Lindbergh kidnapping
The Lindbergh kidnapping was the abduction and murder of Charles Lindbergh III, the toddler son of world famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, Jr. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, in 1932.
The kidnapping and subsequent trial might be described as a media circus: every development was followed by millions of people; newspaper writer H.L. Mencken called the affair "the biggest story since the Resurrection."
Bruno Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the crime, though he proclaimed his innocence. In the subsequent decades, many have argued that Hauptmann was innocent: the victim of a miscarriage of justice by authorities eager to resolve a highly public case. He undoubtedly possessed some of the ransom money, but beyond that, the questions of further involvement in the crime may remain open.
There is ample evidence that, at the very least, the investigation was badly bungled. As Michael Kurland writes, "From the very beginning, the investigation of the case was fragmented and mishandled, and it suffered from the triple liabilities of Lindbergh's fame, ego, and tendency to manage everything. Everyone that dealt with him was conscious that they were dealing with Colonel Lindbergh, and deferred to his opinions. Lindbergh, too, had a very high opinion of himself. He tended to give orders when it would have been more profitable to listen." In fairness, kidnappings of prominent persons were still fairly rare crimes at the time, and police forces had little experience with them.
Lindbergh authorized two separate intermediaries to contact the supposed kidnappers: one was a bombastic school teacher with cloak and dagger delusions, the other a convicted con artist. Ransom was paid to two different groups – and nearly paid to a third – but the child was never seen alive after the kidnapping. Even the identification of the corpse said to be the Lindbergh baby has been called into question.
The crime inspired the "Lindbergh Law", which made kidnapping a federal crime, and also inspired the Agatha Christie novel Murder On The Orient Express.
Background
Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. (June 22, 1930–March 1932) was dubbed "The Eaglet" by the media. His father's exploits in flying airplanes had earlier earned him immense popularity and acclaim, as well as the nickname "The Lone Eagle".
Lindbergh, Jr. (called "Little It" by his parents) was, beyond a slight deformity of some toes on his right foot, a healthy child. Later, the child became known as the "Lindbergh baby".
To escape the media, the Lindberghs were building a 390 acre (1.6 km²) estate near Hopewell, New Jersey, where the family was spending weekends since the work was not complete. Though Hopewell was the nearest town, the estate was actually located in East Amwell Township (Hunterdon County), just north of Hopewell.
The Abduction
Normally, the Lindberghs would have returned to Englewood, New Jersey, where the young family had been staying with Anne Morrow Lindbergh's parents, for the week, but Charles, Jr. was recovering from a bad cold. His parents decided to remain at the house in East Amwell.
On the evening of March 1, 1932 at about 8:00 p.m., the baby had been put to bed by his mother and nanny Betty Gow. Gow stayed with the baby a few minutes longer until she was sure he was asleep. Mrs. Lindbergh looked in on the child at about 9:00 p.m. and found him sleeping quietly.
Gow checked on the baby a little before 10.00 p.m., and discovered he was not in his bed. She told Mrs. Lindbergh, and the two women initially suspected it was another joke by Mr. Lindbergh. He occasionally pulled pranks, and not long before, had secreted the child in a closet, claiming no awareness of his location while they searched the house. When quizzed as to the baby's whereabouts, however, Lindbergh grew alarmed and insisted it was no joke. He told a butler, Ollie Whately, to telephone police (a call was placed at 10:25 p.m.) and then, carrying a rifle, Lindbergh searched the house and the grounds.
Outside, he found a shoddy, homemade wooden ladder on the ground below the second floor nursery window. Its top rung was broken.
A letter was discovered on the nursery windowsill — presumably left there by the kidnapper(s) — but Lindbergh allowed no one to touch it until police arrived.
The first on the scene was Chief Harry Wolf of the Hopewell, New Jersey City police. Soon thereafter, however — and before Wolf could begin much of an investigation — many New Jersey State Police officers arrived, claiming control over the case. The State Police wandered around the Lindbergh home and grounds essentially at will, making no organized search and with no ranking officer clearly directing their actions. It is likely that the crime scene was contaminated by the New Jersey State police and that valuable physical evidence was compromised or destroyed. For example, there were reports of two sets of footprints on the ground near where the ladder had been leaned against the house. But the area was not secured, and many police walked in and out of the area before the footprints could be photographed or cast in plaster.
The police searched the home and reported that they had scoured the surrounding grounds for miles without finding any evidence.
After midnight, a fingerprint expert arrived at the home to examine the note left on the windowsill. He found nothing of value, and the note was opened and read. The handwritten ransom note was riddled with spelling errors and grammatical irregularities:
- Dear Sir! Have $50,000 redy $25,000 in $20 bills 15,000 in $10 bills and $10,000 in $5 bills. After 2-4 days we will inform you were to deliver the Money. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are singnature and three holes. [sic]
There were two interconnected circles (colored red and blue) below the message, punched through with three holes.
The Four Colonels
Word of the kidnapping spread quickly, and, along with police, the well-connected and well-intentioned arrived at the Lindbergh estate. Three were military colonels offering their aid, though only one had law enforcement expertise: Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police. The other colonels were Henry Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer; William Joseph Donovan (a.k.a. "Wild Bill" Donovan, a hero of the First World War who would later head the OSS); and, of course, Colonel Lindbergh.
Though there was precious little in the way of supporting evidence, the Four Colonels quickly concluded that the kidnapping was perpetrated by organized crime figures. The letter, they thought, seemed written by someone who spoke German as his native language.
The Colonels elected to take an unusual step, and contacted Mickey Rosner, a Broadway hanger-on rumored to know mobsters. Rosner, in turn, brought in two speakeasy owners: Salvatore "Salvy" Spitale and Irving Bitz. Lindbergh quickly endorsed the duo and appointed them his intermediaries to deal with the mob.
Unknown to Lindbergh, however, Bitz and Spitale were actually in cahoots with the New York Daily News, a paper which hoped to use the duo to scoop other newspapers in the race for leads in the kidnapping story.
As is common in such high-profile cases, the Lindberghs were the victims of several cruel pranks and claims about their baby.
Federal Interest
The morning after the kidnapping, U.S. President Herbert Hoover was notified of the crime. Though the case did not seem to have any grounds for federal involvement (kidnapping then being classified as a local crime), Hoover bent the rules for the enormously popular Lindbergh, and declared that he would "move Heaven and Earth" to recover the missing child.
The Bureau of Investigations (not yet called the FBI) was authorized to investigate the case, while the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Customs Service and the U.S. Immigration Service and the Washington D.C. police were told their services might be required.
New Jersey officials announced a $25,000 reward for the safe return of "Little It", additional to the Lindbergh family's offer of $50,000 — the total reward of $75,000 was a fortune in those early days of the Great Depression.
Several organized crime figures — notably Al Capone — spoke from prison, offering to help return the baby to his family in exchange for money or for legal favors.
More Ransom Letters
A few days after the kidnapping, a new ransom letter arrived at the Lindbergh home via the mail. Postmarked in Brooklyn, the letter was genuine, carrying the perforated red and blue marks. Police wanted to examine the letter, but instead, Lindbergh gave it to Rosen, who said he would pass it on to his supposed mob associates. In actuality, the note went back to the Daily News, where someone photographed it. Before long, copies of the ransom note were being sold on street corners throughout New York for $5 each. Any ransom letters received after this one are therefore automatically suspect.
A second ransom note then arrived, also postmarked in Brooklyn. Ed Mulrooney, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, suggested that, given two Brooklyn postmarks, the kidnappers were probably working out of that city. He told Lindbergh that his officers could surveil postal letterboxes in Brooklyn, and that a device could be placed inside each letterbox to isolate the letters in sequence as they were dropped in, to help track down anyone who might be tied to the case. If Lindbergh, Jr. was being held in Brooklyn by the kidnappers, such a plan might help locate the child as well, even so far as police staging a raid to rescue the baby, Mulrooney insisted.
Lindbergh strongly disapproved of the plan. He feared for his son's life, and warned Mulrooney that if the plan were carried out, the whole of Lindbergh's considerable influence would be brought to bear on trying to ruin Mulrooney's career. Reluctantly, Mulrooney acquiesced.
The day after Lindbergh rejected Mulrooney's plan, a third letter was mailed — it too came from Brooklyn. This letter warned that since the police were now involved in the case, the ransom had been doubled to $100,000.
Enter Jafsie
At about this time in the ongoing drama, John F. Condon forced his way onstage. He was a 72 year-old school teacher in the Bronx, and a prolific writer of fiery letters to newspapers, especially the Bronx Home News. He usually signed his letters with pseudonyms like "P.A. Triot" or "J.U. Stice".
Condon wrote a letter to the Home News — signed with his legal name, for once — proclaiming his willingness to help the Lindbergh case in any way he could. He added $1000 of his own money to the reward.
Afterwards, Condon received a letter care of the Home News. Purportedly written by the kidnappers, it was marked with the punctured red-and-blue circles, and authorized Condon as their intermediary with Lindbergh; The Lone Eagle accepted the letter as genuine, though at the time, neither man seemed to know that copies of the first mailed ransom letter were being sold by the hundreds, and that, by now, a great many people must have known the "signature" required to forge a letter from the kidnappers.
Following the latest letter's instructions, Condon placed a classified ad in the New York American: "Money is Ready. Jafsie". Condon's new pseudonym was based on a phonetic pronunciation of his initials, "J.F.C." Condon then waited for further instructions from the culprit(s).
Gaston Means, the Socialite, and the Baby Trail
While the irrepressible Jafsie was shoehorning himself into the investigation, a professional con man named Gaston Means was drawn into the case. He took a telephone call from Evalyn Walsh McLean, a wealthy Washington D.C. socialite who'd taken an interest in the kidnapping.
It remains unclear how McLean became convinced that Means could offer any help in the case, but he accepted her invitation. He told her that due to his many criminal contacts, he could quickly solve the kidnapping which seemed to have stumped police. Sure enough, a few days later, he told McLean that he had contacted the kidnappers and that he was their only authorized contact. As proof, Means provided a holdback detail which had been withheld by police: the baby's sleeping suit lacked a diaper-changing flap then typical of such clothing. McLean contacted her friend, Rear Admiral Emory Land, who was a distant Lindbergh relative. When Land related the sleeping suit description to Mr. Lindbergh, the aviator was stunned: his son's sleeping suit had in fact, lacked a diaper flap.
Curiously, Means reported the same fact as the letter-writer: the ransom was now doubled to $100,000. McLean gathered the money and gave it to Means, who insisted that while he could deliver the cash, the kidnappers would return the child only to a Roman Catholic priest. Father Francis J. Hurney agreed to receive the child. Means told Hurney, Land and McLean to retire to McLean's second home in Maryland and await further news.
There were now ongoing negotiations with two sets of alleged kidnappers. As Kurland writes, "nobody could explain why there were two different groups were trying to collect the ransom. Nonetheless, Lindbergh told Land/McLean/Means to go ahead."
In the meantime, Means was stringing McLean and her entourage along. Following his instructions, the group moved from Maryland, to South Carolina, to El Paso, Texas (Means reported that the baby had been hidden in Juarez, Mexico). At no point did they recover the Lindbergh child.
McLean was tiring of the games. She demanded Means return either the money or produce the Lindbergh baby. When Means balked, McLean telephoned police. Means and another man were arrested and convicted of various crimes, and sentenced to prison.
Cemetery John
While Means was preparing money for his group of supposed kidnappers, "Jafsie" was in contact with a different group of supposed kidnappers. The meeting was scheduled for late one evening at Woodlawn Cemetery.
According to Condon, the man stayed in the shadows during the conversation, and he was thus unable to get a close look at his face. The man said his name was John, and he related his story: he was a "Scandinavian" sailor, part of a gang of three men and two women. The Lindbergh child was unharmed and being held on a boat, but the kidnappers were still not ready to return him or receive the ransom.
When Condon expressed doubt that Cemetery John actually had the baby, he promised some proof: the kidnapper would soon return the baby's sleeping suit.
Lindbergh insisted that Mulrooney not be informed, and so "Cemetery John" was not followed by police after the meeting.
Condon would later identify the stranger as "sounding foreign". The stranger asked Dr. Condon " ... would I burn [be executed], if the package [baby] were dead?" When questioned further, he assured Dr. Condon that the baby was alive.
Enter John Hughes Curtis
There was another complication in the case when Commodore John Hughes Curtis became entangled in the kidnapping. Curtis reported that he was approached outside a Norfolk, Virginia social club by a man who called himself "Sam."
Sam said he had been part of the kidnapping gang, but, after a quarrel, decided to split from them. He could return the baby for only $25,000 and chose Curtis as his representative.
When Condon learned of Curtis's story, he promptly declared it a fraud. Lindbergh was not so sure and considered paying him the money.
The New York police questioned Curtis, whose story quickly fell apart. Curtis announced that the scheme was a fraud: he'd hoped to sell his phony story to the press in order to raise money to pay off some creditors.
In a strange turn of events, Curtis was charged by the authorities — not with filing a false report, but with obstruction of justice for his supposed dealings with the kidnappers. He was fined $1,000, and given a suspended one-year sentence.
Jafsie Delivers the Ransom
A few days after Curtis's initial declaration, Condon received a package in the mail: it was a toddler's sleeping suit. Condon showed it to Lindbergh, who quickly identified it as his son's. Kurland writes, "On what basis he made this identification is not known, since the garment contained no laundrymark or other means of distinguishing it from the thousands of others identical to it sold in the stores."
After the delivery of the sleeping suit, Condon took out a new ad in the Home News declaring, "Money is ready. No cops. No secret service. I come alone, like last time."
One month and one day after the child was kidnapped, on April 1, 1932 — perhaps a significant date — Condon received a letter from the purported kidnappers. They were ready to accept payment. The ransom had been bargained down to $70,000.
The ransom was packaged in a wooden box which was custom-made — with hopes that it could later be identified. $50,000 was in relatively new bank notes while $20,000 was in the older gold certificates then being withdrawn from circulation. It was hoped that anyone passing large amounts of gold notes would draw attention to themselves, and thus aid in identifying the culprit(s).
The next evening, Condon was given a note by cab driver Raymond Perrone, who said he'd been paid by a man to deliver the note to Condon. The note was the first in a series of convoluted instructions, leading Condon and Lindbergh all over Manhattan. Eventually, Condon and Lindbergh finally delivered the money to St. Raymond's Cemetery. Condon met a man he thought might have been "Cemetery John", and told him that they'd been able to raise only $50,000. The man accepted the money, and gave Condon a note. Again, Lindbergh (who saw the man only from a distance) had insisted the police not be informed of the procedure, and again, a suspect got away without anyone following him.
The note reported that the child was being held on a boat called The Nelly in Martha's Vineyard. Lindbergh went there, and searched the piers. There was no boat called The Nelly, and a desperate Lindbergh took to flying an airplane low over the piers in an attempt to startle the kidnappers into showing themselves. After two days, Lindbergh admitted he'd been fooled.
The Body
On May 12, 1932, delivery truck driver William Allen pulled his truck to the side of a road about 4.5 miles from the Lindbergh home. He went to a grove of trees to relieve himself, and there he discovered the corpse of a toddler. Allen notified police, who took the body to a morgue in nearby Trenton, New Jersey.
The body was badly decomposed, and had been partly eaten by scavengers. The skull was badly fractured, the left leg and both hands were missing; and it was impossible to determine if the body was a boy or a girl.
Lindbergh and Gow identified the baby as the missing infant after less than three minutes' examination, based on the overlapping toes of the right foot, and the shirt that Gow had made for the baby. They surmised that the child had been killed by a blow to the head. The body was soon afterwards cremated at Mr. Lindbergh's order.
The identification of the tiny body remains a point of contention on the case. In fact, Dr. Philip Van Ingen, Lindbergh Jr.'s pediatrician, had seen the baby only a few weeks before the kidnapping, and after his examination of the remains, refused to identify the corpse as the Lindbergh baby's, stating, "If someone were to come in here and offer me ten million dollars ... I simply wouldn't be able to identify those remains."
Investigation
Once the Little Eaglet was presumed dead, the U.S. Congress rushed through legislation making kidnapping a federal crime. The Bureau of Investigations could now aid the case more directly.
In July 1932, with few leads, officials began to suspect an "inside job": someone the Lindberghs trusted may have betrayed the family. Suspicions fell upon Violet Sharp, a British household servant of the Lindbergh home. She had lied about her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping, and she eventually committed suicide after repeated questioning by the authorities.
The Ransom
Investigation of the case was soon caught in the doldrums: there were no developments and little evidence of any sort, so police turned their attention to tracking the ransom payments. A list of the serial numbers on the ransom bills were widely circulated to banks and businesses. During the following three years, a few of the bills turned up in scattered locations — as far away as Chicago and Minneapolis — but the people spending them eluded capture.
Gold Certificates were to be turned in by May 1, 1932. After that day, they would be worthless. A few days before the deadline, a man in Manhattan brought in $2,990 of the ransom money to be exchanged. The bank was so busy, however, that no one remembered much of what he'd looked like. He'd filled out a required form, giving his name as J. J. Faulkner and his address as 537 West 159th Street in New York City.
When authorities visited the address, they learned no one named Faulkner had lived there — or anywhere nearby — for many years. U.S. Treasury officials kept looking, and eventually learned that a woman named Jane Faulkner had lived at the address in question in 1913. She had moved after she married a German man named Gerhardt. The couple was tracked down, and both denied any involvement in the crime.
Mr. Gerhardt had two children from his first marriage. Though neither could be conclusively tied to the kidnapping, there were some curious facts which lead authorities to suspect involvement: Gerhardt's son worked as a florist and lived about one block from "Jafsie", while Gerhardt's daughter had married a German gardener. "Jafsie" again figured in the investigation: after hearing the three men from the Gerhardt family speak, Condon declared that Gerhardt's son-in-law, the gardener, had a voice very similar to Cemetery John's. The police continued their investigation (Kurland characterizes it as "harassment"), and the gardener killed himself.
Condon was growing more flamboyant in his actions. One occasion, while riding a city bus, he saw a suspect and, announcing his secret identity, ordered the bus to a stop. The startled driver complied, and Condon darted from the bus, though Condon's target eluded him. Another time he dressed as a woman for his clandestine activities, with a collar pulled up to hide his handlebar mustache. The New York Police were by now aware of the "Jafsie" newspaper ads, and wanted to know who the mysterious Jafsie was, but Lindbergh refused to say anything.
Eventually, Condon's flamboyance made it obvious that he was Jafsie. Tiring of Condon's interference, the police threatened to charge him as an accomplice to the crime. He afterwards curtailed his involvement.
The geographical pattern of the sightings led the investigators to conclude that the wanted person or persons lived in The Bronx. A circular was sent out to gas stations throughout New York state with a list of the serial numbers of the ransom bills. The station attendants were requested to write the registration number of any vehicle driven by someone who used one of the bills to pay for gasoline.
Bruno Hauptmann
More than two years after the kidnapping, on September 18, 1934, a gold certificate from the ransom money was discovered by one of James J. Finn's agents, Thomas H. Sisk; it had a license plate number written on it. The ransom bills were paid when a man drove into a gas station, and the gas attendant wrote down the license plate number after reading a flyer warning about certain bills. The license plate belonged to a blue Dodge Saloon owned by Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant with a criminal record in his homeland. "Hauptmann" in german stands for the military rank "captain". After his immigration he preferred to use his second forename "Richard", which was more familiar to american native speakers than "Bruno". In order to give it a more foreign touch the press used his first forename Bruno for reports during the trial instead of "Richard".
He was arrested a day after passing the ransom money. Police searched his home and found nearly $15,000 of the ransom money in the garage. Again, the scene was not secured, and reporters were allowed to wander the house. Hauptmann was arrested the next day and later charged with the murder.
Hauptmann's Trial, Conviction and Execution
Hauptmann was charged with kidnapping and murder — conviction on even one charge could earn him the death penalty. He pled not guilty.
Held in Flemington, New Jersey, the trial soon became a sensation: reporters swarmed the town, and every hotel room was booked.
Edward J. Reilly was hired by the Daily Mirror to serve as Hauptmann's attorney. Reilly was a histrionic alcoholic, called "The Old Lion" to his face for his forceful personality, but called "Deathhouse Reilly" when his back was turned, since many of his clients ended up on death row. Two other lawyers, Lloyd Fisher and Frederick Pope, were co-counselors, but Reilly was in charge of the defense.
One of the State's first arguments was that the wood from the ladder left at the crime scene matched a plank from Hauptmann's attic: the type of wood, the direction of tree growth, the milling pattern at the factory, the inside and outside surface of the wood, and the grain on both sides were identical, and two oddly placed nail holes lined up with a joist splice in Hauptmann's attic. Additionally, the prosecutors noted that Condon's address and telephone number had been found written in pencil on a closet door in Hauptmann's home. When it came time to introduce evidence about the tiny body discovered in the woods near the Lindbergh home, the prosecutors were cautious: they expected the defense to note that the child's own doctor had been unable to identify the remains. When Reilly rose to speak on the subject, he announced, "We concede that the corpse that was found was that of the Lindbergh baby." This admission surprised nearly everyone in the courtroom.
Condon and Lindbergh both testified, confirming that Hauptmann was Cemetery John (despite Condon's earlier insistence that Hauptmann was too small to have been the man). Amandus Hockmuth testified that he would have seen Hauptmann near the scene of the crime, but Reilly did not question Hockmuth about his cataracts or his poor vision.
Hauptmann was ultimately convicted of the crimes and sentenced to death. His appeals were rejected, though New Jersey Governor Harold G. Hoffman granted a temporary reprieve of Hauptmann's execution, expressed doubt about the trial's fairness, and made the politically unpopular move to have the New Jersey Board of Pardons review the case.
Hauptmann turned down a $90,000 offer from a Hearst newspaper for a confession — such a large sum would have benefitted his wife and child — and refused a last-minute offer to commute his execution to a life sentence in exchange for a confession.
He was executed on April 3, 1936, just over four years after the kidnapping. Hauptmann's widow Anna continued to insist that he was innocent until her own death in 1994.
Aftermath and Unresolved Questions
In December 1935, The Lindberghs moved to Europe, partly to evade the spotlight over their first son's death.
Questions about Hauptmann's Guilt
In the decades since the trial, many have argued that Hauptmann was not guilty of the crimes.
As Kurland writes, "The only thing we can be sure Hauptmann was guilty of was possession of some of the ransom money. The rest, incidentally, has never turned up. To the unbiased observer, it was never established that Hauptmann was Cemetery John; it was never established that Cemetery John was connected to the kidnapping and not just an extortionist; and it was never established that the body in the woods was that of the Lindbergh baby."
Michael Newton goes even further, writing, "A review of the prosecution's evidence, coupled with FBI documents declassified in the 1990s, reveals a blatant frame up in the case."
Examples of irregularities include:
The Eyewitnesses
Many of those who identified Hauptmann as involved in the crime have been criticized as unreliable.
- As noted above, one Lindbergh neighbor who reported Hauptmann surveilling the Lindbergh property was legally blind.
- Cab Driver Joseph Perrone (who delivered a note to Condon from Cemetery John in 1932) first insisted he was unable to identify the man who'd given him the note. Colonel Schwartzkopf described Perrone as "a totally unreliable witness." Yet by 1934, when he testified in court, Perrone firmly declared, without doubt, that Hauptmann had paid him to deliver the note.
- For more than two years, Condon insisted he had never caught more than the faintest glimpse of Cemetery John's face, and even then, the man kept to the shadows. Condon at first refused to identify Hauptmann's voice as matching Cemetery John's. However, after he was threatened with facing charges himself in connection to the crime, Condon made a quick turnaround, and asserted that Hauptmann and Cemetery John were one and the same.
- In his first interview after his encounter with Cemetery John, Lindbergh said he never got a good look at the man and that he heard the man speak only two words ("Hey, doctor!") from about 200 feet away. Yet when he testified at trial, Lindbergh's story had changed dramatically, and he identified Hauptmann as Cemetery John.
Condon's Telephone Number in Hauptmann's House
After Hauptmann's arrest, Dr. Condon's address and telephone number were found written in pencil on a closet door in Hauptmann's house. At the time, this was judged as a strong piece of evidence in favor of Hauptmann's guilt. Hauptmann himself admitted in a police interview that he had written Condon's address on the closet door: "I must have read it in the paper about the story. I was a little bit interested and keep a little bit record of it, and maybe I was just on the closet, and was reading the paper and put it down the address." When asked about Condon's telephone number, he could respond only, "I can't give you any explanation about the telephone number."
Later developments have cast doubt on this evidence. Friends and coworkers of Tom Cassidy, a New York City newspaper reporter, insisted that he had bragged often that he'd scrawled Condon's telephone number on the closet door in Hauptmann's house so that he'd have a hot story for his newspaper. Cassidy judged Hauptmann obviously guilty and considered his action only a minor indiscretion.
Questions About the Toddler's Corpse
Some have argued that the body was not in fact Lindbergh III. As noted above, the baby's own doctor was unable to identify the corpse. One other such critic was Ellis Parker, a self taught private detective. Unlike the bumbling "Jafsie", Parker was a seasoned professional, respected by law enforcement: he aided both New York City and State police on several murder investigations, and had delivered guest lectures to both the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
Not long after the little corpse was discovered, Parker noted several irregularities about the supposed Lindbergh Baby's remains:
- The area where the corpse was found had reportedly been thoroughly searched by state police. This raised several possibilities: perhaps the area had not been searched as thoroughly as the police insisted, or perhaps the baby had been placed there some time after the search.
- Parker thought the body was far more decomposed than it should have been even if Lindbergh III was killed on the night he was abducted.
- When measured at his last exam just a few weeks before his kidnapping, Lindbergh III had been 29 inches long. Allowing for the corpse's missing foot, it had been over 33 inches long, in Parker's opinion. It was unlikely, said Parker, that the Lindbergh child had grown four inches so quickly.
Parker speculated that bootleggers had tired of the perpetual attention from police since the kidnapping, and had procured an infant's corpse of roughly the same age as the Lindbergh baby, then placed it in the woods near the home in an effort to put an end to the search for the baby. His suggestions seem to have been ignored by police and Lindbergh.
Michael Newton notes that, as late as 2000, a man claimed to have been the Lindbergh baby, raised by a different family and returning in his old age. His claims were disproved after DNA analysis.
Alternate Scenarios
Given that many doubt Hauptmann's guilt, some have proposed other scenarios for the crime. Most of these are highly speculative, with little or no corroborative evidence.
- One of the more controversial theories is that Charles Lindbergh, known for playing sick practical jokes on his wife, had accidentally dropped the baby from the infamous ladder during a kidnapping prank that went terribly wrong.
- One theory claims that Charles Lindbergh himself accidentally killed his son after playing too roughly with him. This explanation points to Lindbergh's supposed refusal of an autopsy on the body and his commandeering of the investigation as evidence of foul play.
- One theory is that the Purple Gang out of Detroit did the kidnapping.
- The suicide of Lindbergh maid Violet Sharpe has been cited by some as proof of her involvement in an "inside job".
- In 1994, Noel Behn proposed that Lindbergh's sister-in-law, Elizabeth Morrow, murdered the child due to jealousy; Lindbergh himself then concocted the kidnapping story to avoid scandal.
Re-examination of Evidence
In 2005, the Court TV television program Forensic Files conducted a re-examination of the evidence in the kidnapping. Their investigation focused primarily on the handwriting samples and the infamous side-rail of the kidnap ladder, known as "Rail 16."
While certain comparisons of the handwriting used by the prosecution to tie the ransom notes to Hauptmann were proven false, other comparisons between Hauptmann's known handwriting and the ransom notes did apparently bear out the prosecution's claim that Hauptmann had written the notes. The notable characteristics included the tendency to write the letter N backwards, and a very distinctive and unusual capital D.
However, tying Hauptmann to the ransom notes would leave open the possibility that he had seized an opportunity to extort money only once the news was out. To tie him to the actual kidnapping, he would need to be linked to the ladder used in the crime. During the trial, prosecutors and investigators had argued that the portion of the ladder entered into evidence as "Rail 16" was part of a floorboard in Hauptmann's attic which had been cut short. A re-examination of both Rail 16 and the attic floorboard indicated that they were, in fact, part of the same original board.
Additional examination was made of photographs of the kidnap ladder from the crime scene, the day after the kidnapping (and long before Bruno Hauptmann had come up in the investigation). Several distinctive knots on "Rail 16" are visible in these photographs, which would seem to contradict the claims that the police had swapped out "Rail 16" before the trial.
In the end, the program concluded that Hauptmann had indeed been involved, though noted that this left other unresolved questions. In particular, it is still unclear how Hauptmann — with no connection to the Lindbergh family — could have had any knowledge of their last-minute change in plans, which left them in their Hopewell home that particular night.
Books
There are many books written about the Lindbergh kidnapping. A complete and meticulously researched book on the affair was The Airman and the Carpenter written by Ludovic Kennedy, in 1985. Kennedy was noted for three prior books where he established the innocence of wrongly convicted men. While Kennedy does not clear Hauptmann of some complicity with regard to the ransom money, he explains how some of the evidence against Hauptmann was manipulated and distorted. The most famous "error" was that a New York City detective discovered that rung from the kidnapper's ladder came from the attic in Hauptmann's home. Various experts had testified that the type of wood and grain from the attic matched the wooden rung in the ladder. Kennedy says that the ladder rung was 1/4 inch thicker than the wood purportedly taken from Hauptmann's attic and claims it could not have been taken from the attic. Kennedy also points out that Hauptmann was given several opportunities to "confess". He was offered to be given life instead of execution and one newspaper offered to give $90,000 to support his wife and child for the rest of their lives, if he would confess to them. In Kennedy's opinion, it appears that Hauptmann was a stubborn German who would rather die than confess to a crime he did not commit.
In 1999, the latest book on the Lindbergh kidnapping was published, The Ghosts Of Hopewell: Setting The Record Straight In The Lindbergh Case, written by Jim Fisher, a former FBI special agent. Fisher is convinced that Hauptmann was guilty of the kidnapping and attempts to dispute the "factual errors" listed by Kennedy. Some of Fisher's points are well taken, but he errs when he notes that Lindbergh claimed to have recognized the voice of Hauptmann during an exchange of ransom money. Kennedy's research notes the ransom taker said "Hey Doc," but at the trial, the same man is said to have called "Hey Doctor" in a German accent. Lindbergh testified that was the voice of Hauptmann (spoken several years earlier). Later, some of the jurors mentioned that Lindbergh's testimony was crucial in their verdict. Fisher states (page 138) that "Colonel Lindbergh, whether you like him or not was not a liar." Fisher says "The case has become legendary and as such has become fodder for conspiracy theorists, sensationalists, and revisionists promoting their own agendas."[1] In his view, many people think Hauptmann was innocent "Because having an innocent man to railroaded to his death by a bunch of stupid and corrupt cops is a more interesting story than the police working hard to catch the right man. A lot of people are fascinated, and comforted by, the idea of police misconduct leading to injustice. In an era where what one believes is more important than what one knows, Bruno Hauptmann can be innocent, and the Lindbergh baby alive, selling computers in Connecticut."[2]
References
- Ahlgren, Gregory and Stephen Monier, Crime of the Century:The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax, Branden Books, 1993, ISBN 0-8283-1971-5
- Kurland, Michael, A Gallery of Rogues: Portraits in True Crime, Prentice Hall General Reference, 1994, ISBN 0-671-85011-3
- Newton, Michael, The Encyclopedia of Unsolved Crimes, Checkmark Books, 2004, ISBN 0-8160-4981-5
- http://www.gatago.com/alt/true-crime/8118976.html