The Zephyr train and its Iowa connection

Two or three years ago this column was on the 1942 bombing of a streamlined, stainless steel passenger train called the Zephyr.  The unsolved crime was referred to by J. Edgar Hoover as the only substantial act of sabotage to take place in Iowa during World War ll.  

My column did not contain a lot of information, in part because not much was available.  The FBI and Iowa BCI were selective about what was released and local newspaper editors, during those early days of the war, abided by rules of censorship.

What was available, along with information from a couple of old-timers who remembered the incident, made it plain that much of what had taken place was never made public.  While there may have been good reason for secrecy at the time, nearly 70 years have passed.  

I therefore filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the FBI, and made a similar request for records with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation.  These things take a while.  

Several months passed.  Then both agencies responded at about the same time.  

The FBI's investigative file of the incident consists of a whopping 7,000 pages.  In addition to the FBI file, several hundred more pages of reports were compiled by the Iowa DCI (then the BCI).     

This is a lot of material.  My old copy of War and Peace, which seems to go on forever, has a trifling 1,222 pages.  While large portions of the reports are repetitive, I still spent several weeks digesting them.    

There are many ironies in the case, beginning with the strange series of events that occurred at an isolated point on the Burlington line between mile posts 419 and 420.  There were a plethora of clues that, even after 15 years of probing by numerous investigative agencies, were never fully understood.

Not everyone between Red Oak and Corning was a suspect, but a good many were.  I know a couple of regular readers having relatives who were hauled in for questioning.  Polygraphs were administered wholesale.  Every rumor and innuendo was checked and rechecked.  The bomber who had attempted, and nearly succeeded, in murdering 200 passengers and crewmembers on board the Denver-bound Zephyr was wanted as badly as any fugitive of the era.  

There is, of course, far too much for a newspaper column.  But I have condensed and summarized the case for an article which will appear in Iowa Heritage, a publication of the Iowa State Historical Department.  A number of our readers, including a few I interviewed with regard to the Zephyr, asked that I let them know when the story appears.  

The article will be in the summer, 2012 edition, which will be out in a few days.               

Roy Marshall is a local historian and columnist for the Red Oak Express. He can be contacted at news@redoakexpress.com.