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The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, aged twenty months, on March 1, 1932 triggered the most massive manhunt in history and profoundly affected the lives of every parent and child in America. In its tragic wake came the Lindbergh Law which made kidnapping a federal offense. Rich or poor, famous or ordinary, one question loomed in the hearts and minds of all who were touched by the case: If the son of such rich and prominent parents could be snatched from under the very eyes of all the adults who loved and promised to protect him, whose child could ever be safe anywhere?
For the famed aviator whose solo flight in The Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic in May of 1927 made him an international hero and his lovely wife, Anne Morrow,the daughter of an American Ambassador, the loss of their only child was a devastating blow that haunted them for the rest of their lives. For Bruno Hauptman, the 35 year old German carpenter convicted and executed for the heinous crime, a terrible injustice may very well have been committed. After the passing of almost seventy years the distortions of a sensation-seeking press and a vengeful public scream out to anyone who dares to look and circumstantial evidence flows through a very flimsy sieve.
On that fateful night the baby was put to bed by his mother and nurse, Betty Gow, at eight PM. He was looked in on at nine and found to be sleeping peacefully. Fifty minutes later, when the nurse made her final check, the baby was gone. A search of the premises revealed a wooden ladder with a plank missing lying on the ground outside the second floor nursery window and a ransom note on the window sill. The note, written in broken English, demanded $50,000 for the safe return of the child.
Lindbergh had enough presence of mind not to touch the note until the police arrived on the scene, but a subsequent check for finger-prints yielded nothing useful. Even though the police, headed by Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf (father of the Desert Storm General), seemed little more equipped than Lindbergh himself to handle the enormity of such a crime, the investigation that followed was severely hampered by Lindbergh’s own fame, ego and tendency to manage everything. Another note arrived in the mail a few days later. It seemed written by the same hand.
There seems little question that the kidnapping was an inside job. The remote Sourland estate in Huntington County, New Jersey, outside of Hopewell and northwest of Princeton, was partially under construction and prior to the night of the abduction, the Lindberghs had only visited their new home on week-ends. March the first was a Tuesday and only those closely connected to the household could have known that the entire family would be there. That included Betty Gow and one of the English maids, a Violet Sharpe, who lied as to her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping. She committed suicide when told that the police were unsatisfied with her statement and wanted to question her again.
The ransom money was delivered to a cemetery in the Bronx by a well-meaning intermediary named John Condon, but the baby was not returned. A month later the body of a child was found a mile away from the Lindbergh home, so decomposed that identification could only be made by a count of teeth. Any child aged twenty months would probably have had the same number of teeth, but a mended night-shirt on the body matched one worn by the Lindbergh baby and cemented the final identification. Still, the coroner stated publicly that he could not positively ascertain the identity of the dead infant.
For two long years no one knew who was responsible for the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh child. In September, 1934 Richard Bruno Hauptman used one of the marked bills from the ransom at a gas station in New York City. He was arrested and expedited for trial to Trenton, New Jersey after the police searched his house and found $15,000 of the ransom money. He claimed it belonged to a former business partner and friend, one Isidore Fisch, who had gone to Germany and asked him to hold it for him until his return.
The trial that began in the Flemington Courthouse on January 2, 1935 was a rotating carnival of thrill seekers and cameramen. Adding to the sensationalism was the presence of Charles Lindbergh himself who attended the trial on every one of its thirty-one days. The evidence, although monumental, was circumstantial. After the ransom money was found, the police were convinced that Hauptman was guilty and suppressed any evidence that might have proved contrary. This included the ladder and the plank of missing wood that supposedly matched a piece of wood from Hauptman’s own attic and the ransom notes which some experts testified were in his handwriting and some felt were not. In fact, one expert swore that the notes were doctored to appear as if they were indeed written by Hauptman. She was not allowed to testify.
Let us first examine the issue of the ransom money found in his home. As far-fetched as his story seemed, Fisch and Hauptman were business partners. Unfortunately, Fisch had died in Germany and could not corroborate Hauptman’s story, but the prosecution suppressed the fact that the two men had never even met until three months after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh child!
The piece of the ladder whose grain of wood experts claimed matched so perfectly in reality had to be shoved upward in order to fit. The wood was tampered with just as eye witnesses lied or were mistaken. Evidence that wasn’t manufactured was distorted, but it was Charles Lindbergh’s identification of Hauptman’s voice which ultimately sealed the immigrant’s fate. He could not make up his mind for a week until the police presented him with all the tampered evidence against Hauptman. Then and only then did he identify Hauptman’s voice as the one he heard in the cemetery in the Bronx when he accompanied John Condon with the ransom money some two and one half years before. How could he possibly have been sure?
Richard Bruno Hauptman was executed at Trenton State Prison on April 3, 1936 and very possibly for a crime he did not commit. No one will ever know for sure who kidnapped the child, but there was never any evidence placing Hauptman on the Lindbergh property. That cannot be said for Isidore Fisch who had been seen in the area of the Lindbergh home a few months before the kidnapping and was a known swindler. It is possible that Hauptman knew the money was “hot” but that would make him a receiver of stolen goods and not an extortionist and murderer.
Other theories abound, even one involving the sickly sister of Anna Morrow whose absence during the whole ordeal aroused much suspicion. Elizabeth Morrow was rumored to have been attracted to her sister’s famous husband and suffering from a mental condition. In reality, she suffered from a malady of the heart and there is no direct evidence linking her in any way to the terrible crime.
New laws punish kidnappers with their lives and yet the crime continues, although much abated, to this day. New and improved security techniques make expensive walls harder and harder to scale, but an unsettling reality remains even after the passing of seventy years. Our children are our most precious commodity and yet there really is no way to insure that they will always be safe. For all of our efforts and love, in the blink of an eye everything can change as it did for the Lindbergh’s on one terrible Tuesday night in March of 1932.
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