The Lindbergh Baby Disappears. Whodunnit?

After Charles Lindbergh flew The Spirit of St. Louis from New York to France in 1927, completing the first solo nonstop transatlantic flight, he became America’s most admired hero. “The Lone Eagle,” as he was called, then helped develop aviation and married Anne Morrow, daughter of diplomat Dwight Morrow. Anne learned to fly, and she and Charles made spectacular intercontinental flights together. In 1930, the first of their six children, Charles, Jr., was born, dubbed “the Eaglet” by the press.

But tragedy struck on the windy evening of March 1, 1932. The child was snatched from his second-story bedroom. The kidnapper(s) left a crude note demanding $50,000 ransom. It bore a mysterious “signature”: overlapping red and blue circles, and three punched holes. On the ground outside, police found a chisel and homemade three-piece ladder.

The Lindberghs’ Response
As the largest manhunt in American history began, police and reporters swarmed the Lindbergh estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. Thousands of letters poured in from both well-wishers and cranks. Among these were notes from the kidnappers bearing the strange signature. These scolded Lindbergh for violating their instructions not to involve police. The Lindberghs publicly pleaded for the child’s return, promising to meet the kidnappers’ demands.

Because Charles Lindbergh suspected organized crime, his attorneys contacted known racketeers. The latter offered to make inquiries — but, they warned, the kidnapping didn’t seem like work of “the Mob,” who would have asked more than $50,000 for Lindbergh’s son.

On March 8, John Condon, a retired New York City school principal, published a newspaper announcement, offering to be the intermediary for the ransom exchange. Condon then received an anonymous  message authorizing him as go-between, with an enclosed letter addressed to Lindbergh. Because that letter bore the unique symbolic signature, Lindbergh met Condon, and accepted the old man as intermediary.

Condon communicated with the kidnappers through coded newspaper messages. On the night of March 12, at the Bronx’s Woodlawn Cemetery, he met their representative, who became nicknamed “Cemetery John.” Condon told “John” the Lindberghs wanted proof his gang had the baby.

A baby’s sleeping suit was mailed to Condon’s home. Lindbergh identified it as his son’s. The ransom money was gathered; though unmarked (as the kidnappers demanded), each serial number was recorded.

On the night of April 2, Condon received ransom-drop instructions. Lindbergh, with the money — and a pistol — drove Condon to St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx, where the old man gave “Cemetery John” the cash in exchange for a note on the baby’s location — the boat Nelly off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. Lindbergh chartered a seaplane and, with Coast Guard help, scoured the region for two days — but no such boat existed.

Further newspaper messages to the kidnappers went unanswered. On May 12, about four miles from Lindbergh’s house, the baby’s corpse was found in roadside woods by a trucker who’d stopped for a call of nature. However, police and volunteers had already searched this area. Furthermore, advanced decay suggested the body might have been kept someplace warmer — then deposited, conceivably as a “present” for Lindbergh. Outrage filled the nation.

The Police Response
The police suspected an “inside job.” The kidnappers knew where the baby’s nursery was. Furthermore, the Lindberghs always stayed at the Morrow mansion in Englewood, New Jersey, on weekdays, while building their own home in distant rural Hopewell, where they stayed weekends as construction finished. On the week of the kidnapping, however, the baby came down with a cold, and the Lindberghs decided to remain longer at Hopewell. Without a tip, the kidnappers shouldn’t have known about this variation in routine. The baby was snatched on a Tuesday.

Suspicion fell on Violet Sharp, a Morrow maid. Sharp had taken Anne Lindbergh’s phone call about the change in plans. She lied to the police about her whereabouts the night of the kidnapping, saying she went to the movies — but couldn’t recall the film or her date’s name. On subsequent interrogation, she said she actually visited a roadhouse with an Ernie Brinkert — but Brinkert denied it. After the baby’s corpse was found, Sharp became increasingly disturbed. When the police came to question her again, she was dead, having swallowed cyanide. Oddly, a different “Ernie” later corroborated her roadhouse alibi. Today, investigators of the kidnapping still debate the reason for Sharp’s suicide — or was it even murder?

Another evidence of “inside help”: Police found no fingerprints in the nursery — not even the child’s, his nurse’s, or the Lindberghs’. Eventually, Dr. Erastus Hudson — pioneer of a silver nitrate fingerprint process — lifted latent prints from the nursery. Hudson stated the only explanation for the missing fingerprints was someone methodically wiping down the nursery after the abduction. It hardly seemed likely the kidnappers waited around to do this. At the time of the crime, five adults were in the house — Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh, the baby’s nurse, the cook, and butler. Only the butler, Oliver Whateley, was unobserved during the kidnapping. And like Violet Sharp, Whateley died suddenly, in 1933 of peritonitis.

Heading the investigation was New Jersey State Police Superintendent H. Norman Schwarzkopf — father of “Stormin’ Norman” of Gulf War fame. A “political” appointee, Schwarzkopf’s only criminal justice experience before this position was as a department store floorwalker. President Herbert Hoover ordered federal agencies to assist the investigation — a process facilitated when Congress made kidnapping a federal crime. J. Edgar Hoover offered the superior criminology resources of the Bureau of Investigation (BI — later called FBI), but Schwarzkopf refused. While some might commend this as keeping police independent of federal intrusion, Schwarzkopf also rejected local assistance. New Jersey’s Governor authorized the state’s most famous detective, Ellis Parker, to help. Known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” Parker had solved over 200 murders. Yet Schwarzkopf declined, saying Parker was not in his jurisdiction. Since the kidnapping went unsolved for over two years, Schwarzkopf’s refusal of top resources was sharply criticized.

Investigation focused on tracing ransom bills, which appeared in a trickle. Since most were passed in New York City — outside Schwarzkopf’s own jurisdiction — this entailed interagency cooperation. Tracing money was difficult, however; few cashiers delayed customers to check serial-number lists. Most was found when later turned in at banks, but efforts to trace bills to original passers either failed or located someone cleared of suspicion.

A Suspect at Last
The case broke in September 1934. A Bronx carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, passed a $10 ransom bill at a gas station. Police found about $14,000 more in ransom money hidden in his home.

The German-born Hauptmann told police he’d discovered the $14,000 in a box left with him in December 1933 by an associate, Isidor Fisch, who’d gone to Germany where he died of tuberculosis. (Fisch had indeed been in a joint venture with Hauptmann and died in Germany.) Fisch’s brother was coming from Germany to settle the estate. Hauptmann meanwhile decided to spend some of the cash he’d found — Fisch owed him over $7,000 anyway, and Hauptmann said he didn’t know it was ransom money.

The police, however, dismissed Hauptmann’s explanation as a “Fisch story”; he was extradited to New Jersey for trial. In newspapers, the case appeared open-and-shut. Hauptmann had entered the United States as a stowaway, with a prison record in Germany for robberies. John Condon identified him as “Cemetery John.” Condon’s address and phone number were found scrawled in Hauptmann’s closet. Two eyewitnesses placed Hauptmann near the Lindbergh residence around the time of the kidnapping. Handwriting experts indicated similarities between the ransom notes and his writing. A federal wood expert said a board in Hauptmann’s attic matched a rail in the homemade ladder left at the crime scene. The three-quarter-inch chisel found at the scene was asserted to be Hauptmann’s — when police confiscated his tools, the prosecution said, only the three-quarter-inch chisel was missing.

The prosecution claimed Hauptmann alone did the kidnapping, murder, and ransom exchange. Brushed aside was the improbability of a Bronx carpenter knowing about changes in the Lindberghs’ plans. The jury found Hauptmann guilty; he was sentenced to death. When Harold Hoffman, New Jersey’s Republican Governor, learned much was wrong with the prosecution’s case, he granted Hauptmann stays of execution while investigating — to jeers of newspapers, who accused the Governor of protecting a child murderer. Asserting innocence to the end, Hauptmann died in the electric chair in 1936. Then the case was gradually forgotten — except by Hauptmann’s widow Anna, who spent nearly 60 years seeking her husband’s vindication.

A breakthrough came with publication of Scapegoat (1976) by crime reporter Anthony Scaduto, who examined police and prosecution records that had been under wraps for decades.

The Players
After World War I, food was scarce in Germany. Hauptmann, 19 and unable to find work, did turn to theft with a fellow ex-soldier. But after prison, he promised his devout mother, Paulina, it would never happen again. In 11 years in the United States before his 1934 arrest, Hauptmann never committed a known crime. He always went by his middle name “Richard,” but newspapers called him “Bruno” — it sounded more ruthless.

To her regret, Anna Hauptmann was persuaded by the Hearst newspaper chain to engage attorney Edward Reilly. In exchange for exclusive interviews, they would pay Reilly’s fee. With Hauptmann behind bars and Anna caring for a baby, the family could not afford the enormous defense costs — so Anna welcomed the proposal. Reilly, however, though once notable, was now an alcoholic and two years later landed in a mental institution, suffering effects of syphilis. Before being hired, he opined that Hauptmann was guilty and should burn — sentiments echoed by the Hearst press that paid him. Reilly spent less than 40 minutes with Hauptmann before the trial, and though showing occasional adeptness in court, made mistakes that cost his client dearly. After one key blunder, assistant defense counsel Lloyd Fisher — who never doubted Hauptmann’s innocence — shouted at Reilly, “You are conceding Hauptmann to the electric chair!” Some think Reilly was hired to deliberately lose; he was seen dining and boozing with prosecutors.

New Jersey Attorney General David Wilentz, a powerful Democratic Party figure, led the prosecution. Responsibility should have fallen to the county prosecutor, and Wilentz had never before tried a criminal case. Some attribute his involvement to “ambition.” As we will see, there may have been another reason.

Physical Evidence

• Scaduto discovered the original New York police receipts for Hauptmann’s tools, including his three-quarter-inch chisel; later he found the chisel itself in storage at New Jersey State Police headquarters in Trenton. The prosecution had lied about this being missing.
• Hauptmann writing John Condon’s phone number in his closet made no sense, since the Hauptmanns had no phone, and the number was in the phone book anyway. New York Daily News reporter Tom Cassidy eventually acknowledged scrawling it there to get a “scoop.”
• Not one fingerprint linked Hauptmann to the crime — neither in the nursery nor on the 13 ransom notes. Fingerprint expert Dr. Erastus Hudson lifted about 500 prints (including partials) from the homemade ladder at the scene — but none were Hauptmann’s. This seemed improbable if — as prosecutors claimed — he built it. New Jersey State Police Captain John Lamb then asked Hudson a stunning question: Could fingerprints be counterfeited? Hudson indignantly said yes, but that counterfeiting was detectable. The police then washed the ladder clean of fingerprints, and Schwarzkopf refused to let the public know Hauptmann’s were never found on it.
• Hauptmann’s shoes were confiscated for comparison to footprints at the crime scene and cemetery. The prosecution omitted this evidence — presumably they didn’t match.
• The prosecution’s challenge, then, was something to physically link Hauptmann to the kidnapping. The New Jersey State Police took over the lease on the Hauptmanns’ apartment. Detective Lewis Bornmann — whose superior was Lamb — actually lived there. He suddenly reported discovering a partially missing floorboard in Hauptmann’s attic — even though this was unnoticed in nine documented previous searches of the attic by 37 law-enforcement agents. At the trial, the prosecution claimed a kidnap-ladder rail matched the remaining partial-board in Hauptmann’s attic, though of different width and depth. Why would Hauptmann — a professional carpenter with abundant lumber in his garage — rip a board from his attic to help build a ladder? Nonetheless, this became the prosecution’s “smoking gun.”
• Changing Testimonies
  Hauptmann said he worked at the Majestic Apartments in New York City until 5 p.m. the day of the kidnapping. His supervisor Joseph Furcht confirmed this in a sworn affidavit with attached documentation. But after being summoned to the New York District Attorney’s office, Furcht was no longer “positive,” and work records for that time vanished.
• Both of the witnesses placing Hauptmann near the crime scene were discreditable and handsomely paid. Unknown to the defense, 87-year-old Amandus Hochmuth was partially blind and admitted to prosecutors pretrial that he couldn’t identify Hauptmann. When Governor Hoffman interviewed Hochmuth, he couldn’t identify a flower vase 10 feet away. Illiterate Millard Whithed, labeled a chronic liar by neighbors, had denied to police seeing anything suspicious after the kidnapping — but came forward two years later, motivated by reward money.

Hauptmann had much better witnesses for the kidnapping time-frame. On Tuesdays his wife Anna worked late at Fredericksen’s, a New York bakery-café. Hauptmann always waited there for Anna, and sometimes walked the Fredericksens’ dog. Not only did the Fredericksens confirm Hauptmann was there on the kidnapping evening, but August Von Henke saw Hauptmann walking the dog. Mistaking it for his own lost dog, he argued with Hauptmann. Louis Kiss, a bakery customer, remembered the argument. Von Henke and Kiss weren’t friends of Hauptmann, had no incentive to lie, and threatened the prosecution’s case.

The day after Kiss testified, a New York attorney named Berko pressed him to change his testimony with a threat of arrest and an offer of money. Berko admitted his legal career was failing, but that Attorney General Wilentz offered to help him get a position on Manhattan special prosecutor Thomas Dewey’s staff if he could persuade Kiss to recant his testimony. Kiss informed Berko he’d told the truth in court and wouldn’t change it for any price. He summarized the incident in a sworn deposition corroborated by a witness.

• When Hauptmann was arrested, Condon declined to say he was “Cemetery John.” FBI agent Leon Turrou wrote: “He [Condon] remarked on one occasion that Hauptmann is not the man because he appears to be much heavier, different eyes, different hair, etc.” Yet in court, after reportedly being threatened with “obstructing justice,” Condon emphatically identified Hauptmann as “Cemetery John.”
• After Hauptmann’s arrest, the New York police gave samples of his writing to handwriting expert Albert D. Osborn, who reported they didn’t match the ransom notes. But after the frustrated police told Osborn large ransom sums were in Hauptmann’s residence, Osborn requested more samples. The police forced Hauptmann to write the ransom note words dozens of times; “best” examples were selected. Osborn changed his mind, explaining in court that Hauptmann made the same spelling errors as the actual ransom notes. But as Scaduto revealed, the police forced Hauptmann to write with the spelling mistakes dictated to him.
• The state paid eight handwriting experts over $33,000 to testify that Hauptmann wrote the notes. But “experts” testify for who pays their fee, and many differences in Hauptmann’s writing were disregarded. The defense could only afford one handwriting expert, who was simply outnumbered.
• Isidor Fisch, who Hauptmann said left the “money box,” had been a confidence man in many swindles, even swindling Hauptmann in their joint venture. Fisch was seen laundering “hot money” after the ransom payment, and applied for a passport the day the baby’s body was found. Hauptmann’s friend Hans Kloppenburg saw Fisch give him the box before departing for Germany. Kloppenburg told Anthony Scaduto that prosecutor Wilentz warned him: “If you say on the witness chair that you seen Fisch come in with the shoe box, you’ll be arrested right away.” Kloppenburg testified anyway.
• Wilentz used a partner of Isidor Fisch — ex-con Charlie Schleser — to spy on defense witnesses. Feigning friendliness to Hauptmann, Schleser learned about defense plans and reported to Wilentz.

Climax
In his summation to the jury, Wilentz demanded the death penalty, calling Hauptmann “a fellow that had ice water in his veins, not blood … an animal lower than the lowest form in the animal kingdom, Public Enemy Number One of this world … no heart, no soul.”

Wilentz’s summation violated jurisprudence rules by introducing new arguments; he described Hauptmann using the chisel to bludgeon the child in the nursery. Had he suggested this during normal proceedings, the defense could have refuted it — the nursery had no signs of bloody violence.

However, the judge, Thomas Trenchard, gave Wilentz leeway — as he had throughout the trial. The court transcript reveals Trenchard’s marked bias toward the prosecution, overruling the defense in great disproportion. Perhaps the worst impropriety was his 70-minute charge to the jury, in which he aggressively argued for the prosecution. Reviewing the defense’s arguments point by point, Trenchard repeated, “Do you believe that?” By emphasizing the word “that,” Trenchard conveyed disdain — but helped protect himself, since court records didn’t include voice inflections.

While the jury deliberated, a mob surrounded the courthouse chanting, “Kill Hauptmann!” Perhaps some jurors feared becoming victims of mob violence unless their verdict was “guilty of murder in the first degree” — which it was. As Editor and Publisher declared, “No trial in this century has so degraded the administration of justice.”

Hauptmann was told if he would confess, his death sentence would be commuted to life imprisonment. He refused. His spiritual advisor, Reverend John Matthiesen, stated: “I have had fifteen very intimate and soul searching interviews with Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and am convinced that he tells the truth.” Just before electrocution, Hauptmann requested that John 14 be read to him, then kneeled in prayer. His final statement (translated from German):

Soon I will be at home with my Lord, so I am dying an innocent man. Should, however, my death serve for the purpose of abolishing capital punishment — such a punishment being arrived at only by circumstantial evidence — I feel that my death has not been in vain. I am at peace with God. I repeat, I protest my innocence of the crime for which I was convicted. However, I die with no malice or hatred in my heart. The love of Christ has filled my soul and I am happy in Him.

In a generation no longer gripped with media-driven hatred of Hauptmann, Anthony Scaduto (and subsequent writers like Ludovic Kennedy) convinced many that the carpenter was railroaded to the electric chair. But if Hauptmann didn’t do it, who did?

Attacking Lindbergh
Over the last two decades, some authors have claimed Charles Lindbergh, or others in his family, killed the baby. This began with Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax (1993) by Gregory Ahlgren and Stephen Monier, whose contempt for the aviator is undisguised.

Lindbergh, known as a practical joker, once hid the baby from Anne as a prank. From that, the authors devised this scenario: Returning home from work on March 1, 1932, Charles decided to play a joke. He himself climbed the ladder and took the baby, intending to enter the front door saying, “Look who was with me in New York.” But, they declare, he accidentally dropped the baby, killing him. Lindbergh, concerned only for his reputation, drove off, dumped the body in the woods four miles away, hurried home and wrote a fake ransom note before the baby’s nurse returned to the nursery.

Their source for this? Their imagination. Their 286-page volume has only one page of footnotes. This theory, like many, cherry-picks details that support it while ignoring what doesn’t. The ladder abandoned at the scene didn’t belong to Lindbergh and wasn’t sturdy — if he’d wanted a ladder, he had a strong one in his garage. It was dark with a gale blowing; with no one holding the ladder steady, it would have been insanity for Lindbergh to risk his life and his sick child’s for a joke.

Lindbergh’s daughter Reeve says he was “very gentle” as a father, and he was unquestionably courageous. If Lindbergh had really dropped his son, his instinct would have been to seek help — not cravenly dump the body in the woods.

Many people offered to pay the ransom. But Lindbergh insisted on paying himself, selling investments at steep losses to raise the $50,000 (around a million dollars in today’s currency). If Ahlgren and Monier are correct, why would Lindbergh pay the ransom knowing the child was dead?

Others go beyond this “prank” hypothesis. Lindbergh was a leader of the America First Committee, which, before Pearl Harbor, tried to keep the United States out of World War II. Some Lindbergh haters claim he was a “Nazi racial supremacist,” and deliberately murdered his son over some defect in health or appearance. In fact, Charles, Jr. was a handsome, healthy boy who could talk and run. Although less than two, he already attended a Montessori-type preschool. He did have rickets (not uncommon then) and a couple overlapping toes — hardly incentives for murder.

One year after the Ahlgren-Monier book came Noel Behn’s Lindbergh: The Crime, alleging Anne’s sister Elisabeth had wanted to marry Charles and killed the baby out of jealousy, and Charles covered that up. Behn based this largely on undocumented recollections of 93-year-old Harry Green — an investigator once attached to the case — even though he admits “Green had a habit pleading senility.”

William Norris, in A Talent to Deceive, claimed Lindbergh’s brother-in-law, Dwight Morrow, Jr., murdered the baby.

These suspects, rotated like a game of Clue, are all Lindbergh family members. The theorists rely largely on the same “proofs.” Five trendy ones:

1. “Why did Lindbergh call his LAWYER before calling the police?” So asks the website lindberghkidnappinghoax.com, implying legalities worried Lindbergh more than his child. This question twists the truth over a technicality. While Lindbergh searched the grounds with a gun, he had the butler phone the police. Later he called his friend/attorney Henry Breckinridge for advice.

2. Why didn’t Lindbergh immediately open the ransom note? A concerned parent would! Lindbergh knew a crime scene shouldn’t be disturbed, and that police would dust the note for fingerprints — which they did. If Lindbergh had torn that note open, his critics would surely excoriate his “obstructing justice.”

3. Lindbergh kept the police from the ransom drop — he was hiding something! The kidnappers had warned Lindbergh not to involve police. The Lindberghs complied; their priority was the child’s life. Many kidnapping victims have paid ransoms without even notifying authorities. Note the two-headed coin of Lindbergh’s critics — cooperating with police means “guilt”; so does not cooperating.

4. Lindbergh himself wiped off the fingerprints in the nursery! The fingerprints of Lindbergh and his family would be expected in the nursery. The wipedown could have only benefited outsiders.

5. Lindbergh cremated the baby’s remains to destroy evidence! Lindbergh, the child’s nurse, and the child’s pediatrician viewed the remains. An autopsy was performed. However, a news reporter and photographer gained entry to the mortuary, forced open the casket, and photographed the remains. Realizing their baby would never escape paparazzi exploitation, the Lindberghs respectfully decided to cremate, and scattered the ashes from an airplane.

Let the arbiter be Anna Hauptmann, who fought for six decades to exonerate her husband. Though Ahlgren and Monier took blame off him in promoting their claim, Anna said she was “outraged” another book was exploiting the tragedy. Her attorney, Robert Bryan, called their book “reckless” and “full of errors.”

Why Lindbergh?

In 1992’s Republican presidential primaries, Pat Buchanan was the leading opponent to George Bush, Sr. Buchanan deliberately revived Lindbergh’s cry “America First” while challenging the interventionism of neocons in Bush’s administration. This battle continued in 1993-94 (when the Ahlgren-Monier and Behn books appeared), as patriots fought to keep America out of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization. Joining those entanglements devastated American manufacturing and sent millions of jobs overseas.

No one had symbolized “isolationism” more than Lindbergh. And his father, U.S. Congressman Charles Lindbergh, Sr., was a chief opponent of our entering World War I and bitterly fought the Federal Reserve Act, which he prophesied would benefit a few bankers while plaguing average Americans with inflation and economic despair.

In the 1990s, globalists of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) — whose members dominate key positions in both Republican and Democratic administrations — envisioned a “new world order” where America would yield sovereignty to a NAFTA-based North American Union and engage in endless foreign interventions. They also thirsted for billions in bailout dollars for their multinational banks and corporations. Since these bailouts would come largely from “fiat” money (created from nothing by the U.S. Federal Reserve), working Americans would pay for the bailouts through soaring inflation.

These schemes required manipulation of public opinion. The name “Lindbergh” symbolized opposition to them. And since the aviator was still emblazoned as a hero, now was the time to destroy his image. New books would repaint “the Lone Eagle” as “the Nazi who murdered his own son.”

In 2002, President Bush appointed Stephen Monier U.S. Marshal for New Hampshire.

A New Theory

According to the FBI’s files on the kidnapping (released in 1999), gangster Johnny Torrio, Al Capone’s mentor, “expressed his opinion to the Intelligence Unit agents that the Lindbergh baby was not kidnapped for ransom … that the baby was kidnapped and subsequently murdered by someone who had a grouch against Lindbergh and it was purely a case of personal vengeance.”

Logic dictates the kidnapping wasn’t about $50,000. That was a lot in 1932 — but there were many wealthier families whom the public never heard of. To take Lindy’s kid for money would be foolish — the whole country would be after you.

Besides inside knowledge of the Lindberghs’ plans, much evidence suggested conspiracy. Several police officers attempted to reenact the abduction single-handedly, yet none succeeded — even with a sturdier ladder in daylight. Lindbergh and Condon believed they saw lookouts at the cemeteries. Ransom money still appeared after Hauptmann’s arrest. Ellis Parker — considered New Jersey’s best detective — independently found another suspect. But ironically it was Parker who went to prison; in seizing the suspect, it was charged he’d violated the new federal kidnapping law!

The prosecution suppressed all evidence of conspiracy, claiming Hauptmann acted alone. Wilentz’ insistence on the death penalty, not life imprisonment, made little sense, given the meager evidence. If really guilty, in prison Hauptmann might eventually reveal how the crime was done, or name accomplices. Electrocution made this impossible. Was Hauptmann made a patsy to protect someone?

The trial’s injustices — involving the prosecution, judge, and some police officers — suggest a powerful hand at work. Lindbergh was popular, but lacked the wealth and political influence to compromise an entire justice system. Could the kidnapping, and eventual smearing of Lindbergh as perpetrator, both trace to the Lindberghs’ enemies?

In his new book The Lindbergh Baby Kidnap Conspiracy, Professor Alan Marlis, who taught for 35 years at City University of New York, believes James P. Warburg was behind the kidnapping. A prominent banker and member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “brain trust,” Warburg is perhaps best remembered for telling a Senate subcommittee in 1950 we would have world government “by conquest or consent.” He was the son of Federal Reserve architect Paul Warburg.

Marlis’ book, currently available only from the McNally Jackson Bookstore in New York City, is clearly a self-published manuscript, but demonstrates extensive research. Marlis describes a context of sudden deaths for enemies of the FDR-Federal Reserve crowd:

• Walter Liggett, speechwriter for Lindbergh, Sr., was murdered in 1935 — a case never solved.
• In 1936, Louisiana politician Huey Long, possibly FDR’s biggest reelection threat, was assassinated — an incident still controversial.
• Louis McFadden, the Fed’s chief congressional critic, survived two attempts on his life before dying suddenly, also in 1936.
• After triggering the Great Depression, “establishment” bankers wanted Roosevelt elected as President in 1932 to spawn an era of government borrowing, erosion of the Constitution, and moves toward world government. Lindbergh’s father-in-law, Dwight Morrow, now Republican Senator for New Jersey, was touted as a possible presidential candidate. In October 1931, Morrow, 58 and fit, attended a charity dinner hosted by Lehman Brothers — heavy backers of FDR. (Herbert Lehman was Roosevelt’s Lieutenant Governor in New York and signed the papers extraditing Hauptmann to New Jersey.) After the dinner, Morrow returned home — and died that night. Thus vanished a remaining hope for the Republicans, whom newspapers blamed for the Depression.

In 1932, one man still posed a threat to FDR’s election — Charles Lindbergh. Lindy was too young constitutionally to run for President, but his popularity was so universal that his active presence alone might have kept Republican hopes alive. But five months after Morrow’s sudden death, Lindbergh’s baby was murdered — effectively removing the grieving father from the political scene. Some of the links Marlis draws to James Warburg:

• The Lindberghs and Warburgs had what Marlis calls a “blood feud.” In 1913, Charles Lindbergh, Sr. tried to stop creation of the Federal Reserve — which Paul Warburg, its first vice-chairman, had designed. In 1917, Lindbergh tried to have Warburg, as well as FDR’s uncle Frederic Delano, impeached from the Federal Reserve Board. According to Marlis, Lindbergh “Jew-baited” Warburg at the Fed chairman hearings; Paul told his son, and the insult wasn’t forgotten.
• In 1941, the fathers’ feud continued between the sons. James Warburg helped found and finance the Freedom First Committee to oppose Lindbergh’s America First Committee, debated Lindbergh at Madison Square Garden, and publicly denounced him.
• Paul Warburg died less than two months before the kidnapping.
• The police had suspected the crime was an inside job. The governess in James Warburg’s household was the sister of the Morrows’ seamstress, Marguerite Junge, who knew about the Lindberghs’ change of plans. Junge’s alibi for the kidnapping night: She was “out riding” with Red Johnsen — boyfriend of the baby’s nurse.
• In April 1932 (just after the kidnapping and ransom payment), James Warburg took a two-month trip to Europe.
• Warburg’s estate was in Greenwich, Connecticut — the town where the very first Lindbergh ransom gold certificate was passed, by a well-dressed woman at a bakery. The cashier, checking the serial-number list, exclaimed it was Lindbergh ransom money. The woman snatched it back and ran outside into a chauffeured sedan — which police unsuccessfully searched for.

Dr. Marlis makes an interesting case, but also seems to draw some unnecessary inferences from coincidences. Warburg ordering the kidnapping cannot be proven. As with Hauptmann, fairness should negate “convicting” him on circumstantial evidence.

This article could not address many facets of this still-debated case. For those interested in more, good starts are Anthony Scaduto’s Scapegoat, Lloyd Gardner’s balanced The Case That Never Dies, and www.lindberghkidnap.proboards.com.

“…comparisons between Lindbergh and Hauptmann –that the two men were very similar in an unbelievable number of ways, physically, through life and family history, etc. …it was as though Hauptmann was the dark side of Lindbergh. But, if the latest theories have any validity at all, it seems as though Lindbergh was the real dark side.”

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On March 1, 1932, Ollie Whateley, butler at the Charles Lindbergh home in Hopewell, New Jersey, called the local police to report that the Lindbergh’s infant son had been stolen. Within hours, local and state police, plus press and ordinary sensation seekers were all over the grounds. While local police saw a crude ladder, built in sections, lying near the window from which it appeared the baby had been taken, and two grooves where the ladder had rested, most other footprints and possible clues were obliterated in the rush to investigate the rain-soaked grounds.

Lindbergh, hailed as the great American hero after his historic New York to Paris flight in 1927, took charge of the
investigation himself. He refused to allow other members of the household to be questioned. According to him, the child was discovered missing when his nursemaid, Betty Gow, went in to check on him and found the crib empty. She reported this first to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the child’s mother, then they went to Colonel Lindbergh’s room.

“Do you have the baby?” asked Anne. Lindbergh denied having the child, and accompanied his wife to the nursery.

The crib was empty. Lindbergh turned to his wife. “Anne,” he said. “They have stolen our baby.”

Instructing his wife and Betty Gow to remain where they were, Lindbergh shouted to the butler to phone the police, grabbed a rifle, and raced outdoors. When the butler came to report, he found Lindbergh sitting in his car. Lindbergh asked the butler to drive into town and buy a flashlight, so that he could investigate. But before Whateley could do so, the police arrived.

Lindbergh led them straight to the window under the child’s room, pointed out the discarded ladder, and led them to the prints which the ladder had left, and a footprint. According to police reports, he was very calm and collected.

He then led the police upstairs to the nursery, where he pointed to an envelope resting against the window. He told police that he had ordered that it not be touched until a fingerprint expert could be summoned.

The envelope was opened in the presence of the police. Anonymous, it bore an elaborate coded symbol as a signature, and claimed that the writer and associates were holding the child for ransom and would communicate the particulars later. The letter appeared to have been written by someone foreign, probably Germanic.

The fingerprint expert found no prints on the envelope or letter. Nor did he find any on the window, or the child’s crib. He didn’t even find Lindbergh’s prints, or those of the nursemaid or Anne Lindbergh, who had searched the room before police arrival (incidentally, failing to notice the ransom note .)

Over the next several months, Lindbergh continued to spearhead a most unusual investigation. He rejected the FBI’s offer of assistance, but called in Morris Rosner, a member of the underworld. Claiming that he was convinced that the kidnapping was the work of organized crime leaders, he asked Rosner to circulate the ransom note and see if he could get any information from his underworld connections.

Soon after, Lindbergh received a call from Dr. John F. Condon of the Bronx. Condon had placed an ad in the Bronx Home News offering to add his $1000 life savings to the ransom money if the child would be safely returned. Condon told Lindbergh that he had received a note from the kidnappers, appointing him the go-between for the ransom negotiations. Lindbergh accepted this, and it was Condon, operating under the code name of Jafsie, who went to the cemetery where the transfer of money was supposed to take place. Condon, on his second visit, turned a wooden box containing $50,000 in gold certificates to a man whom he called “Cemetery John.”

John, he claimed, was of medium build, with a pointy face, high cheekbones, slanted, dark, almost “oriental eyes”, and a cough. His accent sounded either German or Slavic, although Jafsie claimed that he attempted some German, but “John” did not appear to understand.

Although the money was delivered as instructed, the child was not returned. Instead, Jafsie was given a letter which gave directions to the childs supposed location on “boad Nellie” (the allegedly Germanic spelling of “boat.”) A determined sweep of the area where boad Nellie was supposed to be found nothing.

The search for the child ended on May, 12, 1932, when a truck driver, stopping to relieve himself in the woods about two miles from the Lindbergh home, found the decomposed body of an infant partially buried in a pile of leaves. The child’s sexual organs had been eaten away, but there was evidence of a skull fracture, as though the child had been dropped from a ladder. Although the Lindbergh family physician could not make a positive identification, Lindbergh, after a 90 second inspection where he counted the corpse’s teeth, identified the body as that of his son. The kidnapping had now officially become a murder.

The search for the criminal continued for two years. Then a German-born carpenter named Bruno Richard Hauptmann , with high cheekbones and a pointy face, but fair and blue-eyed, was caught passing one of the bills from the ransom money. Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the kidnapping.

In what has since been termed the Trial of the Century, Hauptmann was convicted, and sentenced to the electric chair, where he died proclaiming his complete innocence.

The fact that $18,000 of the ransom money was found in Hauptmann’s garage acted strongly against him. Hauptmann claimed that he found the money in a package left with him by his business partner, Isador Fisch, before Fisch left on a trip to Germany. Fisch died there, of tuberculosis. While cleaning a leaking closet, Hauptmann rediscovered the box, and discovered that it was full of waterlogged bills. He claimed that he took these to his garage and began to dry them, hiding each bundle as it dried. Fisch, he said, owed him $7,000, so he felt entitled to keep and use that portion of the money in the box. Police and reporters labeled this “the Fisch story.”

Many legal experts and researchers believed Hauptmann, but could not save him from the electric chair. There were too many holes in the case, too many unanswered questions. But in the 60 years since then, four major theories have emerged about what really happened in Hopewell New Jersey that day in 1931.

The first is that Hauptmann was guilty. A variation of that was that he was guilty, but had not acted alone.

The last two theories are more startling. In 1993, two books came out claiming that there never had been a kidnapping; that Lindbergh and his family were actually covering up a killing.

The premise that the kidnap was a coverup appears to answer many of the questions that the arrest and execution of Hauptmann raised. Much of the evidence against Hauptmann was unsatisfactory; much of it was plainly manufactured. And much of Lindbergh’s conduct during the trial is, in hindsight, very peculiar. A quick review of the basic questions answered and left open, will demonstrate this.

HAUPTMANN

Hauptmann was convicted basically on 7 points of evidence.

1. He had $15,000 of the ransom money, and explained it away with the “Fisch story.” Since Fisch was conveniently dead, there didn’t appear to be any way to confirm this.

However: $30,000 of the ransom money remains undiscovered to this day. And almost $3,000 in gold certificates were turned into the bank when the county went off the gold standard by one JJ Faulkner. Faulkner was the known pseudonym of a convicted master forger, Jacob Novitsky (a man with a pointed face, dark complexion and dark, almost oriental eyes) who bragged to his cellmates of his involvement in the extortion of the ransom. Just before Hauptmann’s execution, Faulkner wrote to New Jersey’s Governor Hoffman claiming that they had arrested the wrong man.

2. Police found, at the site of the crime, a 3/4″ chisel. When they examined the toolbox of Hauptmann, a carpenter, they claimed that he had no 3/4″ chisel, but that this would be standard equipment for any competent worker. Forty years later, crime reporter Anthony Scaduto checked the archives of the New York police, and found not only the chisel found at the scene of the crime, but two more, wrapped in a brown bag labeled “Found in Hauptmann’s garage.”

3. Two witnesses came forward to say that they had seen Hauptmann in the Hopewell area the day of the crime. A foreman from the Majestic Corp., for which Hauptmann claimed he was employed on that day, brought forth a time card purporting to show that he had not been at work. If Hauptmann was working, he would not have had time to get to Hopewell within the correct time framework to commit the crime.

1. One of the witnesses who placed Hauptmann at the scene was legally blind. In the prosecutor’s office, he identified a vase of flowers as a woman’s hat. Yet he claimed to be able to recognize the face of a man going by in a car. The second was a known pathological liar who denied categorically that he had seen anything unusual until the offer of a reward was announced.
2. Police had these witnesses pick Hauptmann from a line-up. The line-up consisted of the blond, slight Hauptmann, a burly and very Irish detective, and a policeman still in uniform. Hauptmann was the only one who even resembled the description of “cemetery John” given by Jafsie.
3. On the time card which allegedly showed that Hauptmann had not worked that day, all other workers who were absent were marked with a line of zeros. Hauptmann’s line was marked with blots, suggesting that something beneath had been blotted out.

4. Dr. John F. Condon identified Hauptmann in court as the man with whom he negotiated the ransom.

Until his appearance in the courtroom, Condon refused to identify him; at one point, on record, he said that it was definitely not “cemetery John.”

5. In court, the prosecution produced a board from Hauptmann’s closet which had scribbled on it Jafsie’s phone number. Hauptmann couldn’t recall writing it there, but conceded that since it was in his closet, maybe he did, because he had been interested in following the case.

A reporter for the New York Daily News later bragged to fellow reporters that he had written the number there himself, on a day when there was no fresh news in the case and his editors were on his back for front page material.

For those who doubt this, consider two things. Hauptmann had no phone. If he was using a pay phone to contact Jafsie, he probably would use something more portable than a closet board to record the number on. Also, to see the number, one had to remove both shelves in the closet and stand in the back using a flashlight. Hardly convenient for quick and unobtrusive reference.

6. Police claimed to have found a missing board in Hauptmann’s attic which matched the wood in the kidnap ladder. This “missing” board was discovered after several previous searches. And when the board in question was matched against the piece it was allegedly cut away from, it proved to be thicker than the board still in the attic floor. This caused New Jersey’s governor, Harold Hoffman, to make an open accusation that the evidence had been falsified.

7. The piece of evidence that apparently carried most weight with the jury was Lindbergh’s identification of Hauptmann’s voice as the same one he heard in the cemetery . This was a voice that Lindbergh heard, only once, two years earlier, from a distance of several hundred feet, shouting only 5-6 syllables — either “hey, Doc! Over hear” or “hey Doctor, over here.” Most experts expressed great doubt about the validity of this identification,
but the jury was impressed.

Another point in Hauptmann’s favor was the ladder itself. It was very crude, causing most people who knew woodworking to believe that no carpenter had ever made it.

Consider, too. William Randolph Hearst, who instructed his reporters to cover the trial in a manner that would light a flame of indignation in people everywhere, then paid for Hauptmann’s defense lawyer, Edward J. Reilly. Reilly was suffering from syphilis which caused his institutionalization several months later, he routinely had several martinis at lunch during trial, and spent less than 40 minutes in consultation with his client. He was paid up front, regardless of the outcome of the trial.

THE “GANG”

There is clear evidence that more than one person was involved in the collection of the ransom. In the files of the Bronx police dept., Anthony Scaduto found an FBI document giving Lindbergh’s description of a dark, swarthy man with a rolling gait who acted as lookout for cemetery John.

This was never brought out at trial. Kidnap notes always referred to plural collectors, which may or may not have been a rhetorical device to mislead investigators. However, when Lindbergh called Morris Rosner in to help the investigation, Rosner showed copies of the original note to many members of the underworld. Contemporary handwriting experts appear to concur that the first ransom note was written by a different person than those that followed. (There were people willing to testify to that effect during Hauptmann’s trial, but they were not permitted
to testify, since that would have ruined the “lone killer” scenario.)

Jafsie relates that, during one phone conversation with the Scandinavian (both Condon and the cabdriver who delivered the ransom-collector’s note to Condon originally stated that the man was Scandinavian, not German) he heard another voice in the background shouting “Statto cito” [shut up, in Italian.]

Given the peculiar construction of the kidnap ladder, it would have been impossible for a single person to descend the ladder with the child. First, it would not hold more than 160 pounds without breaking, according to police tests. The child would add an extra 30 pounds. Second, the rungs were so awkwardly spaced that it would take all but an extremely tall person two hands to descend.

If Hauptmann (or Fisch) acted alone, where is the rest of the ransom money? And how did Jacob Novitsky, alias JJ Faulkner, get at least $3000 of that money?

CONSPIRACY THEORIES

The latest theories claim that there was no kidnapping at all; that the kidnap story was devised as a way to cover-up the guilt of a member of the Lindbergh family. In this theory, the ransom collection was separate from the death of the child; it was an attempt by underworld figures to cash in on the Lindbergh’s when they were in a vulnerable position.

Many researchers have questioned Lindbergh’s behavior throughout the investigation. Burdened by their belief in the original premise — that there was a kidnapper at large who must be treated carefully so that he wouldn’t harm the child– they explained this behavior as both fear of criminal reprisal and an attempt to protect his wife. Scaduto seemed to question this protective instinct, despite his apparent acceptance of a kidnapping theory. Lindbergh was not the tender protecting type. He was given to cruel practical jokes, and was essentially a rather cold person. The cover-up theory, however, explains Lindbergh’s behavior, and a few other questions unanswered by the arrest and conviction of Hauptmann.

1. Why would a kidnapper choose to steal the child during hours when household members were still awake and obviously moving around the house?
2. How did the kidnapper get down the ladder carrying a 30 pound child? At the time of their original investigation, police insisted that the criminals must have exited through the house, and initially suspected a member of the household.
3. Why were there NO fingerprints at all in the child’s room? Anne Lindbergh and Betty Gow both admitted to searching the room when they first discovered that the child was missing, but when police arrived on the scene, their fingerprints were missing, too..
4. Why did the two women not see the ransom note during their search of the room, so that Lindbergh was able to spot it when he reentered? And why was it left on the windowsill, when the criminal was already burdened with the child, instead of in the crib, which would have been the logical place to put it? And, on discovering that his child was missing, how could any loving father have ordered that the note be left untouched, and leave it so for two full hours until a fingerprint expert arrived to open and read the note?
5. Why did the family dog, Whagoosh, prone to barking at the slightest disturbance, not bark on the night of the crime? And why, when the entire staff and Anne Lindbergh testified that the dog always barked at disturbances and at strangers approaching the house, did Lindbergh deny this?
6. Why did Lindbergh refuse the offer of help from the FBI, and consistently refuse to allow police to carry out routine investigative procedures, then call in members of the underworld to help the investigation?
7. Why, after Lindbergh observed Hauptmann shouting “Hey, Doctor” did he wait 10 days before deciding that Hauptmann’s was the voice he had heard in the cemetery?
8. Why did Lindbergh refuse to allow police to question his wife or household staff following his report that the child had been stolen?
9. How, if he had no flashlight, did Lindbergh manage to lead the police straight to the marks left by the ladder in the ground beneath the nursery window?
10. How would an outside criminal know that the Lindberghs were at the Hopewell house that Tuesday, when they had never before stayed longer than Saturday through Monday?
11. How did the alleged kidnappers know exactly which window were the child’s, and of those, which one was warped so that it wouldn’t latch? This fact could not be determined by routine surveillance.

These questions made many people suspicious, even at the time of the investigation. If Lindbergh had not been the superhero of his times, they would not have been brushed aside so easily; today it is almost certain that he or a family member would have led the list of suspects. But, in 1931, Lindbergh symbolized all that Americans most claimed to value, so any thought of possible conspiracy was dismissed as unthinkable.

However, there are two theories that appear to answer the above questions.

The first, presented in Noel Behn’s “Lindbergh: The Crime”, is that the child was murdered by Anne’s sister, Elizabeth Morrow. Charles Lindbergh originally courted Elizabeth, and the press reported rumors of an engagement. However, Elizabeth flew to the aid of an ailing brother, and when Lindbergh paid a return visit to the Morrow home, only Anne was there. They began to court, and married. Elizabeth had a mild heart attack following this news, and there is some evidence of a nervous breakdown.

After the birth of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., several disturbing incidents led his parents to give strict orders that the child was never to be left alone with Elizabeth. Household servants all filed affidavits that Elizabeth Morrow killed the family dog, and once threw young Charlie out along with the household garbage.

According to Behn’s theory, the staff DID leave Elizabeth alone with Charlie. And, to avoid further disgrace, further hounding of the family by the press, the family spent two days dreaming up a way to cover up the crime. The kidnap story was the result; the fact that Morris Rossner’s display of the kidnap note sparked an extortion scheme played right into the plans, since it appeared to confirm that there really was a kidnap gang out there.

Elizabeth Morrow was institutionalized soon after the crime. Gossip about her possible involvement persisted, at least in low key whispers at least through the 50s. However, to accept this theory, one must also accept that not only Lindbergh but the entire Morrow family, and the staffs of both households were involved in the cover-up, and that they all lied on the witness stand, knowingly sending an innocent man to his death.

The second theory, on its face, is even more incredible: Lindbergh himself killed the child in the course of a practical
joke. Lindbergh was known for cruel practical jokes. He often filled bunkmates beds with lizards and other reptiles; on one occasion he put a snake in the bed of a man who was terrified of them. Asked if the snake had been venomous, Lindbergh replied “Yes, but not fatally.” He also filled a friend’s canteen with kerosene and watched him drink it; the man was hospitalized for severe internal burns. And, only two weeks prior to the reported kidnapping, Lindbergh hid the child in a closet then ran to his wife’s room, claiming the child had been stolen. He let the joke
go on for 20 terrifying minutes before confessing.

In “Crime of the Century”, Ahlgren and Monier theorize that Lindbergh tried that joke one too many times. In their scenario, Lindbergh called home to say he would be late, but actually arrived at the usual time. He climbed his makeshift ladder to his son’s room, planning to spirit the child out and arrive at the front door with him in hand, claiming something like “Look who I met in New York.” Unfortunately, the ladder broke, Lindbergh slipped, and the child’s head was smashed against the side of the house. Lindbergh then hid the body, went home, failed to check on his young son even though the child had been sick, and spent some time in his study alone before Betty Gow reported the child’s disappearance. Ahlgren and Monier speculate that Lindbergh wrote the original ransom note during this time. Most experts agree that the wording of the note was typical of an English speaking person trying to sound Germanic, rather than of a real German.

To accept this theory, as amazing as it may be, is somewhat easier than to believe the charge against Elizabeth Morrow. The great American hero was above suspicion. Police would never think to check his alibi, to see why he arrived home an hour later than usual that night. Nor did they hesitate to follow his orders throughout the investigation, although they, not Lindbergh, were the trained investigators.

An analysis of Lindbergh’s character makes this sort of practical joke a strong possibility; that he could cover it up so
successfully can be attributed both to the awe in which he was held, and the successful diversion of the ransom note. Much of Lindbergh’s more peculiar behavior can be attributed to understandable moments of panic.

In the late 1930s, when Lindbergh openly associated with Nazis, and made many public statements about the desirability of a Master Race here in America, there were some fitful rumors that Lindbergh had killed his own child because it was genetically defective — retarded. As war and memory faded, these whispers died down. Baby boomers, if they knew much about the case at all, tended to hear it from the perspective of Lindbergh, the vulnerable hero; his later politics forgotten.

There is no proof that Lindbergh in fact killed his own child; however, the theory answers questions left open by Hauptmann’s arrest and execution. And in this theory, only one person had to keep a dreadful secret and perjure himself. If true, however, Lindbergh is guilty not only of the death of his son, but of the cold and deliberate murder of Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

Written by Carol Wallace: Carol Wallace is an expert on the subject, having written her master’s thesis on the Lindbergh kidnapping as well as being widely read in the history of that era. Wallace wrote her doctoral dissertation on the Fatty Arbuckle scandal of 1921. She teaches Mass Media Law, with a special interest in notorious trials and publicity. Regarding the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, she says, “I love this topic, and am glad to discuss it anywhere.”

Source: http://lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/wallace.html