The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[RivkahChaya]

Orange crates (which do in fact hold oranges, at least from grove to barn) are incredibly flimsy boxes that are perilous to sit on. I don't know what kind of wood that is (pine maybe?) but whoever coined the term "green stick fracture" must have had orange crates in mind. There are any number of people like me who have vertical scars running up their legs from trying to use an orange crate at the age of say, 10, as a step stool and putting their foot through it. And it has such a characteristic sound that Foley artists (sound effect guys) used the boards from these boxes to mimic the sound of breaking bones. They also slapped fish on a metal table to make the sound effects for punching. Fun fact.

Actually, "greenstick fracture" comes from the way a live branch comes apart in shards if you twist it.

I realize orange crates were really used for oranges. But euphemistically, any cheap, flimsy wooden crate was called an "orange crate."

I think the wood for them was heat dried so there was no moisture to contribute to spoiling the oranges, but it made the wood splinter easily.

Anyway, as you have pointed out, they broke easily; so maybe the assumption that one had broken was not unreasonable.

[GUT]

G'Day Errata

At that time they even sold ....... Oranges in them, my dad used to cart them.

GUT

[Errata]

The house was newly constructed, so I think there were no trees near enough to hit it, as they hadn't gotten to landscaping it yet.

I really don't know how plausible the "orange crate" theory is, because I don't keep oranges in crates, but maybe this was a common thing for people who bought oranges by the crate. I can recall reading book from the time, and orange crates being mentioned as a source of spare lumber for repairs or children's play houses. "Orange crate" was a euphemism for "cheap box" that had never actually been an orange crate. Even cheap coffins were called "orange crates."

The idea that they were canoodling is interesting, though. It's true they would never admit it to the press, especially since I think it was general knowledge that Anne was already pregnant again.

Orange crates (which do in fact hold oranges, at least from grove to barn) are incredibly flimsy boxes that are perilous to sit on. I don't know what kind of wood that is (pine maybe?) but whoever coined the term "green stick fracture" must have had orange crates in mind. There are any number of people like me who have vertical scars running up their legs from trying to use an orange crate at the age of say, 10, as a step stool and putting their foot through it. And it has such a characteristic sound that Foley artists (sound effect guys) used the boards from these boxes to mimic the sound of breaking bones. They also slapped fish on a metal table to make the sound effects for punching. Fun fact.

[RivkahChaya]

The house was newly constructed, so I think there were no trees near enough to hit it, as they hadn't gotten to landscaping it yet.

I really don't know how plausible the "orange crate" theory is, because I don't keep oranges in crates, but maybe this was a common thing for people who bought oranges by the crate. I can recall reading book from the time, and orange crates being mentioned as a source of spare lumber for repairs or children's play houses. "Orange crate" was a euphemism for "cheap box" that had never actually been an orange crate. Even cheap coffins were called "orange crates."

The idea that they were canoodling is interesting, though. It's true they would never admit it to the press, especially since I think it was general knowledge that Anne was already pregnant again.

[Semper_Eadem]

Getting back to the sound of the board breaking, I think if I heard that I would have gone immediately to investigate, not wait until an hour later when it was too late, especially as the sound would've been louder then some wood snapping out in the forest. Having lived out in the woods I was always afraid that a tree would've hit the house. It would stand to reason that Lindberg would have feared having a tree hit his house and if he did hear some wood breaking outside his house you would've thought he would of ran to investigate, unless he and his wife Anne were occupied with making whoopee, which is possible.

If Charles Lindbergh and Anne were making love while the baby was kidnapped I could see them keeping quiet about it given the attitudes about sex at the time and that Charles and Anne would of been raised to be hush, hush on such matters and to keep it and talking about it (sex) in the bedroom. If this was the case then when all is said and done this would have just added to the pathos of this tragic affair.

[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.

He will affectionately be know as St. Dude.

[Mayerling]

The major industrialists were going to be okay no matter which side won. Henry Ford would have been as valuable to a victorious Reich as Ferdinand Porsche was to the victorious Allies.

A good point Ginger. The above mentioned General Smedley Butler would have nodded his head in agreement (given his experiences).

Jeff

[Ginger]

However to be fair [Ford] was not the only American industrialist who played both sides of the fence regarding the Nazi war machines. Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors was not against business with Nazi Germany, and during the war the Opel subsidiary of G.M. was fully helping the Nazi war machine, as was Ford's German plants. Sloan was lucky that he was not as public a figure in the U.S. as Ford was.

The major industrialists were going to be okay no matter which side won. Henry Ford would have been as valuable to a victorious Reich as Ferdinand Porsche was to the victorious Allies.

[RivkahChaya]

Quite some years ago I remember seeing a TV programme about the kidnapping. At the end there was an old guy on it who believed that he in fact was the Linberg baby, or indeed had been. He had evidence to show that when he was an infant he had undergone plastic surgery, for a reason he didnt know .... then. Now (or at the time of the programme) he was convinced it was to hide his features.

One reason infants do have "plastic" surgery is to repair a cleft lip. This is one surgery that is often done as early in infancy as is considered safe, because it is very difficult for a baby with a cleft lip to suck.

In the 1920s & 30s, and really up through the 1970s, it was considered shameful, for some reason, I guess because in the backs of a lot of people's minds, birth defects were visited on babies as punishment for some sin on the part of the parents, so babies had cleft lips repaired very young, and if the repair looked good, the parents usually kept it a secret. This would be a cleft lip without cleft palate-- cleft palates were much harder to repair, and people were often still left with a nasally voice.

Other things babies were sometimes born with were hemangiomas-- clusters of old capillaries that appeared as red swellings under the skin. They are usually benign, and usually go away, but sometimes it takes several years for them to fade to a non-raised scar. If they are near the eyes, they can interfere with vision, so those are often removed in infancy. If they are large, their appearance is off-putting, so I suppose a parent might insist on having one removed.

My point is, I can think of several reasons a baby might have facial surgery, and "altering its appearance" is at the bottom of the list. Babies appearance alters as they grow anyway, that in rare cases where a small child or baby is lost and recovered many years later, the parents do not always recognize the child. It stretches credulity, I think to believe that risky surgery would be performed on an infant, in the days before good control of infection, to accomplish what time was likely to do anyway. Not to mention, without using implants, or altering bone structure, you can't significantly change appearance (other than when correcting a defect like cleft lip), and there would be evidence of that, even decades later.

As an example, I had corrective orthodontia, which did not just straighten my teeth, but changed the shape of my lower jaw and my palate. When I see a new dentist, he or she can look at my mouth, and see that I had orthodontic work.

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.

No offense, but as you did not know the Lindberghs personally, and were not one of the original investigators, I don't think your gut counts for very much. I know some people who have a gut feeling that vaccines caused autism in their first child, and so they will not vaccinate their second child. I wish they could be charged with child abuse.

And remember that Hoffman gave Hauptmann a very fair opportunity to 'talk' regarding the crime, and he never did. I wonder why not?

Because up until the last minute, he was hoping for a commutation of his sentence to life in prison. If he admitted anything, that was not likely to happen. FWIW, in every state that has the Death Penalty, the governor can grant a stay of execution up until the very last minute (and the president can do this for federal crimes), and I'm pretty sure that was the case back then, as well. A stay, even a 24-hour stay, meant one more chance to plea for mercy, or to get a commutation from the same governor. Governors can also grant full pardons, but there is a waiting period. I think it's usually 5 years from the end of your original sentence, even if the sentence was later commuted. That's why Pres. Carter commuted Patty Hearst's sentence, but it was Clinton who pardoned her. (I'm really not sure how it was that Ford could pardon Nixon so soon. Probably because he was pardoned for crimes he had not yet been tried for.)

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 think there was anything wrong with the way the remains were handled. The body was fully documented, in notes and photographs. That was about all they could do, at the time, with a body that decomposed.

Going back to the idea that children are sometimes born with facial deformities-- one conspiracy theory regard Chas. jr. that I read was that the child was born with some kind of serious birth defect, and that Lindbergh murdered him, and then reported him kidnapped, in order not to have the public find out he had produced a defective child. His marginal involvement in the eugenics movement makes it plausible, but I think someone would have leaked it by now, and I also do not think Anne Morrow would have remained silent while an innocent person went to the electric chair.

Part of the conspiracy theory was that Lindbergh refused journalists access to his child, but Lindbergh was often very odd in his push-pull behavior with the media, and I think he played them on purpose, because it left them wanting more. However, it's just as likely that it was Anne Morrow's wish that the child not be subjected to a lot of press scrutiny. Besides, once the child went missing, the Lindbergh's produced plenty of photos of a normal-looking child.

Another part of the theory was that Hauptmann was a simple opportunist who sent ransom notes because he saw a chance to make a buck when the child vanished. If that's the case, he did an awfully good job or forging the original note, which he had never seen.

I don't think Lindbergh needed to stage a kidnapping, even if he did want to get rid of his child. Children did sometimes just die back then, and there were all sorts of childhood diseases, not to mention the fact that when small children drank floor polish, or lead paint, it was a tragedy, not an opportunity to arrest the parents for child abuse.

[Mayerling]

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.

Hi Stan,

I respect Ford for his mechanical innovations in automobiles, and his remarkable use of the assembly line idea (originally used a century before by Eli Whitney), and even some of his social planning when he was in his initial paternalistic system at the plants. His anti-labor union fighting, his increased megalomania (and mistreatment of his good-natured son Edsel), and his anti-Semitism take him down a great deal in my estimation.

However to be fair he was not the only American industrialist who played both sides of the fence regarding the Nazi war machines. Alfred P. Sloan of General Motors was not against business with Nazi Germany, and during the war the Opel subsidiary of G.M. was fully helping the Nazi war machine, as was Ford's German plants. Sloan was lucky that he was not as public a figure in the U.S. as Ford was.

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.

[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]

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]

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

[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.