The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[OctavBotnar]

Thanks , seems plausible
Surprised distance was nearly 80 miles from Hauptmann house to Lindberghs

[RivkahChaya]

I don't think they had an "address," per se. People who lived on large properties were one house out in the middle of no other houses, and on a private drive, so the house didn't have a street number. That's why people gave their estates names, like "Highfields," in this case. The address would just be

Charles Lindbergh (or whomever)
Highfields
Hopewell, NJ

If the estate grew, and there were eventually a lot of out-buildings, they might start to number them, and name the branches of the main road-- that's how streets got names like "Tall Oak," back then.

I don't know how many people knew where Highfields was, or how to find it on a map, but the press was always printing puff pieces about the Lindberghs, and I'm sure people knew he was building an estate house in Hopewell.

It probably wouldn't have been difficult to follow either Lindbergh himself, or one of the many delivery trucks, bringing furniture, or food to the house. If anyone mentioned being followed, Lindbergh would probably think it was a reporter.

But, in any case, the house was the only one for a considerable distance, so it probably wouldn't be hard to figure out where it was. It was the only one off a long private road, and the private road came off a rural road that didn't have many turns. It may have been obvious, for some reason-- maybe it was paved, and the other branches off the rural road were dirt roads, or maybe it just looked newly paved.

I'm assuming that Hauptmann did some kind of reconnaissance.

[OctavBotnar]

An interesting quote
"In the days before Google maps, a German immigrant from The Bronx actually was able to locate this house, at the end of a mile-long driveway on an obscure road in New Jersey's Sourland Mountains?"
Was Lindbergh's address well known ?

[RivkahChaya]

Yet I also recall reading that Fisch was forever requesting money from his family in Germany.

This may have had something to do with his medical treatments, and I'll bet the source was in danger of being cut off with Hitler's rise.

There had to be a getaway car, obviously, and was it Hauptmann's with A N Other waiting behind the wheel? Or did Bruno think he could lift a small child out of its cot, carry it down a ladder, and then carry it to wherever the car was parked on his own?

Because Hauptmann had a child of his own, I'm betting not-- or at least he knew he probably couldn't control a strange and frightened child in a car while trying to drive.

I still think that it's odd and significant that the abductor of the baby knew which window to place his ladder against - this obviously smacks of inside information.

I thought that once, but people often do not realize how much information they give out. If you've ever seen people interviewed after a psychic show, the kind who uses "cold reading" technique, people are completely unaware that the "psychic" is just repeating information the subject is giving away.

I'm the kind of person who has a good memory for random bits of irrelevant information. I'd kill at [i[Jeopardy[/i], except I'd probably get stage fright, or with my luck, I'd be on for the special "all football, hockey, and shades of pink" edition. Anyway, I'll say "Happy Birthday" to someone, and they'll want to know how I knew it was their birthday, and I'll say it's because it's the same date it was last year, when her husband accidentally dialed my line instead of hers, to say their dinner reservation was changed.

Lindbergh gave radio interviews all the time, so he may have dropped a lot of information he didn't remember dropping, or didn't realize he was dropping, but Hauptmann may have been taking notes.

Also, someone like Violet Sharpe may not have been an insider on the kidnap team. She just may have been talking loudly at dinner in a restaurant, or something. Maybe she liked people to know who her prominent employer was, and mentioned specific details to show that she was telling the truth, if people thought she wasn't, like which floor the baby's room was on, or the fact that they were staying in town. Or heck, if someone saw her at the movies on her day off, they could have inferred that the Lindberghs hadn't left as they'd originally planned.

Which is another point; someone who was watching because they didn't know exactly where the Lindberghs were supposed to be going, and planned to follow, may have gotten "lucky," when they didn't leave after all.

[Graham]

Interesting stuff about Isidore Fisch. I'd read that he was in poor health, but not that he couldn't afford to get treatment. To me, he seems a highly improbable kidnapper, but who knows what the blueprint for a kidnapper is?
I wonder if he owed Hauptmann money? Hauptmann's lifestyle was quite prosperous, a nice house (even if the roof leaked) and a nice car, and be made good money as a carpenter. On the other hand, I believe Fisch was well-known as something of a loan-shark and a pusher of doubtful investments, so was it the other way round - did Hauptmann owe him money? Yet I also recall reading that Fisch was forever requesting money from his family in Germany.
Was he even involved in the kidnapping plot?

There had to be a getaway car, obviously, and was it Hauptmann's with A N Other waiting behind the wheel? Or did Bruno think he could lift a small child out of its cot, carry it down a ladder, and then carry it to wherever the car was parked on his own?

I still think that it's odd and significant that the abductor of the baby knew which window to place his ladder against - this obviously smacks of inside information. Violet Sharpe?

Graham

[RivkahChaya]

Great thread. The ladder being lightly made to allow easier transport would speak to one person alone at the kidnapping scene. If there were two kidnappers on site, a better constructed although heavier ladder would make more sense.

Good point, although it didn't mean that there wasn't a getaway driver parked nearby with the car running. Cars could be temperamental back then, and did things like vapor lock, or backfire loudly when turning the engine off and starting it up, so having it running, with someone in the driver's seat, made sense. Also, Hauptmann had a child, so he'd know how difficult it would be to drive a car with a toddler loose in the car with him-- or conversely, restrained, and screaming. If he had someone else in on the planning, then I'd expect that person would be with him at the site. But I agree that there was probably just one person at the bedroom window, and that it was Hauptmann. If Fisch was just a couple of years away from dying of pulmonary TB, climbing a wide-rung ladder wide be a lot of work for him, probably too much. He also would tend to cough, and someone upstairs having a coughing fit, giving away the fact that there was an intruder in the baby's room would be instant fail.

[DBass]

Great thread. The ladder being lightly made to allow easier transport would speak to one person alone at the kidnapping scene. If there were two kidnappers on site, a better constructed although heavier ladder would make more sense.

[RivkahChaya]

I just thought of it on the fly, but it assumes that they weren't planning to kill the child, and did so only accidentally. It also explains why Fisch went back to Europe, albeit, he didn't leave until after the body was found, but that may have been poor planning. He applied for his passport the day the body was found, before it was identified, and possibly before word of it got to Fisch and Hauptmann. Maybe they tried to get another child here, but with so much publicity, and scrutiny of children resembling the child, it was a non-starter.

The Germany Fisch had left years earlier was not the one he returned to. Getting a foundling probably wasn't as easy as he thought.

I've been looking up Fisch. He had TB, and died of it in 1934, which is why he disappears from the story. Anyway, he knew before the kidnapping that he had TB, and couldn't afford the treatment, which gives him motive. I'd never given the Fisch story much credence before I learned about this-- it seems he tried various get-rich-quick schemes that failed, just prior to the kidnapping.

In regard to the idea that parents of a missing child would take in some other child believing it to be their own, this actually did happen once. Hauptmann would not have known about it, since it's a story that didn't come out until a few years ago, as a result of DNA testing, but in 1912 in the US, a 4-year-old boy named Bobby Dunbar disappeared while on a picnic with his family. Eight months later, the police removed a boy from the custody of a man, who claimed he was the son of one of his field workers. The worker said that he was, and the man was supposed to have taken him for a one-day outing, but had had him for several weeks. The fact that she hadn't reported him missing, and she was unmarried, made her story suspicious to authorities at the time, and he was "returned" to the Dunbars. He remained "Bobby Dunbar" for the rest of his life.

Google "Bobby Dunbar." The story is tragic, but fascinating.

[Semper_Eadem]

Is it possible that the kidnappers were hoping to procure a similar-looking child, and after a year or so had passed, hope the parents thought they were getting their own child back? That might explain why they were drawing things out. It might even explain why Fisch went back to Europe. There were a lot more active orphanages in Europe, and it would be harder to trace a child from another country.

Hey RivahChaya,

That is an interesting theory. I always thought that the kidnappers were drawing things out to (A) cover up that Charles Jr was dead and (B) to give them time to escape. However it is possible that they might of been planning a substitute the slain child.

[OneRound]

I always found Lindbergh a bit of an odd choice for a ransom plot. He was loaded, fair enough, but a genuine all-American hero, beloved and revered, and the public outrage at the kidnap probably should have been foreseen by the kidnappers. I'd have thought the child of a rich society family would have been a more logical target, but what do I know?


Graham

Hi Graham - I know very little about the Lindbergh case but have found this a compelling thread. My thanks to you and all the other contributors.

As well as Lindbergh being ''a bit of an odd choice for a ransom plot'', I think the same could be said of his son. Even in normal everyday circumstances, twenty month old toddlers have a tendency to scream and bawl. It seems very surprising that a kidnapper would run the additional risk of a toddler's uncontrollable temper tantrum drawing the attention of others.

If there was never any intention to physically harm the child, at least one other person must have been lined up to look after him whilst the kidnapper conducted negotiations etc. Pardon the sexist tone but I believe the care of a toddler would have been considered a woman's job in 1930s' America ....

Best regards,
OneRound

[Mayerling]

What a lot of people interested in this case tend to forget is that Hauptmann was a serial criminal in his native Germany and had done time for a series of burglaries and also highway robbery. He was on parole when he left Germany to go to America - that is, he escaped and was a wanted man in Germany.


I always found Lindbergh a bit of an odd choice for a ransom plot. He was loaded, fair enough, but a genuine all-American hero, beloved and revered, and the public outrage at the kidnap probably should have been foreseen by the kidnappers. I'd have thought the child of a rich society family would have been a more logical target, but what do I know?

Jeff, I have read Scarduto's book, but that was probably 30 years ago, and I wonder if it's still available. Kennedy's book is still on the shelves of many public libraries here in the UK, so I assume is still in print.

Graham

Hi Graham,

The other day I mentioned that in the Modern Library edition of Pearson's STUDIES IN MURDER they included other essays, including one on the Hauptmann Case.

A funny thing regarding Edmund Pearson - he was in many ways erudite, witty, and a wonderful read. The first true crime or criminal historian to set up bibliographies and citations for people interested in digging deeper. But he could show some negative traits as well.

Pearson was a man of the Progressive period of U.S. History (1896-1917), and his particular hero was Theodore Roosevelt. In fact he would write a biography on the 26th President. Like Col. Roosevelt, he did not like Germany under the Kaiser. Long before Wilson was forced to as for a declaration of war in 1917 against the German Empire, Roosevelt was calling for it, demanding they pay for murder on the high seas (the Lusitania torpedoing). Pearson did the same thing.

One of the essays in the book STUDIES IN MURDER deals with the three murders (in 1896) on board the ship "Herbert W. Fuller". Although the first mate, Thomas Bram, was convicted many then (and today) feel he was not the responsible party. In the Taft Administration (the murder was on an American ship on the high seas, so it was under Federal law, not that of the state of Massachusetts) Taft pardoned Bram (who resumed his nautical career).

Now if you have the original edition of STUDIES IN MURDER (or a good reprint by Dolphin books), and compare it to the Modern Library version, certain passages in the essay/chapter "MATE BRAM!" have been cut between the 1924 original and the 1938 new edition. These passages deal with the fate of the "Fuller", which was destroyed by a U-boat near Monte Carlo in 1918. Apparently the U-boat crew did give the ship crew a chance to leave the vessel before it was sunk, but they robbed the crewmembers of their valuables before they left. Pearson adds comments about the German mentality about their (and their only) rights as warriors, and ends by saying that truly Blackbeard would have spat on them (the Germans). These would have passed easily in 1924, with the still hostile feelings towards Germany in the wake of the war, but in 1938 they were all removed.

I mention this because in the Hauptmann essay I find that it is fairly up-to-date (mentioning Eleanor Roosevelt's queasiness about the circumstantial evidence), but Pearson does not restrain his still harsh feelings about that foreigner who caused the tragedy...who was German. He brings up the criminal background in Germany of Hauptmann. But he also states (and I have no way to verify this) that Bruno's favorite aviation hero was not the "Lone Eagle" but "the Red Baron", von Richtofen. Pearson may be right, but I have no way of knowing if it is true, or if Pearson was simply letting off more wind and anger at a familiar target (and this time a target his editors would not have felt entitled to an even playing field like that u-boat crew).

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

Good point, although I'd need convincing that Hauptmann wasn't in it for the money. I would suspect that the police had plenty of calls from nuts who claimed to know where the baby was, and they'd tell for a packet of greenbacks.

Graham

I think they did, but they were fairly easy to dismiss. They also had compulsive confessers (which spell-check says I should spell that "confessors," but that's someone who hears confessions; these are people with a very complicated impulse control disorder who confess repeatedly to high-profile crimes, in spite of the fact that it's usually very easy to demonstrate that couldn't have done it) going into police stations all across the country.

The Lindberghs got other ransom notes, but not all had the ringed seal that was also on the one that had been left when the baby was taken, and the ones that did were "written" in the German-ish dialect, if you get what I mean.

I have wondered if the reason that Hauptmann decided to communicate through Condon was the fact that Condon had the idea to use newspapers (something not terribly uncommon then, but still, not necessarily something Hauptmann would have thought of), when the post, and any deliveries to the Lindberghs were being carefully monitored?

You know, there was a family who had a child close to the age of the Lindbergh child, who resembled him so much, that people were constantly calling the police and having them detained. They ended up carrying a letter from some official, the governor of New Jersey, or the chief of the state police, or something, stating that their child was not the Lindbergh baby.

Is it possible that the kidnappers were hoping to procure a similar-looking child, and after a year or so had passed, hope the parents thought they were getting their own child back? That might explain why they were drawing things out. It might even explain why Fisch went back to Europe. There were a lot more active orphanages in Europe, and it would be harder to trace a child from another country.

[Graham]

However, again, we don't know what was really planned. Maybe it wasn't to collect the ransom. Maybe it was to "find" and "rescue" the baby and be a hero.

Good point, although I'd need convincing that Hauptmann wasn't in it for the money. I would suspect that the police had plenty of calls from nuts who claimed to know where the baby was, and they'd tell for a packet of greenbacks.

Graham

[Graham]

However, again, we don't know what was really planned. Maybe it wasn't to collect the ransom. Maybe it was to "find" and "rescue" the baby and be a hero.

Good point. I wonder if Hauptmann was the only one to try and cash in?

Graham

[RivkahChaya]

It's one thing to have business accounts in good standing, and another to have the cash on hand to go buy a single plank, because the scrap wood you are using to make a ladder came up.

If Hauptmann had replaced the plank in his attic with anything, so that no one noticed it was missing, then probably no one would have made the connection to the ladder, and in any event, Hauptmann probably never dreamed they could connect the missing plank to the ladder. What he was worried about was someone remembering that he bought a single plank right before the kidnapping. Ordering a dozen on hid professional account would have meant a delay.

Anne Morrow's family had a lot of money, much more than Lindbergh himself; the amount of the ransom was pocket change to them, and that may have been the salient point.

However, again, we don't know what was really planned. Maybe it wasn't to collect the ransom. Maybe it was to "find" and "rescue" the baby and be a hero.