The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[Graham]

I don't think Lindbergh was responsible for the crime, neither do I think that Hauptmann had nothing to do with it. But I do have a feeling that Lindbergh knew rather more concerning the crime than he was prepared to admit - more than that I can't say, as it's just a gut feeling. And remember that Hoffman gave Hauptmann a very fair opportunity to 'talk' regarding the crime, and he never did. I wonder why not?

Don't know about the USA, but I think the rules regarding the handling of human remains discovered at possible crime-scenes in the UK are basically as laid down many, many years ago. In fact, possibly centuries ago.

I don't normally like speculation when discussing true crime, but this is different and it's good fun!

Graham

[Hatchett]

I think there is a difference in the way that human remains and crime scenes are handled, not necessarilly by Nation, but by time. Things were not handled as scientifically then as they are now.

[Graham]

Hatchett,

I'm not sure. I'm no lawyer, but I think that when human remains are discovered, however old they may seem to be, the police have to be advised, and there are set procedures for the investigation of such remains. I remember a Time Team on some Scottish island, in which they were excavating the remains of a chapel, and when human remains were discovered they were legally obliged to call in the police. Who, in fairness, once it was accepted that these remains dated from about the 7th century I believe, took no further action and allowed the excavation to continue. I believe the first task to be performed when human remains are discovered is to determine the actual cause of death, followed by a determination of whether the cause of death was accidental, natural or criminal.

One of the question-marks regarding the child's remains is that very nearby was a home for orphans, and even at the time it was suggested that the remains could have been those of a child from that home.

Graham

[Ginger]

One of the question-marks regarding the child's remains is that very nearby was a home for orphans, and even at the time it was suggested that the remains could have been those of a child from that home.

I've always found that an odd claim. Why on earth would an orphanage dump a dead child in the woods like that? If they were trying to cover up something, surely they'd have better ways to dispose of the body, burial or incineration or suchlike?

Alternately, if a child had gone missing, surely they'd have involved the police?

The orphanage was, IIRC, St. Michael's, which makes it almost certainly a Catholic institution. I wonder if the rumour had some connection to anti-Catholicism of the time?

[Hatchett]

I think when the remains where found the Police were informed. Certainly the newspapers knew about it. So, it could be presumed that the authorities where fine with the burial, or cremation.

[RivkahChaya]

I've always found that an odd claim. Why on earth would an orphanage dump a dead child in the woods like that? If they were trying to cover up something, surely they'd have better ways to dispose of the body, burial or incineration or suchlike?

You're right, but I think it was just the closest alternate spot. You know, the next closest place with children wasn't merely another family, it was an orphanage.

Social services then, as now, does in fact, lose track of children, and at the time, a lot of "orphans" were illegitimate children who had been given up, but not adopted, because the adoption system was very different. Children in orphanages were sometimes throwaways, or people's shameful secrets, because society made illegitimacy shameful (also illegal in some places, and a woman who gave birth out of wedlock could be forced to pay a fine), and I think down deep, most people were aware of the collective responsibility for creating a situation where a woman was ashamed to claim her own child. So people were drawn to needy children, and repelled by them at the same time.

Then, I think a lot of people just didn't want the body to be the Lindbergh baby.

The orphanage was, IIRC, St. Michael's, which makes it almost certainly a Catholic institution. I wonder if the rumour had some connection to anti-Catholicism of the time?

Probably some of that too. One stereotype of Catholics at the time was that they had so many children they couldn't keep track of them, and they ran amok.

I think there is a difference in the way that human remains and crime scenes are handled, not necessarilly by Nation, but by time. Things were not handled as scientifically then as they are now.

Yes. I think your previous respondent misunderstood what you meant by time. You didn't mean the age of the remains, but the time in which the investigation took place.

It's true that people wee unaware of what forensic evidence they could get from a body, but it's also true they could actually get fewer things. I'm not sure when mass spectrometers were invented, but they are necessary for all but they most rudimentary of toxicology studies. There was no means to lift latent fingerprints. DNA was unknown. Fiber analysis was not accepted as evidence, albeit, it could be used for investigation. Analyzing insect activity was possible, but I don't think it was accepted as evidence in court, and that kind of thing is mainly useful in dating a body, which wasn't really necessary. Unless there was something that could definitively prove the body had been dead significantly longer than the Lindbergh child had been missing, it wasn't of value.

The police thought the money would flush out the culprit and it did. They had no need for the body.

[Ginger]

I'm not sure when mass spectrometers were invented, but they are necessary for all but they most rudimentary of toxicology studies.

The basic technology itself is quite old, from late Victorian times. However, it wasn't until the 1960s or so that practical techniques for applying it to complex organic molecules were developed.

[RivkahChaya]

Thanks, Ginger. Autopsies didn't really have much to offer, forensically, other than to establish that a murder, rather than an accident or suicide, had taken place. Sometimes when people died of disease, autopsies were done to determine whether there was any need to be alarmed about something communicable, if a proper diagnosis had not been made while the person was living, but autopsies were mainly to determine the mode and manner of death, not to gather evidence.

I was always impressed at the thoroughness of the medical examiners in the JtR cases, and the fact that they were doctors. As I said upthread, until the 1970s, in the US, coroners were often elected in larger cities, and anyone could run, not just doctors, whereas in smaller towns, a funeral director was often the county's coroner, appointed by the sheriff, or just given the job by default.

Even through the 1980s, when nearly all chief coroners were either MDs, or people with Ph.Ds in pathology, anatomy, or some field like that, it continued to be an elected position. You didn't want to piss off a large voting block, or a powerful person.

I have no idea whether the coroner in charge of releasing the body of Chas. jr. was elected, and if so, if he was worried about the influence and money that Lindbergh himself had, or the much greater wealth of the Morrow family. Perhaps. He could also have been worried about a general public who wanted to see te baby laid to rest-- a lot of them would have been religious people concerned about the baby's literal "eternal rest." I would need to look that up-- whether the coroner was elected-- before saying that he was influenced by any of those things, though. Of course, even if he was hired, he could still be fired. I don't think coroners were appointed for life anywhere.

[Mayerling]

Lindbergh's later life, when examined, is hardly that of the classic American Hero, and I do wonder if, even at the time of his son's abduction, he was aware that he stood the risk of being exposed as a sham, or at best a part-sham, and someone unworthy of being the Lone Eagle. Don't know, probably never will.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I'm no total fan of "Lucky Lindy" due to his pro-German stance in the late 1930s and his leadership in the "American First" group, but his basic aviation achievements (which are more than just the solo Long Island to Paris flight in 1927 - he did major work for Juan Trippe and Pan American Airways in mapping flight routes with his wife throughout the Western hemisphere) are real enough. He did deserve that "Lone Eagle" mark from the public. His failure to fully live up to it on foreign and racial matters was sad, but not a total wipe out of his achievements.

It is also now known that he did have other children by at least one German woman, so he was an adulterer. The fact that he had these kids probably influenced his family (after accepting these half siblings) from being willing to air any further dirty laundry about other children, such as those claiming they are Charles Augustus Jr. By the way, he was not the only "American Firster" who had a bigamous relationship. Henry Ford apparently had one as well, with offspring.

Jeff

[sdreid]

OK - deleted due to repeat post. Don't know what happened.

[sdreid]

From what I've read, one of our local guys, Fulton J. Sheen, was in with the Lindbergh/Ford/Coughlin isolationist crowd and they are in the process of making him a Saint - redemption I suppose.

Regarding Ford, my dad who was in WWII, said that Ford put in the fix to keep the Allies from bombing his plant in Germany even though they were making war machines for the Nazis. He said that they did strafe the assembly line but that looked like it was for show and did not even shut down the plant.

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan,

The isolationist group is a tricky one to totally dislike (even if you think the movement was wrong headed). It included Katherine Porter, Lillian Gish, Norman Thomas (who was a pacifist), and the remarkable Quaker Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler (a rather perceptive critic on the fat cats who benefitted on war we were involved in in the Caribean), as well as Lindbergh, Ford, and Coughlin. Sheen (I think) was Irish, so his opposition may have been fueled by anti-British Empire feelings more than anything else). Ford (like Lindbergh) was honored in Nazi Germany (he received some high ranking award at one point), and was ambivalent about the war - which did not prevent him from turning over factories in the U.S. to fulfill war contracts for Allied fighter planes and tanks and jeeps, etc. Lindbergh did serve (unofficially) - but in the Pacific theater, not the European. Coughlin spewed his anti-Semitic, anti-FDR venom into 1942 or so, when his superiors in the Vatican told him to shut up or face bad consequences from them. Then he stopped being "the Radio Priest")

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

There's a big difference between isolationists like Lillian Gish, who were jaded by the notion that WWI was supposed to be "the war to end all wars," and people who sympathetic to the Germans, even if they weren't exactly Nazi sympathizers-- in other words, people who basically blamed WWII on an idea that the Treaty of Versailles had been designed to screw the Germans and keep the country in an economic depression that would prevent them from being able to be aggressors again. I'm unable to comment on whether that was ever the intent, although, it clearly did not work.

Then, of course, there were Americans were genuinely Nazi sympathizers. Again, I'm unable to comment on the views of anyone who did not state them explicitly.

I just happen to know a lot about Lillian Gish, and she was very anti-war, even though it would be a mistake to call her a pacifist, because she was not against fighting back at aggressors-- she strongly believed in fighting back, just not in picking fights. She was also on record as thinking the cold war was stupid, in spite of the fact that she knew Ronald Reagan personally, and had voted for him both as governor of California, and in one of his runs for US president (I don't remember which one, though).

I wrote her a letter when I was 17, and she actually wrote me back, and not a form letter, so I'm probably biased.

[Mayerling]

You are fortunate in getting such a letter from such a film star (and a personal one). Everything I read about Lillian Gish makes her one of the nicest performers in Hollywood history. I would have thought her opinion on warfare might have been influenced by her mentor D. W. Griffiths, who (despite his pro-Southern views on the American Civil War) was anti-war in his personal sentiments.

As for Ms Porter, General Butler, and Mr. Thomas, they were also benign in their opposition. Ms Porter was just sick of wars we appeared not to be concerned with. Thomas felt there was plenty of problems in the U.S. that had to be solved first.

As for Butler, he had been in charge of Marine troops sent to Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Honduras, and elsewhere in the 1900s - 1926. His memoirs show how he came to believe it was not the actual interests of the U.S. involved in getting our troops in to support governments (or to fight guerrillas) but the interests of U.S. owned business empires like United Fruit Company. Butler (a medal of honor winner) did his job very well, but he was openly critical about this racket (which he compared with Al Capone running Chicago, deciding that in comparison Capone was a piker (small potatos)). Butler also was instrumental in exposing a plot in 1934 by Wall Street interests to take control of the country away from President Roosevelt and Congress. To me Butler was a patriot and hero.

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

You are fortunate in getting such a letter from such a film star (and a personal one). Everything I read about Lillian Gish makes her one of the nicest performers in Hollywood history. I would have thought her opinion on warfare might have been influenced by her mentor D. W. Griffiths, who (despite his pro-Southern views on the American Civil War) was anti-war in his personal sentiments.

Oh, I'm sure she was, but I was just pointing out that she was still part of the same generation as people like Vera Brittain. Gish was born in 1893, lived to be almost 100-- she died a few months shy of her 100th birthday-- and never officially retired, although her last starring role in a feature film was in 1987. altogether, she made more than 100 films, plus many TV appearances, and appeared on the stage as well, having begun there as a child, before cinema, and continuing to do summer stock when her demand in leading roles dwindled a little in the 1930s. People think of her as part of Hollywood, and forget that she had a personal and intellectual life.

Griffith, himself, sort of got screwed, because the Klan was mostly dead when he made Birth of a Nation, and all he was really trying to say was that the North was sort of rubbing salt in the wounds of South during the Reconstruction, a point I'm not inclined to argue with, and people who have read my other posts know I have no sympathy whatsoever for the Confederacy or the ante-bellum South, and the North was at fault for people essentially running amok, both black and white.

Unfortunately, a lot of people in the southern states saw the film, and thought is was a good idea to start the Klan up again, so that within 5 years, there was a new, flourishing KKK, which in retrospect, the film seemed to be celebrating.

I'm not trying to defend the plot of the film; it was based on a book (and a really poorly written one at that) by a grandson of one of the original Klansman, and he thought the Klansmen were all heros. I read it, so I can tell you that Griffith actually cleaned it up a lot. I'm just pointing out that the Klans resurgence was a consequence I don't think Griffith could have foreseen.

And yes, he was against war, but he wasn't against defending oneself, so, not a pacifist.