4A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL JANUARY 11, 2017
O PINION
Offbeat Oregon
THE LAST "GREAT" TRAIN ROBBERY PT. II
BY FINN J.D.JOHN
For the Sentinel
University of California Professor Edward O. Heinrich had helped the Southern Pacifi c out with a
few minor robbery investigations before. Now, in late autumn of 1923, SP had a big one on its hands.
Four of its employees had been murdered, at least two of them in cold blood, in a train robbery gone
bad at the mouth of Tunnel 13.
Posses had formed and were busily combing the countryside, bolstered by Oregon National Guard
soldiers and law-enforcement offi cers from all around. On clear days, aviators fl ew airplanes low over
the mountains in grid patterns looking for signs of the robbers, possibly the fi rst time in history that a
manhunt was conducted from the air.
After a week or two of this, authorities had assembled an impressive collection of physical evi-
dence. But they had not even glimpsed the fugitives, and they’d made no progress even in fi guring out
who the murderers were.
But that would change after they brought the 42-year-old Professor Heinrich into the case.
The railroad and the police laid out all the evidence, like a client briefi ng Sherlock Holmes: Left
behind at the scene, and scattered at various campsites found in the manhunt, had been a discarded .45
automatic with the serial numbers fi led off; a pair of Pay Day brand bib overalls; a scorched jacket;
and an assortment of other stuff — a plunger-type detonator, some blasting caps, a union suit, camp
garbage, and so forth.
From the bib overalls, Heinrich learned much. The pockets on the left showed more wear than on
the right, and there was pitch on the right, as would be the case if a left-handed lumberjack was lean-
ing against a tree to swing his ax. From some neatly trimmed fi ngernail clippings found in the pocket,
he gathered that when in city clothes, the wearer was a meticulous dresser with small hands. And from
some hairs found here and there, he learned that his man had brown hair and eyebrows.
But the real big score was wadded up in the bottom of the narrow pencil pocket of the overalls,
which no one else had probed. It was a receipt for registered mail. And it led him directly to a name:
Roy DeAutremont.
With that in hand, Heinrich was able to secure a sample of Roy’s handwriting — and that’s when
the DeAutremont Brothers’ doom was truly sealed. Because Heinrich was able to restore the serial
number on the automatic and trace it back to its initial purchaser, who had signed his name “William
Elliot” — in Roy’s handwriting.
From there, it was as good as all over. Had they merely robbed a train, the brothers could probably
have managed to disappear somewhere; but they had murdered four men — two of them in cold blood
— and the entire country was outraged by their crime. The manhunt now went nationwide and even
international. “WANTED” posters were printed and distributed everywhere, prominently displaying
the DeAutremonts’ faces; more than 2.25 million of them would be printed and distributed over the
following several years while they were on the lam. There was nowhere the brothers could go where
their faces would not be recognized.
Roy and Ray fl ed to Detroit and tried to change their hair color and personal appearance as best
they could. Hugh joined the Army and was deployed to the Philippines. But all around them, pictures
of themselves were staring out from those ubiquitous posters on the walls of post offi ces and police
stations.
Eventually, one of Hugh’s fellow soldiers was reassigned to Alcatraz and saw one of those posters,
and the jig was up. The brothers were all arrested and extradited to Jackson County, where they were
sentenced to life in prison.
Hugh was paroled in 1958, but diagnosed with stomach cancer a few months later; he died the
following year.
Roy was diagnosed with schitzophrenia in 1949, and the prescribed cure — lobotomy — left him
unable to care for himself. He died in a nursing home in Salem in 1983.
Ray was paroled in 1961 and moved to Eugene, where he worked for some years as a janitor in the
Erb Memorial Union at the University of Oregon. He died in Eugene in 1984.
Now, most accounts of the DeAutremont robbery, over the years, have been drawn almost entirely
from police statements and newspaper articles. But several years ago, Edgard Espinoza and Pepper
Trail, two forensic scientists from the National Fish and Wildlife forensic lab in Ashland, decided to
dig a little deeper into the records. They found some very interesting details.
For one thing, they found that the timeline of the robbery placed the robbers at the scene, with
everyone dead and the mail car torn open and burning, for a whole hour. What would they have been
doing during that time? Could they have found something in there after all? Or was this merely a fl aw
in the record-keeping? (Remember, the train, still behind them in the tunnel, was full of passengers, and
on the face of it it seems unlikely that the brothers would risk such a delay.)
The more inriguing discovery, though, is a description of a small, dark-featured man who, three
hours after the robbery, knocked at the door of a remote camping cabin in the woods nearby. He asked
the man who was staying in the cabin if he could retrieve some property he’d stashed in the loft — wal-
nuts, he said, left there to dry and forgotten when he’d camped there several months before. The man
had retrieved an oblong object wrapped tightly in a mackinaw coat, which did not look like walnuts,
and left.
The mackinaw, or one like it, was found a few months after that in a nearby creek bed within a few
hundred feet of Highway 99, near a spot where a pick and shovel had been stashed. It had knife cuts
in it, as if whoever was wearing it had been stabbed in the back with a sharp knife. And there was no
sign of the oblong object.
So: did the DeAutremont brothers have an accomplice? Did they actually recover something from
the hold-up? (Southern Pacifi c always refused to disclose what was in the mail car that day, if any-
thing.) Was there a double-cross, and a fi fth murder done, and a secret kept by all three brothers and
taken with them to their graves?
Or is there some other explanation — perhaps the mackinaw and shovel were evidence of some
other crime, or maybe there’s a completely innocent explanation?
It’s almost certain that we’ll never really know.
(Sources: Trail, Pepper & al. “Tunnel 13: How Forensic Science Helped Solve America’s Last Great
Train Robbery,” Jefferson Public Radio, http://ijpr.org; Joers, Lawrence E.C. “The Siskiyou Train Rob-
bery,” Great Moments in Oregon History. Portland: New Oregon Publishers, 1987; http://tunnel13.
com)
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon State University and writes about odd tidbits of Oregon history.
For details, see http://fi nnjohn.com. To contact him or suggest a topic: fi nn2@offbeatoregon.com or
541-357-2222.
The word on calcium:
BY JOEL FUHRMAN, MD.
For the Sentinel
Women need to be cautious
and knowledgeable regarding
high-dose calcium supplements
as the safety and effi cacy of cal-
cium supplements in prevent-
ing bone loss is now suspect.
In addition, according to some
studies, high dose calcium sup-
plements may damage the car-
diovascular system. Learning
the pros and cons of calcium
supplementation is important,
however, the wisest choice for
all women is to make sure their
diet contains adequate calcium.
A steady stream of research
has questioned the safety of
high-dose calcium supplements
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for the cardiovascular system,
in addition to questioning their
value for preventing osteoporo-
sis. This has huge public health
implications, as 52 percent of
American women take calcium
supplements.1
The most recent study took
data from the Multi-Eth-
nic Study of Atherosclerosis
(MESA). At the start of the
study, participants answered
questions on their diet, medi-
cations, and supplements, and
their coronary artery calcium
was measured. Ten years later,
coronary calcium was measured
again.
Participants were broken into
fi ve groups (quintiles) based on
their typical total daily calcium
intake (food plus supplements).
In the highest quintile of total
calcium intake, the risk of cor-
onary artery calcifi cation at 10
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High doses and women
years was reduced by 27 per-
cent, suggesting that calcium
is protective. However, the
use of calcium supplements
was also associated with an
increased risk (12-22 percent)
of coronary artery calcifi ca-
tion, suggesting that dietary
calcium and supplemental cal-
cium may have contradictory
effects.
Each quintile was then split
into users and non-users of
calcium supplements. Out of
those 10 groups, the greatest
risk of coronary artery calcifi -
cation was in supplement us-
ers in quintile 1, meaning the
group that had the lowest food
calcium intake but took calci-
um supplements.2 This study
suggests that dietary calcium
is protective, and supplemen-
tal calcium may not be and
may even be harmful.
If calcium supplements are
harmful, but food calcium
isn’t, why?
The primary difference
seems to be the dose. Many
calcium supplements con-
tain 1000 mg or more, which
is much more than would be
found in a typical meal.
Blood calcium is very tight-
ly regulated, always kept in a
narrow range. However, after
a large dose (such as a high-
dose calcium supplement), the
usual regulatory mechanisms
are temporarily overwhelmed,
there is a transient increase in
blood calcium,3 and this could
be a problem. Observational
studies suggest that elevations
in blood calcium contribute to
carotid atherosclerotic plaque
thickness, calcifi ed plaque, and
cardiovascular events.4,5 This
is presumably because elevated
blood calcium promotes blood
coagulation and deposits of cal-
cium (calcifi cation) in the arter-
ies.
Calcifi cation stiffens the ar-
teries, increases the vulnerabil-
ity of atherosclerotic plaques,
and increases cardiovascular
risk.6,7 Only high dose supple-
mental calcium can raise blood
calcium signifi cantly.
Are we sacrifi cing our bones
to save our arteries?
Are women more prone to
osteoporosis if they don’t take
high-dose calcium supple-
ments? The research says no.
Calcium defi ciency can cause
osteoporosis, however the ev-
idence suggests that calcium
supplementation is helpful only
when someone is vitamin D-de-
fi cient. Vitamin D adequacy
allows for increased absorption
of calcium when intake is low.
The risk of fracture due to low
calcium intake is increased if vi-
tamin D intake is also low.8
When calcium and vitamin D
were supplemented together, vi-
tamin D plus a smaller amount
of calcium (less than 1000 mg)
better prevented fractures than
vitamin D plus larger amounts
of calcium (1000 mg or more).9
High-dose calcium supplemen-
tation was even found to in-
crease hip fracture risk in a me-
ta-analysis of 4 clinical trials.10
The take-home message from
these studies is that high-dose
calcium is not necessary for
protecting bones, and may even
make things worse, but vitamin
D adequacy is important.
Not every study has detect-
ed a harmful effect of calcium
supplements. Two meta-analy-
ses pooling many calcium sup-
plementation trials determined
that regularly using calcium
supplements (1000 mg or more
calcium/day in most studies)
was associated with a 20-30
percent increase in the risk of
heart attack and/or stroke.11,12
However, two other meta-anal-
yses did not did not fi nd any
increase or decrease in the risk
of cardiovascular events in the
groups taking calcium sup-
plements compared to control
groups.13-15
The major difference between
the meta-analyses coming to
different conclusions was the
data included from one trial in
particular, the Women’s Health
Initiative. The Women’s Health
Initiative allowed women to
continue taking their personal
calcium supplements during
the trial. Some argue that this
could have masked the risk as-
sociated with calcium supple-
ments.12,16 Others argue that
the data is still confl icting, and
the evidence doesn’t support a
benefi cial or harmful effect of
calcium supplements, yet.17,18
My conclusion: I advocate a
cautious, conservative approach
to calcium supplementation
Despite this disagreement, and
in light of the new study on
arterial calcifi cation, there is
enough evidence to be cau-
tious about high-dose calcium
supplements. The wise focus
should still be on obtaining
adequate calcium primarily
with food, especially since
high-dose calcium supple-
ments provide minimal (if
any) benefi t for osteoporosis
prevention.
For many people, green veg-
etables, beans, nuts and seeds
most likely provide enough
calcium without the need
for supplements. Certain
groups – such as pregnant,
nursing, and postmenopausal
women, as well as those with
osteopenia or osteoporosis
and those with small appetite
for green vegetables – may
want to consider adding a
small dose of supplemental
calcium, spaced throughout
the day to assure optimal cal-
cium intake, along with their
Vitamin D3 supplements. For
these groups, I recommend
using lower dose, whole food
calcium supplements (whole
powdered seaweed, for exam-
ple) to more closely replicate
getting calcium from foods.
Dr. Fuhrman is a #1 New
York Times best-selling
author and a board certifi ed
family physician specializing
in lifestyle and nutritional
medicine. The Eat To Live
Cookbook offers over 200
unique disease-fi ghting deli-
cious recipes and his newest
book, The End of Heart Dis-
ease, offers a detailed plan to
prevent and reverse heart dis-
ease using a nutrient-dense,
plant-rich eating style. Visit
his informative website at
DrFuhrman.com. Submit
your questions and comments
about this column directly to
newsquesƟ ons@drfuhrman.
com. The full reference list
for this article can be found at
DrFuhrman.com.
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