by Noel Behn
Explaining that the swirl of press attention could impair Condon’s effectiveness as the go-between, Lindbergh, through the offices of Schwarzkopf and Jimmy Finn, pressured newspapers into calling off their reporters. No sooner was the blackout imposed than the New York Daily News, which had already posted its own fifty-thousand-dollar reward for the return of the child, broke ranks, and all the other publications followed. Accompanied by a pack of newsmen on his morning constitutional in the. Bronx, or wherever else he chose to stride, Jafsie was a veritable Pied Piper—and a growing problem for most everyone with whom he had contact.
One of Jafsie’s most recent screw-ups was discovered following the delivery of the ransom in St. Raymond’s. At the strategy session at Mrs. Morrow’s Manhattan townhouse, Jafsie boasted to a dismayed Elmer Irey of how he had beaten John down in price and only given him fifty thousand of the prepared seventy thousand dollars.1 The additional ransom that Condon had arbitrarily withheld meant there was twenty thousand dollars less by which to trace John and the gang—twenty thousand containing four hundred fifty-dollar gold certificates that would have been easier to spot than the five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills that made up the payment that disappeared into the graveyard.
During the furor that followed the disclosures as to who Jafsie was and what his role had been, Lindbergh and Breckinridge steadfastly stood behind him, as they had steadfastly stood behind Spitale and Bitz, Morris Rosner, and H. Norman Schwarzkopf. From a practical standpoint they had no choice. Neither did any of the other law-enforcement agencies now involved with the case. Whether he was part of an extortion scheme or for real, Condon was the primary channel of communication to whoever got the ransom money. He was the only person to have seen John, the only person who could identify him in the future. Or could he? Had the recipients selected him blindly as their go-between—or was he “in on it”?
What began to strike investigators and reporters who managed to interview Jafsie was that the old man seldom told the same story twice, and quite often his latest version of events contradicted what he had said in the past. Talking to Elmer Irey at the Morrow townhouse in the hours after the ransom had been paid, Condon described John as being between five feet eight inches and five feet ten inches, weighing 160 pounds, and having a triangular face with high cheekbones, almond-shaped eyes, thick and straight eyebrows, large ears, a straight nose, and slightly stooped shoulders.2 He readily identified the sketch an IRS artist was making from his description as looking very much like John. The vital statistics he soon provided to other investigators and newsmen saw John get shorter and leaner and younger—thirty to thirty-four years old—standing straighter, stooping more, developing a growth on the inside of his left hand, talking in a thicker Germanic accent as well as in less of an accent, becoming more Scandinavian, using the expressions “smack me out” and “did you got my letter,” pronouncing the words perfect as pefect, colonel as kennel, five as fife, and where as vare. Jafsie asserted that the drawing made by a second artist also looked very much like John even though it didn’t bear that much of a resemblance to the previous picture he had identified. At least two newspaper reports would quote him as saying he never clearly saw John’s face either in St. Raymond’s Cemetery or in Woodlawn Cemetery.
Condon’s earliest personal printed statements of what transpired had come on April 11, when the Bronx Home News published the as-told-to “True Story of Jafsie’s Efforts to Locate Stolen Lindbergh Baby.” Because this was the same day the New York Times revealed he was Jafsie and the day on which he later held the press conference acknowledging his participation in the case, certain law-enforcement officers suspected it was Condon himself who had leaked the story to either the Times or the Home News or both.
As for Condon’s various early accounts of meeting with John in St. Raymond’s, all were in agreement that he heard someone call out, “Hey Doc,” or “Hey Doctor” and he turned in the direction of the voice, which came from inside the cemetery. In some of his statements, he claimed that he saw no one and called out, “Where are you?”; that he received no answer and went back to where the ransom message had said he should enter the cemetery, unlighted and unpaved Whittemore Avenue; that he walked up Whittemore and saw a man rise up beyond a bordering hedge; that as he continued to walk, the man moved along among the tombstones, keeping pace with him. In other narratives Condon related that on hearing the voice and turning toward the cemetery, he immediately saw a man stand up among the tombstones in the distance, gesture to him, and call out, “Hey Doctor, over here.”
Wherever it was in the cemetery that they rendezvoused, most Condon narratives where in accord that the man, to reach the spot, had to scale a five-foot cement wall, cross a narrow, intercepting dirt road or lane, and jump another barrier, probably a fence. As he landed on the other side, one of the man’s feet sunk into the soft dirt, and he was crouched behind a bush when Condon approached. In one version Condon asked, “What are you doing crouched down there?”; in another he was annoyed to find the fellow in that position, and the only thing he uttered was the command “Stand up!” When the man stood, Condon, in most accounts, recognized him to be John who was wearing a dark suit and a fedora with a snap-down brim. But statements also exist in which Condon maintained that even though he knew it was John, he could not see his face in the dark. There is unanimity that John’s first words were along the line of “Did you got it, the money?” which he spoke with a decided German or Scandinavian accent.
Condon provided an ample selection of his explanations to John for why he had not brought the money along, but most of them end with him saying the ransom is in the car. Abundant versions have John wanting to know who is at the car, and when he is told it is Lindbergh, he asks, “Is he armed?” Jafsie lies and says no, he isn’t armed, and John tells him to retrieve the money. Diverse accounts make no mention of a gun or Lindbergh and state that John, after being told the money is in the car, simply tells Condon, “Get it!”3
The later renderings of the events always seem to have Condon insisting on seeing the baby before money changes hands, a demand that was missing from many of the earlier narratives. At least one version in which Condon asked to see the child has John refusing on the grounds that “my father won’t let me.” When asked if his father is a member of the gang, John replies, “Yes. Give me the money.” Condon constantly tried to impress John with the fact that Lindbergh was not a rich man and got him to accept fifty thousand dollars rather than the full seventy-thousand-dollar ransom. Certain recapitulations tell of Condon going to the car to get the money and John walking away without further discussion. Others relate that before this occurred, Condon demanded his “receipt,” the note saying where the child was. John replied that he had to go fetch the note and he’d be back with it in ten minutes. Later versions had Condon trying to use his wristwatch to estimate how far John was traveling when he walked off to get the “receipt.” Condon walked to the car and was given the ransom by Lindbergh. How long it was before he returned to the cemetery and again met with John ranges from ten to fifteen minutes.
The most startling statement made by Condon is that when he went back and met John in the cemetery, he saw another figure lurking in the background. Later he would both deny that he had said this and insist that a third man definitely was there. In one retelling Condon had John counting the ransom money to make sure it was not marked, and he had him not counting it in another. Condon was given the envelope that said where the baby could be found, and in most instances John also told him about the Nelly. John disappeared into the cemetery, carrying the wooden box containing fifty thousand dollars. Condon returned to Lindbergh in the parked car.
A Condon tale that piqued the suspicions more than the curiosity of reporters and investigators was his alleged encounters with a woman he could never describe consistently.4 Back on March 19, while awaiting new instructions from the kidnappers, Condon participated in a charity bazaar to raise funds for a new chapel at the Hart’s Isl
and jail. The event took place in a store at 394 East 200th Street, and while he was there displaying violins that were for sale, Condon was approached by a woman who told him, “Nothing can be done until the excitement is over. There is too much publicity. Meet me at Tuckahoe on Wednesday at five o’clock. I will have a message for you.”5 Before Condon could say anything, she was gone.
On Monday, March 21, he received the letter from the kidnappers in which they asked if Lindbergh got the package containing the baby’s sleeping suit. The following day he inserted a newspaper ad confirming that the sleeping suit was received and found to be genuine. According to Jafsie, it was the evening after that, Wednesday, March 23, that he and Al Reich had driven to Tuckahoe, New York, in the hopes of meeting the woman who talked to him at the bazaar four days before. Once there, Condon proceeded alone to the New York Central Railroad depot. The woman was waiting. “You will get a message later,” she announced. “Keep advertising until you hear more.” Then, as at the Bronx bazaar, she beat a rapid retreat. Included among Jafsie’s reasons for not following her from the depot was that he didn’t want to imperil the missing child or do anything that would make the kidnappers distrust him. As had occurred with John in St. Raymond’s Cemetery, Condon began to vary his accounts of meeting with the woman. One transcript has him saying he didn’t see anyone at Tuckahoe connected to the case and that the reason he had gone there was to meet a relative.6
Trying to confront Jafsie with accusations of lying wasn’t all that easy. Early on in the case, Harry W. Walsh, the Jersey City Police Department inspector assigned to the state-police manhunt, had publicly come under fire for having tried to implicate Red Johnsen and Betty Gow in the crime. With Lindbergh having been bilked out of fifty thousand dollars and critics insisting loud and clear that the state police never should have allowed the payment to be made and that the investigating team didn’t have the talent to solve a crime of this magnitude, Inspector Walsh pursued his prime suspect, Violet Sharpe, a twenty-eight-year-old household maid at the Morrow estate who had been questioned back in mid-March regarding her whereabouts the night of the kidnapping. Certain that the nervous, often-hostile young woman had been lying to the officer who had talked to her at the time, Walsh, on April 18, began a series of interrogations intended to break down Violet. This led to one of the greatest tragedies of the case and to the most vehement outcries against Walsh and the state police in the entire investigation. But it was nothing compared with the personal humiliation he suffered when trying to break down Jafsie Condon. The old teacher, quite simply, had Walsh for lunch.
15
A Matter of Johns
As the Lindbergh camp had probably hoped would happen, media and public interest in the case began to wane. Part of this had to do with the mad-hatter antics of supposed go-betweens and contact men. The exhortations of Mickey Rosner and the headline-catching stunts of John Hughes Curtis and Gaston B. Means had begun to wear thin. Even Jafsie, the prince of print, had contradicted himself off the front page, though he still did have a following.
Lindy continued to express confidence that Cemetery John existed and was in possession of the baby. On April 18 at Sorrel Hill, he listened to an eyewitness account that placed John, or a man who certainly fit his description, in Newark’s Hudson-Manhattan Railroad station the night after the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom was paid.1 The Sorrel Hill meeting marked an upgrading for the New Jersey State Police, which had been excluded from Lindbergh’s dealings with Jafsie Condon. H. Norman Schwarzkopf was in attendance, along with the officers in charge of the troopers’ investigation of the case, Captain John J. Lamb and Lieutenant Arthur T. (“Buster”) Keaten.
The man claiming to have seen John in New Jersey was the leading pretender to Jafsie Condon’s throne as go-between, John Hughes Curtis. From a publicity standpoint, Curtis had come across lean days. He, Sam, and their contention that the baby was being held on a boat had been pushed to the sidelines by a fickle media that was focusing on Condon, who had also brought word that the Eaglet was aboard a boat. Boatwise, Curtis got to the press first. Accompanying him to Sorrel Hill and also sitting in on the meeting was his old friend Edwin B. Bruce, a well-to-do businessman from Elmira, New York. Missing was Lindbergh’s adviser and confidant, Colonel Henry Breckinridge, who was theoretically committed to the authenticity of Jafsie Condon’s John.
Curtis allegedly told Lindbergh, Schwarzkopf, and the two state-police officers that on April 3, a day after Condon had paid the ransom, he and Sam had driven to the Hudson-Manhattan Railroad station in Newark, where they met not only with John but with the rest of the gang of kidnappers: Eric, a Norwegian or Dutchman in his thirties; Nils, a five-foot-nine, 140-pound, thirty-two-year-old Scandinavian; and fortyish George Olaf Larsen, nicknamed Dynamite and also Scandinavian, who was the captain of a schooner on which the child was being held.
The fourth member of the kidnapping team was its leader, John. Though the description Curtis gave of him jibed with what had become the standard portrait of Condon’s John being reported in the papers at that time, differences existed. Jafsie at various times had said John’s accent was either German or Scandinavian. Curtis’s John was definitely Scandinavian. Jafsie’s John was rather odd looking; Curtis’s was handsome. The John that Jafsie described for reporters was thin and slightly stooped. The John of Curtis was endowed with an admirable physique. Jafsie had portrayed John as somewhat nervous and occasionally cowering. John, when Curtis had confronted him, was resolute and self-assured. On meeting at the Newark railroad station, Sam and the gang got into Curtis’s car and drove across the state to Larsen’s cottage in Cape May, New Jersey, where his wife, Hilda, was waiting for them. Hilda operated the two-way radio by which she kept in contact with the kidnappers when they were out to sea.
As Condon had used an accent when recounting what Cemetery John had told him, Curtis now did the same while telling Lindbergh and the state policemen of his John’s conversations with him during their auto ride and subsequent stay at Larsen’s cottage. John stated that he had contemplated kidnapping the baby for some time. Once in his possession, the stolen child would be kept with his girlfriend, who was German and a trained nurse. What his plan had lacked was inside assistance, collusion with a member of either the Lindbergh or the Morrow households. This had been achieved a month before the baby was actually taken, when he and his girlfriend had gone to a roadhouse near Trenton and bumped into just such a person, to whom he had offered a considerable amount of money. John had refused to divulge who the person was or in which of the two households he or she was employed.
The media had given special attention to a green Hudson sedan reported to have been seen in the Hopewell area the night of the kidnapping. Red Johnsen’s green Chrysler, which contained what investigators deemed an incriminating empty milk bottle, had also received a good deal of print as possibly being the car sighted near the estate. Now, over two months later, in the den at Sorrel Hill, John Hughes Curtis alleged that John had told him that on March 1, he, his German girlfriend, Nils, and Eric drove to the Lindbergh estate in a green Hudson sedan. They drove onto a lane on the property and parked. Sam, who had followed them in his own car, parked on the main road so he could signal with his lights if danger arose. John and Niles removed a three-part ladder from the car along with a rag, a blanket, chloroform, and the ransom note that Larsen’s wife had written, all of which they brought to the house. They went up the ladder and climbed through a second-floor window into the nursery. Rather than descending the unsteady ladder with the anesthetized baby, John and Nils brought him down the stairs and out the front door. During his confession to Curtis, John produced a twenty-four-inch by thirty-inch floor plan of both levels of the Lindbergh house and pointed to a specific part of it. “You see this here,” he allegedly told Curtis, who recounted it for Lindbergh in the most compelling Scandinavian accent he could muster, “that’s a pantry and it’s a hallway between the kitchen and the front hall. We had this locked on the hall s
ide, so if they got wise in the kitchen or servants’ quarters they’d have to go all the way around through the dining room and living room to get to the front hall. You’ll find that key on the hall side even now.”2
Curtis contended that he had been taken to the garage by John and shown a green Hudson. Inside the car was a padded wooden box with blankets that John had stated had been used to carry the baby. Early the next morning, according to Curtis, he had driven to Trenton with Captain Dynamite Larsen, who had agreed to meet with Lindbergh. Dynamite had brought along a detailed description of the child, which Curtis was certain would convince the Lone Eagle that this was the authentic kidnapping gang. Dynamite had waited in the car while Curtis went to a pay phone and called Sorrel Hill, trying to reach Lindbergh.
Schwarzkopf and his two aides were unimpressed. Like the green Hudson sedan Curtis claimed he was shown, the fragility of the ladder had been widely reported by the media, and detailed floor plans of the house had been published in a great many papers and magazines. There was nothing new or unique about the use of chloroform by the kidnappers or of their leaving the nursery via the inside staircase. Journalists had speculated about both these possibilities for weeks. Curtis’s description of John was in general accord with what the papers were reporting Condon had said, for the moment. The claim that one of the gang members was either Norwegian or Dutch and that three others were Scandinavian not only corresponded with Condon’s well-reported statement that John’s accent was German or Scandinavian, but it also rang of Henry (“Red”) Johnsen, who had been born in Norway. Johnsen had also worked on boats—like Sam, Dynamite, and other gang members.