A High School Math Teacher Burned Key Evidence of Hitler’s Death

Introduction: A Promise Kept

In the final pages of my book, Hitler's Suicide: The Blood Evidence, I ended with a haunting image and a solemn vow. The image is a photograph from August 1947, showing an unidentified US Army officer standing over a small fire near Frankfurt, pointing at a pile of burning clothes—Adolf Hitler’s tattered and bloodstained uniform from the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt.

This gas-fueled bonfire destroyed the most critical biological evidence in post-war investigation of Hitler's death: the only verified sample of Hitler’s blood needed to validate the disputed bloodstains on the bunker couch. The head of US Army Intelligence in Berlin, Lt. Col. William "Bill" Heimlich's investigators had taken several blood stain samples from the suicide couch and tested them against the blood on Hitler's tattered, bloodstained uniform. It wasn't a match; so, someone ordered the evidence burned and Heimlich's study buried.

I concluded Hitler's Suicide: The Blood Evidence, with this promise: "This author will not stop digging until he gets to the bottom of why this crucial evidence was destroyed."

This article is the first step in fulfillment of that promise. Through a painstaking reconstruction of service records, yearbook photos, and declassified routing slips, I have finally identified the man in the photo, and, in doing so, uncovered a chain of custody failure that suggests the evidence wasn't just burned—it was pilfered.

Part I: From Special Projects Man to Teacher

The investigation began with a simple question: On the back of the photos of the burning of Hitler's uniform in the US National Archives is the name "Taylor". Who was "Taylor"? Was he the photographer or was he the officer in the photo?

Initial searches conflated three men: a famous economist, an infantry training officer, and an intelligence executive. By peeling back the biographical layers, a single, distinct figure emerged: Lt. Col. Milton C. (Clay) Taylor (West Point Class of 1939).

The breakthrough came from an unlikely source: yearbooks from Robert E. Lee High School. The yearbook photos of "Col. Milton C. Taylor," a math teacher, showed a man with a distinct jawline, ear shape, and heavy-rimmed glasses. When overlaid with the high-resolution scan of the 1947 "burning" photo, the match felt undeniable. The man who taught geometry to Virginia teenagers in the 60s and early 70s was the same man who served as the Executive Officer of the G-2 (Intelligence) Division under General Edwin L. Sibert. Subsequent investigation confirmed I'd found our "burning man".

Known as "M.C. Taylor" when he was serving in Europe in the first post-war years, he was not a random supply clerk; he was the Chief of the Special Projects Branch.

Part II: Shipment No. 76

The identification of Taylor unlocked the archival trail. I discovered a declassified "Internal Route Slip" dated December 6, 1946, signed by "M.C. Taylor, Lt. Col. GSC, Executive." The document was a revelation. It concerned the release of "Shipment No. 76"—the official designation for the "Hitler-Eva Braun Property" found in Braun's treasure chest. Crucially, the document explicitly stated the purpose of the transfer:

"This headquarters is in receipt of request from the War Department for the effects of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun for display in the White House, Washington, D.C."

This shattered the accepted narrative. The items weren't originally destined for the incinerator; they were requested by the highest office in the land. Taylor was the gatekeeper who signed them out of the Foreign Exchange Depository (FED) vault in Frankfurt and sent them to the White House.

Part III: The Inventory Split

If the items were sent to Washington in 1946, why was Taylor burning them in a field in Germany in late August of 1947? The answer was found in the inventory documents.

The 1945 "Discovery" Photos:

Photographs taken upon the discovery of Eva Braun’s chest (featuring Sgt. Virginia Wood) clearly show a specific inventory:

The tattered July 20 trousers and jacket.
A pair of black leather shoes.
Black socks.
White handkerchief/cloths protruding from folders on a display table for gathered media.

The 1947 "Burning" Photos:

The photos of M.C. Taylor’s "before" bonfire photo reveals discrepancies.

No shoes were consigned to the flames.
The handkerchief and socks are absent.

Shipment No. 76 was "sanitized." Sometime between M.C. Taylor’s signature in December 1946 and the fire in August 1947, the inventory was split. The "large/gory" items (the uniform) were rejected for the White House display and returned to Taylor for destruction. But the "small/souvenir" items (shoes, socks, handkerchief) vanished.

Part IV: The Handkerchief

Where did the missing items go? The investigation turned to the private market.

In 2013, media personality Glenn Beck displayed a "satin handkerchief browned with Hitler's blood" as part of his "Man in the Moon" exhibit. Provenance descriptions linked it to the July 20 '44 assassination attempt.

Beck's artifact fits the profile of one of the "missing" items. Unlike the famous "Munich Apartment" loot (acquired by dealer Craig Gottlieb in 2014), the handkerchief has no public auction record between 2000 and 2012. This suggests it entered the market via a "Private Treaty" sale, likely from the estate of a high-ranking US official (Sibert? Taylor? Truman's staff?) who retained it when the rest of Shipment No. 76 was processed.

If authentic, Beck's handkerchief is the sole surviving biological link to the July 20 plot—and the last control sample from Hitler's uniform extant. Obviously, DNA testing is in order, especially considering the recent claims made on the two-part Channel 4 BBC documentary, Hitler's DNA: Blueprint of a Dictator.

Part V: Back to the Archives

The final leg of the investigation takes me back to the US National Archives.

Current finding aids for Record Group 242 (Captured German Records) show that the documentary part of Shipment No. 76 (Eva Braun's Photo Albums) is safely in custody. However, the "Suit" and "Personal Effects" listed on the 1946 manifest are missing from the collection.

The paper trail for their disappearance resides in a specific, non-digitized file in Record Group 260 (OMGUS). NARA Finding Aid DN1924 identifies Entry 596 as containing:

"Records pertaining to Eva Braun (Shipment No. 76)"

This file likely contains the Custody Receipt or Property Card that documents the exact moment the clothes were separated from the albums. If M.C. Taylor’s signature is on the "Release for Destruction" line for the suit—but not the shoes or handkerchief—we will have irrefutable proof of authorization.

Conclusion

Lt. Col. Milton C. Taylor destroyed the most crucial forensic evidence in the investigation of Hitler’s 'last days'. While the trousers turned to ash in 1947, the shoes and the bloodstained handkerchief walked away—potentially sitting in a private collection or a mislabeled archival box to this day.

The search for the file in RG 260, Entry 596 continues...

Will we finally discover who ordered M.C. Taylor to destroy the blood evidence?

Hitler's Suicide: The Blood Evidence analyzes the bloodstains often cited as proof of Adolf Hitler’s suicide in the Berlin bunker on April 30, 1945, including revelations of forensic fraud and intentional destruction of crucial evidence.

Bloodstain evidence doesn't lie—so why burn it?

Amid the rubble of postwar Berlin, battle-hardened war correspondent Matt Decker uncovers forensic anomalies that shatter the narrative of Adolf Hitler's suicide, plunging him into a labyrinth of deception spanning a decade.

Drawing on declassified files, conflicting eyewitness testimonies, and wartime enigmas, The Hitler Blood Coverup follows Decker's relentless odyssey from 1945's chaos to the shadowy courts of 1950s Bavaria. When bloodstains on the couch in the Führerbunker fail to match Hitler's blood type, Decker teams with a grizzled French detective, a daring Bavarian racer, and his sharp-witted wife and investigative partner, Leigh, to expose staged deaths, clandestine flights, and Allied-Soviet cover-ups engineered to avert a Cold War crisis.

As intelligence agencies close ranks and betrayals escalate, Decker risks his career and his life to unearth the truth. Peter David Orr's heart-racing thriller, rooted in real events like the 1956 Berchtesgaden death declaration and suspicions from Eisenhower and Stalin, blends pulse-pounding suspense with historical fact. It delves into the doubts and deceptions that lingered in the postwar world, posing a haunting question: What if the 20th century's ultimate tyrant didn't perish in that bunker—but slipped away, his forged blood the ultimate deception?