IN THIS CHAPTER

Linking tool marks, bite marks, and firearms to criminals and crimes

Identifying and tracing sources of poisons

Identifying criminals and remains with fingerprints, blood, and DNA

Solving cases by digitally aging old photographs

Analyzing papers and inks

Some crimes seem to capture the public’s interest. You need look no further than a certain double homicide case against an internationally famous football player and a bloody glove to know what I’m talking about. The Lindbergh kidnapping was the crime of the century long before O.J. Simpson was born. The Sacco and Vanzetti case seemed as if it never would end, and the same can be said of the murderous rampage of Ted Bundy, one of America’s most famous serial killers. This chapter gives you a glimpse at a few of the cases that made headlines and forensic history.

Using a Homemade Ladder: The Lindbergh Kidnapping

Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh was an American hero. On May 20, 1927, the Lone Eagle, as he was known, became the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic in his single-engine airplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. Less than five years later, on the night of March 1, 1932, his son, Charles, Jr., was abducted from the second-floor nursery of his Hopewell, New Jersey, home.

Clues were meager. A ransom note was left on the nursery windowsill, and a ladder lay on the ground beneath the window. Dusting the ransom note envelope revealed no latent fingerprints, but analysis of the writing led investigators to believe that the writer was poorly educated and likely of German descent. The ladder was homemade, suggesting that the kidnapper had tools and was skilled in carpentry.

As the case progressed, communications began between the kidnapper and John F. Condon, a public school principal who had publicly offered a reward for the return of the child. Condon turned over a $50,000 ransom in exchange for a note stating that the child could be found near Martha’s Vineyard Island onboard a boat named Nelly. Unfortunately, no such boat existed, and on May 12, 1932, the decomposing body of the child turned up in a wooded area near Lindbergh’s home. The cause of death was either asphyxiation or blunt-force head trauma.

Police had recorded all the serial numbers of the bills used for ransom, and during the next 2 1/2 years, the money occasionally surfaced between New York and Chicago, with a higher concentration of it turning up in the Bronx.

As the investigators’ attention turned to the ladder, Arthur Koehler, an expert in wood and wood products, was brought in on the case. During his examination of the ladder, he found that four different types of wood were used in its construction: ponderosa pine, North Carolina pine, birch, and fir. The fir appeared to be a section of flooring that had been used to finish the left upper part of one of the ladder’s rails and indicated the builder of the ladder had run out of wood and used a piece of flooring to complete the construction.

Koehler microscopically examined portions of the ladder and discovered marks that suggested that a planing machine had been used to smooth the side rails. He discovered several distinctive marks on the wood that had been made by the machine. Koehler asked for planed wood samples from more than 1,500 mills across the country and discovered the same marks on wood milled by Dorn Lumber in McCormick, South Carolina. From there, he traced the wood used in the ladder to National Lumber and Mill Work Company in the Bronx, where much of the ransom money had turned up.

Meanwhile, a service-station operator wrote down the license plate number from the vehicle of a suspicious-looking man from whom he had taken a ten-dollar bill and called the police. The bill, it turns out, was part of the ransom money, and Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a carpenter of German descent, was arrested.

In the attic of Hauptmann’s home, investigators discovered a floorboard missing from a joist that had four nail holes that exactly matched holes found in the piece of fir used to finish the ladder. Koehler also found a handheld wood plane in Hauptmann’s home that sported defects that matched distinctive marks left on certain areas of the ladder during the smoothing process. Koehler then applied a well-known trick of the forensics trade. He wrapped a piece of paper around the wood from the ladder and rubbed a pencil back and forth until a black-and-white replica of the pattern left by the wood plane appeared. He later applied the same technique to another piece of wood that he’d smoothed with the same plane. They matched.

Based on the evidence provided by Koehler and the fact that some of the ransom money turned up in Hauptmann’s garage, Hauptmann was convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., on February 13, 1935. He was executed April 3 of the same year.

Sacco and Vanzetti and Sacco’s Gun

During the afternoon of April 15, 1920, security guards Alessandro Berardelli and Frederick Parmenter were transferring payroll funds for a shoe factory in South Braintree, Massachusetts. Two men opened fire on the guards, killing them both and fleeing with more than $15,000, a tidy sum in those days. Witnesses told police the two gunmen were “Italian looking” and that one of them sported a dark handlebar mustache. The only bits of evidence found at the scene were several shell casings that were manufactured by three different firms: Remington, Winchester, and Peters.

Two days later, the getaway car was found and traced to an earlier robbery that police believed had been arranged by Mike Boda, a local criminal. When police went looking for Boda at his hideout, they found not him but two men, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. Vanzetti had a dark handlebar mustache, and Sacco possessed a .32 caliber handgun, the same caliber as the murder weapon. Sacco also had 29 bullets for the gun, all manufactured by Remington, Winchester, or Peters. The two men were arrested and charged with the double murder.

Police also discovered that Sacco and Vanzetti belonged to an anarchist movement that advocated violent political change. By the time the trial opened on May 31, 1921, before Judge Webster Thayer in Dedham, Massachusetts, the case had become America’s first Red Scare. The defense team put together an alliance of anarchist, communist, and union leaders called the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee, which labeled the trial a witch-hunt.

The case hinged on proving that the bullets that struck down the two guards came from Sacco’s gun, but those bullets were so outdated that forensic examiners were unable to locate any unspent ammunition to test-fire for making a comparison. Ultimately, they resorted to using the ones they’d found on Sacco at the time of his arrest. A match was made, and Sacco and Vanzetti were convicted and sentenced to death. But the story didn’t end there.

Albert Hamilton, an expert of questionable honesty, came forward saying that he had no doubt the bullets used to kill the two guards did not come from Sacco’s gun. The defense petitioned for a retrial and, during the hearings, Hamilton showed his true colors. In an odd performance, he brought two new .32 caliber Colt handguns to court and disassembled them, along with Sacco’s gun. He then attempted to secretly exchange one of the new gun barrels for the one on Sacco’s gun. Judge Thayer caught him, ordered that Sacco’s gun be reassembled, and denied the petition for a new trial. Still, the story didn’t end.

Because of continued protests by anarchists, in June 1927, a committee was formed to look into the case. America’s leading firearms expert, Dr. Calvin Goddard of the Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York, entered the fray. At his disposal were two new forensic tools: the comparison microscope and the helixometer. The former enabled scientists to microscopically inspect and compare two different bullets, and the latter was a probe fitted with a light and magnifying glass that enabled them to examine details of the inside of a gun barrel. Again, the match was conclusive.

On August 23, 1927, the two killers died in the electric chair. Yet the controversy persisted. In 1961, and again in 1983, the case was reexamined, and on each occasion, Goddard’s findings were confirmed.

Ted Bundy’s Bite Marks

Between 1969 and 1975, a series of brutal sexual homicides swept through the Pacific Northwest, Utah, and Colorado. The victims were strikingly similar in that each had dark hair that was parted down the middle. The suspected killer, a male, often wore a fake cast and feigned an injury, thus seeking his victims’ help with some task. After the unsuspecting women stepped into his tiny Volkswagen bug, the killer overpowered them and took them to a remote area where he tortured, raped, and murdered them.

As police in various jurisdictions worked their respective cases, one name kept appearing: Theodore Bundy. On November 8, 1974, Carol DeRonch, an 18-year-old woman, found herself inside Bundy’s VW. When he attempted to handcuff and bludgeon her, she fought him off and escaped. Nearly a year later, on August 16, 1975, police stopped the driver of a VW for suspicious behavior. They found handcuffs and a crowbar in the car and identified the driver as Ted Bundy. Carol DeRonch fingered him, and he was convicted of kidnapping and sentenced to 1 to 15 years in prison.

Bundy then was extradited to Colorado to face a murder charge. In June 1977, he escaped but was apprehended only eight days later. He again escaped on December 30, 1977, but this time, he headed to Florida.

In the dead of night on January 15, 1978, Bundy entered the Chi Omega sorority house on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee. He assaulted and raped four coeds, killing Lisa Levy and Margaret Bowman. Less than two hours later another student was attacked. She survived.

A month later, police arrested Chris Hagen for driving a stolen vehicle. They soon found out that the person they thought was Hagen actually was Ted Bundy, who was wanted for murder in several states.

Unfortunately for prosecutors, Bundy left little evidence at the sorority house. They found no fingerprints, and none of the surviving victims could identify their assailant. When the police dusted Bundy’s apartment for prints, they found none.

The only piece of evidence that police had to work with was a bite mark on the buttocks of Lisa Levy. Bundy at first refused to give an impression of his teeth, but a court order soon forced him to comply. Bundy’s teeth were misaligned and chipped, and they matched the bite-mark bruises found on Lisa Levy perfectly. On July 23, 1978, Bundy was convicted of murder, a crime for which he was put to death January 24, 1989, in Florida’s electric chair.

Stella Nickell’s Trail of Fingerprints

Sue Snow suddenly collapsed on June 11, 1986, in the bathroom of her home in the Seattle, Washington, suburb of Auburn. Paramedics found her unconscious and gasping for breath. They transported her to the hospital, where she soon died. One possible explanation for the young woman’s death was a drug overdose, but she was not a known user and had taken only a couple of Extra-Strength Excedrin, a safe medication.

During her autopsy, examiners noticed a faint odor of almonds emanating from the corpse. A toxicology exam revealed the presence of cyanide. An examination of the Excedrin capsules followed, and they too tested positive for cyanide. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the manufacturer, Bristol-Meyers, moved quickly to remove all Extra-Strength Excedrin bottles from shelves across the country. Seattle police found two other contaminated bottles, one in Auburn and the other in nearby Kent.

In a separate turn of events, Stella Nickell told police on June 17 that her husband had died suddenly just a few days earlier and that he too had taken Excedrin. Already buried, Bruce Nickell’s death certificate stated that he’d died of emphysema. However, because he was a registered organ donor, a sample of his blood had been retained, making an exhumation unnecessary. Tests done on his blood sample showed that he too died from ingesting cyanide.

While police searched for a connection between Sue Snow and Bruce Nickell, the FDA examined more than 740,000 Excedrin capsules from the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. They found cyanide in only five bottles, two of which were in the possession of Stella Nickell. Asked whether she bought the bottles at the same time and from the same store, she said no, she had purchased them on different days at different stores. The odds against such bad luck are astronomical.

In addition to cyanide, FDA examiners detected another odd chemical in the contaminated capsules: traces of an algaecide known as Algae Destroyer, which is used in fish tanks. Stella Nickell had a fish tank and immediately became the focus of the investigation. An in-depth look into her background revealed that she had a history of forgery, fraud, and child abuse. In addition, she had purchased extra insurance on Bruce that would pay her $176,000 in the event of an accidental death.

Stella Nickell denied any involvement in the product tampering but failed a polygraph examination. Then her own daughter came forward, telling police that her mother had often mentioned killing Bruce, even going so far as indicating that she’d researched the use of cyanide. This information led police to the local Auburn library, where they discovered that a book Stella had checked out was overdue. The title? Human Poisoning. They also found that she had twice checked out Deadly Harvest, a book on toxic plants. At the FBI crime lab, 84 of Stella’s fingerprints were found on the book’s pages. Most of them were found in the section dealing with cyanide. On May 9, 1988, Stella was sentenced to a 99-year prison term.

Finding Fibers on Jeffrey MacDonald

At 3:40 a.m. on February 17, 1970, U.S. Army Captain Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald summoned military police (MPs) to his home at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. When the MPs arrived, they found Dr. MacDonald lying on his bedroom floor next to his wife, Colette. He wore only blue pajama bottoms. A matching pajama top lay across the chest of his wife, who had been brutally and repeatedly stabbed to death. Above them on the bed’s headboard was the single word “Pig” written in blood. Down the hall, the bodies of the MacDonalds’ two children, 5-year-old Kimberly and 2-year-old Kristen, lay in pools of blood. Only Jeffrey MacDonald was alive, having suffered just a single knife wound to his chest.

MacDonald said he’d fallen asleep on the living room sofa only to be awakened by screams from Colette. He was immediately attacked by three men and a woman, whom he described as hippies chanting, “Acid is groovy” and “Kill the pigs” as they slashed him with a knife. They tore his pajama top, which he then wrapped around his hands, using it to parry the thrusts from the knives. He was ultimately knocked unconscious, later awakening to find his family slaughtered. He attempted mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on each of his daughters before finding Colette with a knife protruding from her chest. He removed the knife, covered her with his pajama top, and phoned the MPs.

The MPs immediately were suspicious, questioning why MacDonald’s injuries were minimal when his family had been severely brutalized; why the living room, where MacDonald alleged he’d been attacked by four people, was so neat; and how MacDonald, who needed glasses to correct his poor vision, could provide such detailed descriptions of four assailants he’d seen only in the dark. They also wondered why the torn fingertip of a latex surgical glove was found in the MacDonalds’ bloodstained bed.

Interestingly, the MPs found a copy of Esquire magazine with an article on the recent Manson family murders in the living room. In those murders, the murderers wrote messages, including the word “pig,” in blood at the crime scenes.

Unfortunately, the investigation was less than perfect, evidence was lost, and charges against MacDonald were dropped. The story might have ended there, except that MacDonald went on a television talk show, berating the military and accusing the MPs of gross incompetence. The television appearance led to a renewed interest in Captain MacDonald.

The FBI entered the investigation and turned up a wealth of new information. First of all, in a coincidence that defies odds, each family member had a different blood type. This factor enabled investigators to track the movements of each person and particularly those of Jeffrey MacDonald. His blood was found in small quantities in only three places: on his glasses in the living room, on a cabinet where a box of surgical gloves was stored, and on the bathroom sink, where investigators believe he inflicted his own minor wound. Neither blood nor fingerprints were found on the two phones MacDonald used to call for help, and no prints were found on the knife MacDonald said he removed from his wife’s chest. Furthermore, no prints were found on the knife and ice pick that were discovered outside near the back door. Had they been wiped clean?

Blue fibers from MacDonald’s pajamas were found everywhere. Almost everywhere, that is. They were in the two girls’ rooms and all over, around, and even beneath Colette’s body. Yet, none were found in the living room where MacDonald said he was attacked and his pajama shirt was ripped.

The most damning evidence, however, came from the FBI crime lab. Analysts showed that 48 holes in the blue pajama top exactly matched 21 wounds to Colette when the garment was folded over her chest. More importantly, each puncture was round and smooth, an indication that the garment was stationary when the blows were struck. Had the pajama top been in motion, the way it would have been with MacDonald using it for defense, the punctures would have been ragged with irregular holes.

To top matters off, Collette’s blood stained both pieces of the torn pajama top. When the two pieces were placed side by side, the stain patterns matched, suggesting that the staining occurred before the top was torn; moreover, it directly contradicted Capt. MacDonald’s statement that he’d placed the top over his wife’s body after it was torn.

In July 1979, nearly a decade after the murders, Jeffrey MacDonald went to trial for the triple murder. His conviction resulted in a sentence of three consecutive life terms.

Georgi Markov and the Lethal Umbrella

In 1971, Georgi Markov defected from Communist Bulgaria to London. An outspoken critic of the regime in his homeland, he continued his assaults in antigovernment broadcasts on the BBC. The Bulgarian government was less than pleased with his diatribes.

While walking on the Waterloo Bridge on September 7, 1979, Markov felt a sharp pain in his right thigh. He turned to see a stranger with a furled umbrella. The man apologized in a thick accent and hurried to a cab. Inspecting his leg, Markov discovered a red puncture mark on his thigh.

That night Markov fell ill, and by the next morning, had a high fever, rapid pulse, and low blood pressure. His wound was severely inflamed, and his white blood cell count soared. X-rays of his leg revealed nothing, and despite large doses of antibiotics, his condition worsened during the next two days, and he died. During an autopsy, a section of the skin around Markov’s wound was removed and sent to Dr. David Gall, an expert in poisons at the top-secret government Chemical Defense Establishment at Porton Down.

Within the submitted tissues, Gall found a metal pellet the size of a pinhead with two tiny holes drilled into it. He assumed that the pellet, containing a lethal substance, had been injected into Markov by a gas gun hidden within the assailant’s umbrella. The nature of Markov’s demise made bacterial and viral entities unlikely culprits and favored a chemical toxin.

Only ricin, a substance derived from castor beans, seemed to fit the scenario, but the police had no reliable test for ricin. The body’s natural enzyme systems quickly break down ricin, leaving no trace of it. In an ingenious experiment, investigators injected an amount of ricin equal to what the pellet could hold into a live pig. The animal quickly became ill and died in less than 24 hours. An autopsy of the pig showed organ damage identical to that in Markov’s organs, suggesting that ricin was indeed the agent injected into him.

The Hendricks Family’s Last Meal

David Hendricks was a successful Bloomington, Illinois, businessman who traveled frequently to meet with customers. One such trip was planned for Friday, November 4, 1983. Hendricks planned to leave late November 4 and drive all night to be ready for meetings the next day in Wisconsin. According to Hendricks, while his wife attended a baby shower, he and their three children arrived at a local pizza parlor at 6:30 p.m. for dinner, which they finished by 7:30. The children went to bed around 9:30, his wife returned at 10:30, and Hendricks departed on his trip at approximately 11:30 p.m.

During the weekend, Hendricks called home several times, but received no response. He called friends and relatives to find out whether they’d seen his wife or children. He finally called the police, expressing concern that maybe his family had been in an accident. Police informed him that no one by the name of Hendricks had been involved in any accidents.

Hendricks returned home on the evening of Tuesday, November 8, to find the police and several neighbors at his home. His family had been brutally murdered with a knife and an axe, both of which had been found neatly cleaned and lying at the foot of his bed. Hendricks was too shaken to enter the house, and police, sensing his shock, spared him the grisly details.

Had Hendricks kept his mouth closed, the story might have ended there, but the next day, he told reporters that burglars had broken in. He even listed items that had been taken. Police wondered how he knew what had been taken when he hadn’t entered the house and they hadn’t told him of their findings.

Autopsies of the children proved Hendricks was lying. The stomach contents of the three children revealed undigested pizza, which means they died within two hours of eating because that’s approximately how much time it takes for the stomach to empty. Digestion ceases at death and essentially freezes stomach contents in the state they were in at the time of death. Because the children finished their meals at 7:30 p.m., this finding indicated that Hendricks probably killed his children around 9:30 p.m., about an hour before his wife returned home. He then killed her and left on his trip, thinking he had the perfect alibi. Forensic evidence proved to be his undoing, and he was convicted of murder and sentenced to four life terms.

Picturing John List

In 1971, John List lived in a large home in Westfield, New Jersey, with his wife, three teenage children, and his mother. Neighbors noticed that they hadn’t seen the List family for some time and that the home seemed deserted, except for the fact that lights throughout the house blazed brightly every night. On December 7, police dropped by to investigate and found four bodies neatly placed on sleeping bags on the floor of a room near the back of the house. The bodies were John List’s wife, Helen, and their three children. In an upstairs bedroom, they found the body of John’s mother, Alma. Each had been shot. John List, however, was nowhere to be found, and even more disturbing were five addressed envelopes that police found taped to a filing cabinet.

John List, an influential member of the local Lutheran church, explained his rationale for committing the multiple murders in letters found in the envelopes. He said he was not good with money, his mismanagement had driven the family to the brink of bankruptcy, and he didn’t want his family subjected to a life on welfare, so he spared them this humiliation by killing them.

Two days later, List’s car turned up in long-term parking at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK). Wanted posters were spread immediately from coast to coast, and because of John List’s fluency in German, throughout West Germany and German-speaking areas of South Africa. The result: no leads and no John List.

Two years later, Bernard Tracey joined the Westfield Police Department and quickly became interested in the case. Thirteen years later, he was no closer to finding the fugitive. In an attempt to rekindle interest in the case, Tracey approached Weekly World News, and the supermarket tabloid ran a story on the John List case on February 17, 1986. Again, no new information came forth.

In the meantime, however, Wanda Flanery of Aurora, Colorado, thought the photograph that accompanied the tabloid story closely resembled her neighbor, Bob Clark. She mentioned her suspicion to his wife, Delores, who scoffed at the idea that her church-going husband could be a murderer. Shortly thereafter, the Clarks ran into financial difficulties caused by Bob’s poor handling of their money, and they relocated to Richmond, Virginia.

Still frustrated by his inability to crack the case, Tracey approached the television show America’s Most Wanted, which initially showed little interest in the case. However, when Tracey contacted them once again a year later, the show’s producers decided to look into the situation, which proved to be the major turning point in the case. They hired forensic sculptor Frank A. Bender to fashion a bust of what John List might look like some 18 years after his last known photograph. Dr. Richard Walter of the Michigan Department of Corrections was brought in to offer a profile of John List as an aid to reconstructing his likely current image. Walter thought that List’s religious background made it unlikely that he’d ever undergo any plastic surgery and that his lifestyle wouldn’t be one of diet and exercise — valuable information considering that either factor could alter List’s pattern of aging.

FBI specialist Gene O’Donnell then entered the picture. Using the latest computer technology and the old photograph of John List, he digitally aged the likeness in the photo by adding gray and receding hair and fleshy jowls. He also included thick-rimmed glasses similar to the ones List wore in the photo. When America’s Most Wanted aired the John List case along with the aged photo May 21, 1989, more than 250 calls came in. One from an anonymous caller in Colorado said that John List was living in Richmond, Virginia, under the name of Bob Clark. The caller, it turns out, was a relative of Wanda Flanery. Fingerprints proved that Bob Clark and John List were the same person, and on April 20, 1990, nearly two decades after murdering his family, John List received a life sentence.

Being Anastasia Romanov

The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a bloody affair that included the execution of the royal family. On July 17, 1918, by order of the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, Czar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, their five children, and four others were executed in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, Siberia. This act ended three centuries of Romanov rule. During the ensuing years, the house became a de facto, or unauthorized, shrine, and pilgrimages to see the Czar’s final resting place became commonplace. In 1977, however, the Soviet government put an end to the practice by bulldozing the structure.

For Gely Ryaboy, locating the Czar’s burial site became an obsession. Being a filmmaker with the Interior Ministry, he had access to many secret archives, which he searched for evidence of where the czar and his family might be buried. Through this research, he located the children of Yakov Yurovsky, a guard who had witnessed the executions. Yurovsky’s son gave Ryaboy a note from Yakov, describing the disposal of the bodies in a swamp near the bulldozed house in Yekaterinburg. Working under cover of darkness, Ryaboy finally amassed a collection of bones and clothing fragments that he thought might represent the executed royal family. However, instead of the expected 11 skeletons, only 9 were found.

In 1991, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the task of identifying the remains was undertaken more openly. Superimposition of photos of Nicholas and Alexandra over two of the skulls suggested that, indeed, they were remains of the czar and czarina. DNA testing showed that five of the nine skeletons were from one family; however, it didn’t conclude whether skeletal remains of the man, woman, and three children were, in fact, the Romanovs. So the investigation turned to mitochondrial DNA (see Chapter 15) for the answer. Because mitochondrial DNA is passed down unchanged from generation to generation through the maternal line, a maternal relative was needed. As it turns out, Prince Philip, the husband of England’s Queen Elizabeth, is a direct descendant of Czarina Alexandra’s sister. The prince offered a blood sample, and the match was made, proving that the remains were indeed those of Nicholas, Alexandra, and three of their children.

But what of the two other children? The bones of Crown Prince Alexei and his sister, Anastasia, were not among the remains. Their skeletons were missing from the swamp. Rumors suggested that Anastasia and Alexei survived the execution and escaped, but no one knew where the two ended up.

In 1920, a Berlin woman named Anna Anderson claimed to be the missing Anastasia. Many people believed her, but others considered her a fraud. Although Anderson died in 1964 in Charlottesville, Virginia, the truth didn’t come to light until 1994. Anderson had undergone a surgical procedure before her death, and the hospital kept a sample of her tissue. DNA testing of the sample revealed that she wasn’t Anastasia but rather a Polish peasant named Franzisca Schanzkowska. Finally, in 2007, the remains of two children were found in a shallow grave not far from where the remains of the Romanov family had been discovered, and mtDNA, STR, and Y-STR analysis suggested that the remains were those of Anastasia and Alexei.

Faking Hitler’s Diaries

On February 18, 1981, staff journalist Gerd Heidemann presented his boss, Manfred Fischer, director of the German publishing giant Gruner and Jahr, with the literary find of the century — Adolph Hitler’s diaries. The documents were handwritten in almost illegible German script. Heidemann said he had received them from a wealthy collector whose brother was an East German general. Without consulting any historians or document experts, Fischer agreed to purchase the 27-volume diary along with a previously unknown third volume of Mein Kampf for 200,000 marks.

After receiving the works, Fischer set about authenticating them. He gave portions of the documents and samples of Hitler’s handwriting to Dr. Max Frei-Sulzer of the forensic department of the Zurich police and to Ordway Hilton, a world-renowned document examiner in Landrum, South Carolina. Unbeknownst to Dr. Frei-Sulzer and Hilton, the handwriting samples came from the same source as the diaries. Both men determined that the writings were from the same hand and that the documents, therefore, were authentic.

Bantam Books, Newsweek, and Publisher Rupert Murdoch entered into a bidding war for worldwide publication rights. Murdoch flew in Hugh Trevor-Roper, a renowned British historian, who, while working under the same deception as Frei-Sulzer and Hilton, reached a similar conclusion. Newsweek won the bidding, however, agreeing to pay $3.75 million.

Fortunately, at the request of Gruner and Jahr, the forensic department of the West German police conducted its own evaluation, and what it uncovered shocked the publishing world. The paper on which the diaries were written contained blankophor, a whitener that didn’t exist until 1954. The bindings contained threads of viscose and polyester, neither of which existed in the 1940s. Furthermore, none of the four types of ink that were used were widely available during World War II, and a measurement of chlorine evaporation from the ink revealed that the documents were less than a year old. The manuscripts, it turns out, were fake.