Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

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Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

• The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr

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Abduction of the son of aviator Charles Lindbergh
and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

• The toddler was abducted from his family home in
  East Amwell, New Jersey
• on the evening of March 1, 1932.
• Over two months later, on May 12, 1932, the body
  of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., was discovered a short
  distance from the Lindberghs' home.
• A medical examination determined that the
  toddler had a "massive fracture of the skull",
  which was determined to be the cause of death.

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The Crime

• At 800 pm on March 1, 1932, the nurse-maid,
  Betty Gow, put 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh,
  Jr., in his crib. She then proceeded to pin the
  blanket covering him with two large safety pins
  so as to prevent it from moving while he slept.
• At around 930 p.m., Col. Lindbergh heard a noise
  that made him think some slats had fallen off an
  orange crate in the kitchen.
• At 1000 p.m., Gow discovered that the baby was
  missing from his crib.

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The Crime cont.

• She in turn went to ask Mrs. Lindbergh, who was
  just coming out of the bath, if she had the baby
  with her.
• After not finding Charles Lindbergh, Jr., with
  his mother, the nurse-maid then proceeded down
  stairs to speak with Lindbergh, who was in the
  library/study just beneath the baby's nursery
  room in the southeast corner of the house.

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Crime cont.

• Charles Lindbergh then proceeded up to the
  nursery to see for himself that his son was not
  in his crib.
• While surveying the room, he discovered a white
  envelope had been left on the radiator that
  formed the window sill.
• Lindbergh proceeded to locate his Springfield
  rifle and search the rest of the house looking
  for intruders.
• Within 30 minutes, the local police were on route
  to the house, as were the media and Lindbergh's
  attorney.

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Crime cont.

• There was a single distinguished footprint and
  indentations discovered a short time later just
  below the window in the mud due to the rainy and
  blustery conditions that day and into the
  evening.
• After the authorities arrived on the scene and
  began to search the immediate area surrounding
  the house, a short distance away in a cluster of
  bushes were found three sections of a smartly
  designed but rather crude-looking ladder.

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The Investigation

• First on the scene was Chief Harry Wolfe of the
  Hopewell police. Wolfe was soon joined by New
  Jersey State Police officers. The police searched
  the home and scoured the surrounding area for
  miles.
• After midnight, a fingerprint expert arrived at
  the home to examine the note left on the window
  sill and the ladder.
• The ladder had 400 partial fingerprints and some
  footprints left behind.
• However, most were of no value to the
  investigation due to the surge of media and
  police that were present within the first 30 to
  60 minutes after the first call for help.

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Investigation cont.

• An odd twist to this investigation is that during
  the fingerprint discovery process, not a single
  fingerprint was found in the room none from Mr.
  and Mrs. Lindbergh, none from the baby, and none
  from Betty Gow.
• Getting any solid evidence outside the house
  proved to be virtually impossible. The ransom
  note that was found by Lindbergh was opened and
  read by the police after they arrived.

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Investigation cont.

• The brief, handwritten letter was riddled with
  spelling mistakes and grammatical irregularities
• Dear Sir! Have 50000 redy 25000 in20 bills
  15000 in 10 bills and10000 in 5 bills After
  2-4 dayswe will inform you were to deliverthe
  Mony.We warn you for makinganyding public or
  for notify the PoliceThe child is in gut
  care.Indication for all letters
  aresingnatureand three holes.

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Investigation cont.

• Without spelling and grammatical errors, the
  message reads
• Dear Sir Have 50,000 ready 25,000 in20
  bills, 15,000 in 10 bills and10,000 in 5
  bills. After 2-4 days,we will inform you of
  where to deliverthe money.We warn you about
  makinganything public or notifying the
  police.The child is in good care.Indication for
  all letters are asignatureand three holes.
• There were two interconnected circles (colored
  red and blue) below the message, with a hole
  punched through the red circle and two other
  holes punched outside the circles.

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Investigation cont.

• Word of the kidnapping spread quickly, and, along
  with police, the well-connected and
  well-intentioned arrived at the Lindbergh estate.
  
• Three were military colonels offering their aid,
  though only one had law enforcement expertise
  Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the
  New Jersey State Police Henry Skillman
  Breckinridge, a Wall Street lawyer William
  Joseph Donovan (a.k.a. "Wild Bill).
• Lindbergh and these men believed that the
  kidnapping was perpetrated by organized crime
  figures. The letter, they thought, seemed written
  by someone who spoke German as his native
  language. It should be noted that Charles
  Lindbergh, at this time, used his influence to
  control the direction of the investigation.
• They contacted Mickey Rosner, rumored to know
  mobsters. Rosner, in turn, brought in two
  speakeasy owners Salvatore "Salvy" Spitale and
  Irving Bitz. Lindbergh quickly endorsed the duo
  and appointed them his intermediaries to deal
  with the mob.
• Unknown to Lindbergh, however, Bitz and Spitale
  were actually in cahoots with the New York Daily
  News, a paper which hoped to use the duo to scoop
  other newspapers in the race for leads in the
  kidnapping story.

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Investigation

• Several organized crime figures notably Al
  Capone spoke from prison, offering to help
  return the baby to his family in exchange for
  money or for legal favors. Ideally Capone was
  offering assistance in return for being released
  from prison under the guise that his assistance
  could be more effective. This was quickly denied
  by the authorities.
• The morning after the kidnapping, President
  Herbert Hoover was notified of the crime. Though
  the case did not seem to have any grounds for
  federal involvement (kidnapping then being
  classified as a local crime), Hoover declared
  that he would "move Heaven and Earth" to recover
  the missing child.
• The Bureau of Investigation was authorized to
  investigate the case, while the United States
  Coast Guard, the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S.
  Immigration Service and the Washington, D.C.,
  police were told their services might be
  required. New Jersey officials announced a
  25,000 reward for the safe return of "Little
  Lindy". The Lindbergh family offered an
  additional 50,000 reward of their own. The total
  reward of 75,000 was made even more significant
  by the fact that the offer was made during the
  early days of the Great Depression.

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Investigation Cont.

• A few days after the kidnapping, a new ransom
  letter arrived at the Lindbergh home via the
  mail. Postmarked in Brooklyn, the letter was
  genuine, carrying the perforated red and blue
  marks.
• Police wanted to examine the letter, but instead
  Lindbergh gave it to Rosner, who said he would
  pass it on to his supposed mob associates. In
  actuality, the note went back to the Daily News,
  where someone photographed it. Before long,
  copies of the ransom note were being sold on
  street corners throughout New York for 5 each.
  Any ransom letters received after this one were
  therefore automatically suspect.
• A second ransom note then arrived by mail, also
  postmarked from Brooklyn. Ed Mulrooney,
  Commissioner of the New York City Police
  Department, suggested that, given two Brooklyn
  postmarks, the kidnappers were probably working
  out of that area.
• Mulrooney told Lindbergh that his officers could
  surveil postal letterboxes in Brooklyn, and that
  a device could be placed inside each letterbox to
  isolate the letters in sequence as they were
  dropped in, to help track down anyone who might
  be tied to the case. If Lindbergh, Jr., was being
  held in Brooklyn by the kidnappers, Mulrooney
  insisted that such a plan might help locate the
  child as well.
• Mulrooney was willing to go to great lengths,
  including organizing a police raid to rescue the
  baby. Lindbergh strongly disapproved of the plan.
  He feared for his son's life and warned Mulrooney
  that if such a plan was carried out, Lindbergh
  would use his considerable influence in efforts
  to ruin Mulrooney's career.Reluctantly, Mulrooney
  acquiesced.
• The day after Lindbergh rejected Mulrooney's
  plan, a third letter was mailed. It too came from
  Brooklyn. This letter warned that since the
  police were now involved in the case, the ransom
  had been doubled to 100,000.

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John Condon aka "Jafsie"

• During this time, John F. Condon, a retired
  school teacher in the Bronx, wrote a letter to
  the Home News, proclaiming his willingness to
  help the Lindbergh case in any way he could and
  added 1000 of his own money to the reward.
• Condon received a letter in care of the Home News
  purportedly written by the kidnappers. It was
  marked with the punctured red-and-blue circles
  and authorized Condon as their intermediary with
  Lindbergh. Lindbergh accepted the letter as
  genuine and, at the time, neither man seemed to
  know that copies of the first mailed ransom
  letter were being sold by the hundreds. By then,
  a great many people must have known the
  "signature" required to forge a letter from the
  kidnappers.
• Following the latest letter's instructions,
  Condon placed a classified ad in the New York
  American "Money is Ready. Jafsie". (Jafsie was a
  pseudonym based on a phonetic pronunciation of
  Condon's initials, "J.F.C.") Condon then waited
  for further instructions from the culprits.

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investigation

• A meeting between "Jafsie" and a representative
  of the group that claimed to be the kidnappers
  was eventually scheduled for late one evening at
  Woodlawn Cemetery. According to Condon, the man
  sounded foreign but stayed in the shadows during
  the conversation, and he was thus unable to get a
  close look at his face. The man said his name was
  John, and he related his story he was a
  "Scandinavian" sailor, part of a gang of three
  men and two women. The Lindbergh child was
  unharmed and being held on a boat, but the
  kidnappers were still not ready to return him or
  receive the ransom. When Condon expressed doubt
  that "John" actually had the baby, he promised
  some proof the kidnapper would soon return the
  baby's sleeping suit. The stranger asked Condon,
  "... would I burn be executed, if the package
  baby were dead?" When questioned further, he
  assured Condon that the baby was alive. Lindbergh
  had insisted that Mulrooney not be informed, and
  so "John" was not followed by police after the
  meeting. The New York Police were by now aware of
  the "Jafsie" newspaper advertisements and wanted
  to know who the mysterious Jafsie was, but
  Lindbergh refused to say anything.
• On March 16, 1932, John Condon received a package
  by mail that contained a toddler's sleeping suit,
  which was sent as proof of their claim, and a
  seventh ransom note. Condon showed the sleeping
  suit to Lindbergh who identified it as belonging
  to his son. After the delivery of the sleeping
  suit, Condon took out a new ad in the Home News
  declaring, "Money is ready. No cops. No secret
  service. I come alone, like last time." One month
  after the child was kidnapped, on April 1, 1932,
  Condon received a letter from the purported
  kidnappers. They were ready to accept payment.

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Payment of the ransom

• The ransom was packaged in a wooden box that was
  custom-made in the hope that it could later be
  identified. The ransom money itself was made up
  with a number of gold certificates that were to
  be withdrawn from circulation in the near future.
  It was hoped that anyone passing large amounts of
  gold notes would draw attention to themselves and
  help aid in identifying the abductors. It should
  also be noted that while the bills themselves
  were not marked, the serial number of each bill
  was recorded.
• The next evening, Condon was given a note by cab
  driver Raymond Perrone, who said he had been paid
  by a man to deliver the note. This note was the
  first in a series of convoluted instructions that
  lead Condon and Lindbergh all over Manhattan.
  Eventually, they were sent to St. Raymond's
  Cemetery. Condon met a man he thought might have
  been "John" and told him that they had been able
  to raise only 50,000. The man accepted the money
  and gave Condon a note. Lindbergh, who saw the
  man only from a distance, had insisted the police
  not be informed of the meeting, and the suspect
  got away without being followed.
• The note given to Condon stated that the child
  was being held on a boat called the Nelly at
  Martha's Vineyard. The child was supposedly in
  the care of two women who, according to the note,
  were innocent. Lindbergh went there and searched
  the piers however, there was no boat called the
  Nelly. A desperate Lindbergh took to flying an
  airplane low over the piers in an attempt to
  startle the kidnappers into showing themselves.
  After two days, Lindbergh admitted he had been
  fooled.

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Discovery of the body

• On May 12, 1932, delivery truck driver pulled his
  truck to the side of a road about 4.5 miles from
  the Lindbergh home. He went to a grove of trees
  to relieve himself, and there he discovered the
  corpse of a toddler. Allen notified police, who
  took the body to a morgue in nearby Trenton, New
  Jersey.
• The body was badly decomposed, and it was
  discovered that the skull was badly fractured.
  The left leg and both hands were missing, and
  there were signs that the body had been chewed on
  by various animals as well as indications that
  someone had made an attempt to hastily bury the
  body. Lindbergh and Gow quickly identified the
  baby as the missing infant based on the
  overlapping toes of the right foot and the shirt
  that Gow had made for the baby. They surmised
  that the child had been killed by a blow to the
  head. Mr. Lindbergh was insistent on having the
  body cremated afterwards.
• Once the U.S. Congress learned that the child was
  dead, legislation was rushed making kidnapping a
  federal crime. The Bureau of Investigations could
  now aid the case more directly.
• In June 1932, officials began to suspect an
  "inside job" in that someone the Lindberghs
  trusted may have betrayed the family. Suspicions
  fell upon Violet Sharp, a British household
  servant of the Lindbergh home. She had given
  contradictory testimony regarding her whereabouts
  on the night of the kidnapping. It was reported
  that she acted nervous and suspicious when
  questioned. She committed suicide on June 20,
  1932, by ingesting a silver polish that contained
  potassium cyanide just prior to what would have
  been her fourth time being questioned. After her
  alibi was confirmed, it was later determined that
  the possible threat of losing her job and the
  intense questioning had driven her to commit
  suicide. At the time, the police investigators
  were criticized for what some felt were the
  "heavy handed" police tactics used.
• Following the death of Violet Sharp, John Condon
  was also questioned by police. Condon's home was
  searched as well, but nothing was found that tied
  Condon to the crime. Charles Lindbergh stood by
  Condon during this time as well.17

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Tracking the ransom money

• A pamphlet was prepared with the serial numbers
  on the ransom bills, and 250,000 copies were
  distributed to businesses mainly in New York
  City. A few of the ransom bills turned up in
  scattered locations, some as far away as Chicago
  and Minneapolis, but the people spending them
  were never found.
• Gold Certificates were to be turned in by May 1,
  1933. A few days before the deadline, a man in
  Manhattan brought in 2,990 of the ransom money
  to be exchanged. The bank was busy and no one
  could remember anything specific about the
  person. He had filled out a required form, which
  gave his name as J. J. Faulkner. The address
  supplied was 537 West 159th Street in New York
  City.
• When authorities visited the address, they
  learned that no one named Faulkner had lived
  there or anywhere nearby for many years. U.S.
  Treasury officials kept looking and eventually
  learned that a woman named Jane Faulkner had
  lived at the address in question in 1913. She had
  moved after she married a German man named
  Geissler. The couple was tracked down, and both
  denied any involvement in the crime.
• Though neither could be conclusively tied to the
  kidnapping, there were some curious facts that
  led authorities to suspect involvement
  Geissler's son worked as a florist and lived
  about one block from Condon, while Geissler's
  daughter had married a German gardener. Condon
  again figured in the investigation after hearing
  the three men from the Geissler family speak,
  Condon declared that Geissler's son-in-law, the
  gardener, had a voice very similar to "John", the
  man whom he had met in the cemeteries. The police
  followed up on this lead, but the gardener killed
  himself.

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Capture of a suspect

• For thirty months, New York Police Detective
  Finn and FBI Agent Sisk had been working on the
  Lindbergh case. They had been able to track down
  many bills from the ransom money that were being
  spent in places throughout New York City. A map
  created by Finn recorded each find and eventually
  showed that many of the bills were being passed
  mainly along the route of the Lexington Avenue
  subway. This subway line connected the East Bronx
  with the east side of Manhattan, including the
  German-Austrian neighborhood of Yorkville.
• On September 18, 1934, a gold certificate from
  the ransom money was referred to Detective Finn
  and Agent Sisk. Although an executive order was
  issued on April 5, 1933, calling for all gold
  certificates to be turned in by May 1, 1933,
  under the penalty of fine or imprisonment, some
  members of the public held on to them past the
  deadline. As of July 31, 1934, 161 million in
  gold certificates were still in general
  circulation. The ten dollar gold certificate was
  discovered by a teller of the Corn Exchange Bank
  of the Bronx. It had a New York license plate
  penciled in the margin, which helped the
  investigators trace the bill to a gas station in
  upper Manhattan. The station manager, Walter
  Lyle, had written down the license plate number
  as per company policy, feeling that his customer
  was acting "suspicious" and was "possibly a
  counterfeiter".
• It was found the license plate number belonged to
  a blue Dodge sedan owned by Bruno Richard
  Hauptmann of 1279 East 222nd Street in the Bronx.
  Hauptmann was found to be a German immigrant with
  a criminal record in his homeland. When Hauptmann
  was arrested, he had on his person a twenty
  dollar gold certificate. A search by police of
  Hauptmann's home found 1,830 of the ransom money
  hidden behind a board. Another 11,930 was found
  in an empty can near a window in the
  garage.During the police investigation, the
  garage that Hauptmann built was torn down in the
  search for the money.

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Capture of Suspect

• Hauptmann was arrested by Finn he was
  interrogated, as well as beaten at least once,
  throughout the day and night that followed. The
  money, Hauptmann stated, along with other items,
  had been left with him by friend and former
  business partner Isidor Fisch. Fisch had died, on
  March 29, 1934, shortly after returning to
  Germany. Only following Fisch's death, Hauptmann
  stated, did he learn that the shoe box left with
  him contained a considerable sum of money. He
  took the money because he claimed that it was
  owed to him from a business deal that he and
  Isidor Fisch had made. Hauptmann consistently
  denied any connection to the crime or knowledge
  that the money in his house was from the ransom.
• In the search of his apartment by police, a
  considerable amount of additional evidence that
  he was involved in the crime surfaced. One item
  was a notebook that contained a sketch for the
  construction of a collapsible ladder similar to
  that which was found at the Lindbergh home in
  March 1932. John Condon's telephone number, along
  with his address, were discovered written down on
  a closet wall in the house. A key linking piece
  of evidence, a piece of wood, was discovered in
  the attic of the home. After being examined by an
  expert, it was determined to be an exact match to
  the wood used in the construction of the ladder
  found at the scene of the crime. This particular
  wood was also traced back to the saw mill where
  the lumber was processed in South Carolina.
• Hauptmann was indicted in the Bronx on September
  24, 1934, for extorting the 50,000 ransom from
  Charles Lindbergh. Two weeks later, on October
  8, 1934, Hauptmann was indicted in New Jersey for
  the murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.Two
  days later, he was surrendered to New Jersey
  authorities by New York Governor Herbert H.
  Lehman to face charges directly related to the
  kidnapping and murder of the child.

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The trial

• Hauptmann was charged with extortion and murder.
  Conviction on even one charge could earn him the
  death penalty. He pleaded not guilty.
• Held at the Hunterdon County Courthouse in
  Flemington, New Jersey, the trial soon became a
  sensation reporters swarmed the town, and every
  hotel room was booked.
• In addition to Hauptmann's possession of the
  ransom money, the State introduced evidence
  showing a striking similarity between Hauptmann's
  handwriting and the handwriting on the ransom
  notes.
• Based on the forensic work of Arthur Koehler, the
  State also introduced photographic evidence
  demonstrating that the wood from the ladder left
  at the crime scene matched a plank from the floor
  of Hauptmann's attic the type of wood, the
  direction of tree growth, the milling pattern at
  the factory, the inside and outside surface of
  the wood, and the grain on both sides were
  identical, and two oddly placed nail holes lined
  up with a joist splice in Hauptmann's attic.
• Additionally, the prosecutors noted that Condon's
  address and telephone number had been found
  written in pencil on a closet door in Hauptmann's
  home. Hauptmann himself admitted in a police
  interview that he had written Condon's address on
  the closet door.
• The defense did not challenge the identification
  of the body, a common practice in murder cases at
  the time designed to avoid exposing the jury to
  an intense analysis of the body and its
  condition.
• Condon and Lindbergh both testified that
  Hauptmann was "John". Another witness, Amandus
  Hochmuth, testified that he saw Hauptmann near
  the scene of the crime.

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Conviction

• Hauptmann was ultimately convicted of the crimes
  and sentenced to death. His appeals were
  rejected, though New Jersey Governor Harold G.
  Hoffman granted a temporary reprieve of
  Hauptmann's execution and made the politically
  unpopular move of having the New Jersey Board of
  Pardons review the case. Apparently, they found
  no reason to issue a pardon.
• He was electrocuted on April 3, 1936, just over
  four years after the kidnapping.

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