Did Bruno Hauptman really murder Lindbergh's baby?

This essay is an extremely long one but because of the important message you may get from it and the multitude of details written in it, I felt obligated to leave nothing out. I think you will be fascinated about a case in which people are still talking about it over seventy-five years later.

The kidnapping of 20-month-old, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. who was the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was considered at that time as the ‘crime of the century’. The baby was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey on the evening of March 1, 1932.

First on the scene was Chief Harry Wolfe of the Hopewell police. Wolfe was soon joined by New Jersey State Police officers. The police searched the home and scoured the surrounding area for miles but they found no sign of the baby or its kidnappers.
After midnight, a fingerprint expert arrived at the home to examine the note left on the window sill and the ladder propped against it. The ladder had 400 partial fingerprints. However, most of the footprints leading to the house and away from the house were of no value to the investigation due to the surge of media and police that were present within the first 30 minutes to an hour after the first call for help.

I remember years ago when I was working as a private investigator and was investigating a burglary in an apartment above a store in Toronto, Ontario. It was established that the burglar had crept into the building through the back yard and left his footprints in the snow. Unfortunately, it was pointless for me to photograph them for later identification because the police had walked all over the back yard while searching for clues and it was impossible to establish which ones belonged to the officers and which ones belonged to the burglar. Getting any solid evidence outside the house proved to be virtually impossible.

An odd twist to this Lindbergh investigation is that during the fingerprint discovery process, not a single fingerprint was found in the room—none from Mr. and Mrs. Lindbergh, none from the baby and none from Betty Gow, the baby’s nanny.

The ransom note that was found by Mr. Lindbergh was opened and read by the police after they arrived. The brief, handwritten letter was riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical irregularities. It said:

Dear Sir!
Have 50000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-4 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police. The baby is in gut care. Indication for all letters are singnature and three holes. unquote

There were two interconnected circles (colored red and blue) below the message, with a hole punched through the red circle and two other holes punched outside the circles.

Word of the kidnapping spread quickly, and, along with police, the well-connected and well-intentioned curious people arrived at the Lindbergh estate. Three were military colonels offering their aid, though only one had law enforcement expertise. He was Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police and the father of General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the commander of all coalition forces for Operation Desert Shield/Storm. The other colonels were Henry Skillman Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer and William Joseph Donovan (a.k.a. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, a hero of the First World War who would later head the OSS during World War II, an organization which was the precursor of the CIA).

The morning after the kidnapping, U.S. President Herbert Hoover was notified of the crime. Though the case did not seem to have any grounds for federal involvement (kidnapping then being classified only as a local crime), Hoover declared that he would "move Heaven and Earth" to recover the missing baby. The Bureau of Investigation (not yet called the FBI) was authorized to investigate the case, while the United States Coast Guard, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Immigration Service and the Washington D.C. police were told their services might be required. New Jersey officials announced a $25,000 reward for the safe return of ‘Little Lindy’. The Lindbergh family offered an additional $50,000 reward of their own. Lindbergh and these men believed that the kidnapping was perpetrated by organized crime figures. The letter, they thought, seemed written by someone who spoke German as his native language. I suppose they arrived at that conclusion by looking at the word, ‘gut’ that was in the letter. The word, ‘gut’ in German means ‘well’ and that word can also mean ‘good’. If they arrived at that conclusion, they must have realized that they would be looking for a German immigrant whose understanding of the English language was limited.

From the very outset, Lindbergh was inundated by visits from deranged persons who offered false clues, improbable stories, fake letters and other maneuvers that would invariably prevent him from uncovering any leads to the kidnappers of his baby.
While the baby was still missing, at least two separate men, Gaston Means and John Hughes Curtis, came forward with false claims that they were associates of the kidnappers. Gaston Means, who was a former FBI agent and conman, was convicted of larceny after extorting $100,000 from Washington D.C. socialite Evelyn Walsh McLean. McLean had unwittingly provided Means the money in an attempt to pay a ransom for the return of the Lindbergh baby. Means was sentenced to fifteen years in prison and died while still in prison in 1938. John Curtis, a respected boat builder in Norfolk, Virginia, also made claims that he also was in contact with the kidnappers. Curtis even claimed that at one point he had held the baby in his arms. After the baby's body was found, Curtis confessed that his stories were false and were brought about by "financial pressures". He was fined and given a one year suspended sentence. The Lindberghs were the victims of several other pranks and claims about their baby. Even in this century, a man asserted that he was the Lindbergh’s son who had been kidnapped.

The police contacted Mickey Rosner, a Broadway hanger-on rumored to know mobsters. Rosner, who in turn, brought in two speakeasy owners: Salvatore ‘Salvy’ Spitale and Irving Bitz. Lindbergh quickly endorsed the duo and appointed them to be his intermediaries to deal with the mob. Unknown to Lindbergh, however, Bitz and Spitale were actually in cahoots with the New York Daily News, a paper which hoped to use the duo to scoop other newspapers in the race for leads in the kidnapping story.

Several organized crime figures — notably Al Capone — spoke from prison, offering to help return the baby to his family in exchange for money or for legal favors. Capone was offering assistance in return for being released from prison under the guise that his assistance could be more effective. This was quickly refused by the authorities.

A few days after the kidnapping, a new ransom letter arrived at the Lindbergh home via the mail. Postmarked in Brooklyn, the letter was genuine, carrying the perforated red and blue marks. Police wanted to examine the letter, but instead Lindbergh gave it to Rosner, who said he would pass it on to his supposed mob associates. In actuality, the note went back to the Daily News, where someone photographed it. Before long, copies of the ransom note were being sold on street corners throughout New York for $5 each. Any ransom letters received after this one were therefore automatically suspect.

It is generally a good police tactic to keep an important clue secret from the general public for obvious reasons. The police bungled in this case because there was no really good reason why they should have given the ransom note found in the Lindbergh house to anyone, let alone a person known to cavort with mobsters.

A second ransom note then arrived by mail, also postmarked from Brooklyn. Ed Mulrooney, Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, suggested that, given two Brooklyn postmarks, the kidnappers were probably working out of that area.
That isn’t necessarily true. Often criminals will go out of their way to disguise their whereabouts by mailing letters away from their own turf.

Mulrooney told Lindbergh that his officers could survey postal letterboxes in Brooklyn, and that a device could be placed inside each letterbox to isolate the letters in sequence as they were dropped in, to help track down anyone who might be tied to the case. If Lindbergh, Jr. was being held in Brooklyn by the kidnappers, Mulrooney insisted that such a plan might help locate the baby as well. Mulrooney was willing to go to great lengths, including organizing a police raid to rescue the baby. Lindbergh strongly disapproved of the plan. He feared for his son's life and warned Mulrooney that if such a plan was carried out, Lindbergh would use his considerable influence in efforts to ruin Mulrooney's career. Reluctantly, Mulrooney acquiesced.

I can appreciate why Lindbergh was concerned. A raid on the premises where a victim of a kidnapping is at a serious risk of being murdered before the police can catch the kidnappers. In that era, kidnapping was a capital offence irrespective whether or not the victim was killed so the kidnappers lost nothing by killing their victim.
The day after Lindbergh rejected Mulrooney's plan, a third letter was mailed. It too came from Brooklyn. This letter warned that since the police were now involved in the case, the ransom had been doubled to $100,000. The reward was then increased to $100,000 which was made even more significant by the fact that the offer was made during the early days of the Great Depression. In today’s money, that would be $4,818, 000. That is quite an incentive.

It should be noted that Charles Lindbergh, at this time, used his influence to control the direction of the investigation. That was a big mistake. Victims should never have control of investigations unless of course, they are extremely good investigators, which Lindbergh was not.

During this time, John F. Condon, a 72-year-old retired school teacher in the Bronx, wrote a letter to the Home News. proclaiming his willingness to help the Lindbergh case in any way he could and added $1,000 of his own money to the reward.

As a result of Condon’s letter in the Home News and Condon’s offer to help, he received a letter in care of the Home News purportedly written by the kidnappers. It was marked with the punctured red-and-blue circles and authorized Condon as their intermediary with Lindbergh. Lindbergh accepted the letter as genuine however, at the time neither man seemed to know that copies of the first mailed ransom letter (which had been previously published in the Daily News were being sold by the hundreds. So by now a great many people must have known the ‘signature marks’ required to forge a letter from the kidnappers.

Following the latest letter's instructions, Condon placed a classified ad in the New York American: "Money is Ready. Jafsie". (Jafsie was a pseudonym based on a phonetic pronunciation of Condon's initials, ‘J.F.C.’) Condon then waited for further instructions from the so-called culprits.

A meeting between ‘Jafsie’ and a representative of the group that claimed to be the kidnappers was eventually scheduled for late one evening at the Woodlawn Cemetery. According to Condon, the man sounded foreign but stayed in the shadows during the conversation, and he was thus unable to get a close look at his face. The man said his name was John, and he related his story: he was a Scandinavian sailor, part of a gang of three men and two women. He said that the Lindbergh baby was unharmed and being held on a boat, but the kidnappers were still not ready to return him or receive the ransom. When Condon expressed doubt that ‘John’ actually had the baby, the man promised some proof. He said that he would soon return the baby's sleeping suit.

The stranger then asked Condon, “Would I burn (be executed in the electric chair) if the package (The baby) were dead?" When questioned further, he assured Condon that the baby was alive. Lindbergh had insisted that Mulrooney, New York’s police commissioner not be informed, and so ‘John’ was not followed by police after the meeting. The New York Police were by now aware of the ‘Jafsie’ newspaper advertisements, and wanted to know who the mysterious ‘Jafsie’ was, but Lindbergh refused to say anything. That is more reason why he should not have been involved in the investigation, let alone try to control it.

On March 16, 1932 John Condon received a package by mail that contained a baby's sleeping suit, which was sent as proof of their claim, and a seventh ransom note. Condon showed the sleeping suit to Lindbergh who identified it as belonging to his son. There can be no doubt that Condon had been speaking to someone who had been connected to the kidnapping because the description of the sleeping suit hadn’t been published in the media.

After the delivery of the sleeping suit, Condon took out a new ad in the Home News declaring, "Money is ready. No cops. No secret service. I come alone, like last time." One month and one day after the baby was kidnapped, on April 1, 1932, Condon received a letter from the purported kidnappers. They were ready to accept payment.
The ransom was packaged in a wooden box which was custom-made in the hope that it could later be identified. The ransom money itself was made up with a number of gold certificates that were to be withdrawn from circulation in the near future. It was hoped that anyone passing large amounts of gold notes would draw attention to themselves and help aid in identifying the abductors. It should also be noted that while the bills themselves were not marked, the serial number of each bill was recorded.

The next evening, Condon was given a note by cab driver Raymond Perrone, who said he had been paid by a man to deliver the note. This note was the first in a series of convoluted instructions that lead Condon and Lindbergh all over Manhattan. Eventually, they were sent to St. Raymond's Cemetery. Condon met a man he thought might have been ‘John’ and told him that they had been able to raise only $50,000. The man accepted the money and gave Condon a note. Lindbergh, who saw the man only from a distance, had insisted the police not be informed of the meeting and the suspect got away without being followed.

I am amazed that Mulrooney hadn’t read the ad sections of the newspapers continuously once he was aware that Condon was communicating with the so-called kidnappers. If he had been astute enough, he would have had someone keep an eye on Condon and follow him wherever he went. If this had been done, the officer could have followed ‘John’ in hope that he would lead him to the whereabouts of the other kidnappers and the kidnapped baby. Unfortunately, the commissioner didn’t have the ability to think that far ahead and subsequently, the opportunity of finding the kidnappers and the bay was lost.

The note given to Condon stated that the baby was being held on a boat called the Nelly at Martha's Vineyard. The baby was supposed to be in the care of two women who were, as the note also stated, innocent. Lindbergh went there and searched the piers, however, there was no boat called the Nelly. A desperate Lindbergh took to flying an airplane low over the piers in an attempt to startle the kidnappers into showing themselves. How he expected the kidnappers to show themselves simply because a plane was flying low overhead is beyond my understanding but we mustn’t forget, he was desperate. After two days, Lindbergh admitted he had been fooled. At least he was an honest fool by admitting that he had been fooled.

On May 12, 1932, forty-three days after the kidnapping, delivery truck driver, William Allen pulled his truck to the side of a road about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) from the Lindbergh home. He went to a grove of trees to relieve himself and there he discovered the corpse of a baby. Allen notified the police, who took the body to a morgue in nearby Trenton, New Jersey. The body was badly decomposed. A medical examination showed that the baby had a massive fracture of the skull which was determined to be the cause of death. The left leg and both hands were missing and there were signs that the body had been chewed on by various animals as well as indications that someone had made an attempt to hastily bury the body. Lindbergh and Gow quickly identified the baby as his missing infant based on the overlapping toes of the right foot and the shirt that Gow had made for the baby. Mr. Lindbergh was insistent on having the body cremated immediately afterwards.

Did Lindbergh really believe that his son was the one in the morgue? I doubt it. He was so distracted by a political offer he had to refuse and he was still in a state of grief from the kidnapping of his baby.

As the year of 1932 dawned, the Republican Party leaders, despairing of re-electing Herbert Hoover, had made overtures to Charles Lindbergh to accept the Republican nomination. In fact, his father-in-law, Dwight Morrow, one of the Republican party leaders in New Jersey, had suggested to Lindbergh that he should seek the nomination, but he had refused.

When Lindbergh was notified that the baby’s body was in the morgue, he walked in, hastily glanced at it, and turned away. "Yes," he said, "that is my son." In fact, he did this solely to spare his wife further grief over the missing baby by having her looking at her child’s body. Strangely enough, body shown to him was two inches taller than the Lindbergh baby, and completely decomposed, so that no identification was possible. The Lindbergh doctor, who had examined the baby a few days before the kidnapping, Dr. Phillip Van Ingen, declared there was no way he could identify the body of the baby that was in the morgue.

Once the U.S. Congress learned that the baby was dead, the crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the ‘Lindbergh Law’, that made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime. The Bureau of Investigations could now aid the case more directly.

In June 1932, officials began to suspect an ‘inside job’ in that someone the Lindbergh’s trusted may have betrayed the family. Suspicions fell upon Violet Sharp, by then a British household servant in the Morrow household in New York. Anne Lindbergh had previously called the Morrow household to ask for Betty Gow (an employee of the Lindberghs) to return to Hopewell because the baby had a cold. Somehow Sharp’s name came into the picture.

The police had put her down as a suspect. Why, I don’t know. In any case, she had given contradictory testimony regarding her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping. It was reported that she acted nervous and suspicious when questioned. She committed suicide on June 20, 1932 by ingesting a silver polish that contained potassium cyanide just prior to what would have been her fourth time being questioned. After her alibi was confirmed, it was later determined that she committed suicide because of the possible threat of losing her job in the Morrow house and the intense questioning she had been subjected to. At the time the police investigators were criticized for what some felt were the ‘heavy handed’ police tactics used on her. Has anything changed in police questioning of suspects since then? Not much.

The tin can of potassium cyanide was found nearby her body. There was no record of its purchase by anyone in the household, and it could not be traced to any store in New Jersey. No one had ever seen it or knew what it was used for. Schwartzkopf’s police promptly ruled the death a ‘suicide’, and they made no attempt to trace the cyanide, after deciding that Violet Sharp herself had brought it there. It was later suggested that she was the only person in the household who could identify the kidnappers, and for this reason, there is little doubt that she was murdered by the kidnappers and that Schwartzkopf’s police were guilty of collusion in covering up the murder.

Let me tell you something about potassium cyanide. When ingested, even is a minute quantity, death is sure to follow. Death doesn’t come instantaneously however. It can take as much as twenty minutes for someone to die. When I was invited by government officials to visit the San Quentin state prison in California in 1972, I also sat in the gas chamber in that prison and when I talked about the method of execution in that state, the deputy warden told me that some of the condemned writhed in agony for many minutes before they finally died. The executioner used hydrocyanic acid (prussic acid) which has the same effect on the human body as potassium cyanide.

Violet Sharpe may have committed suicide using that poison but if she did, it was a horrible way to die because death comes about by slow suffocation. There is no record of an autopsy being conducted on her body. She could have died if she used her bare fingers when using the silver polish to polish the silver. It would take longer for her to die but die she would. As an interesting aside, when I was thirteen-years-old, I had a chemistry set and in that chemistry set was a vial of potassium cyanide. It is good thing that I stop sucking my thumb when I did.

After the discovery of the Lindbergh's son's body, John Condon remained unofficially involved in the case. To the public he had become a suspect and in some circles, he was vilified. For the next two years, he visited police departments and pledged to find ‘Cemetery John’. During this time, Condon would frequently take a rowboat out into Long Island Sound to have so-called secret meetings with informants. I am wondering if the man was missing too many brain cells by then.

Condon's actions regarding the case were becoming increasingly flamboyant. On one occasion, while riding a city bus, he saw a suspect and announcing his up to then, secret identity, ordered the bus to a stop. The startled driver complied, and Condon darted from the bus, though Condon's target eluded him. Another time he dressed as a woman for his clandestine activities, with a collar pulled up to hide his handlebar mustache. Tiring of Condon's interference, the police threatened to charge him as an accomplice to the crime. John Condon's actions were also criticized as exploitative when he agreed to appear in a vaudeville act regarding the kidnapping. Liberty magazine published a serialized account of John Condon's involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping under the title ‘Jafsie Tells All’.

Following the death of Violet Sharp, John Condon was questioned by police. Condon's home was searched as well but nothing was found that tied Condon to the crime. Charles Lindbergh stood by Condon all during this time as well.

Investigation of the case was soon in the doldrums. There were no developments and little evidence of any sort, so police turned their attention to tracking down the ransom payments. A pamphlet was prepared with the serial numbers on the ransom bills and 250,000 copies were distributed to businesses mainly in New York City. A few of the ransom bills turned up in scattered locations, some as far away as Chicago and Minneapolis, but the people spending them were never found. It would have been impossible to track down the kidnappers this way since the bills could have changed hands many times over the years.

As per Executive Order 6102 issued by the president of the United States, gold certificates were to be turned in by May 1, 1933 and exchanged for the regular currency. Although President Roosevelt had issued his executive order on April 5, 1933, calling for all gold certificates to be turned in by May 1, 1933, under the penalty of fine or imprisonment, some members of the public held on to them past the deadline. As of July 31, 1934 as much as $161 million in gold certificates were still in general circulation.

A few days before the deadline, a man in Manhattan brought in $2,990 of the ransom money to be exchanged. The bank was busy and no-one could remember anything specific about the person. He had filled out a required form which gave his name as J. J. Faulkner. The address supplied was 537 West 159th Street in New York City.

When authorities visited the address, they learned no one named Faulkner had lived there — or anywhere nearby — for many years. U.S. Treasury officials kept looking, and eventually learned that a woman named Jane Faulkner had lived at the address in question in 1913. She had moved after she married a German man named Geissler. The couple was tracked down, and both denied any involvement in the crime.

Mr. Geissler had two children from his first marriage. Though neither could be conclusively tied to the kidnapping, there were some curious facts which led authorities to suspect their involvement: Geissler's son worked as a florist and lived about one block from Condon, while Geissler's daughter had married a German gardener. Condon again figured in the investigation because after hearing the three men from the Geissler family speak, Condon declared that Geissler's son-in-law, the gardener, had a voice very similar to ‘John’, the man he had met in the cemeteries. The police followed up on this lead, but the gardener had previously killed himself. The investigation in this direction ended just as abruptly as Geissler's son-in-law’s life did.

After an investigation that lasted more than two years, the police got their first real break or so they believed. A male motorist was buying some gasoline for his car and he paid the attendant with a $20.00 gold note. As fate would have it, the attendant thought it strange that anyone was still using their gold notes as money anymore however he nevertheless accepted it as payment but he also wrote down the licence plate number of Hauptmann’s car on the note.

For thirty months, New York Police Detective, James J. Finn and FBI Agent Thomas Sisk had been working on the Lindbergh case. They had been able to track down many bills from the ransom money that were being spent in places throughout New York City. A map Detective Finn had created recorded each find and eventually showed that many of the bills were being passed mainly along the route of the Lexington Avenue subway. This subway line connected the East Bronx with the east side of Manhattan including the German-Austrian neighborhood of Yorkville.

On September 18, 1934 a gold certificate from the ransom money was referred to Detective Finn and Agent Sisk. The ten dollar gold certificate was discovered by a teller of the Corn Exchange Bank of the Bronx. It had a New York license plate penciled in the margin which helped the investigators trace the bill to the gas station in upper Manhattan that the motorist had purchased gas from. The station manager, Walter Lyle, had written down the license plate number as per company policy feeling that his customer was acting suspicious and was possibly a counterfeiter.

It was found that the license plate number belonged to a blue Dodge sedan owned by Bruno Richard Hauptmann of 1279 East 222nd Street in the Bronx. It was also learned that Hauptmann was a German immigrant with a criminal record in his homeland. When Hauptmann was arrested, he had on his person a twenty dollar gold certificate. A search by police of Hauptmann's home found $1,830 of the ransom money hidden behind a board. During the police investigation, the garage that Hauptmann built was torn down during the search for the money. Another $11,930 was found in an empty can near a window in the garage.

Hauptmann was arrested by Finn and interrogated as well as beaten at least once throughout the day and night that followed. The money, Hauptmann stated, along with other items, had been left with him by a friend and former business partner named Isidor Fisch. Fisch had died on March 29, 1934, shortly after returning to Germany. Only following Fisch's death, Hauptmann stated, did he learn that the shoe box left with him contained a considerable sum of money. He took the money because he claimed that it was owed to him from a business deal that he and Isidor Fisch had made. Hauptmann consistently denied any connection to the crime or knowledge that the money in his house was from the Lindbergh ransom.

In the search of his apartment by the police, a considerable amount of additional evidence that he was involved in the crime surfaced. One item was a notebook that contained a sketch for the construction of a collapsible ladder similar to that which was found at the Lindbergh home in March 1932. John Condon's phone number, along with his address, were discovered written down on a closet wall in the house. A key linking piece of evidence, a piece of wood, was discovered in the attic of the home. After being examined by an expert it was determined to be an exact match to the wood used in the construction of the ladder found at the scene of the crime. This particular wood was also traced back to the saw mill where the lumber was processed in South Carolina.

Hauptmann was indicted in the Bronx on September 24, 1934 for extorting the $50,000 ransom from Charles Lindbergh. Remember that $50,000 was given to ‘John’ in the cemetery.

Two weeks later, on October 8, 1934, Hauptmann was indicted in New Jersey for the murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. Two days later he was surrendered to New Jersey authorities by New York Governor Herbert H. Lehman to face charges directly related to the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh’s son. Hauptmann was then moved to the Hunterdon County Jail in Flemington, New Jersey on October 19, 1934.
His trial was held from January 2, 1935 to February 13, 1935. It truly was the trial of the century at that time. Of course far more interesting trials many years later were held but in 1935, this was truly a very big thing in the annals of criminal trials. Newspaper writer H.L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial "the biggest story since the Resurrection." Held at the Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, the trial soon became a sensation: reporters swarmed the town, and every hotel room was booked.

In exchange for rights to publish Hauptmann's story in their paper, Edward J. Reilly was hired by the Daily Mirror to serve as Hauptmann's attorney. Two other lawyers, Lloyd Fisher and Frederick Pope, were co-counselors. David T. Wilentz, Attorney General of New Jersey, led the prosecution.

In addition to Hauptmann's possession of the ransom money, the State introduced evidence showing a striking similarity between Hauptmann's handwriting and the handwriting on the ransom notes.

Based on the forensic work of Arthur Koehler at the Forest Products Laboratory, the State also introduced photographic evidence demonstrating that the wood from the ladder left at the crime scene matched a plank from the floor of Hauptmann's attic: the type of wood, the direction of tree growth, the milling pattern at the factory, the inside and outside surface of the wood, and the grain on both sides were identical, and two oddly placed nail holes lined up with a joist splice in Hauptmann's attic. Additionally, the prosecutors noted that Condon's address and telephone number had been found written in pencil on a closet door in Hauptmann's home. Hauptmann himself admitted in a police interview that he had written Condon's address on the closet door: "I must have read it in the paper about the story. I was a little bit interested and keep a little bit record of it, and maybe I was just on the closet, and was reading the paper and put it down the address." When asked about Condon's telephone number and address written on his closet wall, he could respond only, "I can't give you any explanation about the telephone number."

I remember once on one occasion when I was working full time as an investigator, I had been retained to locate someone and while I was interviewing the parents of the missing person (they claimed that they didn’t know where he was living) I copied down the phone numbers written on the wall next to their phone. Later I traced the numbers and found the person I had been retained to find.

The defense did not challenge the identification of the body, a common practice in murder cases at the time designed to avoid exposing the jury to an intense analysis of the body and its condition. I don’t see how challenging the identification of the body would have assisted the defence. Lindbergh had previously identified it and his word would have precedence over anyone else’s word. Even if the jury doubted that Hauptmann had killed the baby, he would still be faced with defending himself from the charge of kidnapping. Conviction on either one of the charges he was facing could earn him the death penalty.

Condon and Lindbergh both testified that Hauptmann was ‘John’ since they recognized his voice. Another witness, Amandus Hockmuth, testified that he saw Hauptmann near the scene of the crime.

The prosecutor’s evidence was certainly compelling however, it was now the defence’s turn at bat. Despite the fact that Hauptmann's trial lawyers were ineffectively representing him; the lead lawyer being an alcoholic, some interesting facts came out as presented by the defence.

Erastus Mead Hudson was a fingerprint expert who knew the then-rare silver nitrate process of collecting fingerprints off wood and other surfaces on which the previous powder method could not detect fingerprints. He found that Hauptmann's fingerprints were not on the wood, even in places that the man who made the ladder would have to have touched. Upon reporting this to a police officer and stating that they must look further, the officer said "Good God, don't tell us that, Doctor!". The ladder was then washed of all fingerprints, and Colonel Schwarzkopt refused to make it public that Hauptmann's prints were not on the ladder.

We all know that the reliability of witnesses and the physical evidence presented at trials are often suspect.

There are many innocent people in America who are framed and railroaded for crimes that they never committed. Bruno Hauptman was one such victim. Hauptman was executed for a murder he never committed because a corrupt New Jersey Attorney General, in league with a corrupt the local police department and a corrupt Superintendent of the New Jersey State Police needed a patsy to cover for the real kidnappers of the Lindbergh baby and Bruno Hauptman fit the bill perfectly.

It has been alleged that Lindbergh's maid, Violet Sharpe, had to be permanently silenced because she had been working in cahoots with the real kidnappers and could spill the beans, so she was conveniently found dead in the Morrow household about 3 months after the kidnapping.

The New Jersey State Police, headed by the father of the 1991 Iraq invasion, General H. Norman Schwartzkopf, declared the woman's death a ‘suicide’. New Jersey politicians and police had a well deserved reputation for being in bed with the mob in those days so it made anything said by them become highly suspect.

An incorruptible former chief of detectives from Burlington, New Jersey, Ellis Parker however realized that Hauptman was being framed and he claimed that he had discovered the real kidnappers. He even obtained a signed confession, but he and his son, were themselves railroaded into prison for 'kidnapping' the real Lindbergh kidnapper by the same corrupt gang who had railroaded Hauptman. Ellis Parker was conveniently 'suicided' in prison just days before he was to receive a presidential pardon from President Roosevelt.

Why did Charles Lindbergh perjure himself to send an innocent man to the electric chair ? He was not as pure as people wanted to believe at that time. He tried to pressure President Roosevelt and Congress to stay out of the war. Some even accused him of being anti-Semitic. We must not forget that Charles Lindbergh even went out of his way to meet Adolf Hitler prior to the United States entry in the war.
Why did ‘Editor and Publisher’, the house organ of the journalism industry, note on the Hauptmann trial, "No trial in this century has so degraded the administration of justice?"

These questions are raised, but not answered by a painstaking examination of the Lindbergh kidnapping in "Scapegoat" by Anthony Scaduto. Published years ago, it proves that Hauptmann was innocent and that he was convicted solely by suborned perjury from the prosecutor, David Wilentz. As proof of his allegation, Scaduto found the paybook of Reliance Property Management and photographed the page showing that Hauptmann was working in New York on March 1, 1932, when the baby was kidnapped. Wilentz not only hid the paybook in police files where it remained for forty years, but he even got the timekeeper to testify in sworn testimony that Hauptmann had not been hired until March 15th. If believed, and it was, that would mean that Hauptman was fee to go to New Jersey and kidnap the baby.

There have been a great many stories of prosecutors acting in a dishonest manner that has resulted in innocent persons going to prison. I was at the mercy of one such prosecutor many years ago when I was facing a charge of assault with a weapon.
I had previously served a multi-million dollar claim on a woman in Toronto with respect to an automobile accident. Her husband then followed me as I headed towards the inside entrance to the apartment building they lived in. He crept up behind me and then grabbed me by my neck and tried to drag me back to their apartment. I managed to turn around and I hit him in his face as hard as I could with my closed fist. He immediately dropped to the floor, unconscious.

A month later, a cop investigated his complaint and I was arrested and charged with assault with a weapon. The so-called weapon was a 14-inch flashlight he found in my car. When my case came to trial, the prosecutor spoke to my lawyer and offered to reduce the charge to simple assault if I was willing to plead guilty to simple assault. She made that offer after talking to the man I knocked out and his wife and adult daughter who all told her that they never saw anything in my hands at all when I knocked the man out. They even testified to that effect at my trial which resulted in the charge being dismissed.

It is good thing I didn’t have a double-bladed axe in my car. No doubt the stupid cop would have claimed I hit the man with the axe. The detective didn't even contact the eyewitness who could have testified that when I entered the building, I only had a court document with me. The prosecutor didn’t adhere to the premise that it is not the prosecutor’s job to convict but rather it was her job to present the facts to the court. Only the judges or juries have the role of convicting accused persons.

Prosecutor Wilentz had an eighty-seven-year-old New Jersey neighbor of the Lindberghs, Amandus Hochmuth, who testified that at one p.m. on the day of the kidnapping, Richard Hauptmann drove up to him, told him his name and said he was looking for property in the area. Yet Social Security records showed that Hochmuth was legally blind from cataracts and was also senile. At the time of Hochmuth’s testimony, Wilentz was concealing the Reliance paybook which proved that at the very hour that Hochmuth claimed Hauptmann was conversing with him outside the Lindbergh home, he was actually working in New York.

When J. Edgar Hoover learned that the prosecutor Wilentz was manufacturing evidence and preparing a horde of perjured witnesses to testify in the Hauptmann trial, he hastily withdrew the cooperation of the FBI in the prosecution. Foreseeing a complete debacle, he remarked to his associate, Clyde Tolson, "Goddamit, I don’t know if Hauptmann is going to jail, but I’m sure Wilentz will."

Wilentz and Schwartzkopf never presented a single legitimate clue in the case. Instead, they manufactured an impressive array of completely false evidence. Persons of known mental instability were introduced into the case, so that whatever facts discovered would have to be later discounted as being from an unreliable source. An atmosphere of complete confusion was cultivated by the officials and by the press, until it was impossible to discern any facts in the smokescreen which had been raised. The officials, both police and prosecutorial had but one mission, and that was to destroy the real evidence and to convict the man they had on trial.

Governor Hoffman of New Jersey later wrote in Liberty Magazine that J. Edgar Hoover informed him that he and the FBI had formally withdrawn from the case on October 10, 1934. This was three weeks after Hauptmann’s arrest, when Hoover’s agents reported to him that Wilentz and his chief co-conspirator, Col. H. Norman Schwartzkopf, head of the New Jersey State Police (Schwartzkopf means ‘blackhead’ in German; were concocting a completely phony case against Hauptmann. Despite Hoover’s hunger for publicity, he was forced to sit on the sidelines throughout the most famous trial in American history. However, the FBI tour in Washington ever since has included a lengthy discussion of the Hauptmann case, with great emphasis on the role played by the FBI agents in the locating and arrest of Hauptmann. Actually, the arresting force included one FBI agent and nine New York and Jersey policemen. Of course the tour guides never inform the gaping public that Hoover refused to participate in the trial because all of the evidence presented by Wilentz, (with the exception of the ransom money) was completely phony.

It becomes the task of this writer to answer the questions raised by the Scaduto book. Why did the world’s most famous hero, Charles Lindbergh, cooperate with the murderers of his baby and perjure himself to send an innocent victim to death ? He was putty in the hands of the Wilentz, who quickly converted him into a robot-like witness repeating only what he had been told to say. The facts are a matter of record.

On the night of April 2, 1932, Lindbergh had accompanied his go-between, Dr. Condon, known as ‘Jafsie’, to St. Raymond’s Cemetery in New York for the payment of the $50,000 ransom. Lindbergh had remained in the car while Dr. Condon carried the ransom money into the cemetery. He was unable to see the kidnapper, who finally whispered to Condon, "Hey Doctor." This hoarse whisper, some three hundred feet from Lindbergh in the closed car, could hardly be heard by him. In fact, he previously testified at the Bronx grand jury indictment of Hauptmann that he positively could not identify Hauptmann’s voice, These grand jury files remained sealed for more than forty years, until Scaduto obtained access to them.

Nowadays, discovery of that hidden information would have been grounds for a new trial but in those days, it would have been impossible for the defence to have access to that information unless the prosecutor was willing to disclose them, which Wilentz was not prepared to do because of his dishonesty.

During the Hauptmann trial in New Jersey, Wilentz became fearful that the parade of perjured witnesses he and Schwartzkopf had suborned, as well as the clumsily manufactured evidence against Hauptmann, was having little effect on the jury. In fact, the testimony of senile witnesses like Hochmuth was prejudicing them in Hauptmann’s favor. One of his star witnesses was Albert Osborn, the famed handwriting expert, who positively identified Hauptmann as the man who wrote the ransom notes. It was this same outfit of Osborn and Osborn which much later positively identified Clifford Irving’s forgeries of Howard Hughes’ handwriting as being "unquestionably genuine", thus enabling Irving to defraud his publisher of $300,000.

To understand Wilentz’ predicament, we should realize that he was a typical loudmouth. Although he was prosecuting the most publicized case in American history, Wilentz had never before tried a criminal case of this magnitude. He had not been elected to the office of Attorney General of the State of New Jersey, but had been appointed by Gov. Harry Moore as a political payoff after he had persuaded a number of voters to switch their votes.

He was told that if he could get a conviction against Hauptmann, he would become a Governor of New Jersey, and perhaps follow Woodrow Wilson’s example in moving from that office into the White House. Since he had nothing to connect Hauptmann with the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby but the possession of the ransom bills, he enlisted Schwartzkopf, of the state police in manufacturing a phony ladder and other evidence, and rounding up a group of perjured witnesses who would place Hauptmann at the scene of the crime. Because more than a dozen persons were involved in Wilentz’ conspiracy, it was inevitable that J. Edgar Hoover and other officials would be warned of what Wilentz was doing.

Traditionally, a state attorney general would remain in the state capitol, and would select a prosecutor who would personally report to him on the developments in the case. All of the hundreds of reporters at the trial unquestionably accepted the belief that ‘political ambition’ was the sole reason for Wilentz’ unusual behavior. He didn’t want an underling to get all the credit and subsequent fame.

Seeing that the case was going against him, with the possibility that Hauptmann would be freed and that investigators might then discover the true murderers, Wilentz was forced to play his last card. He had a hurried conference with Lindbergh in his office. It is alleged that the conversation went like this;

"Mistuh Lintbug," he said hoarsely (a New York University graduate, Wilentz usually was well spoken except when agitated) this monster is going to be set free unless," He turned away from Lindbergh and suddenly whirled back towards him, his outstretched forefinger almost poking Lindbergh in the eye, "unless you go out there and tell the jury that Hauptmann’s voice is the man you heard in the cemetery."

"But I can’t do that," protested Lindbergh. "You know I’ve already testified before the grand jury that I can’t identify Hauptmann’s voice."

"That doesn’t matter," Wilentz reassured him. "Those grand jury records are sealed. No one will ever see them. Besides, Reilly (Hauptmann’s lawyer) doesn’t know about it."

"It doesn’t seem right, somehow," said Lindbergh.

"You know that this man murdered your baby," said Wilentz. "I know it. But that jury still doesn’t believe it. You’re the only one who can convince them. You must decide now. Is this man going to pay the penalty for his crime, or not?"

Lindbergh agreed. Coached by Wilentz, he returned to the courtroom, and testified, "I heard very clearly a voice coming from the cemetery in a foreign accent, ‘Hey Doctor,’ That was Hauptmann’s voice."

Reporters in the courtroom noted that as Lindbergh spoke, the wife of the accused, Anna Hauptmann, stared directly at him as her lips moved to form the words, "You lie." She knew because her husband was with her all that night.

Adela Rogers St. John who was one of William Randolph Hearst’s writers in his newspaper, wrote that afternoon, "Watching Lindbergh today in this ordeal I cannot believe he would swear away the life of any man unless he was sure. Automatically, I looked at the jury, even before I looked at Hauptmann. Yes."

Adela Rogers St. John knew that Lindbergh had just condemned Hauptmann to death. She did not know that he had previously testified the opposite to the grand jury, or that he had been suborned to commit perjury by Wilentz, as had so many other witnesses in this case. However, her unusual credentials should have told her something was wrong. The daughter of a brilliant attorney named Earl Rogers, she had grown up in the courtroom, and was famous for her instincts as to whether a witness was telling the truth, and how a jury would vote. Most importantly here, she did not say that she believed Lindbergh’s testimony. She said the jury believed it, which they did.

Wilentz had achieved one vital goal; he had turned the trial into a circus. Hundreds of reporters and thousands of spectators had swarmed into the little town of Flemington, New Jersey, and tried to batter their way into the Hunterdon County Courthouse.

Wilentz’ opponent in the case, Ed Reilly, had from the beginning played Wilentz’ game. Inexplicable at the time, it now seems to have been no accident. Big Ed Reilly, known as the Bull of Brooklyn, had defended more than two thousand clients, most of them accused of murder. Many of them were mobsters, for whom he won acquittals, earning fabulous fees in the process. Now fifty-two years old, he looked sixty-five. Red-faced, with a tremendous paunch and thinning hair, he had been an alcoholic for years. He had spent several million dollars in high living, and was paying alimony to four wives. He was nearly bankrupt, and his law practice had dropped alarmingly. Yet this was the man whom an unusually generous William Randolph Hearst had hired to defend the penniless Hauptmann, for a fee of $300,000. (Many millions of dollars in today’s money)

It was well known that Hearst wanted a conviction. He was haunted by the fear that one of his babies would be kidnapped, with a probable demand for a million dollar ransom, which he would have difficulty in paying. He had already relinquished control of the Hearst newspapers to Richard Berlin.

Thus he had a common bond with Wilentz in seeing Hauptmann convicted. This meant that Reilly’s lackluster conduct of the case was due to more than his failing memory and his alcoholic-blurred speech. Reilly had refused to cross examine Hochmuth about his 87-year-old memory or his loss of eyesight. He was referred to as ‘the Bull of Brooklyn’, a man who could tear any witness’s testimony to shreds with a few sardonic thrusts, yet not a single prosecution witness was attacked by this so-called ‘Bull of Brooklyn’.

Hearst himself had abandoned his wife and children to live with a cheap showgirl. As a result, he was no longer received in polite society and he was reduced inviting actors of the silver screen to his palace of San Simeon. His granddaughter, Patty Hearst, ironically enough became the nation’s second most famous kidnap victim. After some period of time of intimacies with her captors, she lost all desire to return to a normal life until much later after she was apprehended for participating in a bank robbery.

Although Hauptmann knew that all of Wilentz’ witnesses were perjuring themselves, including Lindbergh, he never had an inkling that he had been set up with Reilly as his attorney. The $300,000 fee given to his attorney proved to be a profitable investment for Hearst, as his accountants later found that the additional revenues generated by the coverage of the trial totalled more than eight million dollars.
Although Hauptmann’s entire defense consisted of his story that he had legitimately acquired the ransom money, not knowing this was the result of a crime, Reilly did nothing to develop witnesses or evidence which would corroborate this story. He should have gone to Hauptmann’s employer and get him to testify (along with other employees) that Hauptman was working in New York at the same time that Amandus Hochmuth claimed he seen him at 1:00 pm in New Jersey.

Forty years later, Scaduto was able to find reams of evidence corroborating every detail of Hauptmann’s claims that he had for several years been a partner with German citizen named Isidor Fisch, buying, trading and selling furs and other commodities in a small way with their very limited capital. He had no idea that Fisch was a notorious confidence man. One of Fisch’s coups had been to take Al Capone for twenty thousand dollars, but instead of winding up in the bay, he had slick-talked Capone until the criminal kingpin had laughed and said, "Oh, hell, forget it." On December 6, 1933, Fisch owed Hauptmann more than five thousand dollars. On that day, he sailed to Germany. Before he left, he assured Hauptmann that he had no cause to worry about the debt. In any case, he wanted to leave a box of his effects with Hauptmann. This box contained part of the ransom money. Hauptmann put it away without examining it. In March of 1934, Fisch was reported to have died of tuberculosis in a Leipzig hospital, although this is a disease which usually takes many months even years to develop. In any case, the report was a fake. Hauptmann was never informed of it. Fisch survived the Second World War and emigrated to Israel, where he died in a kibbutz in 1969.

When Fisch did not return, Hauptmann opened the box. He saw the ransom money. Not knowing that Fisch had set him up, he began to spend part of it, offsetting the $5,500 Fisch owed him. However, he did keep meticulous notes of money taken from the box, indicating that he expected Fisch to return for an accounting.

Throughout the trial, the news media conditioned the American people to accept as a fact, Hauptmann’s guilt. Newsboys screamed on the street corners of the nation. "Burn Hauptmann". One reporter, Eddie Mahar, persistently described Hauptmann in his daily stories as "the Nazi monster", even though he knew that Hauptmann had no connection with any political groups in either Germany or the United States.
Convinced by Lindbergh’s testimony, the jury brought in a unanimous verdict of "Guilty". Hauptmann was immediately sentenced to die in the electric chair.

Nowadays, a sentencing hearing is scheduled but in that era, that never happened.
After Hauptmann was sentenced, there began a desperate struggle to save his life. At their own expense, and with no personal involvement in the case, various people sought only to work for justice. One of these men was Ellis Parker, former chief of detectives of Burlington, New Jersey, and considered one of the most brilliant and incorruptible detectives in America. Having known Lindbergh’s father-in-law, Dwight Morrow, for some years, he went to Morrow and told him how Wilentz had faked the evidence. He asked only that Morrow persuade Lindbergh to ask for a commuted sentence to life imprisonment while he gathered evidence on the real killers. Morrow’s health was failing rapidly, as he had been overcome by the horrible death of his grandson and the resulting publicity. Nevertheless, in June of 1935, he summoned Lindbergh for a confidential talk.

"Charles," he said, "you must ask the Governor to commute Hauptmann’s sentence, at least for the time being."

"Never," replied Lindbergh, "he must pay the full penalty for his crime." "I didn’t want to tell you this," said Morrow, "but Hauptmann is innocent." "I heard the evidence against him," said Lindbergh.

"It was all faked," said Dwight Morrow. "I know that from an unimpeachable source."

"But the money!" exclaimed Lindbergh.

"The money was real," said Dwight Morrow, "but Hauptmann was set up. Can’t you understand ? He wasn’t the man in the cemetery."

"But I identified him," said Lindbergh.

"Any lawyer knows your testimony was worthless," said Dwight Morrow. "Reilly should have invoked the doctrine of familiarity. In a capital crime, you can’t identify a voice you have heard on only one occasion. Yet Reilly didn’t challenge your testimony. Do you know why ?"

"No," said Lindbergh.

"I do," said Dwight Morrow. "He was paid to see that Hauptmann would be convicted. Any competent attorney would have had your testimony stricken, and the jury would have been told to disregard it."

"Even if that’s true," said Lindbergh, "I can’t take back my testimony."
"You don’t have to," said Dwight Morrow. "Just ask for a commutation of the death penalty. I’ve never asked you for anything, Charles, but I must ask you, in the name of Heaven, to do this. I don’t have much time left, and I don’t want to see another death added to those of young Charles and Violet Sharpe. Call the Governor today."

"I won’t do it," exclaimed Lindbergh. "Why, I’d look like a fool !"

"Please," said Dwight Morrow, half rising from his bed.

"Never!" exclaimed Lindbergh.

Dwight Morrow fell back in complete collapse and died. Lindbergh never mentioned this conversation to his wife, claiming that his father-in-law died without speaking.
Ellis Parker now enlisted the aid of the newly elected Governor of New Jersey, Harold Hoffman. When he was shown the evidence of Wilentz’ perfidy, Hoffman began a frenetic campaign to have Hauptmann freed. Schwartzkopf and Wilentz blocked every move he made. J. Edgar Hoover admitted to him that he had withdrawn from the case, but refused to let Hoffman use the FBI files which showed that the evidence against Hauptmann had been faked by the New Jersey State Police. The press launched a nationwide campaign of ridicule against him. The condemned man wrote a despairing letter which was printed in Liberty Magazine. Hauptmann said of those who had framed him, "their suffering, their agony, will be greater than mine. Mine will be over in a moment. Theirs will last as long as life itself." He was right on that point.
To the end, the press, showing its consistent bias, referred to him as "Bruno" Hauptmann. Although his first name was Bruno, he had never liked it, and had been known as Richard Hauptmann throughout his stay in America. The press seized upon Bruno because of its overtones of ‘brute’ and "’brutal’, as another instrument to whip up anti-German sentiment.

On April 3, 1936 (aged 36) Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair at the prison in Trenton, New Jersey.

In those days, the condemned would be conscious for a brief moment once the electricity was applied to him. That is because the executioner (usually an electrician) had to turn a wheel (the size of a steering wheel in a car) from zero to 2,000 volts and it would take at least a couple of seconds to complete the turn as the voltage was gradually increased. Back in the early eighties, I was invited by the Florida government to visit that states’ penitentiary and during that visit, I sat in the electric chair and discussed the method of execution in that state. I was shown the controls where the executioner stood. All he had to do was push a button and the controls took over immediately. The first thing the condemned received, was an instant jolt of 2000 volts. It was enough to knock them right out and into a state of immediate oblivion.

Hauptmann went to his death reiterating his innocence. I believe that he was really innocent. If he was actually guilty of the murder of the baby, he would have jumped at the opportunity to save his life by accepting the government’s deal that if he said he was guilty, his life would be spared and then his sentence of death would be commuted to one of life in prison. Further, when he was offered a deal by the newspaper that if he told them how he committed the crime, his wife would receive $90,000, after discussing the offer with his wife, he decided and she concurred that an innocent man shouldn’t plead guilty to a crime he never committed. Do you have any idea how much $90,000 was in those days. It was millions of dollars in today’s money.

What happened after Hauptmann’s execution is most interesting.

Governor Hoffman told Wilentz that if he ever dared to run for public office, he would expose his handling of the Lindbergh trial. Wilentz settled down to practice corporation law; soon, he was earning five hundred thousand dollars a year. Much of his work consisted of handling business matters for the Mafia. He represented the Mafia leader Anthony Rosso in a series of multi-million dollar deals. Eventually, he had his revenge on Governor Hoffman. He and others reported Hoffman for income tax evasion. Hoffman had been wont to entertain groups of politicians and journalists at a night spot in Manhattan called The Pen and Pencil. Some of his tabs were picked up by an insurance agent who liked to be with celebrities.

Meanwhile, Ellis Parker apparently had located the real kidnapper of the Lindbergh baby, a man named Paul Wendel. Wendel had been Isidor Fisch’s lawyer, and had regularly dated Violet Sharpe. It was Wendel who set up the kidnapping. Wendel’s sister lived behind St. Raymond’s Cemetery. This was the reason this spot had been chosen for the delivery of the ransom money. Parker had Wendel sign a full confession. When he turned Wendel over to the police, Wendel immediately repudiated the confession and accused Parker of kidnapping him. Parker and his son were convicted under the new Lindbergh kidnapping law, and sent to Lewisburg prison. A few months later, Parker died in prison. His gallant effort to aid Hauptmann had cost him his life.

The insecurities Charles Lindbergh developed when his parents separated during his adolescence resulted in him overcompensating for this. He threw himself into the study of mechanics, and resolved to devote his life to flying. Soon he had his own plane. One of his first assignments was to fly his father around the state on a new campaign to regain his seat in Congress. His plane developed problems, but due to his great skill, he brought the plane down without injuring himself or his father. The crash put an end to his father’s hopes of a successful campaign, and he died a broken man. It was then that Divine Providence selected the young Lindbergh as the new champion of America. In this light, his incredible feat of flying alone across the Atlantic becomes more understandable. Handsome, shy and inarticulate, he had become a familiar figure at the nation’s airports, but no one would have thought of him as an international celebrity or as a national leader. Nevertheless, he found financial backers who put up the money for his flight across the ocean. As he prepared for his entry onto the world stage, everyone believed he was setting off on a suicidal mission. Nothing less can explain the hysterical outpouring of joy which greeted him when he landed at Le Bourget field. He had already been given up for dead, and for the rest of his life he would be known as "Lucky Lindy". Others nicknamed him the "Lone Eagle". Instantaneously, he became the most famous hero in the world. Because Movietime News filmed his takeoff, his flight also inaugurated the era of sound in films.
Lindbergh became moody and irritable, spurning the adulation of the American people.

His wife abetted his reaction by encouraging him to retreat into the pleasant and secluded lifestyle of the very rich.

Throughout their life together, Anne Lindbergh persisted in leading the lifestyle of a typical suburbanite, with a large staff to maintain her home while she wrote lightweight ‘philosophical’ books propounding a vaporous Junior League attitude towards the real problems of the world, from which she was comfortably insulated by her inherited fortune.

After the murder of his first-born son, Lindbergh never again considered public office, yet this atrocity should have given him the iron resolve to come to the rescue of his nation and to make such crimes impossible. He decided instead to further his goal of trying to convince Americans that they should stay out of the Second World War. During his January 23, 1941, testimony before The House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Lindbergh recommended the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Germany. He even went out of his way to meet Adolf Hitler and later praise him.

The Lindbergh murder was unusual in that the victim was from a rich and influential family, but pressing considerations were at stake in this case. Lindbergh himself was a member of no political group or organization, and stood entirely alone. The money belonged to his wife’s family. He had no official position or influence. The very modest ransom demand of $50,000 indicated that this was no ordinary kidnapping case, as the son of a world-famous hero and the grandson of a J.P. Morgan partner would have brought a demand for at least $100,000.

After the trial, the Lindberghs went to England to live. Anne Lindbergh complained that "the English don’t seem to like us." Only one person paid any attention to them, a pushy journalist named Harold Nicolson, who rented them a cottage for an exorbitant sum, and who hoped to make money from a book about Lindbergh. When they returned to the United States, Lindbergh made several public appearances, calling on the American people to repudiate Roosevelt’s campaign to get us into the Second World War. Because of his trips to Nazi Germany, combined with a belief in eugenics, Lindbergh was suspected of being a Nazi sympathizer. He abruptly halted his public appearances, and never again made a public speech, after he received a telephone call late one night.

"Mr. Lindbergh," said the caller, "you must cancel all of your public appearances immediately."

"Why should I do that ?" asked Lindbergh. "Who is this ?" "You will do it," said the caller, "because if you do not, we will kill your wife and babyren. There will be evidence that you did it in a fit of insanity, and you will spend the rest of your life in an institution."

"You’re insane," exclaimed Lindbergh.

"No, I’m not," said the caller, "but you will be, once we have you in an institution for three days. Don’t hang up, because we want to tell you this ... we killed your baby and we can kill the rest of your family whenever we wish. There will be eye witnesses to testify that you did it."

For several moments, Lindbergh was unable to speak. At last he said, "Then Dwight Morrow was right."

"Oh, he knew, did he ?" said the caller. "Good riddance. Now, listen to this. Anyone who dares to oppose us is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with extremely hostile impulses. If you make one more public speech, you will spend the rest of your life in a mental institution as a madman who slaughtered his family. You saw what we did to Hauptmann."

"I can’t listen to this," said Lindbergh. "Can we talk later ?"

"You only have to say yes or no," said the caller. "Say no and our plan goes into effect tonight. If you tell anyone what we said, you will be diagnosed as having extreme paranoia and will be given immediate treatments."

"All right," said Lindbergh, "I agree. I don’t believe anything you’ve said, but I can’t risk my family. I can’t take the chance."

"You don’t have a chance," said the caller. "And remember, if you think you can change your mind, we will always have someone near you who can carry out our plan."
The trial was a farce. Worse yet, it was a criminal farce. Ann innocent man had been convicted of a crime he hadn’t committed or even knew about at the time it was being committed.

When Roosevelt was informed that Lindbergh had capitulated, he tried to enlist him in his war against the Germans. He sent him an offer that he would be given the newly created post of Secretary for Air Lindbergh ignored the offer, and Roosevelt issued orders that he was never to be given any consideration of any kind.

After Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh supposed that Roosevelt would renew the offer, and make him Commander of the Air Force. He heard nothing for some weeks, and when he contacted the White House, he was rudely informed by an underling that orders had been issued that he was not to be allowed to serve in any capacity with any of the armed forces.

To the end of his life, Lindbergh never understood that those who do not seize the power when it is available spend the rest of their days at the mercy of those who do seize it. Trotsky found this out when he got an ice axe in his skull in the tropical climate of Mexico. Prevented from serving his country, Lindbergh persuaded Henry Ford to hire him as an aviation consultant. Roosevelt was furious, but could do nothing, as he needed the airplane production of Ford’s River Rouge plant. Lindbergh then went to the South Pacific theater as an ‘observer’. Still a civilian, he began to fly combat missions, engaging Japanese pilots in single-handed duels which he always won. Like boxing, combat flying is a young man’s game, with everything depending on the quickness of one’s reflexes, yet Lindbergh shot down men half his age. Perhaps he sought death in those Pacific skies, as relief from the recurring tragedies in his life. If this was the case, in every battle his superior skill came through, as he shot down the best pilots in the Japanese Air Force. Absolute censorship was imposed on his wartime exploits, and nothing was known of them for decades after the war.

In his later years, he dabbled in airline management, while his wife continued to publish her works on ‘philosophy’.

Lindbergh spent his final years on the Hawaiian island of Maui, where he died of lymphoma[99] on August 26, 1974. He was buried on the grounds of the Palapala Ho'omau Church in Kipahulu, Maui. His epitaph on a simple stone which quotes Psalms 139:9, and reads: "Charles A. Lindbergh, Born Michigan, 1902 Died Maui 1974".
From the time of her husband's arrest in 1934 and through the trial, his execution in 1936 and the years that followed, Anna Hauptmann had maintained the same thing: That on March 1, 1932, that "nasty and cold night" when 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from his parents' estate in East Amwell Township, her husband picked her up from the bakery where she worked and the two drove to their home in the Bronx, where they stayed through the night.

San Francisco lawyer Robert Bryan, who was helping Mrs. Hauptmann prove her husband’s innocence said he had accumulated evidence over the years that shows that Hauptmann was totally innocent. Some of this evidence, he said, indicates that witnesses were pressured and threatened by the state into testifying against Hauptmann.

This spring Bryan again presented his case and sent information to Gov. Florio's office, which turned the matter over to the attorney general for review. He concluded that "That's like the fox guarding the chicken coop." He wanted Florio to meet personally with Mrs. Hauptmann and to proclaim that "the trial of the century was a miscarriage of justice. "John Shure, a spokesman for Florio, responded, "The attorney general is the chief law enforcement official the governor should look to for guidance on this."

Over the years, Bryan has tried several times on behalf of Mrs. Hauptmann to get Hauptmann's name cleared, and has filed several suits, including one charging wrongful death. All were dismissed.

Before leaving a hotel, Bryan pointed out to Mrs. Hauptmann some of the photographs in the alcove of the restaurant. For a brief moment she smiled, until she saw the picture of columnist Walter Winchell, who had campaigned before and during the trial for the conviction. Of her husband. She stiffened. "What a liar he was." she exclaimed.

Mrs. Hauptmann lived her final four years in New Holland, Pennsylvania which is about 40 miles west of Philadelphia, where she spent much of her life. She never remarried and she never forgot the man she called Richard. In his honor, she refused to say "liberty and justice for all" when she pledged allegiance to the American flag.

Anna Hauptmann's six-decade crusade ended quietly in a hospital in Lancaster, Pennsylvania where she died at the age of 95 on October 10, 1994, the 69th anniversary of her marriage to Bruno Hauptmann. She was cremated and her ashes were taken to the cemetery where her own family was buried.

The only person who came out ahead from this horrible mess with some evidence of success was Norman Schwartzkopf. About that time things were heating up in Europe, he had been active in the National Guard. When the National Guard mobilized for World War II, he was mobilized with them. He then returned to the Army on full-time duty. He finally retired from the Army in 1957 as a Major General.

To be executed for a crime you haven’t committed is truly one of the most horrific things that can happen to you. I made that observation in an international business magazine article I wrote and which my observation was quoted in the Canadian House of Commons during its debate on capital punishment in Canada in the 1970s. I can’t imagine what Hauptman was thinking during those final brief moments as he sat on the electric chair but I like to think that he believed that some day; he would be exonerated in the eyes of the public. I think his belief was a realistic one.

If there was ever a case that was proof that ‘capital punishment should be abolished and life in prison should be the alternative’, (a statement I said in a speech on capital punishment at a United Nations crime conference held in Caracas in 1980) the Hauptmann case is it. However, since his execution, there have been a great many persons who were on death row in the United States after he died who were later found innocent after their trials were over and as a result, they were set free.

Can a trial like the one Hauptmann had; happen again? I wish I could say no but unfortunately, I am not that naïve.