Anne Spencer MORROW

  General Notes:

Cast of Characters

Charles A. Lindbergh - in 1932, when his son disappeared, Lindbergh was the most famous man on the planet, due to his historic 1927 flight. His fame was both a blessing and a curse. It brought great fortune, but it also made him a target. After the Hauptmann trial the Lindberghs and their son Jon left America for Britain, to escape the media. They returned when WWII began, but Lindbergh's reputation had been tarnished by his positive pre-war comments about Nazi Germany. He helped to train combat pilots in the Pacific theater, and after the war developed interests in medicine and the environment.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was the last survivor of the kidnapping drama,passing on in 2000. A poet and essayist, she wrote several books, including "North to the Orient;" "Gift from the Sea;" "Bring Me A Unicorn;" "Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead;" "Locked Rooms and Open Doors;" "The Flower and the Nettle," and others. She came from a well-to-do Englewood, NJ family. While her father was ambassador to Mexico, she met the young hero, Charles Lindbergh, after his historic flight. They married on May 27, 1929. Her husband taught her to fly and to navigate and she accompanied him on flights pioneering new air routes across the Pacific. Their first child, Charles Jr., was born in 1930 and she was pregnant again when he was kidnapped. In all, the Lindberghs had six children. For years Mrs. Lindbergh lived in seclusion in Connecticut.

Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. - the victim was 20 months old at the time of the crime. Affectionately dubbed "The Little Eagle," he had been the subject of great public interest since birth. Photos and news about the Lindbergh baby were widely featured in newspapers and newsreels, who just couldn't get enough about boy. The fascination continued even after his death, when reporters entered the morgue and photographed the corpse. This prompted Lindbergh to have the body cremated, to prevent problems with grave robbers and souvenir hunters. Even so, several individuals over the years have claimed to be the Lindbergh baby, alive and all grown up.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann - an illegal German immigrant, Hauptmann fled to America to avoid a prison term for burglary. He worked as a carpenter, but shortly after the Lindbergh ransom was paid he became a moderately successful Wall Street investor. He was tracked down for passing a ransom bill at a filling station. Then $14,000 of the money was found hidden in his garage. He was tried and convicted in 1935 and, after exhausting appeals, he was executed via electric chair in 1936. Hauptmann never confessed, despite strong inducements to do so. Anna Hauptmann, the widow of Bruno, proclaimed his innocence to the day of her death in 1994 at age 95. She insisted that on the night of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Hauptmann had driven her from the bakery where she worked to their home in the Bronx, at least 50 miles from the Lindbergh house in New Jersey. In her last years, with the help of San Francisco attorney Robert Bryan, she tried repeatedly and in vain to reopen the case, to open trial and investigation records to the public, and to clear her husband's name. Only once after the 1935 trial, in 1991, did she revisit Flemington. The Hauptmanns' son, Manfried, born in 1933, after the kidnapping but before his father's arrest, was last reported living in Pennsylvania. He cared for his mother throughout her long life.

Prosecuting Attorney David Wilentz , called Bruno Hauptmann "Public Enemy Number 1 of the World," and told the jury that the German-born carpenter from the Bronx had not only kidnapped the Lindbergh baby but had deliberately killed the child in his crib. Trying the Lindbergh case was the high water mark of his prosecutorial career, but he pursued a successful law practice in Perth Amboy and was a power in state Democratic politics. He died in 1988. He saw his son, Robert Wilentz, attain the peak of the legal profession in New Jersey. Appointed the state's chief justice in 1979, Robert Wilentz served as chief of the Supreme Court until his death in 1996. During his tenure, not one convicted murderer was executed in New Jersey.

Defense Attorney Edward J. Reilly - At his peak the well-known "Bull of Brooklyn" was one of America's top trial attorneys. By 1935, however, hard living and a string of lost cases had brought a new nickname: "Death House Reilly." The Hearst newspapers, looking to add some color to the trial story, hired him as Hauptmann's lawyer. Reilly promised a host of defense witnesses to blow apart the prosecution's case, but he never produced them. Privately he believed his client was guilty. Hauptmann complained bitterly about the representation Reilly provided. But his funds were confiscated and he had few options. Others on the defense legal team argued vehemently with Reilly about his strategies and his performance.

Key Witness John F. Condon -became the intermediary between the kidnapper and the Lindberghs after writing a letter to a newspaper offering $1,000 of his own money to help reunite the baby with its family. After passing a series of notes to Lindbergh, a transfer of the $50,000 ransom was accomplished in a cemetery. Until "Jafsie" unequivocally identified Bruno Hauptmann as the man to whom he handed the money, many police officers and others considered him a suspect in the case.

Betty Gow , the child's nursemaid, was the last member of the Lindbergh household to see him alive. Her boyfriend, Henry "Red" Johnson, had called the house early that evening and police investigated the pair intensely. Miss Gow was questioned repeatedly, and eventually she was cleared. Red Johnson was held for questioning. Police discovered that he was an illegal immigrant and after satisfying themselves that he had no connection with the Lindbergh crime, he was deported back to Norway. It was Miss Gow who first identified the little body that authorities found in the woods on May 12, 1932. On the stand at Hauptmann's trial she testified about the events of the kidnapping night and identified the child's clothing. After the trial she sailed for Scotland and never returned to the U.S.
Violet Sharpe , a maid in the Morrow household, aroused suspicions with the evasive answers she gave police about her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping. She remains a prime suspect in the "inside job" theory of the kidnapping and death of the Lindbergh baby. Such thinking was bolstered when she committed suicide rather than submit to more interrogation. It was later revealed that she had several casual boyfriends and was frequenting a speakeasy when the child was abducted. Knowing that Mrs. Morrow would disapprove of such activities and fearing she would lose her job, she drank poison rather than face police again.

Col. Norman Schwarzkopf , superintendent of the N.J. State Police, played a key role in the Lindbergh kidnapping investigation and the Hauptmann trial. A West Point graduate and WWI veteran, he organized the State Police in the 1920s. He returned to military service in WWII, rising to the rank of Brigadier General. Later he served abroad and organized the police force of Iran, then an ally of the U.S. There his son, Norman Jr., got his first taste of life in the Middle East. The younger Schwarzkopf, also a West Pointer, won international fame by commanding combat forces in Kuwait and Iraq in the Gulf War. The elder Schwarzkopf died in 1958.

Al Capone, the most infamous criminal of his age, was the leader of organized crime in Chicago in the 1920s. He is said to have been behind more than 300 murders, including the bloody St. Valentine's Day massacre of rival gang members. Some estimate that Capone made over $100 million during his criminal career. At the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping, Capone had just begun a prison sentence for tax evasion. He offered to help find the kidnappers. A slight catch -- he'd have to leave prison to do so. After talking with officials, Lindbergh decided to do without Mr. Capone's help.

NJ Governor Harold G. Hoffman -Sworn in on the day Hauptmann's trial began, Hoffman's career became entwined with the Lindbergh case. Aware of lingering questions, and anxious to build a national reputation, Hoffman tried to have the case reopened. His interference angered the public and helped to ruin him politically. A letter found after his death in 1952 revealed that he had embezzled more than $300,000 during his career.

Justice Thomas W. Trenchard had 28 years on the bench and a reputation as a fair and compassionate judge. During the Hauptmann trial he paid close attention to the needs of the sequestered jury, going as far as to order daily constitutional walks and special weekend outings for them. He even held Saturday court sessions to help speed the trial along. On the day of Hauptmann's execution a man was found who claimed to be the real kidnapper. Trenchard, confident in the jury's verdict, refused to postpone Hauptmann's electrocution, saying, "If executions were put off every time some nut made a last-minute confession, the business of the state would never be carried out...."

The Crime of the Century

In shock value, in terms of human interest, it was the Crime of the Century: Someone had dared to kidnap and kill the infant son of the man then regarded as the world's greatest hero. No mere football hero admired by sports fans, no astronaut propelled by the machinery of modern science, but Charles A. Lindbergh, the young man who had flown the first solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. Nicknamed Lucky Lindy and the Lone Eagle, he had almost single-handedly launched the era of transoceanic flight.

In addition to his Atlantic crossing he and his bride, millionaire heiress Anne Morrow, went on to fly the Pacific North to the Orient, pioneering the flight paths followed by jet liners even today. Mobbed by admirers and pursued by the press both here and abroad, they built a $50,000, 20-room stone house at a secluded spot in the rocky, wooded Sourland mountains of central New Jersey. The Lindberghs had spotted the site from the air, and were impressed by its isolation and potential as an airfield. During the American Revolution, Declaration of Independence signer John Hart had used the same area to hide from the British.

The Lindberghs' son, Charles Jr., was then 20 months old, and they were expecting another child. On a chill, damp weekend in March, 1932, they planned to return Sunday to the home of Mrs. Lindbergh's parents, in the posh suburb of Englewood, NJ, 50 miles away. But young Charles had a cold and they decided to stay another night or two, accompanied by the child's nurse, Betty Gow, and a housekeeper couple. Except for them and the grandparents, it is presumed that no one else knew they were staying.

et sometime between 8 and 10 PM on the night of Tuesday, March 1, the child was taken from his second-floor nursery by a kidnapper who left no fingerprints but did leave a note demanding $50,000 in ransom -- a fortune in those Depression times. Finding the baby was gone, Lindbergh searched the grounds, and called the State Police. The Township of East Amwell, where the Lindbergh house was located, had no local police then or now.

Police and press descended on the scene, trampling what might have been left of a kidnapper's footprints in the mud and a light fall of snow. In addition to the ransom note, investigators found a discarded homemade ladder and a chisel near the house. In the days and nights that followed, a desperate Lindbergh sought help from numerous negotiators who claimed to be go-betweens with the kidnapper. Thousands of letters poured into the estate, some expressing sympathy, some with ransom demands or death threats, and a host of psychic predictions.

The newspapers initially speculated that gangsters had taken the child. Who else would have the gall to snatch the son of the Lone Eagle? Al Capone, the most notorious of them all, was so appalled at the thought, that he offered a $10,000 reward for information that would lead to the recovery of the child unharmed. Capone also said if he were released from his Chicago jail cell, he and his henchmen would find the perpetrator. A national debate ensued on whether or not to free Capone for the task. Speculation ended when the man who put Capone behind bars, IRS agent Elmer Irey, convinced Lindbergh that if released, Capone would immediately flee the country.

One of many would-be go-betweens was Dr. John (Jafsie) Condon, a retired teacher who claimed to be in contact with the kidnapper. One night at a cemetery in the Bronx, accompanied by Lindbergh, Jafsie paid the ransom in gold certificates whose numbers had been recorded. The kidnapper gave Condon a note saying the child was on a boat off the Massachusetts coast. Lindbergh spent days flying over the area to no avail. Unknown to all, the body of little Charles Jr., dead of a skull fracture, lay in the leaves off the Hopewell-Princeton road, a few miles from the Lindberghs' home. On May 12, 1932, the tiny remains were discovered by a truck driver who entered the woods to relieve himself.

It took more than two years of following the trail of passed ransom bills to track down the man accused of the murder, a German-born Bronx carpenter, Bruno Richard Hauptmann. When he was arrested, Hauptmann had over $14,000 worth of the ransom cash hidden in his garage. It was later discovered that a board cut from his attic floor was used in the ladder. Dr. Condon eventually identified Hauptmann as the man to whom he paid the ransom. Within hours of his arrest, press and police were clamoring for the death penalty for Hauptmann.

From what they read in the papers and heard on the radio, few doubted his guilt: Hauptmann was an illegal German immigrant with a criminal record in his past. Had not Lindbergh that night in the cemetery heard a voice with a German accent? And who in America trusted Germans, maligned as "Huns" and "Baby Killers" so recently in World War propaganda? Who would believe Hauptmann? He insisted the money was left by one Isidor Fisch, a fur dealer he knew who had fled to Germany and died there ...a story beyond corroboration. Who would believe Hauptmann's wife, Anna, who protested that on the night of the kidnapping she had been home with Hauptmann in the Bronx? Hauptmann was extradited to New Jersey.

On January 2nd, 1935, the spotlight fell on the century-old Hunterdon County courthouse in the little borough of Flemington for the Trial of the Century.

The Trial of the Century

Imagine modern-day celebrities such as Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings, Ted Koppel, Larry King, Barbara Walters, Oprah and Geraldo descending on one small town. Imagine a swarm of 700 news and cameramen, covering the final chapter of the "Crime of the Century," improvising studios in hotel rooms, homes and storefronts, as utility workers festoon downtown poles with enough additional phone and electric wires to serve a small city.

This was Flemington, NJ in January 1935, when Bruno Richard Hauptmann went on trial for kidnapping and killing the 20-month-old first-born son of world idol Charles A. Lindbergh. It was an event that author H.L. Mencken called "The greatest story since the Resurrection." Walter Winchell, Damon Runyon, Boake Carter, Gabriel Heatter, Lowell Thomas, Dorothy Kilgallen, Edna Ferber and Adela Rogers St. John were among the print and radio celebrities joining the swarm of curiosity-seekers at the 1828 courthouse on Main Street. Police estimated 16,000 cars came to Flemington the first weekend of the trial. When Sheriff John Curtiss opened the courthouse to the public one Sunday, 5,000 people, twice the population of Flemington, elbowed their way in to view the building.

Walter Winchell was the leader of the media pack that, well before the trial, had decided Hauptmann was guilty. Winchell had friends and tipsters in high places, among them J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover had done his best to convey the impression that the case had been broken by the FBI, working with local law enforcement agencies. In reality, New Jersey State Police, commanded by Col. Norman Schwarzkopf, spearheaded the investigation, aided by New York police. Kidnapping was not yet a federal crime, although it would become so by a Congressional act dubbed "the Lindbergh Law."

According to trial testimony (and pretrial publicity), Dr. John F. (Jafsie) Condon, an elderly Bronx educator, volunteered his help by putting a notice in the Bronx Home News seeking contact with the kidnapper. In reply he received notes demanding $70,000 and claiming that the child was safe. The footed winter pajamas the toddler had been wearing the night of March 1 were delivered to Dr. Condon as proof.

On April 2, at a rendezvous in a Bronx cemetery, accompanied by Lindbergh, Dr. Condon gave a box of marked bills, US gold certificates, to a shadowy figure with a reputedly German accent.

Two and a half years of frustrating investigations and rumors passed before the first real clues led to the arrest of Hauptmann, a Bronx carpenter who had no regular job but who appeared to be living better than most folks did in the depths of the Depression. In September 1934 some of the marked ransom bills began showing up. One had been used to buy gasoline at a service station whose owner, thinking it might be a counterfeit, wrote the car's license number on the bill. It was Hauptmann's. Police reported finding a stash of Lindbergh ransom money in Hauptmann's garage.

On the witness stand, Hauptmann denied any involvement in the kidnapping, insisted he made money by playing the stock market, and said a fur dealer, Isidor Fisch, had left the bills at his house. But in the 32 days of the trial in Flemington in January and February 1935, the jury found the Lindbergh money to be one of the most compelling pieces of evidence produced by prosecutor David Wilentz. They also believed seven handwriting experts who said the kidnap notes matched Hauptmann's handwriting. Woodwork and forestry experts said North Carolina pine from a lumberyard near Hauptmann's home, and a board cut from his floor, were used in the crudely built kidnapping ladder. Hauptmann said no "real carpenter" could produce such rough work. Rounding out Wilentz s case were eyewitnesses who placed Hauptmann in the area of the Lindbergh estate on the day of the crime.

Defense counsel Edward Reilly was a flamboyant, hard-drinking attorney from Brooklyn. He was hired by the Hearst newspapers to add some color to the trial, which looked to be an open and shut case. Reilly scoffed at the circumstantial evidence against Bruno. "There is no such thing as a wood expert," he asserted. He suggested that the true culprits were the Lindbergh's servants, or gangsters, or Hauptmann's friend Fisch, or Dr. Condon. He attacked the police as inept bunglers who had planted evidence and botched the investigation. In his prime, Reilly was known for his unflappable courtroom demeanor and ability to convince a jury to disregard the most damning of evidence. Unfortunately for Hauptmann, Reilly was on the downside of his career, suffering not only from alcoholism, but also syphilis. Post trial jury comments described Reilly as an arrogant dandy who did little to help Hauptmann's cause.

Prosecutor Wilentz in his five-hour summation urged the jurors not to bring a wishy-washy recommendation of mercy. Their choice, he said, was to acquit "his animal, this Public Enemy Number One of the World" or find him guilty of murder in the first degree.

Thomas Trenchard, the presiding justice, dismissed the jurors for the night. They passed down a line of police through the crowd outside the courthouse, and crossed Main Street to their rooms on the third floor of the Union Hotel. Hauptmann returned to his cell in the county jail, at the rear of the courthouse. His wife Anna, once more spent the night in the rooms she had rented for herself and their year-old son.

Next morning, Feb. 13, 1935, Justice Trenchard reviewed the evidence and told the jurors' their duties. Some observers had speculated that the Lindbergh child died when accidentally dropped from the ladder. But the jury was told: Even an accidental death, during commission of a burglary, meant "felony murder" and the death penalty.

The jury of eight men and four women took 11 hours to reach a unanimous verdict: guilty. Despite appeals, despite stays of execution by a new governor, Harold Hoffman, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, refusing to confess, went to the electric chair at Trenton State Prison on April 2, 1936.

Anne married Charles Augustus LINDBERGH. (Charles Augustus LINDBERGH was born on 4 Feb 1902 in Detroit, MI and died on 26 Aug 1974 in Maui, HI.)