0:00

Hey there, Side Doorables. Side Door producer

0:02

James Morrison here. I'm usually

0:04

behind the scenes working on episodes, but

0:06

Lizzy Peabody's currently on vacation, so I'll

0:09

be guest hosting this episode. Don't

0:11

worry though, she'll be back for the next one.

0:22

This is Side Door, a podcast from the

0:24

Smithsonian with support from PRX.

0:26

I'm James Morrison. It

0:30

was the fall of 1923 when

0:32

the sheriff of a small Oregon

0:34

town got word of an explosion.

0:45

Something had gone wrong, very

0:47

wrong,

0:48

with Southern Pacific Train number 13, just

0:51

as it was going through Tunnel

0:53

number 13. Tunnel 13

0:56

in the Siskiyou Mountains is in a really rugged

0:58

and really beautiful part of

1:01

the boundary between Oregon and California.

1:15

And so when the inspectors would have shown

1:17

up at the scene, they would have, you know, been in this beautiful

1:20

mountain backdrop, but it would have been absolute

1:22

chaos.

1:23

It was a chaos requiring both passengers and

1:25

freight, but there was a single car

1:28

at the center

1:29

of this chaos, the US Postal Car.

1:31

This car was like blown

1:33

to smithereens on parts of it, and there

1:37

was a confetti of letters and checks

1:39

and whatever else people mailed at the time, just

1:42

probably scattered all over the landscape from when

1:44

the blast happened.

1:48

Deputies on the scene found the car twisted

1:50

and bent,

1:51

the paint melted and blackened. They

1:54

also found three bodies. The

1:56

train's engineer, Sidney Bates, the

1:58

brakeman, Coyle Johnson.

1:59

and Fireman Marvin Singh.

2:03

But investigators soon discovered something

2:05

surprising. These men weren't

2:07

killed by the explosion. They

2:10

had been shot. It was

2:12

clear this was an attempted robbery. What

2:14

wasn't clear was whether the bandits

2:16

had stolen anything. They had

2:19

used so much dynamite to blast

2:21

open the mail car door, they had blown

2:23

up everything inside of it, and

2:25

they killed U.S. Postal Clerk Elvin Doherty,

2:28

who was also inside. Investigators

2:31

were determined to find whoever did

2:34

this. It was a pretty

2:37

violent crime. Train robberies

2:39

weren't that uncommon, but I don't think they

2:41

usually ended in the death of four

2:43

innocent men. But

2:45

the deputies on the scene didn't even know

2:47

how many people they were looking for. The

2:49

train tunnel was dark, and none of the witnesses

2:52

could say how many people they saw or

2:54

what they looked like. There's no

2:56

clear idea of where did they go.

2:58

Who are they looking for? How many

3:01

people are they looking

3:02

for? Lynn Heidelbach is a curator

3:04

at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum.

3:07

She says investigators quickly found

3:09

a trail of clues. The

3:12

robbers had left behind the detonator they used

3:14

to ignite the dynamite. They'd also

3:16

left behind a gun, a Colt .45 with

3:19

the serial number filed off, empty

3:21

knapsacks, and little pads

3:24

that they had stuck to the bottom of their shoes and

3:26

covered in a tar-like substance.

3:29

Something that would have been used to try to cover

3:31

tracks if they were

3:32

expecting to be running from dogs.

3:36

These clues weren't much, but

3:38

it was all deputies had to help them find these

3:40

would-be robbers turned murderers

3:43

who had escaped into the vast Oregon

3:45

wilderness.

3:51

This time on Side Door, the

3:53

story of how US postal inspectors

3:55

set out to find the people responsible

3:57

for this crime. What's been called?

4:00

the last great American train robbery.

4:03

It was one of the most extensive manhunts the country

4:05

had ever seen, and one of the first

4:08

to use modern criminal forensics to

4:10

track down old school outlaws.

4:15

That's the next stop, After

4:17

the Break.

4:23

Hey there, Side Door listeners. Side Door producer

4:26

James Morrison here. If you love

4:28

Side Door, then there's another show we think you might

4:30

like. It's called Science Versus. It

4:33

takes on fads, trends, and

4:35

the opinionated mob to find out what's

4:37

fact,

4:38

what's not, and what's sometimes in

4:40

between. In the new season, they

4:43

cover things like breath work. There's

4:45

claims that it can work miracles and even heal

4:47

trauma. So what's the catch? And

4:49

self-care, things like ice baths,

4:52

gratitude journals. But what really

4:54

works when it comes to our mental health? The

4:56

new season of Science Versus, that's Science

4:59

VS, is available now. You

5:02

can listen on Spotify or wherever you

5:04

get your podcasts.

5:09

There's such a fear around the number 13 that

5:12

there's even a word for this. It's called Triska

5:14

Decophobia. It's why you won't find

5:16

a 13th floor on a hotel, and it's

5:19

why Friday the 13th is considered

5:21

to be an unlucky day. But whoever

5:23

tried to rob Southern Pacific Train number 13

5:26

must not have been a Triska Decophobic, at

5:28

least not at the time, because

5:31

they had robbed the train just outside tunnel

5:33

number 13. And now, with

5:36

a good 13-hour head start, the

5:38

police were hunting them through

5:40

the normally tranquil mountains of Southern

5:43

Oregon.

5:43

The search

5:46

is on

5:47

very quickly, rapidly,

5:49

and is organized. That's the Smithsonian's

5:52

Lynn Heidelbach again. She

5:54

helped curate a centennial exhibition about

5:56

the investigation of this robbery, and

5:58

she says time was a... essence. With

6:01

every minute that passed, the culprits got

6:03

one step closer to freedom.

6:05

There were bloodhounds all over. They

6:08

were flying planes too low

6:10

to the ground, trying to find these

6:12

people. Kate Winkler Dawson

6:14

is a professor at the University of Texas in

6:17

Austin. She says people in the area

6:19

were scared and putting pressure on the sheriff

6:21

to catch whoever did this. And

6:24

even though local law enforcement had evidence,

6:26

they weren't really sure what to do with it. I would

6:29

say investigator is a very loose term

6:32

for this area. It's rural Oregon.

6:34

There's a sheriff and there's deputies, but

6:36

you know these are not groups of people who are used to investigating

6:39

this kind of a crime. Short

6:41

of leads, they leaned on an age-old

6:43

tactic for finding a suspect. They

6:46

made a list of the area's former criminals,

6:49

known drug users, basically

6:51

anyone with a bad reputation.

6:53

They had a county that had

6:56

ne'er-dwells as any county would, and they

6:58

started kind of gathering those people up and

7:00

questioning them. So they sweated

7:03

the usual suspects, looking for

7:05

anyone with a flimsy alibi. But

7:08

they came up short.

7:11

Then reinforcements arrived.

7:14

Outside law enforcement flooded into

7:16

the area from all over. The Southern

7:18

Pacific Railroad Company sent their chief

7:21

special agent, Dan O'Connell, up from

7:23

San Francisco. The post office

7:25

sent their top special agent as well, chief

7:28

of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service,

7:31

aided by a local postmaster and

7:33

some other postal inspectors.

7:36

This new wave of officers, agents, and

7:38

postal clerks searched the nearby woods, and

7:41

they stumbled across a remote cabin nestled

7:43

between the fir trees.

7:45

And in this cabin, they find

7:47

a pair of overalls. And the

7:50

federal investigators examine the overalls,

7:52

and they see a substance that

7:54

looks to them like mechanics grease.

7:56

The investigators fanned out into nearby

7:58

auto repair shops. chase their lead, anyone

8:02

who could have owned a pair of greasy overalls. And

8:05

they go to a couple of different shops, I believe,

8:07

and shake down a mechanic

8:09

who they forced to put overalls

8:12

on and they sort of kind of fit, but

8:15

not really. And they put this poor guy

8:17

in jail.

8:18

But it became clear pretty quickly that the only

8:21

thing this mechanic was guilty of was being

8:23

a little bit greasy. They weren't his

8:25

overalls and he wasn't their guy.

8:28

Theirs were at a loss. They needed

8:30

a break in the case, a name, a description,

8:33

anything to give them a clue to who they

8:35

were looking for. And then

8:38

Southern Pacific Special Agent Dan O'Connell

8:40

had an idea.

8:42

Why not reach out

8:43

to Oscar Heinrich?

8:49

Southern Pacific had used Oscar

8:51

Heinrich, who was this forensic scientist in

8:53

Berkeley, in the past with

8:55

some of the train robberies that they had.

8:58

Forensic science was still pretty new at this

9:00

time, but Oscar Heinrich was

9:02

already gaining a reputation in the field.

9:04

He was billed as the Wizard of Berkeley,

9:08

America's Sherlock Holmes. People said

9:10

he was brilliant.

9:11

Kate recently wrote a book about

9:13

Heinrich titled American Sherlock. She

9:15

spent hours poring over his journals and

9:18

she says it was clear that he had an obsession

9:20

for detail. Each line

9:23

of each of these journals detailed every

9:25

penny that he spent in meticulous

9:28

detail.

9:28

So five cents for butter on this

9:30

day, 12 cents for petrol on this day.

9:33

Being a trained chemist with an acute attention

9:36

to detail made Heinrich a keen forensic

9:38

investigator. And if you're not sure

9:40

what forensic science is, think of shows

9:42

like CSI. They use science

9:44

in labs to investigate the tiny, even

9:47

microscopic evidence a criminal leaves behind.

9:50

Fingerprints, skin cells, hair,

9:52

and blood. There's a totally different

9:54

type of investigation than law enforcement in

9:56

the 20s were used to and they didn't

9:58

like it one bit.

10:00

Forensic scientists

10:01

in the early 1920s were really

10:03

looked at as scants by law enforcement because

10:06

they felt like these guys in these white

10:08

jackets were undermining them.

10:10

Police in those days wanted to catch the bad guys

10:12

by chasing down hot tips and kicking

10:14

down doors. They didn't want some professor

10:17

in a lab making them look silly by proving them

10:19

wrong or finding something they had overlooked,

10:21

which is exactly what Heinrich did. He

10:23

spent 24 hours that day in

10:26

his lab straight down in the basement.

10:28

He meticulously poured over everything

10:31

the dynamite detonator, the Colt 45,

10:34

but it was a pair of greasy overalls that

10:36

he really honed in on.

10:38

Because when he read the report

10:39

from the federal government that said

10:41

this was grease on a pocket,

10:44

he thought this doesn't seem very likely

10:47

and he did a couple of interesting

10:49

things.

10:52

Heinrich chipped some of the dried grease off

10:54

the overalls and put it on a microscope slide,

10:57

placed it under the lens, and then quickly

10:59

the real truth came into focus.

11:03

And he recognized that it

11:05

was

11:05

the pitch from a fir

11:07

tree. So not grease, pitch

11:09

from a fir tree.

11:11

Not just any fir tree, but the

11:13

types of trees found in Western Oregon, the

11:15

trees lumberjacks are hired to cut

11:18

down. So

11:19

he called O'Connell and said, hey, unless

11:21

this mechanic who's in jail is also

11:24

someone who cuts down

11:26

trees for a living, this is not

11:28

likely to be your person.

11:30

And Heinrich was just getting started. He

11:33

had nailed the overalls to a door. He

11:35

knew lumberjacks cuffed their pant legs, so

11:37

he rolled up the bottoms of the legs. And

11:39

then he found a pair of lumberjack boots and he placed

11:42

them beneath the cuff legs to get a good idea

11:44

of the culprit's height.

11:46

He said that this was somebody who was around

11:49

5'10", not much taller, someone who was under 165.

11:52

He also said that this is

11:55

somebody who is likely left-handed because

11:57

the way that somebody buttons their overalls

13:43

Postal

14:02

inspectors started interviewing people and

14:04

quickly learned that Roy had been living in Southern

14:06

Oregon at the time of the robbery. His

14:08

brothers Ray and Hugh were there as well.

14:11

Ray and Roy are twins

14:14

of a family of five boys.

14:17

Their next in age is Hugh.

14:21

The Deautraments grew up in the Midwest.

14:24

Their father moved the family around looking

14:26

for work. He eventually left

14:28

his family and headed for Oregon. Meanwhile,

14:32

the five young boys stayed

14:34

behind with their mother in New Mexico.

14:36

They're living in poverty, they're kind of having

14:38

a hard time, and Ray decides

14:41

to head west.

14:42

Chelsea Rose again. She says when

14:44

Ray was around 19 years old, he

14:47

went to work in a shipyard just across

14:49

the Columbia River from Portland.

14:51

And this is when there was some kind of violent outbreak

14:54

and it led to

14:54

a bunch of arrests. Civil

14:57

law enforcement had raided the shipyard to crack

14:59

down on labor activists and socialist

15:01

agitators. In the years after

15:04

World War I, nearly half of all

15:06

states had enacted anti-labor statutes

15:08

to punish union organizers, which

15:10

is what Ray was. When

15:13

Ray came to Oregon, he joined the labor organization

15:16

International Workers of the World,

15:18

advocating for workers' rights and fair pay.

15:21

And that put a target on his back when police started

15:24

busting unions in the area.

15:26

Basically, they raided his house, they found

15:28

all his propaganda material,

15:30

and that red card and that was

15:33

enough to send him to jail.

15:35

Ray was given a choice. Give up

15:37

the names of other labor organizers or

15:40

spend a year in jail. Ray

15:42

refused to betray his union brothers and

15:44

was sent to a jail-like reformatory.

15:47

When he was released, he didn't come out with a

15:49

let bygones be bygones sort

15:52

of attitude.

15:53

He came out hot. That definitely

15:55

kind of colored the way that he

15:57

spent the next couple years.

16:03

Now Roy Diatrimont had moved

16:05

to Oregon to be with his recently released

16:08

twin brother Ray. It was the Roaring

16:10

Twenties and the economy was in an upswing.

16:13

But even though it seemed like everybody was getting

16:15

their pieces of pie, Ray and

16:17

Roy struggled to get theirs.

16:19

And so there's a whole context of

16:22

this economic and social

16:24

instability at this time. It's

16:27

not just the Roaring Twenties. This is

16:29

really quite a challenging time for

16:31

people.

16:32

Roy had to leave his job as a

16:34

barber when he started losing his eyesight.

16:37

And Chelsea Rose says that both brothers had

16:39

mental health issues that made it hard to find

16:42

or keep work.

16:44

Ray really suffered with depression and Roy

16:47

would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia.

16:49

They bounced from job to job

16:52

trying to make ends meet. And in the

16:54

early summer of 1923, their

16:56

younger brother Hugh came to join them

16:58

in Oregon. He had just graduated

17:00

from high school and was only 19 years old. His

17:04

older brothers Ray and Roy were now 23.

17:08

The three of them decided they needed steady work.

17:10

So they rolled up their sleeves and they turned

17:13

to the one industry in the Pacific Northwest

17:15

that was always hiring.

17:18

The Twenties is kind of a time where the lumber industry

17:20

is really booming. So I think it would have been pretty

17:22

easy to find a job in the different lumber

17:25

camps.

17:26

The brothers found work at a lumber camp

17:28

in Silverton, Oregon, but they weren't

17:30

well suited for the dirty and physically

17:32

demanding work of cutting down trees.

17:35

They were fairly small men, around five

17:37

and a half feet tall, thin and well

17:40

groomed by some accounts. They

17:42

spent their evenings in the lumber camp thinking

17:44

of other ways to fund their future. Flipping

17:47

through dime novels and comic books that

17:50

glorified Prohibition era criminals

17:52

like Al Capone were the exploits

17:54

of famous train robbers of the old Wild

17:56

West. Chelsea says

17:59

this appealed to the... brothers, they felt like

18:01

they could never get ahead, that the game of life

18:04

was rigged against them, and in

18:06

an unjust society, it was the outlaws

18:09

who were the heroes.

18:11

So this is kind of an era where this

18:14

Robin Hood kind of, you know, portrayal

18:16

of these robbers was around, and this really

18:19

captivated them, and an era where

18:21

they were, felt kind of discouraged

18:23

by their prospects.

18:25

While the brothers read their stories of famous

18:27

criminals taking whatever they wanted, a trade

18:29

of the train whistled in the distance. The

18:32

train nicknamed the Gold

18:34

Express.

18:38

And they were convinced that this was a train

18:40

that had a lot of gold, and of course,

18:42

it had money in it also, and valuables.

18:45

They decided in that camp that they were

18:47

going to pull off one big heist,

18:50

big enough to

18:51

get their lives on track forever.

18:53

So they were pretty convinced that this

18:55

was going to be a huge amount

18:57

of loot for them as they were able

18:59

to pull it off. But

19:01

the Deautrement brothers never could have

19:03

guessed just how hard it is to rob

19:05

a moving train.

19:10

Still ahead, the brothers feel the heat

19:12

from one of the oldest and most feared

19:15

federal law enforcement agencies, the

19:17

U.S. Postal Inspection Service. I'm

19:21

serious, you did not want to mess with the

19:23

postal inspectors. Love

19:26

more on that?

19:27

After the break.

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slash side door.

20:13

In the late fall of 1923, the manhunt

20:16

for the de Autremont brothers was well underway,

20:18

thanks to the clues provided by Oscar

20:20

Heinrich. Chelsea Rose says

20:22

Southern Pacific and the US Postal Service

20:25

threw all their resources into

20:27

catching the brothers.

20:28

It was the biggest manhunt of its kind

20:30

at the time and you know of course they didn't know how

20:33

long it would take but they printed ultimately over 2.5

20:35

million wanted posters

20:38

in Spanish, French and multiple

20:41

other languages.

20:41

The Smithsonian's Lynn Heidelbogen,

20:44

she says this was an international manhunt

20:47

spanning nearly every continent. There

20:49

was no escape and a healthy reward

20:52

for whoever caught the brothers.

20:54

We're talking about several thousand

20:56

dollars for each suspect. In

20:59

today's money, each brother's bounty

21:01

was worth about a hundred thousand dollars.

21:04

That's more than a quarter million dollars if you

21:06

could catch them all. But the manhunt

21:09

wasn't just wanted posters. The

21:11

US Postal Inspection Service was

21:13

hot on the trail of the brothers and

21:16

the postal inspectors were essentially

21:18

like the FBI of that time period.

21:24

The FBI had only been around for a few years

21:27

in 1923. There was no

21:29

CIA or ATF. The

21:32

US Postal Inspection Service was

21:34

pretty much the main federal law enforcement

21:36

network of the time. In fact,

21:39

the Postal Inspection Service is the oldest

21:42

federal law enforcement agency, older

21:44

than America itself even. The first

21:47

postal inspector was appointed by Benjamin

21:49

Franklin to essentially inspect the mail

21:52

and make sure it got delivered. But in

21:54

the 19th century, criminals

21:56

realized just how much money was

21:58

being sent through the mail.

23:38

His

24:00

name was actually Hugh,

24:02

Hugh Diatromont. I

24:04

think really it's just bad luck

24:06

for Hugh that he was the first one to get caught.

24:09

With his brothers still on the lamb, Hugh

24:11

went on trial alone in Jacksonville,

24:14

Oregon.

24:20

And this was a media

24:22

circus. This is like a spectacle that Southern

24:25

Oregon had probably never had before

24:27

and probably hadn't since. The

24:30

spotlight was

24:30

really on them and he was kind

24:32

of a celebrity. The

24:35

media portrayed Hugh as a patsy, an

24:38

impressionable youngster who went along with

24:40

his older brothers. Public opinion

24:43

was on his side, but his luck

24:45

ran out when one of the 12 jurors

24:47

died during the trial.

24:50

There are some accounts that say his lawyer had

24:52

wanted to have an alternate before this,

24:54

but Hugh was too superstitious to have 13

24:57

jurors because the

24:59

crime, of course, involved train 13

25:02

and tunnel 13, so they didn't have an

25:04

alternate. And so when this juror

25:06

died unexpectedly, the judge

25:09

had to throw the case out. The

25:11

publicity surrounding

25:12

Hugh's trial swept across the

25:14

nation and the postal inspectors

25:16

issued a whole new batch of wanted posters

25:18

to capitalize on the momentum, a move

25:21

that paid off. Because

25:23

someone in Ohio saw one of these posters

25:26

and recognized a pair of twins they knew

25:28

as the Goodwin brothers,

25:30

it turned out

25:31

these twins were actually Roy and

25:33

Ray Diatrimont, although they

25:36

looked a little bit different.

25:38

Ray, who changed his appearance a

25:40

little bit, he dyed his hair, I think he even had a tooth

25:42

removed to try to change the shape

25:44

of his face a little bit.

25:46

All three brothers were now sitting in

25:48

jail together. Ray and Roy

25:50

watched Hugh's second trial unfold as

25:53

they waited for their first trial to start. It

25:56

only took the jury and Hugh's case 90 minutes

25:58

to return with their verdict. guilty

26:01

of first-degree murder, descendants,

26:05

life in prison.

26:06

That

26:07

was the good outcome. Ray

26:09

and Roy could see the writing on the wall.

26:12

Public opinion had shifted dramatically since

26:14

Hugh was first captured. They weren't

26:16

celebrities anymore. They were cold-blooded

26:19

killers.

26:20

Crowds were calling for vengeance.

26:22

This is really still the era of public

26:25

hangings, and I think that the public

26:27

just really thought that it would kind of culminate

26:30

in a big public hanging.

26:32

Hugh's case had given the twins a good

26:34

look at the evidence they were up against. Heinrich's

26:37

findings hadn't just told investigators

26:39

who to look for. He had given them

26:41

an airtight case for a conviction.

26:44

I think it became very clear with the

26:47

overalls, and certainly with

26:49

his discovery of the

26:51

receipt for the certified letter, you know, it

26:53

was pretty solid evidence. If he had not found

26:56

that receipt, I think it would have been

26:58

a pretty shaky case.

27:00

With their lives literally on the balance,

27:03

Ray and Roy pled guilty to avoid

27:05

the death sentence.

27:06

And the brothers also get like back-to-back

27:09

life sentences, and none of them are supposed to

27:11

ever be eligible

27:11

for parole.

27:13

As part of their plea, Roy wrote

27:15

a highly detailed 100-page confession, and this is

27:20

where everyone finally learned exactly

27:22

how the brothers had plotted and schemed

27:25

and executed their perfect robbery.

27:31

That was very bad news, bears. These guys

27:33

did not know what they were doing. Just

27:36

days before the robbery, Hugh was driving

27:38

the designated getaway car when he crashed

27:40

smack dab into a cow, utterly

27:43

destroying their escape vehicle. Meanwhile,

27:46

his older brothers had tried to scope out the tunnel

27:48

ahead of time, but they were seen skulking around.

27:51

As they were running away, Roy bashed his knee

27:54

and he could barely walk, and they barely escaped.

27:57

So, it was a comedy of errors,

27:59

and

27:59

Really all of this should have felt foreshadowed

28:02

for them. Just a terrible

28:05

series of mistakes that was going to happen. But

28:08

the brothers decided to go through with the robbery

28:10

anyway.

28:13

The brothers thought they had an airtight plan.

28:15

They knew the train had to check its brakes at the top

28:18

of the mountain

28:19

right before entering tunnel number 13

28:21

and then dropping down into California.

28:24

They basically weaponized the landscape in a few

28:26

ways. They took advantage of the fact

28:28

the train had to slow down and that made it vulnerable

28:31

and they could access it. But also it made

28:33

for a pretty quick getaway because they

28:35

could run basically in any direction and

28:37

they're in really rugged wilderness.

28:40

In fact, it's still really rugged today.

28:43

Their plan was to hop on the train as it slowed

28:45

for its brake check, force the engineer

28:47

to stop it, and then they could shoot their

28:49

way into the mail car and steal whatever

28:52

gold or other treasures were inside. Just

28:55

in case they brought a bag of dynamite

28:57

to blow open the mail car door, they

28:59

disguised themselves as railway workers and

29:02

waited for the train to arrive at tunnel number 13

29:05

just around one o'clock in the afternoon.

29:08

Ray was at the south end of the tunnel, sometimes

29:10

called the West Portal, and the other

29:12

two went to the other side.

29:14

Ray stood alone at the entrance of the tunnel,

29:17

nervously chain-smoking cigarettes, hoping

29:19

everything would go according to plan. Hugh

29:22

and Roy waited at the end of the tunnel for

29:24

the train's engine to emerge.

29:26

Before the brothers even reunited

29:29

together, everything had started to go totally

29:32

wrong.

29:36

When the train emerged from the tunnel, the

29:38

engineer, Sidney Bates, saw Hugh

29:40

and Roy chasing after him. He

29:42

pushed the throttle wide open, speeding

29:45

up the train. Roy, with

29:47

his recently injured knee, hobbled after

29:49

the train, barely making it aboard

29:52

and losing his gun in the process.

29:54

Because I guess they were trying to get the train

29:56

to stop at the end of the tunnel, and he

29:58

hopped on the train and lost his gun.

29:59

his gun. Male clerk Elvin

30:02

Doherty had hurt all the commotion and locked

30:04

himself inside the car with a pistol. The

30:07

brothers tried shooting the hinges but

30:09

they just couldn't get the male car door open.

30:11

So that's when they brought in the dynamite. Roy

30:15

supposedly was the one that ended up using the dynamite

30:17

and instead of just like one stick or a little

30:19

bit he used like every piece they had

30:22

and so he way overcorrected and

30:24

that's why the whole male

30:26

car was blown

30:27

up. Their payday,

30:29

the money, the gold that was supposed to

30:31

be their ticket for a better future, it was

30:34

a pile of smoldering ruins.

30:37

They desperately were on hands and knees with all

30:39

the smoke in the flames trying to find any

30:41

kind of loot and they couldn't.

30:44

Smoke filled the train tunnel blocking

30:46

out any light. They demanded train

30:48

engineer Sidney Bates pull the train out of

30:50

the tunnel so they could see but he refused.

30:53

While they were arguing with the engineer, brakeman

30:56

Coyle Johnson ran from the back of

30:58

the train to help. When he popped out

31:00

of the smoky tunnel, the brothers thought he

31:02

was trying to shoot at them.

31:05

So they shot him in the gut, you know

31:07

kind of in a panic but he

31:09

wasn't shooting at them. They just heard some random

31:11

noise.

31:12

At this point the brothers realized just

31:15

how wrong everything was going. They

31:17

had blown up their loot if there wasn't he ever

31:19

to begin with and they had killed two

31:21

men. Worse still, they

31:24

had two witnesses, the engineer Sidney

31:26

Bates and the fireman Marvin Singh.

31:29

The story has disagreed whether the brothers had ever

31:31

planned to kill anyone but

31:33

at that moment

31:34

they decided they weren't going to leave any witnesses

31:37

and they shot Sidney and Marvin.

31:40

When the coroner looked at the bodies

31:42

they were clear they had their hands up so they were really

31:44

shot in cold blood at the time. I

31:46

don't think they intended to kill anybody.

31:49

I certainly know they didn't intend to blow up

31:51

the the one car that they needed

31:53

the most which was the US postal car. I

31:56

think they were probably pretty horrified

31:58

at the end of it when they were dead. done.

32:00

The Deautrement brothers had sat in a lumber

32:03

camp, planning a heist that they thought would

32:05

set them up for life. And in a

32:07

way, they were right. The robbery

32:09

had earned each of them a life sentence.

32:12

While in prison, Roy became

32:14

increasingly violent.

32:16

And eventually he was sent to the state

32:18

mental hospital where he was lobotomized and

32:20

supposedly it wasn't successful if

32:23

that operation ever is considered

32:25

successful. He was basically catatonic

32:28

and he lived out his days in that facility

32:30

and he didn't really have

32:32

much of a life after that point.

32:34

None of the brothers were ever supposed to get out

32:36

of prison. But Hugh turned out

32:39

to be a model inmate. He published

32:41

an award-winning magazine that earned him

32:43

the nickname Dean of Prison Journalism.

32:46

He was paroled in 1958. But

32:49

shortly after his release, he was diagnosed

32:52

with stomach cancer.

32:53

And he died shortly

32:56

thereafter within a couple of

32:58

months.

32:59

Ray was a model inmate as well and

33:01

was paroled in 1961, nearly 35 years after being caught.

33:06

As he was being released, he told a reporter, well,

33:09

one thing is for sure. For the rest of my life,

33:12

I will struggle with the question of whatever

33:14

possessed us to do such a thing. He

33:17

and Roy both died in the early 1980s, almost 60

33:19

years after the robbery.

33:26

Now 100 years after the robbery,

33:29

Chelsea says it's important to try to understand

33:31

the impact this crime has had and

33:33

to remember the victims.

33:35

That's actually one of the saddest parts

33:37

of this story is how the victims

33:39

even today continue to be lost. And

33:43

it's understandably hard to compete with

33:45

the excitement of a criminal gang and

33:47

this global manhunt, but I wish

33:49

we knew more about them. For

33:51

instance, postal clerk, Elvin Doherty.

33:55

He left a young family, including a really

33:57

young

33:57

son. He was supposed to go

33:59

on a vacation.

33:59

to do some hunting in Eastern

34:02

Oregon after the crime. So that's

34:04

kind of a sad insight into his life that he never

34:06

got to do that.

34:08

Fireman Marvin Singh was only 23 years

34:10

old, roughly the same

34:12

age as the Diatrimons when they killed him. And

34:15

it was a day before brakeman Coyle Johnson's

34:17

37th birthday. He wasn't

34:19

even supposed to be working that day.

34:21

He was actually just riding as a passenger.

34:24

And he got involved because when the train

34:26

stopped, he went to see if he could help. He

34:29

ended up leaving behind a wife, and they had already

34:31

lost two children. So you can only imagine

34:33

how absolutely devastating this would have been

34:36

for her.

34:37

Engineer Sidney Bates was a veteran

34:39

at Southern Pacific.

34:40

He was also really active in his community,

34:43

involved in a lot of different organizations.

34:45

And he left behind a wife as well. So

34:48

the ripple effect was pretty extreme,

34:51

especially for the first few years.

34:54

Nobody had a happy ending.

34:56

Kate has written about countless criminal investigations,

34:59

murders, and robberies. And she

35:01

says one thing sticks out for her in this

35:04

case. Ultimately, the concern

35:06

over mental health is what loomed large

35:09

for me over

35:09

this story, not feeling badly

35:12

necessarily for the brothers, but they were in

35:14

an untenable position in their lives also.

35:17

There is a silver lining to all this, though. When

35:20

law enforcement agencies saw how Oscar

35:22

Heinrich helped catch the Diatrimon brothers, they

35:24

warmed up to criminal forensics.

35:27

I do think that this case accelerated

35:29

the development of forensics, because

35:32

once Heinrich used all these tools,

35:35

you can see people approaching

35:37

him.

35:38

And it made criminal forensics a staple

35:41

of the US Postal Inspection Service.

35:43

Today, they have a nationally

35:46

recognized and accredited forensics lab

35:48

for forensics analysis.

35:55

This crime has been called the last great

35:58

American train robbery.

35:59

a pretty sexy title, but it really

36:02

rankles some folks because the more

36:04

you look into it, it wasn't actually a robbery.

36:07

Chelsea says it was technically a holdup. I

36:09

mean, nothing was taken. It's

36:11

not the last train robbery.

36:14

There are others.

36:15

And it really wasn't that great.

36:17

But it did happen in America. And there

36:19

was a train involved. So there is

36:22

that. And while this case might not

36:24

be the last anything,

36:26

there were a lot of firsts that happened

36:28

with this train robbery. I think it is one of

36:30

the things that spurred the federal government to

36:32

believe that they needed sort of a centralized

36:35

agency that would handle federal agents

36:38

who could be primed to, you know,

36:40

work on these really big cases.

36:43

It was also one of the first times airplanes

36:45

were used in a manhunt. And it was

36:48

one of the first modern crime investigations,

36:51

relying heavily on forensics and

36:53

technology.

36:54

This is not the 19th century crime

36:56

investigation. This is using

36:59

science. This is using communication

37:02

networks to track these

37:04

individuals down and bring them to trial.

37:07

And so the case really sits

37:09

for me in this liminal space between the old

37:11

West and the modern age. And,

37:14

you know, in one way, you could say that they went into

37:16

the tunnel in one era and they came

37:18

out in another.

37:31

You've been listening to Side Door, a podcast

37:33

from the Smithsonian with support from PRX. If

37:37

you want to know more about this attempted train robbery,

37:39

you're in luck. The Smithsonian's National

37:42

Postal Museum has teamed up with the U.S. Postal

37:44

Service and the Southern Oregon Historical

37:46

Society for a virtual exhibition

37:49

that marks the centennial of the case. You

37:51

can find that on the Postal Museum's website.

37:54

We'll also include a link in our newsletter. You

37:56

can subscribe at SI.edu.

38:00

And if you're listening on Spotify,

38:02

let us know your favorite part of the episode

38:04

right in the app. For help with

38:07

this episode, we want to thank Lynn Heidelbaugh,

38:09

Chelsea Rose, and Kate Dawson. We'll

38:12

include a link to Kate's book, American

38:14

Sherlock, Murder, Forensics,

38:16

and the Birth of CSI in our newsletter.

38:19

If you want to hear more great stories of postal inspector

38:21

heroes, check out our past episode,

38:24

Ponzi's Scheme. You've heard

38:26

of the scheme. Now learn all about

38:28

the person who started it, and how postal

38:31

inspectors captured the notorious

38:33

Charles Ponzi. And if

38:35

you want more of this train robbery story, Chelsea

38:38

Rose has just published a two-part series

38:40

about the robbery for her podcast, Underground

38:43

History. She gets a lot deeper into

38:45

the forensics, and I encourage you to check it out. It's

38:47

really great. And if you're

38:49

a fan of historical true crime stories, look

38:52

for Kate Winkler Dawson's podcast, Buried

38:54

Bones. Our podcast is

38:56

produced by Lizzie Peabody and me, James

38:59

Morrison. Our associate producer

39:01

is Natalie Boyd. We had additional

39:03

help on this episode from Amy Drozdowska.

39:07

Executive producer is Anne Cananon.

39:10

Our editorial team is Jess Sadek

39:12

and Sharon Bryant. Tammy O'Neill

39:15

writes our newsletter. Episode artwork

39:17

is by Dave Leonard. Our show is mixed

39:20

by Tarek Fuda. Our theme song and

39:22

episode music are by Breakmaster Cylinder.

39:25

Producer support comes from PRX. If

39:28

you have a pitch for us, send us an email at

39:30

sidedoor at si.edu. If

39:33

you want to sponsor our show, please email

39:36

sponsorship at prx.org. I'm

39:39

your guest host, James Morrison, filling

39:41

in for the irreplaceable Lizzie Peabody,

39:43

who will be back for the next episode. Thanks

39:46

for listening.

39:49

Okay, I'm

39:53

back from vacation. Hello?

39:58

Where is everybody?

40:00

Oh, wait, here's the note.

40:04

Dear Lizzie, we did the episode

40:06

without you. Don't be mad.

40:09

Huh.

40:11

P.S. There's a casserole in the fridge?

40:14

Love the side door team. I

40:16

wonder what kind of casserole. From

40:21

B.R.X.