Vallejo murder led to historic trial
The trial nearly a century ago of a Vallejo thug who killed his city street department boss was no ordinary court proceeding. The case that ended with Martin Colwell going to prison for the rest of his life marked the first, precedent-setting use of bullet “fingerprints” as evidence in American courts.
Colwell’s 1926 conviction for gunning down John McCarty was not easy for the prosecution, despite strong circumstantial evidence, including Colwell’s threats of revenge after McCarty fired him from a street labor gang two days before the shooting. Colwell also was known to be violent and had a lengthy criminal record that resulted in three previous prison terms, one for burglary and two for assaults with a deadly weapon.
But prosecutors, after one deadlocked trial in a Fairfield courtroom, managed in a second trial to convince jurors of Colwell’s guilt — with the help of famed criminologist Edward O. Heinrich, their star witness. Heinrich, the so-called “Wizard of Berkeley” and “American Sherlock Holmes,” produced microscopic evidence that the bullet fired point-blank into McCarty’s chest could only have been fired from Colwell’s .38 revolver.
Heinrich reached his conclusion after test-firing a live bullet found in Colwell’s pocket, along with several others from a box of ammunition found in the defendant’s waterfront ark. Using a stereoscopic microscope, he compared the bullets with the bullet that killed McCarty and found similar rifling scratches on all of them. He then produced photographs of the marks, which he called “bullet fingerprints.” Such images had not been seen before in U.S. courts.
Heinrich explained that gun manufacturers, to improve bullet accuracy, used steel bars with cutting edges to make spiral riflings inside gun barrels, and the rifling marks were never identical. The result is a gun barrel “autograph” on any bullet fired from the weapon.
Colwell’s second trial began on May 18, 1926, and jurors found him guilty of murder on June 8. Three days later, Superior Court Judge William O’Donnell sentenced him to life in prison. Colwell, 59 when he started his term at San Quentin Prison, was later transferred to Folsom Prison, where he died in 1938.
He’s buried in the prison cemetery, with a small marker identifying him only as inmate 14237.
On Dec. 19, 1925, McCarty, 40, had just returned from work to his 915 Pennsylvania St. cabin when he heard someone calling him. Shot as he opened his door, McCarty staggered across the street to the Vallejo Ice Co. for help and kept saying, “I fired Colwell.” McCarty died in an ambulance taking him to the hospital.
About two hours after the shooting, police arrested Colwell as he headed out of town, walking along the railroad tracks. His .38 revolver, with one chamber empty, was in his pocket along with three bullets. Four shells were gone from the box of shells found in his room. Colwell couldn’t account for the missing bullet, insisting he had been drunk the day of the shooting and remembered nothing. Officers also found opium, cocaine and other drugs, describing him as “a walking drug store.”
Besides his state prison time, Colwell also had served county jail time. One newspaper account said he had “run amuck” in 1912 while being held at the Solano County jail in Fairfield and was sent to the state hospital in Napa. He escaped from that institution in 1916. Colwell used the aliases John Barry, Joe Kelly and Marty Holleran, but no matter what name he used, Colwell wasn’t hard to identify. He had tattoos of an eagle, flags, an anchor, girls and stars on his arms and back, and of a fullrigged sailing ship on his chest.
When not behind bars, Colwell, a Massachusetts native, had all sorts of jobs around Vallejo over a span of more than 30 years. Besides his street repair job, he had worked as a printer, fireman and carpenter and in his 20s may have acted in local theater groups. He also had merchant seaman papers and enlisted in the Navy at Mare Island in 1888. He had managed to save some money — and used his savings to retain two prominent Vallejo lawyers, Thomas J. Horan and Arthur Lindauer, a former Solano County district attorney, to fight the charge that he killed McCarty.
During the first trial, Vallejo Police Chief William Stanford testified that Colwell made a jail cell comment that “If I did kill him, it was not me — it was whiskey.” But the defense attorneys managed to get a deadlock — seven for conviction, five against — mainly by putting on another criminologist, Chauncey McGovern, to contradict Heinrich’s expert testimony.
In the second trial, the defense offered new alibi witnesses and kept trying to discredit Heinrich. But he was better prepared this time. At a juror’s request, approved by the judge, Heinrich set up his microscope in the courtroom to demonstrate how he photographed the bullets. One by one, jurors walked up to the microscope and peered into it. He also took additional photos that matched earlier images supporting the prosecution argument that the fatal bullet was fired from Colwell’s gun. After closing arguments, jurors deliberated for only an hour and five minutes before returning with their unanimous guilty verdict.
Over the years, there have been references to the trial in articles and books about criminology and forensic firearm examination. They include a March 2008 paper about Heinrich published by the American College of Forensic Examiners. The paper includes details of the precedentsetting Colwell trial and concludes that Heinrich, who died in 1953, “would have enjoyed seeing the procedures he developed or refined nearly a century ago still being used today to make mute evidence speak.”
— Vallejo and other Solano County communities are treasure troves of early-day California history.
The “Solano Chronicles” column, running every other Sunday, highlights various aspects of that history. My source references are available upon request. If you have local stories or photos to share, email me at genoans@hotmail.com. You can also send any material care of the Times-Herald, 420 Virginia St.; or the Vallejo Naval and Historical Museum, 734 Marin St., Vallejo 94590.