A comprehensive survey of the ransom notes

 My last post touched on only one of the questions surrounding the ransom notes.  Readers who wish to look into the notes cannot do better than Mark Falzini's superb summary and analysis, which can be found here:


shttp://www.njspmuseum.blogspot.com/2008/02/one-of-most-fascinating-areas-of-study.html

The Mystery of the Ransom Notes:I

Never the least stir made the listeners,   

 Though every word he spake 3

 Fell echoing through the shadowiness of the still house.

                                                Walter De La Mere,  “The Listeners.”

                                   

            The Lindbergh kidnap ransom notes have been discussed from almost every angle.  Handwriting experts at the trial and afterwards down to recent television shows, especially one on Court TV, have reaffirmed the prevailing verdict that the author of all the notes was Bruno Richard Hauptmann.  The first book length study of the handwriting by expert J. Vreeland Haring, The Hand of Hauptmann (1937), argued that the notes – all of which were written by the same person, he insisted – constituted the scientific means necessary for a conviction once a suspect had been apprehended and samples of his writing “fell into the hands of the police.”

It is an identification which places the writer of these notes on the scene of the crime; it is a witness more certain and unerring than any human witness who may have observed his stealthy entrance in that nursery on the night of March 1 and actually seen the despoiling of the crib….  (p.39)

            We will leave Mr. Haring’s assertions, including his insistence that Hauptmann was not instructed how to write any words, or use any specific spellings for another post.  In this one I want to concentrate on a peculiarity of the notes not much discussed in all the furor over authorship and whether there was one or more writers of what must be one of the longest “dialogues” in kidnaping history.  No, I am not referring to the “singnature,” that strange symbol of interlocking circles and three holes.  That also will have to wait for another time.

            In this post I would like to call attention to the persistent concern shown in the notes to re-assure the Lindberghs that the child was in “gute care,” and being taken care of day and night by “two ladys.”   If one simply reads through the notes from the very first one to the last, without considering any other aspect of the notes, or the circumstances of the way they were handled, this concern stands out more than any other Various commentators on the psychology of ransom notes pointed out at the time and later that phrases used – and the threats not used – indicated the child was already dead.  The willingness to continue negotiations for as long as it took suggested the same point to some commentators; while to Harry Walsh it also suggested that the perpetrators kept tabs on the corpse’s location indicating it was safe to go on talking.  The promise that the child was in good care was present in the first note left on the window sill the night of the kidnaping. 

Is it possible the note was written in the nursery at the very time the child was taken out of the crib?  No.  A later note, on March 7, said the kidnaping was planned for a year, but not carried out because of concern about the child’s health.  “we was afraid the boy would not be strong enough.”  So, in effect, if this statement is to be credited, the kidnapers in the nursery note promise that the boy will receive good care, and that he is now strong enough to endure the trauma.  This reassurance is repeated in note after note throughout the negotiations from March 1 to the payoff night April 2, 1932.  The note that remarked on concern about the first year of the child’s life  --“the boy would not be strong enough” – thanked the Lindberghs for the information they had given in the newspapers about the child’s diet.  Another note even said that the child was eating more than the diet required!

Try reading the notes by themselves and see if that is not the dominant theme – a running commentary about the child’s physical health.  The oral dialogue between John Condon and the man he labeled “Cemetery John” at Woodlawn Cemetery on the night of March 12, 1932, contained a mini-history of the kidnaping in two sentences.  Remember that the notes promised the child would be in good care, and that the kidnaping had been delayed for a year out of concern for the child’s health, and that it was now eating better than the recommended diet.  During the conversation at Woodlawn, the shadowy figure who met Condon expressed great fears about his role – he suggested he had been trapped into participating in the crime.[1]  “Would I burn if the baby is dead?”  To which Condon supposedly replied, sharply:  “Is the baby all right?”   “The baby is happy and well –better as it was.”  (Italics added.)

If (always a question) Condon’s recollection of the conversation is correct, it would appear that Cemetery John (a) had close enough connection with the family to know some details about the child’s health or (b) read the rumors that Harry Walsh discredited that there was something wrong with Charlie. Either way, it would seem that the kidnaper(s) had something of an obsession with the child and that money was only part of the reason for the crime

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[1]   Readers of the previous post will note that Harry Walsh believed Condon had been not straight about the case and that he had some dark secrets in his past that might have been used as blackmail, or, more simply, that he was capable of such a crime.  John Condon/Cemetery John, or JC/CJ.  Psychologist alert!

Give 'Em Hell, Harry!

If we get in touch with them, they will think they are in a China war.

Inspector Harry Walsh, March 3, 1932

Inspector Harry Walsh of the Jersey City Police Department could have played one of the 1930s tough cops in any of the gangster movies.  He was accused more than one time of using the “3^rd Degree” when he questioned suspects; and he was very much a political figure under “Boss” Frank Hague, who ran Jersey City as his personal fiefdom in this era.  On Walsh’s desk were two cradle-style telephones with center ovals that ordinarily had the phone number inside. One phone used for local calls had a picture of Hague in the oval, while the long distance phone had a picture of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[1]

As noted in my last post, Harry Walsh always believed that the kidnaper had to have accomplices.  From the moment he arrived on the scene on March 2, 1932 to the eve of Hauptman’s execution he was convinced that the crime could not have been carried out by one man climbing into the nursery, seizing the child from the bed, and then exiting down a ladder with the child to make his get-away unaided.  He never wavered from that view.  He also believed that the crime could have been solved earlier had proper police procedures been followed.  But, instead, he argued, the State Police, following Col. Norman Schwarzkopf’s lead, allowed Charles Lindbergh to set the limits on what could and could not be done.  Walsh was not shy about expressing his views and these got him into a peck of trouble with both Schwarzkopf and J. Edgar Hoover.  He deserved some of the criticism, certainly, but his role in the investigation deserves a second look.

Hague deputed Walsh to Hopewell the day after the kidnaping – in response to Gov. A. Harry Moore’s request, who had promised all the state’s resources would be made available for the search.[2]  Walsh took a leading role in most of the original interrogations, especially in three key ones:  Violet Sharp, the maid he suspected of tipping off the kidnapers; John Condon, the eccentric schoolmaster who paid over the ransom money to the man he called “Cemetery John,” and John Hughes Curtis, the financially troubled shipbuilder from Norfolk, Va., who invented a story of kidnapers who used a man named “Sam” to deliver messages about where and when to pay the ransom.  Walsh ultimately broke Curtis’s story, and got him to confess he had made it all up. But he had no luck with Violet or Condon.

Without going into great detail here, Walsh pursued the maid with tough questioning until he uncovered the lies Violet told about her activities and who she associated with on the day and evening of the kidnaping. He did not have the chance to follow-up that success, and Violet’s strange behavior eventually culminated in her suicide – for which Walsh received plenty of criticism, in the United States and in Violet’s homeland, Great Britain, as a bully who drove the woman to suicide.  In the Condon interrogations, Walsh believed he had been very close to cracking the schoolmaster’s story, had he been given more opportunity to press him about his “relationship” with Cemetery John, and whether his own indiscretions might account for his behavior.  Either Condon was incredibly naïve about his dealings with CJ, he believed, or somehow complicit.  But he would never know which was the case because Lindbergh had ruled out any attempt to stake out the pay-off site, and he was called off Condon.  (For those who wish to look deeper, the paperback edition of my book will be published in the late spring of 2012.)

In the early days of the investigation Walsh was the most quoted police officer at the kidnap site.  And, in those early days, he was highly complimentary to Lindbergh for the cooperation the police received and the generosity of the family in providing space for the police officers.  The only thing that bothered him were the crowds of people and the mass of passing automobiles that clogged the roads around Highfields.  Under such conditions it was tough to carry out an investigation.

Walsh was called to the scene on May 12^th when the body was found not 100 feet off the roadside a few miles from the house; and was the first to “touch” the child by attempting to turn it over with a stick.  In doing so, he penetrated the skull.  This act caused some confusion and consternation among prosecutors later, because the hole resembled a bullet wound.  If the child had not died at the house as the result of a fall – the original prosecution theory – then there would be unwanted complications.  However that might be, the inspector testified at the Hauptmann trial that the corpse, “veiled with vermin,” might have been placed in a hole dug out for the purpose, or might not have.  Could nature have explained why the body was only “buried” a few inches deep?  “That is altogether possible.”

Prosecutor David Wilentz warned Walsh to stick to answering the questions without speculating.   But little details bothered Walsh.  A week after the corpse was found a conference was held at Highfields summoned by Schwarzkopf and which included representatives from the Bureau of Investigation (later the Federal Bureau of Investigation or FBI) and the Treasury Department.  Schwarzkopf opened the session, but most of the time Harry Walsh took the lead in answering questions and exploring the theories that had developed.

He was discreet and offered no public criticisms until after the body of the child was found.  Like later investigators several things stood out in Walsh’s mind:  He could not understand why or how the window where the ransom note was found on the sill had been closed.  He came back a couple of times to that point as if posing the thought might cause them to theorize about the oddity.  He thought it was very important as well that one of Charlie’s thumb guards, a contraption with laces that tied around the wrist, had been found by Betty Gow, the nursemaid, “in the middle of the road just about half way between the two ruts” at the entrance to the property a month after the kidnaping.  In the middle of the road, presumably where it would be easy to see, yet it had not been found for a month. 

For Walsh, the place where the thumb guard was found suggested further proof of a gang, presumably with the person carrying the dead child from the house stripping off the sleeping suit and handing it to someone in another car.  He did not mention the possibility that the thumb guard was a plant, however, placed there long after the kidnaping, possibly to get rid of incriminating evidence.  A photographer for the Philadelphia Inquirer did bring up this point in a letter to Governor Harold Hoffman in 1936, however, informing him that he had walked over that entire area the morning after the crime, taking pictures and looking for “clues” and saw nothing in the road where the thumb guard was found.

At the May 18^th conference, Walsh rehearsed his theory that Violet had been the one to tip off the kidnapers, but he also equivocated on whether it was an “inside” job or not, since if the crime had been planned by outsiders who took turn watching the goings on inside the house, they could have seen all they needed to know about the set up since there were no curtains or shades on the windows.  What nagged at him was the timing, the “Tuesday Night” problem, and that was where Violet came in. But while Schwarzkopf issued a press statement that her suicide indicated pretty certainly that she had secret knowledge, the trail ran out when her companions on that evening were quizzed.

Most important to his mind was the role of the enigmatic Condon.  It had taken four and a half hours to get his story, Walsh told the assembled group at Highfields.   The FBI representative, Mr. Nathan, asked the key question:  “Of course you gentlemen are convinced that Condon is straight?”  No, answered Walsh, he was not.  “I do not know whether it is the truth but I understand he has been arrested on two or three complaints of corrupting the morals of minors and another sex case or carnal abuse.”  These rumors swirled around Condon for years without posing a serious threat to his story (or various stories) of the meetings with “Cemetery John.” For Walsh, they apparently seemed to indicate that he might have been an unwilling participant in the crime as a man being blackmailed.  When he first questioned Condon at Highfields on May 12, Walsh went easy on him.  But not so on June 2 when he tried to pick out weak points in his story, especially his apparent vow to the kidnapers that they could “trust” him, in a long session at the Alpine State Police station.  What did that mean, he hammered at Condon, how far did that go?  Would he stand by guilty murderers? “From the circumstances of this case as I know them you know more than you have told us.”  Condon insisted this was not the case, and would contend in his articles and “memoir” of the case, Jafsie Tells All,  that Walsh made him walk along a narrow path near a precipice as the interrogation went on to frighten him. 

Walsh zeroed in on what many have always regarded as the strangest moment in the final transaction on April 2 – Condon’s ability to barter down the ransom from $70,000 to $50,000.  Condon’s claim had been that he had convinced the man he met that night that Lindbergh could not scrape together more than the original demand for $50,000.  In this version given to Walsh Cemetery John supposedly replied, “We know it’s hard times like that, why certainly we’ll take fifty thousand.”  Walsh was rightly amazed.  The reply is almost a parody of genuine empathy, if not gallantry – and as such revolting.  In other versions of his conversation, however, Condon had said that Cemetery John was much more grudging, saying that if they could not get the $70,000 they would have to accept fifty.  Either way, it sounded fishy to Walsh, who put it to the schoolmaster that the reason “they” accepted the lesser figure was because the money was to have gone to Condon who had been told that the child was dead and no longer wanted any part of the scheme.

If one were dealing with anyone else but Condon, such a conclusion would not be unwarranted.  But one is hard-pressed to accept any of his statements as resembling a true account of events.  Walsh confronted him with the language of the ransom notes that said the kidnapers had raised the price because they had had to take in an additional conspirator:  “That person couldn’t have been anybody but you.”  They went round and round on that question until Walsh finally gave up.

Meanwhile, shortly after the May 18^th Conference, some of those who had gathered for the confab staged a re-enactment of the crime.  They were led in this acting out  by Colonel Lindbergh, who had suggested the idea.  After a detective climbed down from the nursery on “the ladder” (although it is not clear from the story whether it really was the ladder), Lindbergh led the group along the path he supposedly traced with his flashlight the night of the crime, “as well as along other possible routes in an attempt to fix on the true one.”[3]

What Walsh thought of the re-enactment we do not know.  A few months later in a series of newspaper articles, Walsh re-enacted his own role for readers of the Jersey Journal.  Every day that passes he wrote in November 1932, make it less likely that a “complete solution” would be possible, but, as the old saying went, “murder will out.”

He said that J.Edgar Hoover had recommended a well-known man in police circles for shady dealings, one Morris “Mickey” Rosner, as a go-between if a mob had the child.  That was not so, and he was rightly criticized for saying Hoover had been the instigator through Lindbergh’s friend and lawyer.  However that may be, Walsh revealed that Rosner had been paid $2,500 by Lindbergh, and given an opportunity to read the ransom note.  The men Rosner contacted heralded their role in the press – but produced nothing of importance.  The way Walsh described the Rosner affair in these articles indicated that he had not agreed with Lindbergh’s role from a fairly early date. The Colonel had guided the search that first night, then he directed it towards a New York mob, and he prevented police from following the car he and Condon drove to the pay-off rendezvous.  Walsh felt keen frustration that “normal” police procedures were not followed, and said so in these articles, which also alienated Col. Schwarzkopf. 

Walsh was unrepentant about his dealings with Violet Sharp.  He sarcastically referred to her bank balance of $1600, saying he wished he had that much set aside.  And he dismissed explanations that claimed she was embarrassed by what he had uncovered about her social life.  The people she might have tipped off, he believed, were “professionals” because they knew the child was dead even as the negotiations for its return continued and reached a climax when Condon handed over $50,000 in a specially made box to “Cemetery John.” Amateurs would never have the courage to go through with it after the child died. They were capable of making trips down to see if the body had been discovered – a brazen display of sang froid if there ever was one.

In any event, by the time of the Hauptmann trial, relations between Walsh and the NJSP had reached a low point.  And after the trial when Gov. Harold Hoffman tried to find out by his own investigation the story of all that happened that night, the first of March 1932, Walsh seemed ready to help in any way he could, according to defense attorney Lloyd Fisher, who had been “in touch” with the inspector “on various occasions.”  Fisher also said that “Walsh had told him not to hesitate to call upon him if and when he, Walsh, could be helpful.”   Whether he would have allowed his doubts about the investigation and the trial to overcome his natural political instincts to stay far away from Hoffman’s controversial  foray into the workings of Jersey Justice,  is more doubtful.[4] 

So we are left to ponder the same questions Walsh did about the way the crime was carried out by the perpetrators and “solved” to the satisfaction of a jury in Flemington, New Jersey.

But there was one more thing of interest in Walsh’s articles.  Near the end of the last article in the Jersey Journal, Walsh took up the question of the child’s health:

“ ‘Was the baby a mute?’  That is another question I hear.

  Ridiculous!

  The baby was a normal, healthy happy youngster.

  Why anyone should start such a crazy whisper story about Baby     

  Lindbergh is beyond me – but I suppose such aspersions are one  

  Of the taxes on fame.”[5]

In my next post I will discuss the ransom notes and their seeming knowledge about Charlie’s health.

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[1]   Walsh’s rank seems to go up and down almost as often as a flag on a flagpole, at least in media accounts.  Sometimes he is listed as Captain, sometimes Inspector, sometimes Chief. 

[2]   Years earlier Walsh had been sent to New Brunswick to help with the re-investigation of the famous Hall-Mills murder case, which ended in an unsuccessful prosecution of Reverend Hall’s brothers-in-law.  Famous as the “Minister and Choir Leader” case, the bodies of Hall and Mrs. Mills were found in an orchard with love letters strewn about them.  It was always suspected the widow’s brothers were the culprits. But the point to be made here was that experienced officers like Walsh were often “loaned” out for big profile cases.

[3] “Lindbergh Reenacts Baby’s Kidnapping,” New York Times, May 20, 1932.

[4]  M.&M. to Harold Hoffman, February 21, 1936, from the “Meade Files” in the Hoffman Collection at the State Police Museum.  (I would like to thank Michael Melsky for going this letter to my attention.)

[5]   Jersey Journal, November 23, 1932.

Monday Night-Tuesday Night: the Immediate Genesis of the Crime?

when the stars line up
and you catch a good break
and people think your lucky
but you know it’s grace
it can happen so fast
or a little bit late
timing is everything.

Garrett Hedlund, "Timing is Everything" Lyrics

Those who argue that it was impossible for the crime to have been put together by a kidnap team in the short time after Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s call to the Morrow home in Englewood at 10:30 on the morning of March 1, 1932, have a good point. Several investigators at the time and later, notably Harry Walsh the high ranking police officer from Jersey City, who was in on all the crucial interrogations, and John Douglas the former FBI profiler, who writes today on famous cases, both believed that Violet Sharp somehow tipped off the conspirators that the Lindberghs would be at Highfields that crucial night. But how, ask the dissenters, could such a crime be put together in the time remaining after Anne’s call?  It couldn’t, so therefore it must have been the work of a lone wolf, Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

But does that conclusion really follow – if the tip off came earlier, on Monday night? It is true that contacting Hauptmann to give him a “go” signal so late in the morning would have been difficult, especially since there was no telephone in his apartment.  But suppose the signal had been given earlier – on Monday night, and not necessarily to Hauptmann?

What do we know about Monday night?  Anne had stayed down at Highfields instead of returning home as the family usually did at the end of the weekend.  Her concern was for Charlie’s cold, which caused her enough worry that she stayed close by the nursery, and broke her husband’s “rule” by entering the nursery on more than one occasion between the hours of eight and ten.   Anne and Charles spoke on the telephone Monday night around 7:00 pm. He had worked in New York and called to let her know that he would not be home that night.  We do not know all that was said during that conversation, but it certainly left in doubt whether they would return to Englewood the next day. The cold had gone down to Charlie’s chest she informed her husband, and she planned to send Whately out for a thermometer; and she would recall for police that she kept a close watch on Charlie that night.  It did not sound like she was ready to take the child out so long as his condition did not markedly improve.  Plans were made in the phone conversation for Charles to come to Hopewell if the decision was to stay another night – suggesting that it was a not unlikely choice.

We do not know about any other phone calls made from Highfields that night.  There may have been none.  But even if there were none, we do not know, either, whether Charles spoke with his mother-in-law that evening, or whether any other persons including the servants at Englewood had some knowledge of what was said.

Several things might follow from this brief note about Monday night’s possible conversations.  The uncertainty about the return could explain why Hauptmann reported for work the next day if he had been expected to be a part of the kidnapping team that traveled to Hopewell. It has never been explained what might have happened had he actually been put to work at the Majestic Hotel that day. He was not.  But perhaps it made no difference.  He could have gone to work because his role might have been finished with the construction of the ladder.  The plans went ahead without him, because he was not needed.  The final “go” signal could have been given after Anne’s Tuesday morning call, but it would have been given when things had already been put in train.  As in the nature of a “Fail-Safe” code during the Cold War.

If we go down that path, the mystery of “Tuesday Night” clears up a bit.  It has always been difficult to understand how a kidnaper or kidnap team could have possibly known the Lindberghs would be there, the only time they had ever stayed over that long.  Here was an opportunity that might not come again soon.  If Charlie was the target and only target of a team effort, taking him from Hopewell would be far easier than a risky endeavor at the Morrow Estate with all of its servants inside.  The decision had been made to carry out the crime – and the sooner the better after the decision, because delay might well mean a loss of nerve, and defections.  So there was some urgency.

This argument is somewhat strengthened by Anne’s March 13^th statement, because she does not say she spoke to Charles the next morning, April 1^st, when, she records the child was better with no fever.  She spoke to Betty Gow, however, but did not say “anything definite about our return to Englewood,” even as she asks that Betty come down to Highfields.   According to her statement, Charles did not call until some time between 6 and 7 to tell her he “would be late in coming home.”  The wording suggests that the plan had been to stay that night, unless things changed more dramatically.  Given the number of communications about their plans, several people could have known where they would likely be as early as Monday night.  

Otherwise, we have to speculate along with others in the past, that Hauptmann was so enraged by not having work that day that he returned to his house, perhaps finished the ladder (with a great deal of sawing and planning), and rushed down to the Hopewell area in time to have been seen by the old man Amandas Hochmuth, spinning off into a ditch as he rounded a corner – all this before noon.  He then hung around all afternoon until he tried to hide from Benny Lupica who saw him near the entrance to the target house.  And, to make it perfect, he luckily hit on the right night!  That is really the only way to make the lone wolf theory work.

So the question arises:  who was the key planner/organizer?  The ransom notes themselves suggest detailed planning, not a shot in the dark.    Subjects for a later post – most certainly.

(Thanks to Mark Falzini for previewing this blog, which, in part was stimulated by  our conversations over the timing of the phone conversations on Monday and Tuesday.)

 

Pebbles and Mud

PEBBLES AND MUD

“Returning from her stroll, Anne Lindbergh paused at the southeast corner of the house and looked up at the second-story nursery windows, then picked up a few pebbles from the moist, clayey ground and tossed them against the corner windowpane.  Presently Betty Gow, the nurse, appeared.  Smiling, she turned away and came back with the little boy in her arms.  She pointed down to his mother and he smiled in recognition.  Anne Lindbergh waved.  Betty raised the baby’s hand and waved it back.”

                                  George Waller, Kidnap, p. 3.

            George Waller’s  1961 book, Kidnap: The Story of the Lindbergh Case,  was considered for a long time the very best book on the case, despite its failure to cite sources in the text, and a very limited bibliography.  The back page carries the imprimatur of George Mason Brown, a very serious journalist and public intellectual.  And the author information tells us that Waller was a newspaper editor and the author of more than a thousand radio plays.  Waller’s dramatic opening of his study frames the entire case – precisely as the prosecutor, Attorney General David Wilentz did at the trial, in order to set the stage for the "Crime of the Century."  With Anne Morrow Lindbergh on the stand very early in the trial, Wilentz began a series of questions about her afternoon walk the day of the kidnapping.  Was there one occasion, he asked, when Charlie was up in the nursery and “you were downstairs and you played  from the downstairs to the window?”  Anne answered promptly that after she returned from her walk down the path and back to the house they called Highfields, she had continued  from the driveway to a place beneath the nursery window and tried to look for him.

“I attracted the attention of Miss Betty Gow [the live-in nursemaid] by throwing a pebble up to the window, and she then held the baby up to window to let him see me.”  But after that things became a little vague.  Anne could not recall exactly which of the windows she threw the pebble against, as she moved back and forth.  Finally she said, “I don’t remember.”  But Betty did hold the child up for her to see.  (In the testimony, of course, Charlie is constantly referred to as a baby.) 

Wilentz then asked if she stayed on the walk or moved off of it at any time.  “I walked from the driveway along by the side of the house where it was quite muddy and then on to the flagstones, flagstoned porch at the back.”  Wilentz stressed in the next several questions that she walked in the mud at times.  “Was the condition of the ground such that when you walked there there you left footprints of your walk?” 

“It was.”  It was, the attorney general repeated, so the condition was such that you left footprints? “I did.”

Wilentz then asked about the temporary walk way, and ascertained that it was only two planks or so wide.  His meaning was clear, even if not from Anne’s words, but from the evidence of the walkway – it was impossible for her not to have left footprints.

To finish up this sequence, the Attorney General asked about the time of day.  Anne replied that it was around three-thirty.  She could not be exact.  (Trial Transcript, pp. 60-3)

This moving vignette accomplished two things for the prosecution:  First, it put in the minds of the jurors at the outset the heinous nature of a crime that would so tragically interrupt one life and destroy another.  In a prosecution effort where the actual presence of the accused on the night of the kidnapping depended on dubious eyewitness accounts, it was important to establish in early testimony an emotional bond between the jury and the victim's family, especially the mother.  It would not have mattered who was on trial for that to be an imperative task for the prosecution. Second, and more to the point of the prosecution’s immediate effort to eliminate possible collaborators in the crime, it established that any unexplained footprints discovered outside the house were those left by Anne herself during this walk.  This is yet another conflicted issue at the trial as I shall try to demonstrate below. 

Authors following Waller have included the vignette in their accounts, including myself.  In The Case That Never Dies, I write that it would have been difficult indeed for Anne not to have left footprints given the placement of the boards along the outside the house if she threw pebbles at the window.  (p. 16)  And Betty Gow confirmed the story during the trial.  In Betty’s testimony, she recounts that “my attention was drawn to Mrs. Lindbergh out of doors.  She was throwing pebbles up to the window, and as I recall ….”  Betty is interrupted at this point by Prosecutor Wilentz who is concerned about noises outside the courtroom.  After someone is sent to attend to the problem, Wilentz asks for the question to be repeated.  It is, but there is no further account of the pebble incident, or of Betty holding the child up to the window.  And there is absolutely no confirmation in either woman’s testimony of the scene as Waller described it, with mother and child exchanging smiles.  Since the defense would not dare risk a cross examination of Anne Lindbergh, the scene remained untouched by any doubts questions to Betty Gow might have raised. (Trial Testimony, pp. 257-9)

Waller’s experience at writing radio plays obviously got the best of him here.  In some ways it is a minor question to be sure, but in a scene which helps to set the stage for a “non-fiction” account of  events surrounding the crime, it is nonetheless disturbing, whoever had been on trial. What is most interesting about the story, however, is that none of it seems to have been told before the trial by anyone.  It is not in Betty’s pretrial deposition, at least not in the one available today.  And there is no Anne Morrow Lindbergh pretrial deposition in the New Jersey State Police museum.  There may well have been such depositions, as attorneys hate to ask questions for which they do not know the answers.  But they are not known to exist today.[1]

When Anne was first questioned on March 11, 1932, she said that she was in the “baby’s room” when he awoke from his nap, between two-thirty and three.   After a short while she “left them for most of the afternoon.”  She went for a walk, “a long walk down the road, then I came back, went up to the baby’s room [and] had the baby down to the living room.”  (Statements File, in the New Jersey State Police Museum)  This statement would put the walk somewhat later than her trial testimony, and there is no mention of the pebble-throwing vignette.  Two days later she made another statement.  She repeats that she left Betty with Charlie between 2:30 and 3:00.  Only this time she says that she did not return from her walk down the driveway until “about 5:00.”  “When I came back, about 5:00, I went up into the baby’s room where I found Betty, Elsie [Whateley] and the baby.”  So it was much later, according to this statement, when she returned from the walk, and went to the nursery where she “found” Betty and Elsie with Charlie.  On a cloudy day on March 1st, it would have been nearing dusk.  Moreover, “found” is a curious word to use if she had earlier stood outside the nursery and signaled with pebbles.  In neither statement is the vignette recalled, although they are given only a few days after the kidnapping.  One would think something that moving would have come up at least once in her statements.  Nor does it appear in her diary entries as published later.  It is not in any of Betty Gow’s statements to police, either.

Obviously, the police were in no position (and in no mood) to probe Anne’s statements for additional details at this moment in her ordeal.  Elsie Whateley confirmed that she had gone up to the nursery around four o’clock at the trial, and that later Anne “came up” and “we all played with the baby.”  (Trial Transcript, p. 232) This tallies with Anne’s March 13^th statement, but there is no mention of the pebble incident. 

Does all of this mean that Wilentz and his aides “implanted” the story in Anne’s consciousness and along with her “discovered memory” persuaded Betty Gow to go along?  We have at least one instance where Assistant Prosecutor Peacock tried to make Betty say at the trial that Anne was in a prayerful position after the discovery the child was missing.  Betty demurred for quite some time during the deposition. He barely succeeded, but Betty did say at the trial that all the women struck such poses, carefully placing her in the same meditative mood as Anne.  Betty was a quick study, indeed.  Peacock had also managed to get Amandas Hochmuth -- a key eyewitness presented by the prosecution -- to say that the time he saw the man with the glaring red face go off in the ditch was much later than his original statement – a crucial point at the trial, which made it easier to put Bruno Richard Hauptman near Hopewell on that day, as he had reported for work that morning, and, being told he was not to be hired that day, would have arrived later than Hochmuth's original claim.  I recount these instances in my book. 

Whether Peacock or Wilentz would try such a thing with Anne cannot be known.  During her testimony, moreover, Anne proved much more resistant to his efforts to lead her than did her husband.  One can remain a complete agnostic, however, and still point to Wilentz’s use of the vignette to try to eliminate a very weak spot in the prosecution case.  The question that he continues to repeat during her testimony concerns footprints, not the pebbles.  And there she readily agrees that it would have been impossible for her not to have left footprints.  Thus any effort to introduce footprints of a woman outside the nursery was negated.

If the case had not “ended” with Hauptmann’s conviction, later authors would have seized upon the footprints question as a prime example of police – at all levels – bungling. Investigators the night of the kidnapping almost unanimously recall seeing “footprints” both near the window and trailing off toward where the ladder was found and going beyond that to Featherbed Road or Lane.  I will not recount all those statements here, but wish instead to focus on one, that of Nuncio de Gaetano. [2]

DeGaetano  testified at the trial about the single footprint he discovered.  But in his statement of March 3, 1932, he had quite a bit more to say about the question.  Study this carefully and see what you think:  “Then proceeded to the yard and made observations of the ground underneath the nursery window from which the child was supposed to have been taken.  The undersigned noticed a foot print pointing towards the house near the temporary boardwalk which was laid there,” and I will call this footprint #1.  DeGaetano continues his sentence, “and approximately 18 inches to the right of this print was an impression presumed to have been made by a heavy woolen stocking as the impression of the ridges were distinctly shown.”  I will call this footprint #2.  “Also noticed were two impressions near the temporary boardwalk and the footprint which was later proved to have been made by the ladder.” Is this footprint #3, or a way of referring to the ladder marks? It is far from clear if there was another one somehow inside the ladder marks or not.  “Upon further investigation found the foot print of a woman’s shoe, which was explained by Chief Wolfe of the Hopewell Police to have been made by Mrs. Lindbergh.”  This is footprint #3 or 4 depending on one’s reading of the ladder marks.  But notice what is happening here.  DeGaetano accepts Wolfe’s description of the footprint – and that’s it, period, end of inquiry. 

Wolfe’s identification would tally with Anne’s discussion of her walk.  But at this moment we have no documentary evidence that Wolfe questioned Anne about her behavior that afternoon.  Maybe he did, maybe he did not.  But it is not in his statements either, or those of his companion, Williamson from the Hopewell police.  And yet it deflects all attention from that footprint.  There is absolutely no indication that Anne’s show was matched up to the footprint.  Within hours all interest in this footprint disappears along with the print itself.  DeGaetano then goes on to talk about the footprints of “rubber boots or overshoes” that lead away from the ladder to “an abandoned road . . . and chicken coop.”  There is no indication here if the investigators believed the footprints #1 and #4 were made by people in regular shoes who changed shoes – de Gaetano seems unsure himself talking about stockinged feet, rubber boots, overshoes, all of which might leave ridged marks – or if there were at least three people involved outside. (Memorandum by de Gaetano, March 3, 1932, Harold Hoffman Papers, Box 29, at the New Jersey State Police Museum)

Gov. Harold Hoffman received two letters later that cast some light on how deGaetano’s original finding offered some difficulty for the prosecution.  The prosecution did not wish to have a single little matter like footprints mess up the “perfect case.”  Wilentz thus pressed Anne to tell about the pebbles incident to make sure that the jury understood who made any and all woman’s prints outside the house.  If he did not succeed in implanting the testimony in Anne’s accounts, he certainly pressed  the jury to get the point.  A disgruntled ex-trooper wrote Hoffman about an incident the day after the jury was picked and before the trial was to begin.  Archie Stinsom claimed that he was present in a judge’s office in Flemington that day when various officers, high ranking officers along with prosecutors, argued about the footprint evidence, and whether there was one or more footprints found. From Anne’s testimony it can be seen how Wilentz sought to finesse the whole issue.  Faulty police work or not, the evidence from the earliest statements was that there were footprints, and footprint trails.  A decent defense attorney should have been able to find out the truth; that Reilly was not, and he was in charge of the case.

Another letter writer, Tommy Bonsall, wrote to a friend Jim Burke, whose letter was passed on to Hoffman after the trial, that he had been told by two NJP officers, Lang and Herbert, that there were two “sets” of footprints leading from the house to Featherbed Lane. (Letters in Hoffman Papers, Box 33) We know perfectly well why the prosecution wished to use Anne to wipe away all memory traces of those prints, and how efficiently Wilentz cleaned up the territory.  But we have to ask: Whose prints did the police find that night?  It was a remarkable accomplishment by the prosecution team, using a single episode to establish a powerful emotional bond and at the same time to eliminate potentially troublesome footprint issues.

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[1]  I do not make this as a categorical statement, because in this case perhaps more than any other, new evidence or, better put, evidence of new evidence turns up with astonishing regularity.  Many thanks to Mark Falzini for triggering this inquiry.  It was he who discovered that the account of Anne’s throwing the pebbles does not appear in any of her interrogations.  As always I am deeply indebted to Mark and all the others in SSI for my efforts to understand this baffling case.

[2]   Given the treatment of the footprints issue at the trial, the number of these statements from different police officials stands as an accusatory indictment of police behavior that night, but this can be argued forever and in more than a few pages, certainly.

Welcome!

On this blog I will be presenting essays on contested subjects involving the Lindbergh Kidnapping that did not appear in my book, which will be republished soon in paperback with a new epilog by the Rutgers University Press.


I hope you will find them interesting and perhaps a little controversial.

If you have time, come along with me for a journey back to another time, and a country house near Hopewell, New Jersey.