullets and bullets fired from the guns Similarly, each gun left marks on the primers and casings of of both defendants, he established that the Colt .32 auto- their empty shells that were also unique to a single weapon. matic found on Sacco at the time of his arrest, but not Using slugs taken from the Massacre victims including Vanzetti’s .38 Harrington & Richardson revolver, had fired 70 fired bullets of .45 automatic pistol caliber, many of them the fatal shots. Such “ballistics” evidence was too arcane for whole, the rest more or less fragmented, and seventy shell the court, and the jurors ignored it in favor of their preju- casings picked up off the floor, Goddard first spent many dices against “anarchists,”then poised to destroy America. In hours explaining the theory and practice of forensic com- 1927 both Sacco and Vanzetti were executed. parison. Two years after that the City of Chicago was too pre- Then he established to the satisfaction of the coroner’s occupied with closing speakeasies and arresting “the usual jury that two .45-caliber Thompson submachine guns had suspects” to give much thought to science, or spending city been used. At the time there were five relatively common funds on it; but Massey had been sufficiently impressed by weapons chambered for this cartridge. They were the Colt 102/12 Reprinted from the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 102:11-20 Additional articles available at http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/resources/articles/ ASAC_Vol102_02-Goddard_100008.qxp 2/17/11 11:58 AM Page 13 .45 automatic pistol, the Savage experimental .45 automatic, was the submachine gun. Confirmed by the arc shaped print the Colt and Smith & Wesson M1917 .45 revolvers, and the on the case rim, left by the Thompson gun bolt as it slams Thompson submachine gun. forward chambering the cartridge, two of the guns were Each of these arms had its own individual rifling char- believed to have been used. Magazines for this firearm came acteristics, except that the Colt M1911 pistols and M1917 in 50 rounds and 20 round capacities. Fifty of the shells revolvers were supposed to be rifled according to the same showed identical case marks, while the other 20 showed dif- ferent patterns of marks. Obviously guns using these two kinds of magazine had been employed. Since two of the Massacre killers had worn police uni- forms, Goddard obtained and test-fired all the Thompsons belonging to the police departments in Chicago and its sub- urbs. These were ruled out. The following December, while lying low as “Frederick Dane” near the lakeside town of St. Joseph, Michigan, Fred ‘Killer”Burke (Figure 4) panicked following a minor traffic acci- dent and killed a policeman named Charles Skelly. He escaped, but the Berrien County, Michigan, Sheriff’s Department raided his house near St. Joseph, Michigan, and found an arsenal of ordnance that included two Thompson guns. These were delivered to Goddard’s laboratory for examination. They turned out to be the weapons used in the Massacre, and the man who possessed them, Frederick Dane, who turned out to be Fred “Killer” Burke, had beat it out of town. The New York police were aware of Goddard’s new Figure 2. The comparison microscope used to compare bullet crime lab (Figure 5) and sent bullets taken from the body of markings left by rifling. local gangster Frankie Yale (Shot July 1, 1928), which were specifications. However Colt revolver .45 bullets differ from found to have come from one of the Massacre guns. (A sec- Colt automatic .45 bullets. Also the Colt guns are rifled with ond machine gun used on Yale had been left in the car aban- a left twist, while all the fired bullets showed marks with a doned in Brooklyn by the killers.) right hand inclination. This eliminated all Colt handguns. Besides advancing the science of forensic ballistics, While the other three guns all had six groove rifling, coupled with shooting angles and distances, Goddard’s labo- right twist, the shape of the grooves, pitch and width ratory soon was doing hair and fiber investigations, discov- differed. The Savage automatic, being practically a unique ering new chemistries for use in serology (blood), and gun, was hardly considered. The S&W revolver was also struck out, as the bullets did not show the tell-tale marks which indicate “fired from a revolver.” Thus all that was left Figure 3. Dr. Goddard with the “Helixometer” for looking down gun barrels. Figure 4. 102/13 Reprinted from the American Society of Arms Collectors Bulletin 102:11-20 Additional articles available at http://americansocietyofarmscollectors.org/resources/articles/ ASAC_Vol102_02-Goddard_100008.qxp 2/17/11 11:58 AM Page 14 Figure 5. employing the new “moulage” technique to make rubber- and-plaster casts of footprints and tire tracks. The lab even utilized Leonarde Keeler’s new “lie-detector” equipment, which could help police narrow their list of suspects (but which is still not admissible as courtroom evidence). Additionally, in 1931, the Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory set up month-long classes to train future crimi- nalists, one of whom turned out to be a “G-man,” Special Agent Charles Appel, who took his knowledge back to Washington, D.C., to help set up a national crime laboratory using the same equipment and technologies some eighteen months later. When FBI Director Hoover chewed out Melvin Purvis for doing business with the Chicago lab, and also refused to give the lab any credit, Goddard was dismayed. After the early financing by Massey and Olson, Northwestern University funded the work of the laboratory, which was partly offset by charging for services performed. Even that was not enough to make the laboratory self-sup- porting, and during Chicago’s world fair of 1933 the lab had to set up an exhibit and sell souvenirs, such as a matchbox- size container with a bullet and shell casing. The inscription Figure 6. Comparison of different .45 caliber slugs, fired from pop- ular firearms of the day.