The Sixteenth Rail

Before there was CSI, there was Arthur Koehler. In 1932, the "Crime of the Century" shocked the world: the infant son of aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was snatched from his second-story nursery. Left behind at the scene was a single, handmade wooden ladder—the only physical link to the kidnapper. While the nation clamored for vengeance and the media descended into a frenzy, a mild-mannered wood technologist from Wisconsin named Arthur Koehler began a quiet, methodical pursuit of justice. Armed with a microscope and an uncanny knowledge of nature, Koehler did what no detective had done before: he tracked a piece of lumber across the country, from a remote mill to a lumberyard in the Bronx, and ultimately to a single floorboard in a suspect's attic. The Sixteenth Rail is the gripping true story of the "Sherlock Holmes of Wood." It is a high-stakes legal thriller and a fascinating look at the birth of forensic science, proving that while men may lie, the grain of a tree never does.