Braintree, Massachusetts, killing a paymaster and a guard in the process. Microscopically
examining the smallest striations on the death bullets and bullets fired from the guns of both
defendants, he established that the Colt .32 automatic found on Sacco at the time of his
arrest, but not Vanzetti’s .38 Harrington & Richardson revolver, had fired the fatal shots. Such
“ballistics” evidence was too arcane for the court, and the jurors ignored it in favor of their
prejudices against “anarchists,” then poised to destroy America. In 1927 both Sacco and
Vanzetti fried.
Two years after that the City of Chicago was too preoccupied with closing speakeasies and
arresting “the usual suspects” to give much thought to science, or spending city funds on it;
but Massey had been sufficiently impressed by 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 collegues* and began setting up an even more elaborate lab in Chicago to work on the
Massacre. At Coroner Bundesen’s suggestion--because the police themselves were still
suspects--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.
Calvin Goddard’s was a full-service laboratory, patterned partly after a lab established
about two years earlier by August Vollmer in California, and partly after laboratories long-
established in several European countries. The Europeans were far ahead of the United
States in most areas of forensic science; where they came up short was in ballistics. Their
specialists (and Vollmer’s as well) had a basic understanding of the rifling marks on bullets,
but for evaluation they still were wrapping slugs in tinfoil and trying to match them by
studying the patterns with a magnifying glass. Goddard employed a new split-image
comparison microscope developed by Philip Gravelle, which actually was a pair of
microscopes linked to a single eye piece and had two independently rotating posts instead of
the mirror-and-plate arrangement that would normally hold a slide. Bullets mounted with wax
on each post could be slowly turned until the nearly-invisible striations perfectly matched up--
or failed to match up, if the bullets came from different guns.
Goddard also used a “helixometer,” newly developed by John Fischer based on the
medical cytoscope, which could optically examine the interior of a gun barrel which would
confirm its caliber, determine the pitch of the rifling, and examine it for powder residue.
Riflings differed among manufacturers and usually were unique to a particular brand, model
and caliber of handgun or rifle. Shotguns had no rifling, but each gun still left marks on the
primers and casings of their empty shells that were also unique to a single weapon.
Using slugs taken from the Massacre victims and seventy shell casings picked up off the
floor, Goddard first spent many hours explaining the theory and practice of forensic
ballistics, and then established to the satisfaction of the coroner’s jury that two .45-caliber
Thompson submachine guns had been used, one with a fifty-round drum and the other with a
twenty-round “stick” (or straight) magazine.
Since two of the Massacre killers had worn police uniforms, Goddard obtained and test-
fired all the Thompsons belonging to the police departments in Chicago and its suburbs.
These were ruled out, and it was not until sheriff’s police raided a house near St. Joseph,
Michigan, in December, 1929, and found an arsenal that included two Thompson guns, that
these were delivered to Goddard’s laboratory for examination. Goddard found them to be the
weapons used in the Massacre, and man who had possessed them, a 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 crime lab and sent bullets taken from the body of local gangster Frankie
Yale, which also were found to have come from one of the Massacre guns. (A second
machine gun used on Yale had been left in the car abandoned in Brooklyn by the killers.)
Besides advancing the science of forensic ballistics, coupled with shooting angles and
distances, Goddard’s laboratory soon was doing hair and fiber investigations, discovering
new chemistries for use in serology (blood), and 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 criminalists, as they were now being called, one of whom turned out to be a “G-
man” who took his knowledge back to Washington, D.C., to help set up a national crime
laboratory some eighteen months later using the same equipment and technologies. When
FBI Director Hoover chewed out Melvin Purvis for doing business with the Chicago lab, and
even refused to acknowledge it, Goddard was really pissed off.
After its initial financing by two wealthy civic-minded Chicagoans, Massey and Olson,
Northwestern University funded the work of laboratory, which was partly offset by charging
for services performed. Even that was not enough to make the laboratory self-supporting,
and during Chicago’s "Century of Progress" World Fair in 1933-34 the lab had to set up an
exhibit and sell souvenirs, such as a matchbox-size container enclosing a bullet and shell
casing from a "Machine Gun taken from Chicago Gangsters." (Any ol' gangster would do.)
In the early 1930s the laboratory outgrew its quarters at the Northwestern Law School in
downtown Chicago and was moved from 469 Ohio Street to another Northwestern building at
222 East Superior. Calvin Goddard went back to New York, leaving the lab in the hands of
Fred E. Inbau and a well-trained civilian staff. By 1938 the Chicago police had lost enough of
its gangster-era stigma to purchase the facility for $25,000, including two chemical
laboratories, a photography room and darkroom, a chamber outfitted with a “lie detector,” a
document examiner’s room, a library that included some 1000 books on scientific crime
detection, and an exhibits room containing many hundreds of guns and other implements of
crime.
Most of the civilian staff was employed to operate the police department’s lab, which had
been relocated in the police headquarters building at 1121 North State Street; and when the
department expressed a desire to replace these men with police personnel, Inbau began
training officers who had at least some background in science. Meanwhile, Joe Wilimovsky,
who also worked with the coroner's office, scrounged most of Goddard's personal files,
photos and other items not nailed down, and with his brother Allan helped set up a similar
crime lab for the State of Wisconsin. Eventually this material went to Wisconsin collector Neal
Trickel, together with an original Dillinger death mask and mold, from which Neal plucked
three eyebrow hairs that he later graciously donated to The John Dillinger Died For You
Society's Doctor Horace Naismith, the nom de guerre of Your Benefactor.
One of the original crime lab’s major and lasting contributions was its American Journal of
Police Science, first published in January-February, 1930, by the Northwestern University
Press, and which has since been incorporated into the Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology, published originally in 1910 as an academic periodical and still widely circulated
today.
examining the smallest striations on the death bullets and bullets fired from the guns of both
defendants, he established that the Colt .32 automatic found on Sacco at the time of his
arrest, but not Vanzetti’s .38 Harrington & Richardson revolver, had fired the fatal shots. Such
“ballistics” evidence was too arcane for the court, and the jurors ignored it in favor of their
prejudices against “anarchists,” then poised to destroy America. In 1927 both Sacco and
Vanzetti fried.
Two years after that the City of Chicago was too preoccupied with closing speakeasies and
arresting “the usual suspects” to give much thought to science, or spending city funds on it;
but Massey had been sufficiently impressed by 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 collegues* and began setting up an even more elaborate lab in Chicago to work on the
Massacre. At Coroner Bundesen’s suggestion--because the police themselves were still
suspects--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.
Calvin Goddard’s was a full-service laboratory, patterned partly after a lab established
about two years earlier by August Vollmer in California, and partly after laboratories long-
established in several European countries. The Europeans were far ahead of the United
States in most areas of forensic science; where they came up short was in ballistics. Their
specialists (and Vollmer’s as well) had a basic understanding of the rifling marks on bullets,
but for evaluation they still were wrapping slugs in tinfoil and trying to match them by
studying the patterns with a magnifying glass. Goddard employed a new split-image
comparison microscope developed by Philip Gravelle, which actually was a pair of
microscopes linked to a single eye piece and had two independently rotating posts instead of
the mirror-and-plate arrangement that would normally hold a slide. Bullets mounted with wax
on each post could be slowly turned until the nearly-invisible striations perfectly matched up--
or failed to match up, if the bullets came from different guns.
Goddard also used a “helixometer,” newly developed by John Fischer based on the
medical cytoscope, which could optically examine the interior of a gun barrel which would
confirm its caliber, determine the pitch of the rifling, and examine it for powder residue.
Riflings differed among manufacturers and usually were unique to a particular brand, model
and caliber of handgun or rifle. Shotguns had no rifling, but each gun still left marks on the
primers and casings of their empty shells that were also unique to a single weapon.
Using slugs taken from the Massacre victims and seventy shell casings picked up off the
floor, Goddard first spent many hours explaining the theory and practice of forensic
ballistics, and then established to the satisfaction of the coroner’s jury that two .45-caliber
Thompson submachine guns had been used, one with a fifty-round drum and the other with a
twenty-round “stick” (or straight) magazine.
Since two of the Massacre killers had worn police uniforms, Goddard obtained and test-
fired all the Thompsons belonging to the police departments in Chicago and its suburbs.
These were ruled out, and it was not until sheriff’s police raided a house near St. Joseph,
Michigan, in December, 1929, and found an arsenal that included two Thompson guns, that
these were delivered to Goddard’s laboratory for examination. Goddard found them to be the
weapons used in the Massacre, and man who had possessed them, a 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 crime lab and sent bullets taken from the body of local gangster Frankie
Yale, which also were found to have come from one of the Massacre guns. (A second
machine gun used on Yale had been left in the car abandoned in Brooklyn by the killers.)
Besides advancing the science of forensic ballistics, coupled with shooting angles and
distances, Goddard’s laboratory soon was doing hair and fiber investigations, discovering
new chemistries for use in serology (blood), and 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 criminalists, as they were now being called, one of whom turned out to be a “G-
man” who took his knowledge back to Washington, D.C., to help set up a national crime
laboratory some eighteen months later using the same equipment and technologies. When
FBI Director Hoover chewed out Melvin Purvis for doing business with the Chicago lab, and
even refused to acknowledge it, Goddard was really pissed off.
After its initial financing by two wealthy civic-minded Chicagoans, Massey and Olson,
Northwestern University funded the work of laboratory, which was partly offset by charging
for services performed. Even that was not enough to make the laboratory self-supporting,
and during Chicago’s "Century of Progress" World Fair in 1933-34 the lab had to set up an
exhibit and sell souvenirs, such as a matchbox-size container enclosing a bullet and shell
casing from a "Machine Gun taken from Chicago Gangsters." (Any ol' gangster would do.)
In the early 1930s the laboratory outgrew its quarters at the Northwestern Law School in
downtown Chicago and was moved from 469 Ohio Street to another Northwestern building at
222 East Superior. Calvin Goddard went back to New York, leaving the lab in the hands of
Fred E. Inbau and a well-trained civilian staff. By 1938 the Chicago police had lost enough of
its gangster-era stigma to purchase the facility for $25,000, including two chemical
laboratories, a photography room and darkroom, a chamber outfitted with a “lie detector,” a
document examiner’s room, a library that included some 1000 books on scientific crime
detection, and an exhibits room containing many hundreds of guns and other implements of
crime.
Most of the civilian staff was employed to operate the police department’s lab, which had
been relocated in the police headquarters building at 1121 North State Street; and when the
department expressed a desire to replace these men with police personnel, Inbau began
training officers who had at least some background in science. Meanwhile, Joe Wilimovsky,
who also worked with the coroner's office, scrounged most of Goddard's personal files,
photos and other items not nailed down, and with his brother Allan helped set up a similar
crime lab for the State of Wisconsin. Eventually this material went to Wisconsin collector Neal
Trickel, together with an original Dillinger death mask and mold, from which Neal plucked
three eyebrow hairs that he later graciously donated to The John Dillinger Died For You
Society's Doctor Horace Naismith, the nom de guerre of Your Benefactor.
One of the original crime lab’s major and lasting contributions was its American Journal of
Police Science, first published in January-February, 1930, by the Northwestern University
Press, and which has since been incorporated into the Journal of Criminal Law and
Criminology, published originally in 1910 as an academic periodical and still widely circulated
today.
| The Northwestern University Law School's Scientific Crime Detection Laboratory |
| The First American "Crime Lab" |
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
exceeded any gangland killings
before or after February 14, 1929,
throwing the city into a frenzy of
police activity, awakening the
Chicago Crime Commission, and
dismaying civic-minded
businessmen who were tired of
hearing their city called the world’
s “gangster capital.” Coroner
Herman Bundesen, wielding more
authority than any medical
examiner before or since, virtually
took charge of the case and
immediately selected a “blue-
ribbon commission” of leading
citizens who became part of a
special grand jury that would
attend a year’s worth of hearings.
The hearings accomplished as
little as the police investigations,
except in one respect. Bert
Massey, vice-president of the
Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company,
had heard of a New York
“criminalist” named Calvin
Goddard who had tried to
introduce the new science of
forensic ballistics into the court
case of Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the self-
described anarchists accused of a
1920 payroll robbery in South
exceeded any gangland killings
before or after February 14, 1929,
throwing the city into a frenzy of
police activity, awakening the
Chicago Crime Commission, and
dismaying civic-minded
businessmen who were tired of
hearing their city called the world’
s “gangster capital.” Coroner
Herman Bundesen, wielding more
authority than any medical
examiner before or since, virtually
took charge of the case and
immediately selected a “blue-
ribbon commission” of leading
citizens who became part of a
special grand jury that would
attend a year’s worth of hearings.
The hearings accomplished as
little as the police investigations,
except in one respect. Bert
Massey, vice-president of the
Colgate-Palmolive-Peet Company,
had heard of a New York
“criminalist” named Calvin
Goddard who had tried to
introduce the new science of
forensic ballistics into the court
case of Nicola Sacco and
Bartolomeo Vanzetti, the self-
described anarchists accused of a
1920 payroll robbery in South
Calvin Goddard, trained as a physician, became a major and then a
lieutenant colonel in World War I before joining with Charles E. Waite,
Phillip Gravelle and John Fischer to form the privately-owned Central
Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York in 1922.
lieutenant colonel in World War I before joining with Charles E. Waite,
Phillip Gravelle and John Fischer to form the privately-owned Central
Bureau of Forensic Ballistics in New York in 1922.
| The comparison microscope and Calvin Goddard examining a revolver barrel with the crime laboratory's helixometer |
| The Goddard crime lab's vast collection of firearms and a waste basket filled with cotton into which guns were test-fired for comparison or identification purposes. In those days, Real Men didn't bother to wear hearing protection. |
Photo of Calvin Goddard (far left) along with Massacre gun and his handwritten calculation of the number
of murders committed with such guns, along with "bullet box" sold at Chicago's World's Fair, Goddard's
business card, barrel showing internal rifling, a .45-caliber bullet found in the drum of a Fred Burke
Thompson, a box for United State Cartridge Co. cartridges, and a pamphlet picturing shell casings from
Sacco-Vanzetti killings examined the Goddard laboratory when it was in New York.
of murders committed with such guns, along with "bullet box" sold at Chicago's World's Fair, Goddard's
business card, barrel showing internal rifling, a .45-caliber bullet found in the drum of a Fred Burke
Thompson, a box for United State Cartridge Co. cartridges, and a pamphlet picturing shell casings from
Sacco-Vanzetti killings examined the Goddard laboratory when it was in New York.
| Assortment of crime-lab photos and papers from Joe Wilimovsky, who also kept six .38 Special rounds from Frank Guzenberg's revolver plus a Type XX "box" magazine siezed at Fred Burke's house along with .45-caliber ammunition for the Thompson guns and a 12-guage Climax shotgun such as used in the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, all manufactured by the U.S. Cartridge Co., all courtesy Neal Trickel, a friend of Joe and Allan Wilimovsky. |
After it was confiscated by
the officious Sgt.
Mulvaney, Dillinger's
death mask and mold
evidently remained
stashed in the Coroner's
Office where it was later
salvaged by Joe
Wilimovsky and
eventually obtained by
Neal Trickel, who found
and plucked three
eyebrow hairs--which he
more or less donated to
Your Benefactor before
selling it at auction in
1990.
the officious Sgt.
Mulvaney, Dillinger's
death mask and mold
evidently remained
stashed in the Coroner's
Office where it was later
salvaged by Joe
Wilimovsky and
eventually obtained by
Neal Trickel, who found
and plucked three
eyebrow hairs--which he
more or less donated to
Your Benefactor before
selling it at auction in
1990.