The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[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

[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.

[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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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.

[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]

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]

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

[RivkahChaya]

Surprised distance was nearly 80 miles from Hauptmann house to Lindberghs

Really? Hopewell is offshore, and Hauptmann was all the way in the Bronx. This was before the highway system, so it was probably more than two hours. Now, I'm guessing it would take maybe 90 minutes, probably on I-95. I have no idea what roads existed then, though.

[Ginger]

Really? Hopewell is offshore, and Hauptmann was all the way in the Bronx. This was before the highway system, so it was probably more than two hours. Now, I'm guessing it would take maybe 90 minutes, probably on I-95. I have no idea what roads existed then, though.

Here's the relevant map from the 1930 Rand/McNally: http://www.mapsofpa.com/art9pics/1930-3350-2.jpg

The main roads are marked in red. Assuming Hauptmann (or someone from the NYC area) to have been the kidnapper, there'd be a choice of two main roads southwest from Elizabeth, NJ - US 1*, and NJ 27, which run parallel to Trenton. Eleven miles before Trenton, one could go north on NJ 31, another main road, and then some five miles on, turn west onto an 'improved' (gravel, stone or seashell, per the map) road which leads some six or seven miles from Blawenburg through Hopewell, probably the modern Franklin Turnpike. For all except the last few miles, then, there'd have been a paved, well-maintained two lane (or wider) road.

* For non-Americans, federal highways are marked with the symbol of a shield. For motoring (or kidnapping) purposes, they're functionally identical to state and local highways, same traffic rules, state and local police patrol them, etc.

[sdreid]

I just noticed today that Harold Hoffman, the Governor of New Jersey who tried to halt Hauptmann's execution, was one of the original panelists on the What's My Line TV game show in 1950 along with Dorothy Kilgallen of Kennedy Assassination fame.

[RavenDarkendale]

I always thought it interesting in regards to the ladder that Hauptman always sneered at it and stated that he was a carpenter, and such a ladder was not the work of a carpenter.

But then many guilty people show a lot of bravado...

[RivkahChaya]

I always thought it interesting in regards to the ladder that Hauptman always sneered at it and stated that he was a carpenter, and such a ladder was not the work of a carpenter.

But then many guilty people show a lot of bravado...

What exactly was it about the ladder that was so unprofessional? I thought the way it folded for easy carriage, then hooked together, was sort of clever. Was it the rungs being far apart? That was probably economy, although it may also have been the reason one failed rung was such a disaster. I wonder if guilt was behind the denial.