Charles Lindbergh (1902 –1974) is the archetype American hero – a hero’s hero if you
will – who has been idolized for his historic trip across the Atlantic Ocean in
1927. Few people realize that he was a cold blooded killer who got away with
murder.
If Lindbergh’s fame needed any boosting, it got it on March
1, 1931 when the world heard the news that his infant son, Charles Jr, was
missing from his Hopewell, NJ home, in the hands of a kidnapper. The news was electrifying and eventually led
to the “Trial of the Century” a couple of years later.
In the meantime, Lindbergh ordered that the note
found on the window sill from where the child was allegedly absconded be left
unopened until finger print experts could examine the envelope and letter.
The letter turned out to be a ransom note demanding 50,000
USD. Refusing the aid of law enforcement officials, including the FBI,
Lindbergh mounted a highly unorthodox investigation by turning to organized
crime to help find his missing son. Morris Rosner was an underworld figure
whose services Lindbergh employed in the search of young Charles.
Soon thereafter, a Dr John Condon, who would later use the pseudonym Jafsie in his contact with the alleged kidnappers, acted as the liaison between Lindbergh and the kidnappers. He brought the money to a man whom he described, in Carol Wallace’s words, as ‘medium build, with a pointy face, high cheekbones, slanted, dark, almost "oriental eyes", and a cough.’ This individual was known as “Cemetary John” after the place where the money handover took place.
Wallace is in fact our tour guide to this tale as she published nearly 20 years
ago in Conspiracy of the Day an article based upon her master’s thesis about the Lindbergh
kidnapping. She later earned a doctorate on the Fatty Arbuckle affair, and was
an authority on the 1930s era.
The money was delivered, but instead of receiving the child,
Jafsie received a bogus note describing where the baby could be found. On May
12, 1932 the remains of Charles Jr were found indicating death by a skull
fracture.
The search for the killer continued until a German born
carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was found passing some of the ransom money.
He was arrested and charged with the crimes of kidnapping and murder, based
largely on the evidence of the money and his faint resemblance to Jafsie’s
Cemetary John.
On top of the circumstantial evidence, the fates were
against Hauptmann. Two witnesses came forward to identify him as being in the
vicinity at the time of the crime. One witness was legally blind but claimed to
see him many feet away driving by in a car, but later, according to Wallace,
identified a vase as a woman’s hat, as you do when you are legally blind. The
other witness Wallace identified as a known pathological liar whose testimony
about Hauptmann changed when he was offered reward money.
A reporter for the New York Daily News planted evidence in
Hauptmann’s home linking him to the crime by writing Jafsie’s number on a hard
to get to board in his closet. That Hauptmann didn’t have a phone was of no
consequence to the court or law enforcement.
Lindbergh’s testimony was perhaps the most lethal because he
claimed to be able to identify, after hearing only a few syllables 2 years
prior, Hauptmann as Cemetary John. Hauptmann’s cause was not helped by William
Randolph Hearst who hired a boozing syphilitic attorney to defend him; a
defender who spent only 40 minutes in consultation with his client. But justice
was not the purpose – only its appearances.
Perhaps the most critical piece of evidence in the case was
the very crude ladder which would not have been so poorly constructed by a
skilled carpenter such as Hauptmann. On the other hand, a man whose métier was
not carpentry, perhaps a man more prone to flying than constructing, would have
produced such a crude device.
Wallace explores some theories about the real killer which
she dismisses because they in general require too much suspension of disbelief,
if not failing outright the laugh test, such as the guilt of Hauptmann who was
railroaded through a corrupt and criminal court system.
She points out how Lindbergh, a generally cold person
anyway, played frequent cruel jokes on people, such as putting a venomous snake
in the bed of a man deathly afraid of them, and putting kerosene in the canteen
of a friend who had to be hospitalized after gulping it down in Lindbergh’s
presence.
A few days before the disappearance of the son, Lindbergh
hid the baby from his hysterical wife for 20 minutes before bringing her the baby.
Wallace conjectures with solid reasoning, that Lindbergh was in the process of
playing another joke on his wife by removing the baby from his room down the
rickety ladder when the baby accidentally fell to his death. Thus Lindbergh was
covering up at a minimum manslaughter.
But rumors persisted that the crime was uglier – that the
Nazi Lindbergh, who advocated for a Master Race, murdered his son because he
was retarded, genetically defective. We believe the rumors. Why else would he
refuse police and FBI help in finding his son? Was it because he feared being
found out? Besides, why waste valuable time on someone who is dead? And why
turn to organized crime for help? Lindbergh’s collaboration with the notorious
Wild Bill Donovan of the future OSS and CIA in the matter is additional cause
for suspicion.
America may continue to remember Lindbergh as an aviation
hero and philanthropist, but we remember him as a murderer and Nazi.
Reference
The Kidnapping of the Lindbergh Baby by Carol Wallace Copyright (c) 1994 by Carol Wallace
Copyright 2013 Tony Bonn. All rights reserved.