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Wednesday, March 1, 2023

The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case: Crime of the Century

    Today marks the 91th anniversary of the Lindbergh kidnapping case. The following is a thumbnail account of the crime of the 20th Century:

     On the night of Tuesday, March 1, 1932, someone climbed into the second-story bedroom of Charles and Anne Lindbergh's house near Hopewell, New Jersey and snatched their 20-month-old son, Charles, Jr. After being the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean in April 1927, Charles Lindbergh had became internationally famous. Colonel Lindbergh and his wife were living in their recently built mansion in the remote Sourland Hills in central New Jersey. The kidnapping made headlines around the world and for months would dominate the news.

     Upon arrival at the scene of the crime, the police discovered the homemade ladder the kidnapper had used to gain entry into the house. That wooden, three-piece extension ladder, and a ransom note containing several misspelled words and a symbol comprised of two intersecting circles and three holes, were the key crime scene clues. (Several other ransom letters containing the same symbol and exact misspellings would be sent to the Lindberghs, and would lead to the payment of a $50,000 ransom, on April 2, 1932. A ransom intermediary paid the money to a shadowy figured in a cemetery in the Bronx. Despite the exchange of ransom money, the Lindbergh baby was not returned.)

     On May 12, ten weeks after the kidnapping, a truck driver relieving himself in the woods stumbled upon the partially decomposed body of the Lindbergh child in a shallow grave about two miles from the Lindbergh estate. The police identified the remains by matching his homemade undershirt with the cloth remnant from which it had been cut by his English nursemaid, Betty Gow. Other points of identity included the abducted child's teeth, hair, dimple on his chin and overlapping toes. Decomposition made fingerprint identification impossible.

     The investigation, spearheaded by the New Jersey State Police, was painstaking and remarkably professional, but plagued by false suspects and wild-goose chases. The case floundered for two and a half years until a Manhattan, New York gas station attendant penciled a customer's car license number on a $10 gold certificate given to him in payment for the fuel. This was a large bill in those days, and because the country had converted to green-back bills, the gas station attendant was suspicious enough to jot down the license number. A bank clerk, aware the Lindbergh ransom had been made up of gold notes, called the police, and, as it turned out, this bill had been part of the ransom pay off. (The police had a list of the ransom bills' serial numbers, and knew that dozens of them had been spent in The Bronx and Manhattan.)

     Investigators traced the license number to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter in the country illegally who lived in The Bronx with his wife Anna and their young son. Hauptmann, who met the description of the man who received the ransom money in the Bronx cemetery, possessed a criminal record in Germany. The police arrested him the next day, and in his garage, found $14,000 of the unspent ransom money. Hauptmann had quit his carpenter job on the day the ransom money had changed hands, and during the next two and a half years, in the midst of the Great Depression, had invested and lost $35,000 in the stock market.

     In January 1935, Hauptmann went on trial for murder in Flemington, New Jersey. The sensational trial lasted six weeks and produced front-page newspaper headlines around the world. The prosecution offered the jury two theories of how the child had died. The kidnapper had either killed the baby in his crib, or had dropped him while climbing down the ladder which had split. Eight prominent handwriting experts testified that the 36-year-old defendant had written all fourteen of the extortion letters, including the note left in the nursery. Four other prosecution forensic document examiners had been held back to testify on rebuttal, but they were not needed because the Hauptmann defense failed to produce a qualified expert to say that Hauptmann had not written the ransom documents.

     A federal wood expert from Wisconsin named Arthur Koehler testified that the carpenter tools in Hauptmann's garage had left their unique marks on the kidnap ladder. He also identified one of the boards on the ladder, called Rail 16, as having once been part of a floor plank in Hauptmann's attic. Investigators also found a sketch of the ladder in one of the defendant's notebooks.

     The intermediary who had delivered the ransom money to the man in the cemetery, John F. Condon ("Jafsie"), identified Hauptmann as the man he had given it to. Colonel Lindbergh, who had waited in the car that night as the ransom exchanged hands, testified that Hauptmann's voice was the voice he had heard coming from the cemetery. Several other witnesses testified they had seen Hauptmann near Hopewell on the day of the crime. Another witness, a movie cashier, identified Hauptmann as the passer of a ransom bill.

     Although the prosecution's case was circumstantial--Hauptmann didn't confess and no one saw him kidnap or murder the baby--it was based on physical evidence and expert testimony. The Hauptmann defense, by comparison, was weak in the face of the handwriting and wood evidence. As an alibi, Hauptmann and his wife claimed they were together at her place of employment in New York City on the night of the kidnapping. Hauptmann further maintained that he had earned the money he had been spending by playing the stock market. The defendant said he had received the ransom bills found in his garage from a business associate named Isidor Fisch who had given it to him in a shoe box. (About a year before Hauptmann's arrest, Fisch had returned to Germany where he died of tuberculosis. At the time of his death he was penniless.) According to Hauptmann, he had no idea what was in the shoe box until he opened it and found the cash. Since Fisch owed him money, Hauptmann felt he had the right to spend some of it. He never let on to his wife that he had found the money, and denied knowing it had anything to do with the Lindbergh case. People came to refer to this account as the "Fisch story."

     Hauptmann's chief defense attorney, a Brooklyn attorney named Edward Reilly, tried to prove that the kidnapping had been an inside job by implicating the Lindbergh servants working in concert with John Condon, and others. He failed miserably, putting on the stand a motley assortment of crackpots, criminals, and obvious liars who embarrassed and hurt Hauptmann's case. Hauptmann took the stand on his own behalf, and turned out to be an unsympathetic witness who got caught in several lies that incriminated him further. Unable to produce one qualified witness to counter the handwriting and ladder evidence, and unable to satisfactorily explain possessing all of that money for so long, the Hauptmann defense degenerated into tragic burlesque, then collapsed.

     On February 13, 1935, after 32 days of testimony, the jury found Hauptmann guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to death in the electric chair. Hauptmann's attorneys immediately appealed the case, but the New Jersey Appellate Court unanimously affirmed the conviction. Following a 30 day reprieve, two hearings before the New Jersey Court of Appeals and Pardons, and a last minute stay of execution, Hauptmann, on April 6, 1936, died in the electric chair at the state prison in Trenton. Only a handful of protestors stood outside the prison that night, and when told of Hauptmann's electrocution, they quickly dispersed and went home.

17 comments:

  1. I have read your book about the Lindbergh case. I found that it was very well researched and informative. I would highly recommend your book to anyone who wants to know more about the case.

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  2. Could Hauptmann have gone to the Hopewell house to rob it and then entered the baby's room and decided at that point to take the child?
    The PBS program showed that he had used a ladder to rob other wealthy people in Germany.

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    1. That is possible but unlikely. Hauptmann had planned the kidnapping for a year.

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  3. I really enjoyed your book and have also read The Ghosts of Hopewell. I agree that Hauptmann definitely was guilty of the kidnapping. I really think that it was impossible for anyone to have successfully climbed out of the window with the baby. I think Hauptmann panicked and had to drop the child which killed him. Unfortunately we will never know exactly what happened! but I think that is the most likely scenario.

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    1. Thank you Mickey. I'm glad you enjoyed the books.

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    2. Hauptmann had plenty of time to clear the crime scene before the police put up road blocks and such. As for his wife, investigators questioned her two and a half years after the murder. Moreover, I believe her purpose in life was to save herself from being the wife of a cold-blooded baby killer. She did everything she could to protect him. People who knew Mrs. Hauptmann did not have a high opinion of her. This is speculation, of course, there are still many mysteries in the Lindbergh case.

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    3. Thank you so much for your response. One other question which I have never seen anyone answer. When Doctor Condon first met cemetery John at the Woodlawn cemetery he asked him about Henry Johnson. Cemetery John seemed to know him because he replied, "Red Johnson?" He replied that Johnson was innocent as was Betty Gow. If this was indeed Hauptmann, how would he know who Red Johnson was? Furthermore how would he know who Betty Gow was?

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  4. One aspect of the case that intrigues me is the timeline involved for Hauptmann. If we agree that the baby was taken at approximately 9PM and hidden in the woods in a direction away from the Bronx, how long in those days would it have taken for Hauptmann to get back home. What is your opinion on this and the difficulty he would have had avoiding the police blockades back to the bronx and also his wife remembering that he came home very late that night when she was questioned years later about it? Didnt he usually pick her up at the bakery at around 9? Surely one would think she would somehow connect to this when the police questioned her.

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  5. Please forgive me for crashing your thread, but I sure do wish your books were available in eBook format for Kindle! My husband will have a big old tantrum if I bring in One. More. Book. because (he says) books are taking over the house and soon we'll have to live in the garage. I invited him to go ahead and do so and he just muttered and jingled the change in his pocket.
    So, please... eBooks? Pretty please!

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  6. My book, "The Lindbergh Case" by jim fisher is on Kindle. It costs $14.72.

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  7. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. I know. I have it. It was great, too.
      More, please? Thank you!

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  8. The International Criminal Court against Child Kidnapping is an organization pursuing its authority on principles long established by international conventions, laws and treaties. The International Criminal Court against Child Kidnapping accepts universal jurisdiction based on international laws to prosecute individuals for the international crimes of (parental) child kidnapping, crimes against humanity, human rights violations and the enforced disappearance of children by Government Officials. The International Criminal Court against Child Kidnapping is intended to complement existing international judicial systems and it may therefore only exercise its jurisdiction when certain conditions are met, such as when national courts are unwilling or unable to prosecute criminals or when the United Nations Security Council or individual states refer investigations to the Court- https://www.childabductioncourt.com/

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  9. Thanks, Jim, for your wonderfully clear and logical presentations of this case. Here in the UK, Ludovic Kennedy was a big influence in persuading people of Hauptmann's "innocence". Glad to see that you've helped lay this one to rest. Guilty as charged!

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  10. Hello -- I obtained your books on the Lindbergh case when they came out, and to me they still constitute the best material available. I note that there is an error in paragraph two above. The Lindberghs were actually not living at their new estate yet; it was a sheer total fluke that they were there the night the kidnapping took place. Which brings up the question again, and I've never seen an answer for it anywhere: How did Hauptman know the Lindberghs were at the estate that night? Thank you for your continuing First Class work and consideration here.

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    1. He didn't. I think he first went to the Morrow estate and when they weren't there, figured they had moved into their new house. I'm glad you like the books, thank you.

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