The Lindbergh Baby Kidnap

In 1928 he married Anne Spencer Morrow, a fellow aviator and the heiress to a fortune as the daughter of a partner at J.P Morgan who was also Lindbergh’s financial adviser. On 22 June 1930 she gave birth to a son, also named Charles. It was also her birthday, a sign of good things to come, surely. 

 

Between 8 and 10pm on Tuesday, 1 March 1932, one or more persons approached the Lindbergh house on their isolated country estate near the town of Hopewell in New Jersey. Placing a folding ladder against a wall at the front of the house someone then climbed it and entered the nursery of the baby Charles through an unlocked and partially open window. They then snatched the child from his cot and disappeared into the night. A ransom note had been left on the windowsill. 

 

It immediately became the Crime of the Century, and one to which there appeared to be few clues other than the ladder which broken had been left up against the wall and was clearly handmade, and the ransom note which demanded $50,000 for the save return of the baby and was written in broken English and a scratchy hand: 

 

The signature referenced was at the bottom of the note, two interconnected blue circles surrounding a red circle with a hole punched through it with two further holes to the left and right. This would be how any communication from the kidnappers could be identified. 

 

No identifying fingerprints had been found in the nursery while footprints near the ladder, though indicating the presence of more than one person, were too inconsequential to be of any use and in any case had been trample upon since. There was nothing more substantial than this, but then what clues were required? Given the circumstances it must have been an inside job. 

 

The house at the time was under repair and the Lindbergh’s were only staying there at weekends so how did the kidnapper know that the baby Charles had been taken ill and so they would be residing there on a Tuesday night? How did he/or they know which room was the nursery? The staff both at the Lindbergh house and nauseum estate were interrogated ad nauseum, but no evidence could be found linking them to the crime and no obvious suspect emerged. 

 

The baby had also been snatched at night, but not the dead of night, and when the Lindbergh’s were still up and the staff were still going about their business. How did the kidnapper keep the baby silent given their propensity to cry? How did he carry the baby down a ladder perilously poised on damp and uncertain ground in the semi-darkness? Had he thrown the baby to an accomplice below? The mystery deepened and in the coming weeks would take on an increasingly bizarre aspect. 

 

A further ransom notes was received on 6 March bearing a Brooklyn, New York postmark with further instruction and an increased ransom of $70,000. The following day a police conference was held to address the crime which by this time was dominating the news agenda around the world. 

 

In the meantime, Lindbergh charged his attorney Henry Breckenridge to act on his behalf. 

 

Two days later yet another ransom note was received informing Breckenridge that the intermediary chosen was unacceptable and that a notice should be placed in the newspapers indicating such. That same a 71-year-old retired school principal from New York Dr John F. Condon wrote an open letter to his local newspaper offering his services as a go-between in any kidnap negotiations. He was even willing to add $1000 of his own money to the ransom. A fourth ransom note arrived soon after agreeing to Condon being so. Oddly perhaps, after consulting Breckenridge so also did, Lindbergh. 

 

Now, as the authorised intermediary Condon using the pseudonym Jafsie and the kidnapper communicated via the newspapers and it was through a notice posted in the New York American that he announced the ransom money was ready. Following a somewhat convoluted process of cloak-and-dagger a meeting was arranged for the evening of 12 March at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for the handover of the ransom. 

 

Although he was not considered a suspect in the case some had their doubts regarding the motives of Dr Condon and the New Jersey State Police Superintendent H. Norman Schwartzkopf had wanted him placed under surveillance, but Lindbergh refused permission insisting upon no police involvement. 

 

The man Condon met there among the tombstones shrouded in darkness and a developing mist referred to himself as John shielding his face as he spoke, but he could not disguise his accent which was clearly foreign and probably German. He proceeded to concoct a somewhat elaborate story of him being a sailor from Scandinavia who was just one of a much larger gang. Condon couldn’t care less he merely wanted to know if the man he was talking too was genuine and that if the baby was still alive? No money would be parted with until proof was provided. John agreed he would do so. 

 

On 16 March, another ransom note was received demanding still more money along with a baby’s romper suit. Lindbergh would later confirm that it was indeed the one his son had been wearing. A further meeting was now arranged for the handover of the ransom money. It was held on 2 April in circumstances not dissimilar to those of the first meeting. Condon had the money, it was in a custom-made box which could be easily identified while much of the money, $40,000 to be precise, was in gold certificates which if redeemed, exchanged for cash, or used to pay for services rendered might raise the eyebrows of its recipient. The rest of the money was in dollar notes of various denomination the numbers of which had been recorded. The ransom money amounted to only $50,000 much less than the kidnappers were by now demanding but Cemetery John took it anyway. 

 

With the cash now safely in his hands he presented Condon with another note informing him that the baby was being taken care of by two women aboard a boat named the Nellie moored in Martha’s Vineyard. Upon receipt of this new information the police with Lindbergh present undertook an immediate search of the area but no trace of the boat was found. The search was repeated but with no more success. They appear to have been wasting their time on a wild goose chase. 

 

On 12 May the decomposed body of a baby was discovered in the undergrowth by a worker relieving himself in some woods near the village of Mount Rose some 5 miles from the Lindbergh family home. The body was identified to be that of Charles Lindbergh junior and that he had died from a blow to the head likely received on the night of the abduction. No serious effort had been made to conceal the body which had apparently been discarded in haste. Lindbergh did not permit a full post-mortem examination of the body and instead following a hastily arranged funeral had it cremated. Regardless, a kidnap had now become a murder. 

 

Following the discovery of the body President Roosevelt ordered the Bureau of Investigation (soon to become the Federal Bureau of Investigation or F.B.I) under its dynamic and well-considered young Director J. Edgar Hoover to oversee and coordinate the proceedings. 

 

Meanwhile, the police having issued an identikit of Cemetery John based on the description provided by Dr Condon now focussed their attention upon Violet Sharpe, the English maid of Lindbergh’s mother-in-law. She had been on a date with a man on the night of the kidnap but could not recall his name and during questioning appeared vague and nervous often providing different answers at different times to the same questions. So, though no evidence could be found linking her to the actual crime she remained a person of interest as a possible source of intelligence for the kidnapper. On 10 June however, depressed following a series of relationships and harassed by the police she committed suicide by drinking cyanide. 

 

With the death of Violet Sharpe, the case went cold. There were few other leads only the usual cranks, frauds, and endless stream of false confessions. All the police could do was follow the money and booklets with the serial numbers of the dollar notes and gold certificates had already been distributed to all the banks, counting houses, and retail outlets in the New York area. 

 

A decision taken by President Roosevelt in September 1933, though not directly related to the case, to recall to the Treasury all gold certificates helped tracing them considerably. It meant they had to be spent or banked by the date of return or become worthless. It also decreased the number in circulation making them easier to trace and map. So, where was he money? 

 

On 2 May 1933, 296 ten-dollar gold certificates, all ransom notes, were found to have been deposited in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Further investigation put a name to the possible depositor, a J.J Faulkner but despite having an address no trace could be found. Then the case went cold again until more than a year later in August 1934 the gold certificates began to circulate once more, 16 in total, mostly in the vicinity of Harlem and Yorkville. 

 

The breakthrough came on 18 September 1934 when a manager at the Corn Exchange Bank in New York contacted his local branch of the Bureau to inform them that one of the gold ransom certificates had been discovered among their cash deposits. Further investigation traced its origin to a Gas Station where it had been used to purchase a 5 gallon can of petrol. As it transpired the attendant who had taken the money his suspicions aroused had also taken down the licence plate number of the customers car. The Bureau which had by now taken effective control of the case, traced the car to a certain Bruno Richard Hauptmann who lived on the corner of 222nd Street in the Bronx. The house was immediately placed under surveillance and when on the morning of 19 September, a man fitting the description of the suspect in the Lindbergh case left the house and tried to get into his car he was promptly arrested. When questioned he gave his name as Richard Hauptmann. Found on his person was one of the $20 gold certificates. 

 

While in custody he was identified by the attendant at the Gas Station as the man who had passed him the gold certificate, and a search of Hauptmann’s home now took place. It was to prove revelatory. There was a pair of shoes which were proven to have been bought with one of the gold certificates that had been traced earlier, wood matching the type made to make the ladder was found, while there was a hand drawn sketch of a folding ladder in a notebook. Also, on the inside of a closet door was scrawled the phone number and address of the go-between John Condon. But it was in the garage that the most damning evidence was found, 14,600 dollars in ransom money. 

 

The by now Federal Bureau of Investigation were convinced they had their man and a sample of his handwriting was sent to their laboratory in Washington where enough similarities were discovered to provide a positive identification with those found on the ransom notes. 

 

On 26 September 1934, Hauptmann was indicted in New York on a charge of extortion and on 8 October in New Jersey on a charge of murder. The trial date was set for 3 January 1935. 

 

But who was this Bruno Richard Hauptmann? 

He was a German national born in 1899 in the small town of Kamenz near Dresden. Like many of his generation he had endured trauma during the Great War losing his two elder brothers while himself serving briefly on the Western Front during 1918. Following the end of the war he worked as a carpenter supplementing his meagre income by taking to crime mostly street robbery and home invasion. On one occasion he had used a ladder to enter the mayor’s house through an upstairs window before proceeding to burgle it. For this he would serve time in prison. Upon his release in early 1923 he would twice try to enter the United State illegally only to be deported on both occasions. He would finally succeed in November as a stowaway aboard the SS George Washington. Safely in America he was quickly absorbed into New York’s large German community where he soon resumed his old trade. In 1925, he married a waitress of German descent Anna Schoeffler. 

 

The trial which took place in Flemington, New Jersey before Judge Thomas Trenchard was subject to intense scrutiny from the outset. The journalist H.L Mencken never shy of a little hyperbole referred to it as “the greatest story since the Resurrection.” An exaggeration perhaps, but it caught the general mood. 

 

Hauptmann’s Defence Counsel was Edward P. Reilly, an experienced but hard-drinking self-publicist who knew the tricks of the trade well enough and applied them liberally if not always to the advantage of his client. Known as the ‘Bull of Brooklyn’ his penchant for grandstanding, playing to the gallery, and garnering headlines was well known as also was his often-expressed contempt for those he deemed the criminal class. 

 

The Prosecution was led by the New Jersey State District Attorney David T. Wilentz who was a very different man to his legal adversary, though he also could bully with the best of them should it be required. Often described as slick, he was certainly erudite and persuasive and unlike the more ebullient Reilly, forensic in his approach. 

 

Wilentz opened proceedings by presenting the prosecution case and his theory of events: that on the night of the kidnap Hauptmann climbing the ladder he had brought with him entered the nursery via its partially open window carrying a burlap bag into which he placed the baby Charles. He then described how “as he went down that ladder of his, the ladder broke! He had more weight going down than he had when he was going up. And down he went with the child. In the commission of this burglary, the child was instantaneously killed when it received that first blow.” He continued to outline his case declaring that he would provide the evidence and eyewitness testimony to prove it. He then called for the death penalty to be imposed for any guilty verdict insisting that “it is the only suitable punishment in this case” before calling his first witness, Anne Lindbergh. 

 

Her testimony was however brief; she had little to add to that already known while the Defence Counsel declined to cross-examine her out of courtesy for her predicament. But appearance had at least provided the jury with an opportunity to see the grieving mother. 

There were audible gasps in the courtroom when Charles Lindbergh, a tall and imposing figure whose physique only enhanced his heroic stature seemed on this occasion a little diminished. He looked weary and a little unkempt and his crumpled grey suit somewhat unbecoming. Even so, his demeanour remained sober and aloof. He told the Court that on the night his child was snatched all he heard was a low thud come from the nursery, “like an orange box falling from a chair,” he said. More significant was his testimony regarding the night the ransom money was paid. He had travelled to the cemetery in a second car and though armed had declined to intervene. He did however hear the kidnapper shout “Hey Doctor!” When asked by Wilentz if he recognised the voice he answered emphatically – “It was Hauptmann’s voice.” 

 

A series of witnesses now took the stand, some more convincing than others; there were State Troopers who testified to the footprints found at the scene, eyewitnesses who testified to seeing Hauptmann in the vicinity of the Lindbergh house, a xylotomist who declared the wood found in Hauptmann’s house to be the same as that used to make the ladder, and a variety of handwriting experts. 

 

The attention of the gallery was focussed elsewhere however, namely upon the upcoming appearance of Dr Condon, and the courtroom fell silent as his name was called to give evidence. 

 

He had been at the centre of events ever since his unsolicited intervention in the weeks immediately following the kidnap and the atmosphere could have been cut with a knife as he took the stand and Wilentz guided him through the various steps leading to the handing over of the ransom money. When asked who he handed the money over to he did not hesitate to reply, pointing at the accused, Bruno Richard Hauptmann. 

 

The courtroom erupted. So much so that Justice Trenchard had to delay proceedings while order was restored and the esteemed members of the Fourth Estate had calmed themselves sufficiently enough to return to their seats. 

 

But as the Defence Counsel William Reilly was to point out in his cross-examination of Condon, he hadn’t always been so assured in his determination that Hauptmann was ‘Cemetery John’. Had he not failed to pick him out of a police lineup? That even when the police brought Hauptmann to his attention he declared emphatically, “No, he is not the man.” It was to be a rare moment of success for Reilly, but it would be short-lived as Joseph Perrone the man who had delivered a note to Condon at the Cemetery shortly before the meeting was in no doubt it was Hauptmann who had paid him a dollar to do so. 

 

The evidence though it remained largely circumstantial was stacking up. Ella Achenbach, a neighbour, described how on the day of the kidnap she had seen Hauptmann leave home with his wife that morning only to return in the evening limping badly from an injured leg. Testimony that was later verified by the doctor who treated him. 

 

The most damning evidence against Hauptmann remained the ransom money found both on his person and in his garage, however. How did it come to be in his possession? It was the question Wilentz wanted the answer to and when Hauptmann took the stand he pursued the matter relentlessly. The accused’s nervousness and hesitancy he exploited to good effect often interrupting him mid-sentence and labouring the point where he seemed uncertain in his response. It did not help that Hauptmann’s explanation appeared more contrived than plausible. 

 

He testified that since leaving his job, coincidentally the day after the ransom money was paid, he had been dabbling on the Stock Exchange with some success it seems. He was able to live comfortably on the proceeds at least. His activities had also brought him to the attention of Isidore Fisch since when they had become friends and business partners. 

 

Isidore Fisch was well known within New York’s German community as a shadowy figure and a bit of a chancer always seeking investors in some crackpot scheme or other. His claim to have been a businessman trader in furs appears to have been unfounded and there is even less evidence that he ever had a partner. He was known to fence ‘hot’ money however, buying it cheap to use later when the interest in it had cooled. 

 

On the day the body of the Lindbergh baby was discovered he applied for a passport and upon its receipt purchased a ticket on a liner bound for Europe with $420 in gold certificates loaned to him by Hauptmann. 

 

Isidore Fisch sailed for Europe on 9 December but before doing so, according to Hauptmann, he left various items with him for safekeeping one of which was a shoebox which upon inspection he found to contain $14,000 in gold certificates, all of it ransom money. The money then was not his and he had only been spending it because Fisch owed him $700. None of this could be verified however, because Isidore Fisch had since died in Germany on 29 March 1934, from tuberculosis with his rent unpaid and unable to afford the expensive medical treatment he required. Yet at no point did he request any of the money he had left with Hauptmann. His testimony it seemed had raised more questions than answers. 

 

While Wilentz had remained for the most part disciplined and focussed throughout the trial the same could not be said for the Defence Counsel William Reilly who was increasingly thrashing around for someone to blame. In fairness he didn’t have a great deal to work with. 

 

Claiming the kidnap must have been an inside job he questioned the Lindbergh’s maid Betty Gow about her association with local gangsters – she had none – suspects were few it seemed. He suggested the kidnap was an act of revenge committed by neighbours angry with the Lindbergh’s over something or other, though he could not specify what. He even cast suspicion upon Dr Condon suggesting he might be the criminal mastermind who had planned the entire crime from start to finish. 

 

The verdict was never in doubt, and it took only 11 hours and 24 minutes from the end of the trial to it being announced in court. Judge Trenchard’s sentence – death. 

 

There followed the usual appeals and pleas of mitigation and at one point a temporary stay of execution in the hope that Hauptmann with the possibility of a commutation of sentence to life imprisonment being dangled before him might name others many believed must also have been involved in the kidnap and murder – but he never did. 

 

Following the rejection of a final plea for clemency to the Pardon Court of New Jersey Bruno Richard Hauptmann went to the electric chair at 8.45 am on 3 April 1936. He met his fate as most do in similar circumstances quietly and with little fuss denying the many journalists present the more hysterical reaction that makes for good copy. 

 

Although the verdict was little disputed at the time in recent decades theories have emerged suggesting Hauptmann may not have been guilty after all, or at least that he was just part of a wider conspiracy. 

 

The most significant suspect to emerge since was a fellow German by the name of John Knoll who may have been known to Hauptmann. He fitted more accurately the description of Cemetery John provided by Dr Condon and also had the fleshy development on his left thumb he remembered, and which Hauptmann did not. It also transpired that he had taken ship for Europe in the days preceding the trial began only returning to America after the trial had ended and sentence had been passed. But Hauptmann never implicated him and he wasn’t considered a suspect at the time. 

 

If there was someone else involved in the crime, then it is not inconceivable that it was Anna Hauptmann. She and Bruno were after all seen leaving the house together on the morning of the kidnap and returning together later that night. She had also given birth to a son, their only child, just the year before he was arrested. Could he have covered up her involvement in the crime not wanting his son to be raised without its mother? This is speculation however, and there is little evidence that would lean towards verification. She was also to campaign for the rest of her life to prove her husband’s innocence. 

 

Public opinion would also change regarding the person of Charles Lindbergh. He had not come over well during the trial appearing distant and aloof, even arrogant and an intensely private man he was desperate to avoid the public gaze, and so after the trial and in great secrecy he took his family to England where they were to remain for a number of years. Upon his return however he was soon mired in controversy as a high-profile campaigner for the America First Movement and vocal apologist for Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Regime in Germany. But it was revelations about his private life which emerged in the 1970’s and his already well-known interest in eugenics and the existence of a master race of which he considered himself one, that saw him become suspect in the murder of his own son. 

 

A regular traveller to Germany after the war he was to father seven children by three different women all of whom were kept secret from his wife and each other. Indeed, even on his deathbed he was to write to each of the women demanding they maintain his secret, they agreed. Likewise, the children who he rarely ever saw were not to be told who their father was. His selfishness, interest in eugenics and lack of conscience has led some to believe he may have murdered, or had others murder his son because he had some physical imperfection or other which he found embarrassing. Again, there is little evidence for this other than a good story and the desire on the part of some to splash a little colour on a monochrome canvass. 

 

Charles Lindbergh died on 26 August 1974: 38 years, 4 months, and 23 days after the execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann.