The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

[RivkahChaya]

There's a map of the house at http://www.house-crazy.com/the-charl...ll-new-jersey/ , plus some photos of the nursery, then and now.

Where's the secret passage to the conservatory?

I wonder too how good his hearing was, having been an open-cockpit airplane pilot.

That's a good point. My step-father was a career Navy pilot, and while his general health is very good for a man of his age (75), and always has been exceptional, his hearing is very poor. He won't admit it, though. If you tell him it isn't a personal failing, and is probably because of his piloting, he has an even worse attitude about that, because he seems to think you're saying something bad about the Navy.

Don't get me wrong-- SF is a really great, mostly easy-going guy (who my mother is very lucky to have). But he's going to have to go completely deaf before he gets a hearing-aid, I guess.

[RivkahChaya]

I would think that if his intentions were sincere he would have approached the family privately and explained to them why he thought he might be their brother. Since he would not have been given any provision in his father's will, any claim he might have on that money would have to be sued out of every living descendant. And no judge is going to order that, even if he was their brother. He would only get anything through his sibling's good will, and you don't get that by announcing your birthright to a reporter.

I don't know his whole history with the family. I'm assuming he started out with that. He's been around for a while. The family probably gets contacted by people like that a lot, and wealthy people usually have lawyers on retainer, so he probably got referred to the lawyer. He may have even gotten a form letter.

I think this is an unfortunate combination of the same kind of fantasies everyone has around the age of 12 about discovering that the people raising them aren't their real parents and their "real" parent are famous and glamorous, along with a situation where something really did happen, to fuel the situation, like a parent who died when he was young, or parents who left him with relatives at some point, and then a mental illness that makes it hard for him to distinguish fantasy from reality, and in the end, he hurts people who have already endured a lot of pain.

I think he genuinely believes he is the Lindbergh child, but that doesn't make it so. I don't think he is another illegitimate child of Charles Lindbergh. I think the Lindbergh family is right not to engage him, because he is essentially a stalker, and you should never do anything to encourage a stalker. Things that you would think are discouraging, or "finalities," are not that to a stalker. They see any kind of contact as the relationship going forward. Sometimes they say they have realized the error of their ways, and want to apologize, but letting them is always a mistake, because they see that as a foot in the door. If you forgive them, maybe you are open to starting over.

If they ignore this guy, he may never go away, but he also may never escalate. A DNA test is the kind of contact that could set up a string of fantasies, like meeting the family at the testing facility, which, when they don't pan out, could make him escalate.

[RavenDarkendale]

I think he genuinely believes he is the Lindbergh child, but that doesn't make it so. I don't think he is another illegitimate child of Charles Lindbergh. I think the Lindbergh family is right not to engage him, because he is essentially a stalker, and you should never do anything to encourage a stalker. Things that you would think are discouraging, or "finalities," are not that to a stalker. They see any kind of contact as the relationship going forward. Sometimes they say they have realized the error of their ways, and want to apologize, but letting them is always a mistake, because they see that as a foot in the door. If you forgive them, maybe you are open to starting over.

If they ignore this guy, he may never go away, but he also may never escalate. A DNA test is the kind of contact that could set up a string of fantasies, like meeting the family at the testing facility, which, when they don't pan out, could make him escalate.

You might have something there. Lindbergh and Anne Morrow's five surviving children, In light of the fact that their father had seven more children with three other women, may have felt that they just didn't want to hear about any more kids!

[RivkahChaya]

That's not what I meant. I think that if they thought there really was a chance this guy was the kidnapped child, they would get tests. But they know he isn't. I'm sure they have gotten advice from a lawyer, and it's to leave him alone.

I doubt that he is another illegitimate child of Lindbergh, but that's not what he's claiming. If the tests showed that, I don't think it would satisfy him, and he would still continue to claim to be the kidnapped child, even if it required a convoluted story that involved Anne Morrow being unfaithful.

The family is doing the right thing by staying away from him.

[Mayerling]

Somehow, if the baby had been handed to some other family after the kidnapping, I can't believe Hauptmann at the last moment would not have used that information as a bargaining chip with the authorities to keep him out of the electric chair.

I know Hauptmann pinned his whole appeal to the government and to the public on the issue of whether his guilt was really proved. Years ago I read an article in Liberty Magazine that he had submitted trying to show that some of the evidence against him was questionable at best. I am aware that some of the witnesses were not the greatest, but at the same time some of his alibi witnesses were certainly far from convincing either.

But in 1936 the New Jersey Governor was Harold Hoffman, and he was willing to listen to Hauptmann (probably more than he should - he lost his re-election bid), and he delayed execution while further investigations were made. It did not pan out well.

Under those circumstances I would wonder why Hauptmann at the eleventh hour would not tell a vital secret to the Warden like, "That was not the Lindbergh baby they found - the baby is with X family since 1932." Fear of reprisals? From whom? (Hauptmann might admit complicity in the kidnapping but would name his associates to protect his family). It just seems so totally odd that if it were true he'd not use it.

Earlier on this thread there was a comment that Al Capone was widely thought, at first, to be involved. Actually Capone did get involved in that he offered to aid the police in the investigation (he apparently admired Lindbergh), but in return he'd get a reduction in time on his income tax sentence. His offer was not accepted.

Jeff

[RivkahChaya]

That's a good point. Hauptmann wasn't executed for the kidnapping, or the extortion. He was executed for murder. If he could have led the police to a living baby, he surely would have had a commutation to life in prison, probably with parole hearings. I can't imagine an accomplice he would protect with his life, other than his wife, and considering how publicly she pursued his posthumous exoneration, I don't think she was an accomplice, because her best strategy would be to lie low and let things die down after the execution. If she knew where the child was, and didn't want to come forward so she and her husband wouldn't both go to prison, she could send an anonymous note. I can't imagine a scenario where Hauptmann knew the location of the living child, and didn't reveal it.

The only way for the baby to have survived the kidnapping is for Hauptmann to have been entirely uninvolved, which is why he didn't know where the child was, but that still leaves the mystery of who the body in the woods was, and the police really did look at other missing child reports; the Lindbergh child fit the parameters perfectly, and no other missing child did.

[RavenDarkendale]

That's not what I meant. I think that if they thought there really was a chance this guy was the kidnapped child, they would get tests. But they know he isn't. I'm sure they have gotten advice from a lawyer, and it's to leave him alone.

I doubt that he is another illegitimate child of Lindbergh

I don't think he is either, I was just saying that even if he turned out to be Lindbergh's kid, he isn't Charles, Jr. That baby is dead,

As I said before, Hauptman had both the chance of death penalty commuted to life in prison and $90,000 from Hearst as well just for a confession of guilt. If he was involved and knew where that baby was, he could have walked. That cremation of the baby's remains destroyed the easy way out, which would be to get DNA from the body. But I know as a father of three had one of my children been found in a shallow grave and badly decomposed, I would most likely did the same. There's no way for an open casket funeral anyway.

[Graham]

That's a good point. Hauptmann wasn't executed for the kidnapping, or the extortion. He was executed for murder. If he could have led the police to a living baby, he surely would have had a commutation to life in prison, probably with parole hearings. I can't imagine an accomplice he would protect with his life, other than his wife, and considering how publicly she pursued his posthumous exoneration, I don't think she was an accomplice, because her best strategy would be to lie low and let things die down after the execution. If she knew where the child was, and didn't want to come forward so she and her husband wouldn't both go to prison, she could send an anonymous note. I can't imagine a scenario where Hauptmann knew the location of the living child, and didn't reveal it.

The only way for the baby to have survived the kidnapping is for Hauptmann to have been entirely uninvolved, which is why he didn't know where the child was, but that still leaves the mystery of who the body in the woods was, and the police really did look at other missing child reports; the Lindbergh child fit the parameters perfectly, and no other missing child did.

John Condon, who for unclear reasons Lindbergh trusted to act as an intermediary, claimed that during his meeting with the masked man, who he said had a marked 'German' accent, at the 233rd Street Cemetery, the man asked him if 'he would burn if the baby was dead'. Condon then asked the man if indeed the baby was dead, and he claimed he was told that the baby was alive and well and on a boat (which Condon said the man pronounced as 'boad'). Further, the masked man ('Cemetery John' as Condon called him) said that he would send to Condon the baby's sleeping-suit, which did in fact arrive by post and was identified by the Lindbergh's as the one worn by Charles Jnr. on the night he was abducted. The remains of the baby found about a month later near Hopewell was dressed in a flannel shirt that had been made by Betty Gow. There was no sign (apparently) of a sleeping-suit.

Whilst much can be made of John Condon's involvement in the case, my own belief is that 'Cemetery John' was indeed Bruno Hauptmann, and that the remains found in the woods were indeed those of Charles Lindbergh Jnr. I do not feel, however, that Hauptmann acted alone. I am convinced that he had some inside help from someone at Hopewell (as I said, how did he know which room the baby slept in?), and I have a fairly strong feeling that other people were involved - ref: the talking in Italian that Condon claimed to have heard when he was phoned by the presumed kidnapper following his, Condon's, ad in the New York American.

And finally there was the amazing investigation by the wood technologist Arthur Koehler who pin-pointed the timber in the ladder as being sold by a lumber-yard in The Bronx - Hauptmann lived in The Bronx. And later, unless you believe it was a police plant, the nail-holes in a piece of the ladder matched nail-holes in the joists in the roof of Hauptmann's house.

So was it a case of kidnapping for a large ransom that went disastrously wrong? I believe it was.

Graham

[Mayerling]

John Condon, who for unclear reasons Lindbergh trusted to act as an intermediary, claimed that during his meeting with the masked man, who he said had a marked 'German' accent, at the 233rd Street Cemetery, the man asked him if 'he would burn if the baby was dead'. Condon then asked the man if indeed the baby was dead, and he claimed he was told that the baby was alive and well and on a boat (which Condon said the man pronounced as 'boad'). Further, the masked man ('Cemetery John' as Condon called him) said that he would send to Condon the baby's sleeping-suit, which did in fact arrive by post and was identified by the Lindbergh's as the one worn by Charles Jnr. on the night he was abducted. The remains of the baby found about a month later near Hopewell was dressed in a flannel shirt that had been made by Betty Gow. There was no sign (apparently) of a sleeping-suit.

Whilst much can be made of John Condon's involvement in the case, my own belief is that 'Cemetery John' was indeed Bruno Hauptmann, and that the remains found in the woods were indeed those of Charles Lindbergh Jnr. I do not feel, however, that Hauptmann acted alone. I am convinced that he had some inside help from someone at Hopewell (as I said, how did he know which room the baby slept in?), and I have a fairly strong feeling that other people were involved - ref: the talking in Italian that Condon claimed to have heard when he was phoned by the presumed kidnapper following his, Condon's, ad in the New York American.

And finally there was the amazing investigation by the wood technologist Arthur Koehler who pin-pointed the timber in the ladder as being sold by a lumber-yard in The Bronx - Hauptmann lived in The Bronx. And later, unless you believe it was a police plant, the nail-holes in a piece of the ladder matched nail-holes in the joists in the roof of Hauptmann's house.

So was it a case of kidnapping for a large ransom that went disastrously wrong? I believe it was.

Graham

Hi Graham,

I agree - it was a kidnapping that went completely wrong. Although it is constantly mentioned in biographies of Lindbergh and his wife Anne, and is touched on by students of the case, most people ignore that Anne's father was Dwight Morrow, who had been a business partner at J. P. Morgan & Son, as well as a former Ambassador to Mexico and New Jersey Senator to the U.S. Congress. Morrow died in 1931, but had he lived there was a strong movement to replace Herbert Hoover as Republican Presidential Candidate in 1932 with Morrow. The point is that Morrow being rich, Anne would have been in line for a large inheritance. Moreover, Lindbergh was making a huge salary (for that time) as an aviation advisor - mostly to Juan Trippe the creator of Pan American Airlines. Lindbergh and his wife had flown throughout the hemisphere mapping potential routes for Pan Am to use. They thus had money. Through the dead Senator they had top level political and financial connections. If anyone had been following Lindbergh's career at the time in the newspapers all this would have been known, and so the idea of a major ransom being possibly collectible for the child (known as "Baby Lindy" in the press) would have occurred to some thug sooner or later.

I have never figured out how Mr. Condon (a Bronx School Principal) managed to win his way into Col. Lindbergh's circle. Supposedly he had put some message to attract the kidnapper in a personal column of a Bronx newspaper, and he got a response (from Hauptmann, presumably), and then contacted Lindbergh. If so it is a crazy hundred to one shot that is somewhat hard to believe really happened. Still I would have been as suspicious as hell about it if I had been in Lindbergh's position.

At that same time one John Curtis had contacted Lindbergh that he had contacts with the kidnappers who were hiding on a boat. Curtis later proved to be a liar or publicity seeker - he wasted precious time following his tale. And a friend of the Morrows, Evelyn Walsh McLean (whose husband owned the Washington Post) fell for a set of lies from former Secret Service Agent Gaston Means that he knew where the baby was - McLean lost a large sum of money to Means (a dubious, possibly murderous individual), and eventually Means went to prison for this fraud. But all this just shows that in the beginning of the crime the Lindberghs and their friends were desperately trying to follow any possible lead to get the baby back. This would (I suppose) include checking out Condon's story and trusting it.

Jeff

[sdreid]

I pretty much agree Graham although I'm not totally convinced that the child was killed accidentally. A fall wouldn't have been all that great and children have bones that are much more resilient than we adults even if a man landed on top of him. I can however see the child being seriously injured in a fall and the kidnappers finishing him off when they saw the seriousness of his condition.

Somewhere, I heard that Condon originally said that "John" had an Italian accent. I believe a German would have pronounced boat boot (more or less rhyming with soot) not boad.

[RivkahChaya]

The German word for boat sounds like the English word "boot," but that doesn't mean a German native speaker trying to say "boat" would not say "boad." If, in German, the sound made by "oa" in English is always followed by a voiced consonant (d not t; b not p; g not k; &c.), then a German speaker in English will need a lot of drill and practice to learn to say words like "boat" (or goat, or broke, or hope) correctly.

I don't know anything about the phonology of German, so if it doesn't have that rule, don't "correct" me, because I made it up. There are a lot of reasons a person might mispronounce something, beyond "He's using his native language word." My mother is a dialectologist, so she actually might know what native language a person would come from to make the "boad" error.

I don't know anything about Condon, but someone who had a successful career as a school principal probably had some pretty good people skills. He may have been very good at negotiating, and at getting people to open up and talk to him, and at coming across as sincere.

[RavenDarkendale]

And finally there was the amazing investigation by the wood technologist Arthur Koehler who pin-pointed the timber in the ladder as being sold by a lumber-yard in The Bronx - Hauptmann lived in The Bronx. And later, unless you believe it was a police plant, the nail-holes in a piece of the ladder matched nail-holes in the joists in the roof of Hauptmann's house.

Graham

As I recall from reading transcripts of this case, the wood technologist evidence was highly controversial. Some felt that it was the strongest evidence against Hauptmann, others questioned if there could even be such a thing as a wood expert.

More damaging to Hauptmann was the fact that despite no fingerprints on the ladder, the ransom notes, nor inside Lindbergh house, no clear indication that the notes were beyond a shadow of a doubt his handwriting, and his explanation for possessing the ransom money, he was considered guilty from the get go.

We are asked to believe that a man who spent the ransom money openly, who was foolish enough to use boards from his own attic to build a latter, foolishly leaving this behind, was smart enough to avoid fingerprints anywhere at the crime scene. Usually a person is either very smart or very stupid but seldom both!

[RivkahChaya]

I wonder if Hauptmann simply wore gloves as a matter of course, because he was a carpenter. He wore work gloves when he made the ladder, and then he wore gloves, either because he also again wore work gloves, or maybe wore gloves because it was cold. It was more common for people to put on gloves in the evening then, and it did not have to be very cold. There were even styles of gloves known as "driving gloves." Also, unfinished wood is not the best surface for catching fingerprints in the first place. So it might not be that he was so clever he avoided leaving prints; it might have been dumb luck.

Don't underestimate the number of gold certificates still in circulation after they were officially withdrawn. Go to eBay, and see how many people are auctioning these things off today, and you'll realize that a lot of people didn't turn them in like they were supposed to. The lines were daunting, and people really didn't think that a bill could be worth $10 one day, and just be a piece of paper the next, and that was in fact true, because stores continued to accept them, even banks continued to accept them, and that was all that mattered. You could no longer redeem them for gold, but almost no one ever did that. A lot of people hoarded cash after the stock market crash, when banks failed, so there was a lot of cash out there.

By the time someone noticed Hauptmann spending a gold certificate, and thought it was odd, several years had passed, and this was because every time banks got them in a deposit, they turned them in to be destroyed, so they were slowly being removed from circulation. Hauptmann also paid for gas with a $10 note, back when gas cost 15 cents a gallon. That'll make the cashier take a closer look.

[Graham]

As I recall from reading transcripts of this case, the wood technologist evidence was highly controversial. Some felt that it was the strongest evidence against Hauptmann, others questioned if there could even be such a thing as a wood expert.

More damaging to Hauptmann was the fact that despite no fingerprints on the ladder, the ransom notes, nor inside Lindbergh house, no clear indication that the notes were beyond a shadow of a doubt his handwriting, and his explanation for possessing the ransom money, he was considered guilty from the get go.

We are asked to believe that a man who spent the ransom money openly, who was foolish enough to use boards from his own attic to build a latter, foolishly leaving this behind, was smart enough to avoid fingerprints anywhere at the crime scene. Usually a person is either very smart or very stupid but seldom both!

Raven,

I agree with what you say about the 'wood technologist', not because I think he was mistaken or even a fraud, but because the police 'discovered' the 'wood evidence' a few days after Hauptmann's wife had left the house and it was unoccupied. What an incredible coincidence! That experts in wood existed and exist is beyond question - for example, dendroarchaeology is now a precise science.

It also must be said that the police were under terrific public and official pressure to solve this case, and the discovery of Hauptmann must have been seen as a gift of the gods. Yes, I do think he was stupid enough to do the things you mention - after all, the crime was committed on 1 March 1932 and the gold-certificate used to buy gas was passed on 15 September 1934 - about 2 1/2 years during which time no suspicion whatsoever had been laid at Hauptmann's door, and he doubtless thought that he was safe.

However, amongst many questions that still surround this celebrated case:

- why was Governor Hoffman of New Jersey so interested in Hauptmann that he actually had the execution delayed? Was it just a political ploy reference his ongoing differences with David Willentz, who had prosecuted Hauptmann at his trial? Or did Hoffman 'know something' that he never let on?

- what was the role, if any, of the mysterious Isidore Fisch? Hauptmann claimed that he and Fisch had been in business together, and that Fisch owed him money, about $7500, and that prior to going to Germany in 1933 he had asked Hauptmann to 'look after' what turned out to be the gold certificates handed over as the ransom money. That was Hauptmann's story of how he had come by the certificates, which the police say were well hidden in his house.

- if Hauptmann wasn't involved, how was it that when the police asked him to write a phrase using words used in the 'ransom notes', he wrote them with the same mis-spelling?

I can't say that the case against Hauptmann was 100% proven, but it does seem that he was definitely involved, and if so he was certainly not the master criminal he probably thought himself to be.

Great case, and as the man said, "It will never die".

Graham

[RivkahChaya]

- if Hauptmann wasn't involved, how was it that when the police asked him to write a phrase using words used in the 'ransom notes', he wrote them with the same mis-spelling?

Hauptmann claimed that the police told him how to spell (that is, misspell) the words.

Don't get me wrong. I think Hauptmann did it, although I'm an agnostic about whether or not he acted alone. But that doesn't mean that between the time he wrote the ransom note, and the time he was arrested, his English hadn't improved, so the police said "No, spell it this way," or that the police were not pro-active, and dictated letter by letter.

For that matter, if you are trying to sound out words, there are only so many ways to spell them. It's very common to see "separate" spelled "seperate," but I doubt you'll ever see it spelled "ball peen hammer." I would hesitate to convict someone for writing "seperate," or in the case of Hauptmann, using a letter the way it's used in German. I don't know anything about German, but for example, if someone Polish used a "cz" instead of a "ch," that's how you write the "ch" sound in Polish. Cf. "Czech Republic." That's not how Czechs spell the word; that's the Polish spelling, which Americans use, for some reason.