The Lindbergh Kidnapping - The Theft of the Eaglet

By Russell Aiuto

The Theft of the Eaglet

The remains of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.

The child's body was face downward, covered with leaves and insects. It was little more than a skeleton, the outline of a form in a dark, murky heap of rotting vegetation. The left leg was missing from the knee down, as were the left hand and right arm. Most of its organs were gone, scavenged by the animal life dwelling in the wooded area. It had decomposed so completely that it was not possible at first to determine whether it was a boy or a girl. The cause of death was a massive fracture of the skull. The body had been left to the elements for two to three months. Less than twenty-four hours later, and an hour after it had been identified as Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. by its nurse and father, the remains were cremated. Seventy-three dramatic days of waiting had come to an end.

Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.

Now, men and women, as I told you before, there are some cases in which a recommendation of mercy might do, but not this one, not this one. Either this man is the filthiest and vilest snake that ever crawled through the grass, or he is entitled to an acquittal. If you bring in a recommendation of mercy, a wishy- washy decision, yes, it is your province, I will not say a word about it. I will not say another word. But it seems to me that you have the courage. If you are convinced, as all of us are —you must find him guilty of murder in the first degree.
—David T. Wilentz, Attorney General of New Jersey, in his summation to the jury, February 13, 1935.

"Crime of the Century"

The Lindbergh case, the "Crime of the Century," is not so much about the kidnapped and murdered child as it is about America's hero, Charles Lindbergh, the first man to fly the Atlantic alone, in a small, fragile, one-engine airplane, a feat so venerated that the plane occupies a prominent position in the Air and Space Museum. It is the story of a shy national icon caught in a wave of publicity then unknown in American journalism, now expanded beyond print to include the influential voice of radio. The case remains a memorable crime because it involved not only Lindbergh, the hero, but the accused, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant, convicted and executed, whose guilt to this day, in the minds of many, remains an unanswered question. Like many crimes sustained in our history, the victim becomes less important than the participants. Its immortality is not only in the unresolved question about the accused killer, but in the checkered careers of the victim's father and mother. The father, the "Lone Eagle," spends the rest of his forty years as an appeaser, an isolationist, and an environmentalist. 

Anne Morrow Lindbergh

The mother, a writer and poet, lives on as a shy, private romantic. Legally the case is closed and, although it gave birth to "The Lindbergh Law," which first defined the crime of kidnapping to be a federal offense, it persists in its fascination by its almost mythic nature: A crime against a hero, unresolved, controversial, and in many ways inexplicable.

Charles A. Lindbergh

"Lindbergh is a surprise. There is much more in his face than appears in photographs. He has a fine intellectual forehead, a shy engaging smile, wind-blown hair, a way of tossing his head unhappily, a transparent complexion, thin nervous capable fingers, a loose-jointed shy manner. He looks young with a touch of arrested development. His wife is tiny, shy, timid, retreating, rather interested in books, a tragedy at the corner of her mouth."
This description of Charles A. Lindbergh and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, is from the diary of Harold Nicolson, January 5, 1933. Nicolson made his observation while employed by Anne's mother to write a biography of her father, the financier and diplomat, Dwight Morrow, who had died the year before.
At the age of twenty-five, in 1927, Lindbergh was the first man to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo. He was acclaimed a national hero and given the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He then embarked on a career of aviation consultant. In 1929, he met the daughters of Dwight Morrow, then Ambassador to Mexico. While he seems to have shyly courted both Elisabeth and Anne Morrow, he married the latter. In 1930 their first child, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., was born.
Lindbergh was unprepared for the attention that accompanied his fame. He and his wife were constantly hounded by the press, and the more reclusive and uncooperative they became, the more intense became the scrutiny of them. Despite his father-in-law's advice to accept the intrusions into his private life, Lindbergh was determined to escape from the tabloid-type journalism —known at the time as "yellow journalism" —as well as the broad coverage that respectable newspapers of the day expended on his and Anne's every movement.

Overhead view of the Lindberg Estate

To escape, he built a house on a 390-acre tract in a remote area of New Jersey, near the small town of Hopewell. He and Anne and their child lived at the Morrow estate in Englewood, New Jersey, staying weekends at their recently completed house in Hopewell. Normally, they would return to Englewood on Monday mornings, but, on the last weekend of February, they decided to stay over for another day or two, because the baby had a cold.

The Crime

Wanted poster

On a cold rainy night, March 1, 1932, in the remote rural area near Hopewell, New Jersey, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., twenty months old, was kidnapped. Sometime between 8:00 p.m., when his nurse, Betty Gow, checked on the sleeping baby, and 10:00 p.m., when she once again checked on him before retiring for the night, "The Eaglet" (as the newspapers called him) had been removed from his crib.
The only remembered event that indicated that something had gone amiss was earlier, about 9:00 p.m., while the Lindberghs were sitting in the living room. Col. Lindbergh had heard a noise that sounded as if an orange crate had fallen off a chair in the kitchen.

Schwarzkopf and Lindbergh

At 10:25 p.m., Ollie Whately, the Lindbergh caretaker, called the Hopewell Police, and shortly thereafter Col. Lindbergh called the New Jersey State Police. In the cold dark, Lindbergh hunted for signs of the kidnapper, carrying his Springfield rifle. He could see nothing. A number of State Police officers were on the scene, when around midnight their chief, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, arrived to take command.
The impressions of Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf are mixed. He was an army officer in World War I. At the age of twenty-six, he was appointed the first head of the New Jersey State Police, which he designed and ran as a military body. The organization was strong on enforcement, but weak on investigation. His "troops" had military ranks and wore quasi-military uniforms. He was the father of 1991 Desert Storm commander H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr.
While he was excluded from much of the planning to connect with the kidnappers, and while much of his advice was over-ruled by Lindbergh and his lawyer, Henry Breckinridge, once the Eaglet's body was discovered in early May, he took charge of the investigation. It was clear that he found it difficult to cooperate with the New York City Police, the FBI, and other investigative units. Lindbergh expressed confidence in him, particularly during the unproductive months that followed the discovery of the child's body, during which time the efforts of the State Police were roundly criticized.
The first of the state police to arrive investigated the outside area. They found footprints in the wet ground below the window, but neglected either to measure them or to make plaster casts of them. There were two deep impressions, presumably made by a ladder. Also, a carpenter's chisel was found near the ladder impressions. Less than a hundred yards away, the ladder, in three sections, was discovered, the bottom section —the widest —was broken. Near a small dirt road, there were tire tracks.

Ladder at the nursery window

By this time, Lindbergh's lawyer and friend, Henry C. Breckinridge, had arrived. The three colonels (Lindbergh, Breckinridge, and Schwarzkopf) went into the nursery with other officers and Cpl. Frank Kelly, the crime scene and fingerprint man.

The nursery

 

The Ransom Note

On the windowsill was an envelope, spotted earlier by Lindbergh. It was dusted for fingerprints, as were other areas in the room. Officer Schoeffel slit the envelope open with his penknife. He removed a single sheet of folded paper. It had been written with blue ink. The note was handed to Lindbergh.  It read:
Dear Sir!
Have 50000$ redy with 2500$ in 20$ bills 1500$ in 10$ bills and 1000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-4 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony.
We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the polise the child is in gute care.
Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holes.

The ransom note

At the bottom right-hand corner of the sheet of paper was a drawing of two interlocking circles, each about an inch in diameter. The area where the circles intersected had been colored red. Three small holes had been punched into the design. Kelly found only a single unidentifiable smudge on the envelope, nothing on the sheet of paper.
Within a few hours scores of reporters were at the Lindbergh estate, and by morning curious on-lookers were tramping over the property. Schwarzkopf set up a command post in Lindbergh's three-car garage. The butler and his wife were kept busy providing coffee and sandwiches to the police and the journalists. Additional telephone lines were brought in, and the press finally established their headquarters in the small hotel in the village of Hopewell.
Lindbergh took charge. He and Breckinridge decided that the best way of obtaining the return of the baby was to do whatever the kidnappers asked. Schwarzkopf, in awe of Lindbergh, had no choice, even though he pointed out that Lindbergh legally could not offer immunity to the criminals.
Within the next few days, thousands of pieces of mail were received at Hopewell. Three state police officers worked full time on sorting through the mail. Three theories were being formed:
1) Lindbergh presumed that the kidnappers were professional.
2) Because of the kidnappers' familiarity with the house, the location of the nursery, and the modest ransom request, Schwarzkopf thought that the gang was local and unprofessional.
3) Lieutenant Keaton, Schwarzkopf's principal detective, wanted to pursue the possibility that the kidnapping might have been, directly or indirectly, the work of domestic employees, since somehow the kidnappers had to have been informed that the family was not returning to the Morrow estate, as was their custom. Keaton gingerly explored the possibility that Betty Gow, the nursemaid, was somehow involved.
On March 4, a second ransom letter was received. It scolded Lindbergh for involving the police, and upped the ransom demand to $70,000. The same symbol of interlocking circles was at the bottom of the note. Thinking that this note might have been intercepted by the police, a third letter was sent the next day to Breckinridge's office, to be delivered to Lindbergh. It essentially repeated the information contained in the March 4th letter.

Parallel Threads

At this point, a number of simultaneous stories take place. Not only will Lindbergh and his trusted friends take charge, but, beyond their control, others will become involved.
One week after the child was kidnapped, John F. Condon offered his services as go-between.

John Condon

On the one hand, Condon is described as a ham, an eccentric, a braggart, a self-promoter, and a windbag inflated with his own importance. On the other hand, he is a benevolent scout leader, dedicated, sentimental, a patriot, and a guileless rube. His book, Jafsie Tells All, reads like a turn-of-the-century Frank Merriwell novel, with Condon casting himself as a noble knight, dedicated to the service of his idol, Charles Lindbergh.
The kidnappers accepted his offer, Lindbergh accepted his offer, and negotiations were authorized. Condon placed an ad, as instructed, in the New York American, notifying the kidnappers that the money was ready. He concocted a code name based on his initials —"Jafsie," a condensation of J.F.C. On March 12, Condon received written instructions, delivered by a cab driver. Despite not having the money, Condon set off to meet with a kidnapper in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. The kidnapper had a Germanic accent and asked for the money. Condon told him that he didn't have it, and that he couldn't deliver it until he had seen the baby. The man, who told Condon that his name was John and that he was Scandinavian, said that he could not let Condon see the baby —"Number One will be mad" —but that he would send Condon a "token," the baby's sleeping suit, by Monday morning.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
The number of individuals involved in the Lindbergh case, from its beginning in 1932 to its conclusion in 1936, is well into several hundred. It is necessary to construct a scorecard of the participants, if this complicated story can be followed. At various times a single individual played a crucial, yet isolated role, such as the truck driver, William Allen, who found the child's body. Some participants, such as Lieutenant Arthur Keaton of the New Jersey State Police, were involved in the entire four-year period, and its aftermath. What follows is a selected list of the characters that will assist the reader in following the bizarre twists and turns of this case.
The HouseholdCol. Charles A. Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.
Betty Gow, the baby's nurse
Oliver Whately, caretaker, chauffeur, etc.
Elsie Whately, cook, housemaid, etc.
Other family, friends, ancillariesElizabeth Morrow, Anne Lindbergh's mother
Elisabeth Morrow Morgan, Anne Lindbergh's sister
Henry C. Breckinridge, the Lindbergh's lawyer and family friend
Violet Sharpe, Morrow family maid
The InvestigatorsCol. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Head, NJ State Police
Maj. John J. Lamb, NJ State Police
Lieut. Arthur T. Keaton, NJ State Police
Cpl. Frank A. Kelly, crime scene investigator, NJ State Police
J. Edgar Hoover, Director, FBI
Elmer Irey, Head, IRS Law Enforcement Division
Harry W. Walsh, Jersey City Police Department
James Finn, New York City Police Department
Go-Betweens, Con-Men, DupesJohn F. Condon, "Jafsie"
Morris ("Mickey") Rosner, bootlegger and swindler
Salvatore Spitale and Irving Blitz, Rosner's associates
Gaston B. Means, former detective and swindler
Evalyn Walsh McLean, Washington socialite
John Hughes Curtis, shipbuilder
The AccusedBruno Richard Hauptmann
The JudgeThomas W. Trenchard
The ProsecutionDavid T. Wilentz
Anthony M. Hauck
Joseph P. Lanigan
The DefenseEdward J. Reilly
C. Lloyd Fisher
The ExpertsArthur Koehler, wood expert
Albert S. Osborn, handwriting expert
J. Vreeland, handwriting expert
Other CharactersAnna Hauptmann, Bruno Richard Hauptmann's wife
Isador Fisch, German fur trader
Ellis Parker, Sr., Detective, Burlington County, NJ
Harold G. Hoffman, Governor of New Jersey

Parallel Threads, Continued

While Condon was initiating contact with the actual kidnappers, several other spurious efforts were underway. All four of these —the one legitimate and the three bogus —occurred during the same time period.
THE REAL KIDNAPPERS:  JAFSIE AND CEMETERY JOHN
Who was John F. Condon, and how did he become involved? A retired physical education teacher, Condon was appalled by the crime against America's hero. He wrote a letter to the Bronx Home News, offering $1,000 of his own money to be added to the ransom demand of $50,000, and offering to act as a go-between. It appeared in the March 8, 1932, edition, exactly one week after the kidnapping. The next day he received a reply to his letter, accepting his services, and instructing him to place the message Mony is redy in the New York American. There was also a smaller envelope that was to be given to Col. Lindbergh. Condon immediately called Lindbergh and read him the letter that had been addressed to him, that is, Condon. He then asked Lindbergh if he should read the enclosed letter. Lindbergh said, "Kindly open it and read it to me." It read:
dear Sir, Mr. Condon may act as go-between. You many give him the 70000$. make one packet the size will bee about
Here was a sketch of a box, seven by six by fourteen inches. Condon described it to Lindbergh. The rest of the note read:
we have notify your already in what kind of bills. We warn you not to set any trapp in any way. If you or someone els will notify the Police ther will be a further delay After we have the mony in hand we will tell you where to find your boy You may have a airplain redy it is about 150 mil awy. But befor telling you the odr. a delay of 8 houers will be between.
"Is that all?" Lindbergh asked. Condon added that there was some sort of design at the right-hand bottom corner of the page, two interlocking circles, with three small holes punched into the design. Lindbergh became excited, and invited Condon to meet him at Hopewell.
After Condon's initial meeting with "Cemetery John" in Woodlawn Cemetery, the child's sleeping suit was mailed to Condon, as John had promised. After an additional exchange of advertisements by Condon and letters from John, a rendezvous for paying the ransom was arranged. Two packages of bills were made, both containing gold certificates, that is, currency that was still based on the gold standard. Gold certificates would be recalled by government edict a year later. The prescribed box contained $50,000, and a second package contained the additional $20,000 demanded by the kidnappers. The bills were not marked but the serial numbers had been recorded.
On the night of April 2, 1932, one day and one month since the Eaglet had been taken, Lindbergh drove Condon to the appointed spot. It was in another cemetery, St. Raymond's. Condon wandered among the tombstones while Lindbergh, armed with a pistol, waited in the car. No one seemed to be around. As Condon returned to the car to tell Lindbergh that John was not there, a voice called out, "Hey, Doctor!" Both Condon and Lindbergh had heard the voice.
The kidnapper called out again. "Here, Doctor. Over here! Over here!"
Condon returned to the graveyard, and saw a figure. He followed, lost him, then was startled when a crouched figure said, "Hello." It was John.

Mrs. Lindberg and baby, happier times

After a discussion about the whereabouts of the baby, Condon returned to the car to get the money. He had convinced John that there was only $50,000, and took only the box back to the kidnapper. He gave the box to John, who gave him a note, telling Condon that it should not be opened for six hours. The baby was all right, he told Condon, and was being safely kept on a boat called Nelly. John disappeared into the cemetery, and Condon returned to the car and Lindbergh. They drove away.
About a mile from the cemetery, Condon convinced Lindbergh that it would be all right to open the note. It gave the following instructions:
The boy is on the Boad Nelly. It is a small boad 28 feet long. Two persons are on the boad. The are innosent. you will find the Boad between Horseneck Beach and gay Head near Elizabeth Island.

Hoaxes

During the period of March 2 to May 12, when the baby's body was found, while Lindbergh, Breckinridge, and Condon were in contact with whoever had written the original ransom note found in the nursery, the three separate hoaxes were going on.
Hoax One: The Small-Time Mob
The first hoax perpetrated on Col. and Mrs. Lindbergh was the general assumption that only organized crime could be responsible for such a slick kidnapping. The late 1920s and the early 1930s had become an era of gangland kidnappings. Because of this, a small-time bootlegger by the name of Mickey Rosner offered his services to hunt for the baby, claiming that his connections would result in the return of the child within a week. Lindbergh and Breckinridge, over the objections of Schwarzkopf and Keaton, accepted Rosner's offer. He asked for, and received, $2,500 for expenses and delegated two of his associates, also small-time hoodlums, Salvatore Spitale and Irving Bitz, to serve as his field contacts with various units of the Mob. Over several months, Rosner was able to claim that success was just around the corner. Reinforcing Rosner's claim that negotiating with the Mob was the way to retrieve the baby, Al Capone, recently imprisoned for tax invasion, maintained that he could find the gang that kidnapped the Eaglet, if he were free for two weeks. Although Lindbergh said that he never intended to ask for Capone's release, he contacted the IRS agent who had built the case to put Capone away, Elmer Irey, head of the IRS Law Enforcement Division. Irey convinced Lindbergh that it was unlikely that any member of any mob could be trusted. Even though Capone's offer was rejected, Rosner maintained his status in the Lindbergh household until it appeared that contact had been made with the real kidnappers.
Hoax Two: Gaston B. Means
The third day after the kidnapping, March 4, Gaston Bullock Means, a former FBI agent, fired by J. Edgar Hoover in 1924, and a swindler who had served time, contacted several influential people in New York and Washington, reporting that the kidnappers had asked him to participate in the crime, but that he had refused. Thus, he had special insights into the kidnappers, and could locate the baby and negotiate for his release. One of the people he contacted was Evalyn Walsh McLean, the former wife of the publisher of the Washington Post.
Mrs. McLean, genuinely moved by the possibility of helping the Lindberghs, summoned Means. He told her that the head of the kidnapping gang, "The Fox," wanted one hundred thousand dollars, and that he wanted a Catholic priest to whom he could return the child after receiving the ransom. Mrs. McLean agreed to put up the money, and enlisted the Rev. J. Francis Hurley, who agreed to help.
After more than a month of diversions to a number of places, including South Carolina and Texas, along with the investment of the one hundred thousand dollars of ransom money and an additional $3,500 in expenses, Mrs. McLean became suspicious, demanded the return of her money. According to Means, he had given the ransom to a member of the kidnapping gang, and could not return it.
On June 13, 1932, Means was found guilty of larceny on two counts, and two days later given a fifteen-year prison sentence. A year later, Means' accomplice, a disbarred lawyer and car thief, was found and tried for conspiracy along with Means for the additional $35,000 they had tried to swindle out of Mrs. McLean. They were each given two years, with Means' penalty tacked on to the fifteen years he was already serving.

Hoax Three: John Hughes Curtis
Curtis was a respected boat builder in Norfolk, Virginia. He approached the local Episcopal priest, the Reverend H. Dobson-Peacock, who had known the Morrow family when Dwight Morrow had been ambassador to Mexico. Curtis said that he had made contact with the leader of the kidnappers, and described the members of the gang. He also could maintain contact with the gang through a woman named Hilda. From April 18 to May 12, Curtis' strange story was made credible by his support from Rev. Dobson-Peacock and Admiral Guy Hamilton Burrage, the man who had brought Lindbergh back from France in triumph in 1927. Curtis led Lindbergh on a wild-goose chase along the mid-Atlantic coast, claiming that he was in constant contact with the kidnappers, and that he had actually held the child in his arms.
Once the child's body was found, Curtis' hoax became clear. Under pressure, he confessed on May 17 that it had all been a hoax, and stated that for the past seven or eight months, due to financial pressures, he "had been insane." He apologized abjectly, and was eventually given a fine and a one-year suspended sentence for giving false information and hindering an investigation.

Investigation

Because Lindbergh and Breckinridge had restrained Schwarzkopf and the other investigative agencies during the attempt to retrieve the child, little had been accomplished in over two months. With the discovery of the child's body on May 12, a mere four miles from the Lindbergh estate, the restraints were gone. The problem was that there was very little to go on.
The physical evidence available, at the time that William Allen stumbled into the woods to relieve himself and found the body, consisted of a chisel, the ladder, and a number of notes from the kidnappers. No useful footprints, no fingerprints.
The Autopsy
The autopsy of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. was to be carried out by the county physician, Dr. Charles H. Mitchell, but he had severe arthritis and the actual dissections were made by the county coroner, a funeral home director, Walter Swayze. The baby's pediatrician, Dr. Philip Van Ingen, was shocked. An old physician, Mitchell, using the hands of a non-medically trained mortician, Swayze, was about to carry out the autopsy on the most famous murder victim of the century. Despite his misgivings, Van Ingen stayed to observe. It was not until 1977 that Swayze revealed that he did the actual procedures.
The corpse was in a repelling, advanced state of decay. The brain did not contain a bullet, although there was a small hole at the base of the skull, made after death. They presumed that it was made by Insp. Walsh at the discovery site, when he poked the soft skull with a stick. Dr. Mitchell, following Swazye's gingerly examination of the skull and found four fracture lines and a decomposed blood clot. He concluded that the cause of death was a blow to the head. The baby could have been murdered in his room, since a baby's fractured skull does not bleed, or he might have been dropped while the kidnapper was carrying him down the ladder.
The fontanelle, the soft spot on top of the baby's head that stays open until the child is about a year old, was found to be one inch in diameter. The Eaglet was twenty months old.
Basically, the autopsy provided no clues, except sufficient information in the remains of the baby's clothes, the number of teeth, and his uniquely crossed little toes. There was no question that the corpse had been in the woods for several months, making the time of death very probably around the time of the kidnapping. No photographs of the skull, the blood clot, or the small round hole were made. Other than some measurements and a one-page report, typed by Swayze, there was nothing else for Schwarzkopf and his investigators to use.
Confusion over the baby's length —advertised in the widely distributed posters as 29 inches, but measured by Dr.Mitchell as 33 inches —was one issue that gave credence to the idea that the baby was not Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. Revisionists seize on this discrepancy. Those that are convinced that it was the Eaglet point out that "2 feet, 9 inches" —a misdescription on the wanted poster —is 33 inches. If it is argued that the child was younger than the Lindbergh baby because of the fontanelle discrepancy, then an explanation must be given for one-year-old child who is an unusually tall 33 inches.
The ladder
Eventually, the ladder became a crucial item of evidence. Schwarzkopf enlisted the aid of wood experts, the most enterprising of whom was Arthur Koehler, of the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin. He had written Lindbergh and volunteered his services. From slivers sent to him, he was able to determine that the ladder was constructed from pine from North Carolina, Douglas fir from the West, birch, and Ponderosa pine. Remarkably, Koehler was able to trace some of the ladder lumber from a mill in South Carolina to a lumber dealer in the Bronx.
The ladder was both crudely and professionally constructed. Some of the joints and connections showed the work of a carpenter, while the pieces of wood that made up the ladder seemed to have been gathered from a variety of sources.
Suspects
Inspector Walsh, on loan to the New Jersey State Police from the Jersey City Police Department, agreed with Lieutenant Keaton, and clung to the idea that the kidnapping must have been an inside job. The peculiar circumstance of the kidnapper knowing both that the Lindberghs, contrary to their habit, were not returning to Englewood on Monday, and that the kidnappers knew precisely which room was the nursery, bothered Walsh.
Walsh was suspicious of Violet Sharpe, the twenty-eight-year-old maid at the Morrow estate. She knew of the change in the Lindberghs' plans. She was inconsistent in her accounting of her actions on the night of March 1, 1932, and clearly anxious and defensive. She was unable to identify the man she had gone to a roadhouse with the night of the kidnapping and she could not give the names of the other couple who accompanied them.

Violet Sharpe

By June, Violet Sharpe had become so hysterical that Walsh and Schwarzkopf were sure they were on to something. They phoned that they would return to the Morrow estate for further questioning of Violet. Declaring that she couldn't stand it, she went upstairs and took cyanide, contained in a silver-polishing compound, and was dead within minutes.
Eventually, the man that Violet had been with, as well as the other couple, came forth to corroborate her story. She had been telling the truth, but could not admit to a "loose" behavior that might cost her her position at the Morrow estate. She was engaged to the butler, and this arrangement could have been jeopardized if it had been made known that she had been picked up and taken to a roadhouse for drinks. Schwarzkopf was roundly criticized for driving an innocent citizen to her death.
Walsh turned to the man who he considered to be the most suspicious: John F. Condon, "Jafsie," the do-gooder. Several days after Violet Sharpe's suicide, Condon was brought in for questioning. Despite hours of questioning, Condon gave as good as he got, and was released. During July and August, Schwarzkopf and his men tapped Condon's telephone, opened his mail, dug holes in his yard, and stripped the wallpaper of his study walls. During the next year and a half, undaunted by the suspicions hovering over him, Condon, reviewed thousands of mug shots, looking for "Cemetery John." A year after the kidnapping, in order to show his support, Lindbergh invited Condon and his daughter to dinner at the Morrow estate.
Shortly after that, Schwarzkopf and his men decided that Condon was eccentric, but not involved. The lone dissenter was Walsh, who then returned to his regular duties with the Jersey City Police Department.

The Ransom Bills Appear

The first gold notes from the ransom money surfaced shortly after the delivery of the ransom on April 2, 1932. By that fall, a quarter of a million booklets listing the serial numbers of the ransom bills had been distributed. Attempting to get the country's financial house in order, President Roosevelt, shortly after assuming office, ordered that all gold or gold certificates valued at more than one hundred dollars, had to be turned in by May 1, 1933. Lieutenant Finn, who was keeping a large map to indicate where the bills were turning up, hoped that the presidential order would make the gold bills from the ransom cache more conspicuous.
On May 1, 1933, $2,980 of the ransom gold notes was turned in to the Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. The deposit slip for the exchange of the currency was signed by J.J. Faulkner. No description of J.J. Faulkner or his whereabouts could be found by Finn and his colleagues. With the exception of one author's claim to have identified J.J. Faulkner, he remains an unresolved element of the case.
From time to time, ransom bills turned up on a slow but regular basis. Finally, on September 15, 1934, a gas station manager, Walter Lyle, had written the license plate number on a ten-dollar gold certificate used to buy 98 cents worth of gas. He remembered the purchase and the driver of the car. When he was handed the gold certificate, he stared at it. "What's wrong?" asked the driver. "That's good money." He spoke with a German accent. Lyle said that he hadn't seen a gold certificate in quite some time. The driver said, "No. I have only about one hundred left." As the car drove away, Lyle, thinking that the bill might be counterfeit, wrote down the license plate number. The license plate was for a blue, 1930, four-door Dodge whose owner lived at 1279 East 222nd Street, the Bronx. The registration also indicated that the owner was German-born, thirty-five, and a carpenter. His name was Richard Hauptmann.

Richard Hauptmann

Hauptmann had entered the United States illegally in 1923, then he was twenty-three years old. In Germany, he had served in World War I at the age of seventeen, and shortly after the war he was imprisoned for robbery, served part of his sentence, and escaped. In one of his robberies, he had used a ladder.
All indications were that he was a skilled at his occupation. After arriving in the United States, he married a German waitress, Anna Schoeffler, in 1925. They had a son in 1933, named Manfreid, after the famous German aviator, the "Red Baron." He played the mandolin, traveled, and was well liked by members of the German-American community in the Bronx. In late spring, 1932, Hauptmann ceased being a carpenter, and became an investor in stocks.
The police staked out his apartment and Hauptmann was arrested as he drove away. Lieutenant Keaton examined Hauptmann's billfold and found a neatly folded twenty-dollar gold note. It was a Lindbergh bill. Returning to the Hauptmann apartment, the police noticed that he glanced again and again towards the garage that his landlord had allowed him to build. He was asked if that was where he had hidden the ransom money. He said, "I have no money." Later, the garage was dismantled, board by board, and over $14,000 of the ransom money was found hidden between the wall joists.
Hauptmann was interrogated, possibly beaten, and maintained that the money had been given to him by Isador Fisch, a business partner, before Fisch had departed for Germany in December, 1933.
Later, Insp. Lewis J. Bornmann of the New Jersey State Police discovered a missing rafter in Hauptmann's attic that corresponded to one of the uprights of the kidnap ladder. Koehler confirmed that the missing length of lumber matched, even to nail holes, the bottom section.
Hauptmann was asked to provide samples of his handwriting.
During this period, Lindbergh, in disguise, listened as Hauptmann repeated the words of "Cemetery John." Over two years after he had first heard the voice in the cemetery say, "Hey, Doctor," Lindbergh identified Hauptmann's voice as the one he had heard.
After being indicted for extortion in New York —a device to hold Hauptmann in custody —Hauptmann went before the grand jury in New Jersey, so that he could be indicted and then extradited. At the grand jury proceedings, Lindbergh testified to the voice. Attorney General David Wilentz, representing New Jersey, brought a number of police witnesses, as well as Osborn, the handwriting expert. An extradition hearing was then held in New York. Wilentz called many of the same witnesses, including a neighbor of Lindbergh, Millard Whited, who testified that he had seen Hauptmann near the Lindbergh estate a few days before the kidnapping. Judge Hammer, presiding in the extradition hearing, ruled that Hauptmann would be extradited to New Jersey, specifically to the Hunterdon County seat, Flemington, New Jersey, where he would be tried for the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.
In a seven-car, two-motorcycle caravan, Hauptmann was taken from his New York jail cell to the Flemington jail, which was at the back of the courthouse. It was ten o'clock at night. The streets around the courthouse were teeming with people, and the area was lighted with flares.

The Trial

The Courthouse was full

The trial, which the renowned acerbic journalist and critic H.L. Mencken called "the greatest story since the Resurrection," took place in the county seat, Flemington, New Jersey. It was indeed a circus, with hundreds of reporters and spectators swelling the small town to several times its population.

Attorney General of New Jersey, David T. Wilentz

The prosecution was led by the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey, David T. Wilentz, thirty-eight years old.Wilentz and his prosecution team completely outmatched Hauptmann's lawyers. Wilentz, who was trying his first criminal case as attorney general, was a dapper, cigar-smoking, confident little man who built a convincing circumstantial case. He is almost always photographed with a broad grin, a cigar, sometimes with a white fedora with a brim turned down in the manner of a New York dandy or the gangster Al Capone. Despite his smiling charm, his eleven hours of cross-examination of Hauptmann was quite savage, and his summation emotional, dramatic, and impressive.
The New York Journal offered to provide Hauptmann with a well-known Brooklyn defense attorney, Edward J. Reilly. He was assisted by a local Flemington attorney, well respected but inexperienced in criminal defense, C. Lloyd Fisher.

Reilly and Mrs. Hauptmann

It is tempting to attribute much of the responsibility for Hauptmann's conviction to Reilly. Even those works that present the case for Hauptmann's guilt describe Reilly and his courtroom performance in unflattering terms. He was florid, hulking, bombastic —he wore a swallow-tail coat and striped trousers —and something of a boozer. The lunch breaks during the trial often presented Reilly with opportunities to consume a number of drinks. The difference between his morning performances in court, and the afternoons, where he was listless, were noted. While a resident of Flemington during the six-week trial, he had an endless stream of "stenographers," all of them uniformly gorgeous, who visited his quarters each evening.
There is little doubt that he invented and hired witnesses, fabricated statements to the press, and deliberately misled the jury. His incompetence even dismayed Hauptmann, who, during the long trial, had only one fifteen-minute private conference with his principal attorney. He alienated his own client, his co-counsels, the jury, and the spectators by his senseless bullying of prosecution witnesses. He missed a crucial opportunity to raise reasonable doubt when, to the complete mystification of his colleague, Lloyd Fisher, he conceded that the corpse of the child discovered by William Allen was indeed Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. Much of his cross-examination was an attack on the competence of the police officers and their investigation, a tactic that was more effective sixty years later when used by Johnnie Cochran in his defense of O.J. Simpson.
Although paid $25,000 by the New York Journal for his work, he later sent Mrs. Hauptmann a bill for an additional $25,000, attempting to get his cut of the action from her fund-raising efforts to support her husband's appeals.
Two weeks after the verdict, drunkenly raving, he was taken away to a Brooklyn hospital in a straightjacket. A few weeks after that, he was back in action, but disinclined to sue the Hauptmanns for additional legal fees.
The prosecution's case was built on several powerful circumstantial elements. First, $14,600 of the ransom bills was found hidden in Hauptmann's garage. The defense counter to this was that Hauptmann had indeed hidden this money, but that he had found it in a shoebox left to him by a business partner, Isador Fisch, who had departed for Germany in December, 1933, leaving the box in Hauptmann's care. Since Fisch owed him money, Hauptmann felt free to spend some of the bills. Fisch died in Liepzig in March, 1934.
Second, the connection of the beam from Hauptmann's attic to the kidnap ladder was carefully laid out by Koehler and the prosecutors. The defense argued that the ladder had gone through many hands since its discovery, and argued that not only was the beam's placement in the ladder upright questionable, but that Officer Bornmann could have planted the evidence. For a time, they argued for its inadmissibility, but Trenchard ruled for the prosecution.
Third, the prosecution brought an array of handwriting experts who testified that the ransom notes were written by Hauptmann, when the writing samples he provided were compared and analyzed. Reilly boasted that he would have as many handwriting experts counter this testimony, but, in fact, he presented only two weak "experts," several others that he had contracted refusing to testify for the defense.
In addition to these important issues, the prosecution brought a number of witnesses who reported seeing Hauptmann, his car with the ladder, near the Lindbergh estate prior to March 1, the night of the kidnapping.

Lindberg on the stand, testifying

Most telling was the positive identification of Hauptmann as "Cemetery John" by Condon, and the testimony of Lindbergh, who said that the voice he had heard on April 2, the night of the delivery of the ransom, was Hauptmann's. Reilly attempted to discredit Lindbergh by asking if he was armed during his testimony. Lindbergh, who had been carrying a pistol while a spectator at the trial, and having been forewarned, honestly replied that he was not.
As mentioned, Reilly allowed the identification of the corpse in the woods to stand as that of the Lindbergh baby, even though the autopsy was haphazard and confusion reigned over certain identifying marks, such as the baby's age and height.
The principal defense witness was Hauptmann, who was attacked by Wilentz in a very long cross-examination, and who presented himself as defiant. In a high, whining voice, he was unable to satisfactorily explain Isador Fisch, the handwriting similarities, and his whereabouts on March 1 and April 2.

The Sentence

After twenty-nine court sessions, 162 witnesses, and 381 exhibits, the case was given to the jury at 11:21 a.m., Wednesday, February 13, 1935. Eleven and a half hours later the jurors returned, reportedly after five ballots that began seven for guilty, five for acquittal, finally ending with a unanimous vote of guilty.
Judge Trenchard pronounced the sentence of death, to be carried out the week of March 18, 1935. Because of the inevitable appeal, he postponed the execution of the sentence to June.
In his diary entry for February 14, 1935, Harold Nicolson described the Lindberghs' reaction to the verdict and sentence.
"Suddenly Betty [Mrs. Morrow] ... looked very white. 'Hauptmann,' she said, 'has been condemned to death without mercy.' We went into the drawing room. The wireless had been turned on to the scene outside the courthouse. One could hear the almost diabolic yelling of the crowd. 'You have now heard,' broke in the voice of the announcer, 'the verdict in the most famous trial in all history. Bruno Hauptmann now stands guilty of the foulest ...' Then we all went into the pantry. Charles sat there on the kitchen dresser. 'I don't know,' he said to me, ' whether you have followed this case very carefully. There is no doubt at all that Hauptmann did the thing. I am sure about this —quite sure.' And then quite quietly, while we all sat round in the pantry, he went through the case point by point. It seemed to relieve all of them. He did it very quietly, very simply."

Aftermath

Partly at the urging of Ellis Parker, a detective with the Burlington County, NJ police, and partly from his own sense of political opportunism Governor Harold G. Hoffman took up the cause of Hauptmann. Attorney General Wilentz was widely believed to be his principal opponent in the 1936 election. Hoffman met with Hauptmann, secretly, in his prison cell. Within the limits of his authority —which did not include clemency —he gave Hauptmann a stay of execution. There were calls for his impeachment, but Hoffman persisted in his claim that he only wanted to see justice done.

The Electric Chair

Finally, since the Board of Appeals, of which Hoffman was a member, rejected Hauptmann's appeal, the execution date was set for April 3, 1936. It was carried out by Robert G. Elliott, the same executioner who had operated the electric chair in the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, nine years before.
On December 22, 1935, during the appeal process, Lindbergh and his wife and young son sailed for England, where Harold Nicolson had provided them with a house in Kent. After the verdict, the Lindberghs were inundated with hate mail, including death threats against their second son, with frightening attempts by 1930's paparazzi to photograph young Jon Lindbergh. The "exile" received mix reviews in the press, some editorials sympathizing with their plight, others excoriating the Lindberghs for leaving their homeland.
Just prior to the execution, Ellis Parker, along with his son and several accomplices, kidnapped a disreputable lawyer, Paul Wendel, forced him to confess that he had kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby. Wilentz questioned Wendel, found that he had been coerced by Parker and his partners, and dismissed the entire "confession" as a travesty. Parker and his associates were sentenced to prison for kidnapping.

Theories & Theories

NBC Radio announces the kidnapping of baby Lindberg

The kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby remains the "Crime of the Century." What has changed since Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.'s accused murderer was executed in 1936, is in the certainty that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was guilty. By the end of his trial and his guilty verdict, only his wife, his defense attorney, the governor of the State of New Jersey, and a few others doubted that he killed the Eaglet.
What brought about this change? The circumstantial evidence remains —for all to see —plentiful, convincing, and unaltered. Why did doubts arise?
There are a number of reasons. First, the dedication to Hauptmann's innocence was sustained by the long life and remarkable persistence of Anna Hauptmann, who died in 1994, at the age of ninety-five. For sixty years, she maintained her husband's guiltlessness, even in the face of publicity-seekers and opportunistic writers who hoped to profit from her ingenuousness.
Second, there is no question that principals who were important to the prosecution —Conlon, Wilentz, and Schwarzkopf, for example —somehow metamorphosed into unattractive personalities to certain journalists and writers. While not perfect human beings by any means, they seemed to change into persecutors or self-promoters, or worse.
Third, it was the Lone Eagle himself, and, to a lesser extent, Anne Morrow Lindbergh and her aristocratic family, that changed opinion.
The sensitive, publicity-shy —almost to the point of paranoia —Lindbergh, after sitting in the Flemington courtroom every day of the six-week trial, took his wife and new infant son to England, fleeing from intense public scrutiny, seeking a place of safety for their child, Jon, not yet four years old. While at first this seemed like an exile not of their own doing, the Lindberghs became "foreign," part of European society.
By 1938, Lindbergh had become a well-known admirer of the German Luftwaffe, was awarded a medal by Hermann Goering, and considered to be a dupe of the Nazi propaganda effort to exaggerate the strength of German air power. Lindbergh wrote a publicized letter to Ambassador Joseph Kennedy (himself, a noted appeaser) suggesting that the rest of Europe had no defense against the mighty and admirable Germans.
Later, after the war had begun, Lindbergh became an important voice for "America First," the isolationist movement that persisted until the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, Lindbergh slowly redeemed himself, but for younger generations he was no longer the hero of solo flight, but a middle-aged conservative tainted with fascism.
Therefore, from shortly after the trial to the present day, the positions of Lindbergh and Hauptmann became reversed. Hauptmann became the oppressed innocent, and the boy hero, the aviator, became the unpatriotic, coldly aloof, oppressor. In other words, the possibility that Hauptmann was innocent became more widely believed. Simultaneously, the idea that Lindbergh was somehow to blame for Hauptmann's fate, either through direct involvement (e.g., the cover-up theories), or indirectly through his arrogance, became the basis for a great many books that exonerated Hauptmann and —in varying degrees —vilified Lindbergh.

And More Theories

The literature that exists on the Lindbergh case is overwhelming. Part of this is caused by the sheer size of the volumes produced, very few being less than four hundred pages in length. In addition, there are a number of biographies of Charles Lindbergh, all of which devote a good portion of their discussions of his life to the events of 1932 to 1936. Finally, Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh were authors in their own right, Mrs. Lindbergh's diaries contributing significantly to the years surrounding the Lindbergh case.
There have been several television documentaries on the Lindbergh case. In 1982, Ludovic Kennedy, later an author of two books about the case, wrote and narrated Who killed the Lindbergh baby? for the BBC. In 1989, Edwin Newman narrated Reliving the Lindbergh Case, a PBS program produced by New Jersey Network. The best known of the Lindbergh docudramas, and available on video, is The Lindbergh Case: Is History's Verdict Wrong?, which was produced on NBC in 1976. It featured Anthony Hopkins as Hauptmann. Mrs. Hauptmann made a number of television appearances in the last years of her life, the last being in 1992 on A Current Affair segment, entitled "A Half-Century of Heartache."
A number of novels have been published that are either about the Lindbergh kidnapping case, or use it as a plot device. Two are mentioned in the bibliography. The most famous fictional use of the case is Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express. I have found references to two plays. The first, Lindbergh and Hauptmann: The Trial of the Century, written by Harry Kazman, is a reenactment of the trial. The second, written by John Logan, is entitled simply Hauptmann, and got as far as Off-Broadway.
For the most part, the biographies do not venture into the controversy about Hauptmann's guilt or innocence, but report rather straight-forwardly the events during the period of the kidnapping, murder, and trial.

Handwriting comparison used to implicate Hauptmann

There is one work, The Lindbergh Case, by Jim Fisher, that stands alone in its comprehensiveness as the argument for Hauptmann's guilt. The other books on the case are of two types: either they argue that Hauptmann was not the kidnapper or murderer, and that he was railroaded by a zealous justice system, without identifying the "real" murderer, or they are complex accounts that "prove" that some other named individual is the culprit.
The next section summarizes these theories and their variants. Many of these books are either still in print, readily available in second-hand bookstores, or on the shelves of local libraries. The books published in the Thirties are more difficult to obtain, although much of their contents are described in more current works. The bibliographical information for each is given. I have examined about two-thirds of the twenty-five or so major works listed in this section and in the bibliography.
I have assigned, on a scale of one to ten, my judgment as to the credibility of each theory.
Proposition One: Hauptmann was the kidnapper and murderer
1) Waller, George. 1961. Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case. Dial.
Waller's book is one of the first comprehensive works after the 1930s that discusses the case objectively, without raising conspiracy theories. Waller did not have the complete Lindbergh archives of the New Jersey State Police available, but as a straightforward accounting of the case, it is excellent.
Credibility Score: 9
2) Fisher, Jim. 1994. The Lindbergh Case. Rutgers University Press.
This is a well-documented account of the case, using the primary documents that are available for examination in the Lindbergh Case Archives at the New Jersey State Police Headquarters, West Trenton, N.J.
Fisher constructs a case for the guilt of Hauptmann, emphasizing the three crucial areas of circumstantial evidence: the handwriting evidence, the ladder, and the money found in Hauptmann's garage. He disputes the claims of several other authors in a new preface written for the softcover edition of his book —the original hardback appeared in 1987 —and marshals arguments that their conspiracy theories neglect much of the evidence.
If Fisher has any weakness in his presentation, it is in his use of Condon's book as a source of information in describing the events of the turning over of the ransom. "Jafsie" is so intent on characterizing himself as a selfless hero that much of what he wrote cannot be believed. Still, the overblown descriptions of Condon do not detract from the sense that Fisher has been careful in his research and analysis.
Credibility Score: 9
3) Biographies of Lindbergh: Hixson, Milton, Davis, Mosley, Ross (see Bibliography)
Lindbergh's biographers necessarily devote a portion of their books to the kidnapping and the trial. All those that I have surveyed report the events dispassionately, and assume that Hauptmann was guilty.
Proposition Two: The Conspiracy Theories
1) Ahlgren, Greg, and Monier, Stephen R. 1993. Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax. Brandon Publishing Company.
This work claims that Lindbergh killed his own son while "horsing around," and then buried the child in a shallow grave. In order to cover up the accident, he invented the kidnapping. This theory requires a minimum number of five conspirators, perhaps many more.
Credibility Score: 1
2) Jones, Wayne D. 1997. Murder of Justice. Vantage Press.
This interminably long work summarizes the various conspiracy theories of Ahlgren and Monier, Kennedy, Behn, and Scaduto, arguing that Hauptmann was railroaded by a zealous justice system in its mad pursuit to close this sensational case. If one didn't want to read the other four or five books, all of which are at least entertaining, this is an available, somewhat demented, summary.
Credibility Score: 2
3) Kennedy, Ludovic. 1985. The Airman and the Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann.
Kennedy does not name the murderer, but he implicates Isador Fisch. Mostly, he argues that the entire case was a cover-up, with perjured testimony and manufactured evidence. He is particularly sympathetic to Hauptmann, and paints him as a well intentioned, caring husband and father.
Credibility Score: 4
4) Scaduto, Anthony. 1976. Scapegoat: The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
This is the first of the well-known conspiracy books. Scaduto presents the argument that not only was Hauptmann railroaded, but that the actual kidnapper and murderer was Paul Wendel. Scaduto relied a great deal on Mrs. Hauptmann, who later disavowed him, and one of Ellis Parker's accomplices, Murray Bleefeld, still alive at the time Scaduto was writing his book. His entire premise rests on the believability of Bleefeld, and a nifty massaging of the evidence.
Credibility Score: 2
5) Behn, Noel. 1994. Lindbergh: The Crime. NAL-Dutton.
This is a variation of the Ahlgren and Monier book, only Behn claims that the most likely culprit was Anne Morrow Lindbergh's older sister, Elisabeth. Elisabeth, crazed with jealousy over her loss of the Lone Eagle to her younger sister, killed the baby in a fit of rage. In order to avoid family scandal, Lindbergh covered up the murder. Elisabeth died about a year later. While the writing is quite good, and the accounting of the facts of the crime reasonably complete, Behn has no evidence for his theory, and admits to its speculative character.
Lindbergh Biographies
A number of comprehensive biographies of Lindbergh have been published (see Bibliography), but the most recent is probably the most reliable, having been based on all of the papers of Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh.  It is Lindbergh, by A. Scott Berg (Putnam, 1998).  It is a straightforward biographical treatment, very well documented, and without authorial interpretrations.  Berg's account of the kidnapping is objective, relates the facts accurately, and does not propose theories.   Without white-washing Lindbergh the hero, it presents a much more incisive view of this strange and interesting personality.

Bibliography

A. Books in Print:
Search BarnesandNoble.com for Lindbergh
A&E Biography Video: Lucky; The Charles Lindbergh Story
Ahlgren, Greg and Monier, Stephen R. 1993. Crime of the Century; The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax. Brandon Publishing Company.
Behn, Noel. 1994. Lindbergh: The Crime. NAL-Dutton.
Berg, A. Scott. 1998.  Lindbergh.  Putnam.
Fass, Paula S. 1997. Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America. Oxford University Press.
Fisher, Jim. 1994. Lindbergh Case. Rutgers University Press.
Haring, J. Vreeland. 1937. Hand of Hauptmann: The Handwriting Expert Tells the Story of the Lindbergh Case. Patterson Smith (reprint)
Hixson, Walter L. 1996. Charles A. Lindbergh; Lone Eagle. Harper Collins.
Jones, Wayne D. 1997. Murder of Justice: New Jersey's Greatest Shame: Long Awaited Truth Proves Hauptmann Innocent of the. Vantage Press.
Kennedy, Lodovic H. 1996. Crime of the Century. Viking Penguin.
Lindbergh, Anne Morrow, Locked Rooms & Open Doors: Diaries & Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1933-1935, Harcourt Brace
McElhaney, James W. 1988. Classics of the Courtroom, Vol. XIV. PEG MN.
Milton, Joyce. 1993. Loss of Eden. Harper Collins.
The Trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. 1992. (Criminology Series) Gordon Press.
B. Books no longer in print:
Brant, John and Renaud, Edith. 1932. True Story of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. Kroy Wen.
Collins, Max Allen. 1991. Stolen Away: A Novel of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. Bantam.
Condon, John F. 1936. Jafsie Tells All! Jonathan Lee.
Davis, Kenneth. 1954. The Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh and the American Dream. Doubleday.
Demaris, Ovid. 1961. The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case: The True Story of the Crime that Shocked the World. Monarch Books.
Dutch, Andrew K. 1975. Hysteria: The Lindbergh Kidnap Case. Dorrance.
Haldeman-Julius, Marcet. 1937. The Lindbergh-Hauptmann Kidnap-Murder Case. Haldeman-Julius Publications.
Kennedy, Ludovic. 1985. The Airman and the Carpenter: The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann. Viking.
Mosley, Leonard. 1976. Lindbergh: A Biography. Doubleday.
Nicolson, Nigel, ed. 1966. Harold Nicolson: Diaries and Letters, 1930-1939. Atheneum.
Pearson, Edmund. 1938. Studies in Murder ("Hauptmann and Circumstantial Evidence"). Random House, Modern Library.
Ross, Walter. 1976. The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh. Harper and Row.
Scaduto, Anthony. 1976. Scapegoat: The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. G.P. Putnam's Sons.
Shoenfeld, Dudly David. 1936. The Crime and the Criminal: A Psychiatric Study of the Lindbergh Case. Covici-Friede.
Vernon, John. 1987. Lindbergh's Son (novel). Viking.
Waller, George. 1961. Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case. Dial.
Whipple, Sidney B. ed. 1937. (reprint, 1989). The Trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann: Edited with a History of the Case. Doubleday, Doran.(reprint, Notable Trials Library).

Above article written by:  

Russell Aiuto 

 

Aiuto is a retired educator. He was a college professor of biology, specializing in genetics, a dean, a provost and a college president. He has a BA in theater from University of Michigan, a BA in biology and English from Eastern Michigan University and an MA and Ph.D. in genetics and botany from the University of North Carolina. After his academic career at Albion College (MI) and Hiram College (OH) he was a division director at the National Science Foundation, director of research and development for the National Science Teachers Association, and senior project officer for the Council of Independent Colleges.
As an author of non-fiction, he has published twelve research papers in genetics, five science textbooks, a number of articles in science education, literature, and criticism, and has been the editor of a major national science curriculum revision. His fiction publications include two short stories, seven plays, and a novel. In his spare time he enjoys cooking, travel and performing in local theater groups. He is a contributor to Notable Twentieth Century Scientists and is listed in Who's Who in America.