The testimony itself offers the reader dramatic and exciting reading. The 86 page essay by the author which prefaces the book is an excellent work of clarification of the whole complex matter of the crime itself and the ensuing trial. No one who has a genuine interest in really understanding the complicated aspects of the case can afford to miss reading every word of this essay.
For instance, the author makes clear and intelligible the curious aftermath of the case involving such matters as Governor Hoffman's espousal of Hauptmann's cause, the determination of Col.
Lindbergh to leave with their son Jon for England amidst the rising tide of public clamor, and, finally, the Means and Wendel "confessions," the latter involving kidnapping and torture. The author's factual analysis of the case shows that the crime was one of the most daring exhibitions of criminal conceit in American history. We can be sure now that it was undoubtedly conceived and executed by a lone amateur who was able to elude the police for 30 months after the commission of the crime.
The theory often advanced that the kidnapping was an "inside job," conceived or abetted by servants in either the Lindbergh or Morrow household, proves to be an untenable one.
It is fascinating to follow the author's description of the brilliant scientific detective work of Arthur Koehler, wood technologist of the Forest Service of the Dept. The ladder evidence of this dogged, thorough scientist, together with the spell- ing and hand writing in the ransom notes, sealed the doom of Hauptmann, the Bronx resident, once he was captured.
The author's tribute to Justice Trenchard is a refreshing aspect of this lurid case. The correctness of Justice Trenchard's position throughout the long trial cannot be successfully challenged, according to Mr. He says that the defendant's right to a fair and impartial trial was safe-guarded under very difficult conditions largely because the attitude, manner and conduct of the Court itself was beyond reproach or criticism. Since more than a million words of evidence were heard in the trial, it will be appreciated what a difficult task was undertaken by the author in presenting a review of all the salient testimony.
Whipple is the opinion that a perusal of the testimony shows that the State had a well-knit and carefully conceived plan of attack whereas the defence relied in large part upon rumor, conjecture and innuendo to divert the jury's attention from the main issues. He claims that the defense, in fact, presented not one theory but a dozen, all conflicting. The Lindberghs move into their new estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. Charles, Jr. Reporters and souveneir hunters swarm over the Lindbergh estate.
The Lindberghs receive their first communication from kidnappers since the crime. Kidnapper responds to Condon letter. Lindberghs agree to allow Condon to act as intermediary. Condon, a. The remains of Charles, Jr. Bruno Richard Hauptmann is arrested for the crime. Lindbergh gave Condon toys and safety pins so that he might identify the baby and authorized him to place a "Money is ready" note in the New York American.
At on the evening of March 12, the doorbell rang at Condon's house. The man who rang the doorbell handed Condon a letter. The man explained that a man in a brown topcoat and brown felt hat had stopped his taxi and asked him to deliver a letter to Decatur Avenue. The letter turned out to be from the kidnapper.
The letter told Condon to "take a car" to a specific location near an empty hot dog stand where he might find a note under a stone telling him where he should go next. Condon found the note. It told him to "follow the fence from the cemetery direction to rd Street.
I will meet you. The man had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. The man asked whether Condon had the money.
He replied, "I can't bring the money until I see the baby. Condon chased the man down and they sat down together on a bench. Condon told the man who called himself "John" he had nothing to fear; no one would hurt him.
The man expressed to Condon the fear that he "might even burn. The baby is all right. Condon asked that the man take him to the baby, but instead the man, saying he had "stayed too long already" and that the chief conspirator--"Number One"--will be mad at him, got up to leave. He promised to send Condon "a token": the baby's sleeping suit.
A few days later, Dr. Condon received a package containing a gray wool sleeping suit. It was the sleeping suit worn by the Lindbergh baby on the night of the kidnapping. Lindbergh worried that the kidnappers might be losing patience, and urged that the ransom be paid immediately--even before the baby was actually seen.
On Tuesday, March 31, Condon received a note from "John" demanding that the ransom money be ready by Saturday evening. IRS officials helped assemble the ransom money using gold notes. Within two years the country would be off the gold standard, officials reasoned, and the bills round yellow seals of the gold notes would set them apart from other currency. Officials delivered two boxes containing the ransom money to Condon's house. At on Saturday evening the doorbell rang again at the Condon home.
A taxi driver delivered a note telling Condon to drive to a florist shop where he would find another note under a table outside the shop. Condon, accompanied by a gun-toting Charles Lindbergh, drove to the location. The note pointed Condon to another cemetery, this one across the street from the florist shop. Lindbergh decided to hang back and see what happened. When they met, "John" asked Condon if he had the money. Condon said the money was in the car, but he wouldn't hand it over until told where the baby was.
When "John" promised to be back in ten minutes with a note identifying the baby's precise location, Condon went to the car to retrieve the ransom money. Condon took the envelope to Lindbergh, who opened it. At on May 12, , a truck driver named William Allen stopped just north of the small village of Mount Rose, New Jersey two miles from the Lindbergh home to relieve himself in the nearby woods.
About seventy-five feet off the road he looked down to see a baby's head and a foot protruding from the ground. It was Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The hunt for the Lindbergh baby was over. Investigation later revealed that the baby was probably killed by a blow to the head, possibly from a fall coming down the ladder from the nursery.
In the days that followed, investigators continued to question one of Lindbergh's maids, Violet Sharpe , who they viewed as having been evasive in prior interviews. Sharpe told police that she had been out with a man named Ernie Brinkert on the night of March 1 although, curiously, an Ernest Miller later came forward and admitted that he, and not Brinkert, had dated Violet that night. Sharpe's photo identification of Brinkert, and business cards of Brinkert found in Sharpe's room, caused police to consider him a possible suspect, but he turned out to have a solid alibi for the night of the kidnapping and his handwriting did not match that on the notes.
The day after identifying Brinkert as her March 1 date, Violet Sharpe--ill, depressed over the death of the baby, and shaken by relentless prying into her private relationships--committed suicide by drinking cyanide chloride from a measuring cup. Speculation began--and continued through the years that followed--that Sharpe was connected with the kidnapping.
The investigation was adrift. During and much of , the police kept tracking locations where the marked gold ransom notes appeared. First scattered all over the city, over time the notes began to concentrate in upper Manhattan and the German-speaking district of Yorkville. On November 27, , a cashier at the Loew's Theater remembered taking a gold note for a movie from an average-sized, big-nosed man who matched Condon's description of "John.
The teller informed investigators who assumed that the notation was for a license plate, penciled in by a gas station attendant. Their assumption turned out to be correct. The attendant at the upper Manhattan service station, John Lyons, recalled that the note came from an average-sized man, with a German accent, driving a blue Dodge. He told investigators he remarked to the man, as he gave him the gold note, "You don't see many of those anymore.
The New York Motor Vehicle Bureau reported that the license number written on the note belonged to Richard Hauptmann, a thirty-five-year-old carpenter living in the Bronx. The next morning, after leaving in his home in his blue Dodge, Hauptmann was arrested. In his possession was a twenty-dollar gold note. Confronted with the discovery of the ransom money, Hauptmann said that Isidor Fisch , a German friend who had sailed for Germany the previous December, then died a few months later of tuberculosis, had left some of his belongings with him for safekeeping.
When he discovered that Fisch's belongings contained the gold notes, Hauptmann told investigators, he decided to spend it without even telling his wife, Anna.
Investigators had expected Hauptmann to confess. They were disappointed. In the weeks that followed, Hauptmann was given the third degree. Officials fingerprinted him, put him in line-ups, and made him submit handwriting samples.
Meanwhile, detectives kept busy. They investigated the "Fisch Story"--and found it to be fishy. On the trim of a door in a baby closet in the Hauptmann home, detectives noticed a smudged phone number, written in pencil. It was Dr. Condon's phone number. In Hauptmann's attic, investigators noticed a sawed-off board. Prosecutors would later charge that Hauptmann used the board to repair the ladder found at the Lindbergh home on the night of the kidnapping.
From interviews with Hauptmann's neighbors, a picture emerged of Hauptmann as a shy, hardworking, and frugal carpenter. The case against Hauptmann kept building. Two weeks later in the Hunterdon County Courthouse in Flemington, New Jersey, twenty-three grand jurors unanimously voted to indict Hauptmann for the murder of the Lindbergh baby.
New York agreed to extradite Hauptmann to stand trial in New Jersey. An opening date for the trial was set: January 2, By New Years Day, Flemington overflowed with hundred reporters, thousands of curious spectators, and hundreds of communications technicians.
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