Journalist H. L. Mencken called the trial of Bruno Hauptmann, the accused kidnapper of the baby of aviator Charles Lindbergh, the greatest story since the Resurrection. While Mencken's description is doubtless an exaggeration, measured by the public interest it generated, the Hauptmann trial stands with the O. J. Simpson and Scopes trials as among the most famous trials of the twentieth century. The trial featured America's greatest hero, a good mystery involving ransom notes and voices in dark cemeteries, a crime that is every parent's worst nightmare, and a German-born defendant who fought against U. S. forces in World War I.
On the cold, rainy night of March 1, 1932, sometime between 8:00 and 10:00 o'clock, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the twenty-month-old child of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was snatched from the second-floor nursery of their Hopewell, New Jersey home. The kidnapper left a small, white envelope on a radiator case near the nursery window. It contained a ransom note:
Dear Sir!
Have 50,000$ redy 2500$ in 20$ bills 1500$ in 10$ bills and 1000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-2 days we will inform you were to deliver the Money. We warn you for notify the police the child is in gute care. Indication for all letters are signature and 3 holes.
An investigation outside the house revealed a broken three-piece homemade extension ladder. The side rails of the middle section were split, suggesting that the ladder broke when the kidnapper descended with the baby. Investigators also discovered a chisel and large footprints leading away from the house in a southeasterly direction. In a remarkable oversight, the footprints were never measured.
By the next morning, word of the kidnapping had been broadcast to the world and reporters, cameramen, curious onlookers, and souvenir hunters swarmed over the Lindbergh estate. Any evidence not yet retrieved by police was lost in the stampede.
Charles Lindbergh made very clear to Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, head of the New Jersey State Police, that he wanted the police to allow him to negotiate without interference with the kidnappers. No arrests were to be made until the ransom was paid and the baby safely returned. The Lindberghs broadcast a message to the kidnapper or kidnappers on NBC radio promising to keep confidential any arrangements that would bring their baby back safely.
On March 5, the Lindberghs received their first communication from the kidnapper(s) since their baby was taken. It came in the form of a handwritten note mailed from Brooklyn. The note said Don't by afraid about the baby two ladys keeping care of it day and night. The note warned the Lindberghs to keep the police out of the case and said that a future note will tell them were to deliver the money. Feeling a need to find a go-between to deal with the kidnappers, the Lindberghs settled on two bootleggers who had volunteered for the assignment. Meanwhile, gangster Al Capone, calling the kidnapping the most outrageous thing I have ever heard of, offered $10,000 for information leading to the return of the child.
In the Bronx, New York, an intelligent, patriotic, and a bit overbearing seventy-two-year-old retired principal named Dr. John Condon wrote a letter that ran in the Bronx Home News of March 8, 1932. In his letter, Condon offered the kidnappers $1000 of his own money in addition to any ransom money provided by the Lindberghs. He promised to go anywhere, alone, to give the kidnappers the extra money and promise never to utter his name to any person. The next day Condon found in his mailbox a letter from the kidnapper(s) asking him to get the money from Mr. Lindbergh and await further instruction. Condon called Lindbergh with word of his letter. Lindbergh urge
d Condon to drive out to Hopewell for a meeting to discuss a response to the note. 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 8:30 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 2974 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. He was to be at the location in 3/4 of a hour.
Condon found the note. It told him to follow the fence from the cemetery direction to 233rd Street. I will meet you. Condon walked toward the cemetery gate when he saw a figure inside the cemetery--deep in shadows--signaling him. The man had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. Did you gottit my note? the man asked in a German accent. The man asked whether Condon had the money. He replied, I can't bring the money until I see the baby. Then, spotting another man outside the cemetery, the shadowy figure said It's too dangerous! and turned and ran. 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. Alarmed, Condon asked him what he meant. What if the baby is dead? he asked. Would I burn if the baby is dead? Condon, blood rushing to his face, demanded to know why he was asked to deliver a ransom if the baby was dead. The baby is not dead, the man said. Tell the Colonel not to worry. The baby is all right. Condon asked where the baby was. Tell Colonel Lindbergh the baby is on a boat, the man answered. 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. I must go. Goodnight.
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 7:45 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. Hey, Doctor! the man he recognized as John yelled. 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 handed John $50,000 in return for an envelope said to contain directions to a boat called Nelly, where the Lindberghs
might find their long-lost baby. Condon took the envelope to Lindbergh, who opened it. The note said: You will find the Boad between Horseneck Beach and gay Head near Elizabeth Island. At dawn the next morning, Charles Lindbergh was in the air, flying along the Atlantic Coast looking in vain for a twenty-eight-foot boat called Nelly.
At 3:15 on May 12, 1932, 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 1932 and much of
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