Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 26, 1992 TAG: 9201230195
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SAM BLACKMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
BRUNO HAUPTMANN - VILLAIN OR VICTIM?
The passage of 60 years has muted but not silenced the controversy over the kidnapping on March 1, 1932, of 20-month-old Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.Was Bruno Richard Hauptmann the kidnapper, and did he act alone?
A note, with many misspellings, left on the windowsill of the baby's nursery in the New Jersey mountainside home of his famous father, Charles A. Lindbergh, and his mother, Anne Spencer Morrow, demanded $50,000 for the return of the child. It was paid. The state said Hauptmann got the money. Hauptman's defense was that the money had been left to him for safekeeping by a friend who had since died.
The state contended the baby was killed in a fall when a crude ladder used in the kidnapping broke under the combined weight of Hauptmann and the baby.
Hauptmann, a 36-year-old German-born carpenter, was arrested Sept. 19, 1934, in the Bronx, N.Y., after he used a $10 ransom bill to pay for gas at a service station and police found $14,600 more in his garage. He died in the electric chair in the New Jersey state prison in Trenton on April 3, 1936.
Hauptmann's 93-year-old widow, Anna, one of the last surviving principals in the case, is trying again to clear his name. At a news conference a few months ago in Flemington, N.J., where the trial was held, she said, "My husband was never near the Lindbergh home. They killed an innocent man."
Her lawyer, Robert Bryan, who has represented her for years, said, "The trial of the century was probably the greatest fraud in the history of this country."
Anna Hauptmann testified that her husband called for her the night of March 1 at the Bronx bakery where she had worked since 1929. She said they "went home together about half past nine, quarter to 10" and stayed there.
On cross-examination, she was asked if she had not told a New York City police detective when Hauptmann was arrested "that you had no recollection of what happened March 1, 1932, . . . that you did not know whether your husband was with you or not."
There was some sparring between the prosecutor and the witness but no direct answer.
At her recent news conference, Anna Hauptmann asked that New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio declare her husband unfairly convicted. Florio's director of communications, Jon Shure, said later that Bryan "submitted some documents and they are being reviewed in the attorney general's office."
The controversy, seemingly endless, arose because the case against Hauptmann was based largely on circumstantial evidence.
The case has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court several times and been rejected. Hauptmann's widow has contended that her husband was the innocent victim of a conspiracy to conceal evidence. She sought monetary damages.
A few years ago a San Francisco Court of Historical Review and Appeals, an unofficial body that studies controversial cases, recommended that the case be reopened by New Jersey authorities, who say they support the verdict and saw no reason to do so.
Before leaving office 10 years ago, Gov. Brendan Byrne, ordered the 90,000 pages of Lindbergh files opened. But Byrne, a former judge, said: "The jury decision was a sound one, and justice was done."
After their honeymoon in 1929, Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh lived in rented rooms in an uptown New York hotel. When they decided to build a house, they chose a site in the Sourland Mountains near Hopewell, N.J., 60 miles from New York.
The fieldstone house was livable but not yet finished, and the Lindbergh family usually spent only weekends there.
The Lindbergh baby had a slight cold. That Tuesday, March 1, the weather was raw and windy, and so Anne decided it would be best to stay home. Lindbergh returned from New York.
The Hauptmann defense made much of the fact that the Lindberghs had decided to stay in Hopewell that night. How could a kidnapper have known? Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the state police (father of the general who led the coalition forces in the Persian Gulf War) and his staff questioned all servants in both the Lindbergh and Morrow households to determine if it could have been an inside job. One of the servants committed suicide, prompting the police to say it indicated "guilty knowledge of the crime." Others said she was "frightened to death."
Lindbergh, who was reading in a downstairs room, testified at Hauptmann's trial in January 1935 that he heard a strange noise that he said sounded "like the slats of an orange crate falling off a chair."
Nurse Betty Gow went to the second floor nursery about 10 p.m. and found the baby missing. Lindbergh ran to the nursery, saw the empty crib and said, "Anne, they have stolen our baby."
The note on the windowsill said:
"Dear Sir:
"Have 50000$ ready 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills after 2-4 days we will inform you where to deliver the mony we warn you for making anyding public or for notify the police the child is in gut care." The note said the "singature" for future letters would be two interlocking circles with three square holes.
Early on, there were many bizarre developments, fed by speculation that underworld figures had kidnapped the baby. Among them:
Gangster Al Capone, under an 11-year sentence for income tax evasion, offered a $10,000 reward for the baby's return. He told Arthur Brisbane, a Hearst columnist, that he would restore the child to the Lindberghs in return for his freedom. Lindbergh and law officials turned him down.
The Lindberghs announced they had authorized two minor underworld figures, Salvatore Spitale and Irving Bitz, to act as go-betweens with the kidnappers.
In Washington, Gaston Means, a private detective with a shady past, tried to interest well-known social figures, including Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the 44 1/2-carat Hope diamond, in the case. She gave Means $104,000 ($100,000 ransom, $4,000 expenses) on his promise he could return the baby alive.
Meantime, a 72-year-old Bronx educator, Dr. John F. Condon pondered what he could do. He wrote a letter to the Bronx Home News offering $1,000, in addition to the $50,000 ransom, asking the kidnappers to get in touch with him and promised never to reveal their names.
Surprisingly, he received a reply, saying, "handl inclosed letter personally to Mr. Lindbergh. It will explain everything." It went on to say if the press and police were "notifyed everything are cansell." And a final instruction: "after you get the money from Mr. Lindbergh put these words in The New York American: "Mony is redy."
Condon took the letter to Lindbergh at Hopewell. Lindbergh conferred with his friend and adviser, Henry Breckinridge. They were convinced the writer knew something because the signature seemed the same. And the interlocking symbol, which had never been printed in the newspapers, was on the letter. They authorized Condon to go ahead. There were several exchanges, and Condon received in the mail the baby's sleeping suit, as evidence he was dealing with the right people.
On the night of April 2, Condon and Lindbergh went to a Bronx cemetery, as instructed, where Condon handed $50,000 to a man who, from behind a hedge, called, "Hey doctor, over here."
Lindbergh, seated in a car nearby, was asked at Hauptmann's trial: "Have you heard that voice since?" He said he had: "It was the voice of Bruno Richard Hauptmann."
Condon was given this note: "the boy is on the Boad Nelly . . . You will find the Boad between Horseneck Bay and Gay Head near Elizabeth Island."
Lindbergh searched the waters off Cape Cod, the Virginia capes, Norfolk and South Jersey. He was returning from Norfolk on May 12 when he was notified the baby's body had been found in a shallow grave a few miles from his home.
The ransom money led to Hauptmann's arrest on Sept. 19, 1934. A few days earlier he gave Walter Lyle, a gas station attendant in the Bronx, a $10 gold certificate. Lyle wrote the car's license number on the bill.
After Hauptmann's arrest, police found $14,600 more of the ransom money in his garage. Hauptmann contended the money was left with him in a shoe box by Isodor Fisch, with whom he had a business partnership, when Fisch left for Germany where he had since died. Hauptmann said the money had been in a closet and untouched until he hit it with a broom. He said gold certificates fell out and he hid them in the garage.
Seven handwriting experts testified that Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes. That testimony, the ransom money in Hauptmann's possession and the ladder were among the main pieces of circumstantial evidence.
The ladder used in the kidnapping was crude. Hauptmann denied making it, saying, "I am a carpenter." Attorney General David Wilentz, the chief prosecutor, contended that the noise Lindbergh heard was that of the ladder breaking under the combined weight of Hauptmann and the child. A physician testified the baby died of a fractured skull.
A state witness, Arthur Koehler of the United States Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., testified that a ladder rail had been part of a floor board in Hauptmann's attic. He said he laid the board on a joist in the attic and found the nail holes in the board matched those in the joist.
Hauptmann was convicted and sentenced to die in the electric chair the week of Jan. 17, 1936.
But the bizarre events continued:
Hauptmann was granted a reprieve for 30 days by Gov. Harold Hoffman, who made a secret visit to Hauptmann in the death house. Hoffman issued a statement saying, "I share with hundreds of thousands of our people the doubt as to the value of the evidence that placed him in the Lindbergh nursery. I do doubt that this crime could have been committed by one man."
Evalyn Walsh McLean came back in the picture. She had lost faith in Gaston Means' ability to restore the child and had asked for the return of the $100,000. When the money was not returned, Means was arrested, tried and convicted and sentenced to 15 years in prison, where he died.
McLean wasn't sure the case had been solved with Hauptmann's conviction. She hired Samuel Leibowitz, a famous criminal lawyer, to pursue it. He visited Hauptmann three times in his cell and said he told Hauptmann he was certain the Court of Pardons would commute his sentence to life imprisonment if he "came clean." Leibowitz got nowhere. He told McLean "there was no question Hauptmann was guilty. I said the only way he could be saved from the chair was to name his accomplice or accomplices. I said I was convinced that he did not act alone."
In the meantime, the Supreme Court denied a last-minute request from Lloyd Fisher, who had replaced Reilly as chief defense counsel, to apply for a writ of habeas corpus. The New Jersey Court of Pardons denied clemency.
Fifty-five witnesses were in the execution chamber when Hauptmann, accompanied by two clergymen, entered at 8:41 p.m. Robert Elliott, the gray-haired executioner, spun a wheel three times. Six doctors applied stethoscopes. Then Dr. Howard Weisler, the prison physician, said: "This man is dead." It was 8:47 1/2 p.m.
Samuel G. Blackman was the Trenton, N.J., correspondent for The Associated\ Press during the 1930s and covered the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case from the\ night of March 1, 1932, through the execution of Bruno Hauptmann. Blackman\ retired as the AP's general news editor in 1969.
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