Lindbergh

by Noel Behn

  Nine lawmen tailed the blue Dodge south through Bronx Park and on along Park Avenue: Detective Jimmy Finn, Special Agent Seery, and Trooper Horn rode in one of the black Fords; Sisk, Buster Keaten, and NYPD detective Chester Cronin were in another; New Jersey Troopers Dennis Duerr and John B. Wallace occupied the third, which was driven by Detective Sergeant William Wallace of the NYPD. As they neared the busy intersection at East Tremont Avenue, one of the tailing cars feared they might lose the Dodge. With a city street-cleaning truck blocking the way, the Dodge sedan slowed. Before being able to pull around the truck, it was pinned in by one of the black Fords. Trooper Duerr, gun in hand, rushed to the driver’s window of the Dodge and shouted for the car to pull to the curb. Sergeant Wallace threw open the passenger’s door, slid onto the seat, and poked a gun into the driver’s ribs. A second Ford moved up beside them; a third blocked the rear.

  Richard Hauptmann stared at the lawmen inside and outside his automobile, then pulled to the curb and shut off the engine. He was jerked from behind the wheel, handcuffed, and led onto the sidewalk, where, in a nervous voice marked by a strong German accent, he complained of his treatment.18 Sisk and Keaten stood studying him and made no reply. There on the sidewalk, with traffic rolling past and the lawmen still not talking, he was frisked, and no weapon was found. His wallet, taken from his back trouser pocket and examined, contained twenty-nine dollars: a five-dollar bill, four singles, and a twenty-dollar gold certificate. Special Agent Seery checked the serial numbers. The twenty was from the ransom loot.

  The silence was broken with a flurry of questions regarding how he came to have the gold certificate, which they told him was counterfeit. Dick Hauptmann calmly explained that he had initially collected gold notes as a hedge against inflation and that at one time he had three hundred dollars’ worth. When his inflation fears abated, he began to spend the hoard. The gold certificate they had taken from his billfold was the last he possessed. They asked why he told the filling station attendants that he still had about a hundred dollars in gold money. Dick now admitted that he had just fibbed. Yes, he did have about a hundred dollars’ worth left. At his house. In a tin box. While Finn went to telephone his superior to inform him of the apprehension, the prisoner was kept in the back of a Ford and handcuffed to Sergeant Wallace. According to one version, Wallace looked at the German carpenter in distaste and said, “So you’re the Lindbergh kidnapper.”19 In most other accounts Haptmann wouldn’t be told the true reason for his seizure until later.20

  Another team of DI, NYPD, and trooper investigators was energetically searching the second-floor apartment at 1279 East 222nd Street when Hauptmann was brought back. He showed them the tin box. It contained $120 worth of gold coins. He was berated. They wanted gold certificates, not coins. He was shoved down onto the bed, then ordered up so the bed could be stripped and searched. The mattress was taken away and cut open. Hauptmann stoically watched lawmen ransack his apartment in their quest for evidence. They found family photographs, a German-English dictionary, seventeen memorandum books written in German, letters, and a pile of Hudson Bay sealskins. The most suspicious items recovered were not necessarily incriminating: a pair of high-powered binoculars and service station give-away maps of many states, including New Jersey and Massachusetts. Dick explained that he was a nature lover—and later he admitted that on occasion he had hunted small game in New Jersey not all that far from Hopewell but insisted he had never been at the Lindbergh estate. His young wife, Anna, who was with their baby son, Manfried, in the backyard, came upstairs. Shaken by the sight of her husband in handcuffs and the apartment in near ruin, she asked him if he had done something wrong. He told her no. She was ordered out of the premises.

  An electric wire was found that ran from a bedroom window to the small frame garage just beyond the rutted road at the edge of the property. Hauptmann told investigators it was part of an improvised alarm system he had installed to scare off burglars who might try to steal his car. By way of demonstration, he pressed a button by his bed, and an electric light went on in the garage. Sisk, who had noticed Richard glancing in the direction of the garage, went downstairs with Buster Keaten and Inspector Lyons of the NYPD and checked out the structure. Neatly stored in the fifteen-by-eleven-foot interior were a baby carriage, trunks, folding chairs, and other household articles. Nearby was a workshop area replete with a carpentry bench. The garage floor was composed of oil-stained eight-inch-wide wooden planks that appeared to have been burned or charred. A pair of middle planks was loose. The trio of lawmen pried them up. The dirt beneath looked freshly leveled. They took a spade and dug down. A foot below something metal was hit. After exhuming it and cleaning it off, they saw it was a metal jar. A heavy jar. The lid was forced off. Nothing was inside except water.

  A break developed in the front apartment on the first floor of the house, which was occupied by the landlady: a ten-dollar gold certificate from the ransom loot, which Hauptmann had given her the day before as partial payment of his September rent. An eyeglasses case that she used as a hiding place produced another listed ten-dollar bill, this one received as part of Hauptmann’s January rent. By then Hauptmann had been spirited off to the police station in Greenwich Village where Jimmy Finn had his office. No one knew he was there, and the police intended to keep it that way as long as possible.

  A rhythm of its own was taking over the investigation, a fervor and blindness. The optimum goal of the task force members was to implicate the suspect directly in the kidnapping-murder, as well as in extorting ransom money from Charles Lindbergh. The line between these two objectives became blurred in the rising enthusiasm. Like Finn, others at the scene would later contend that they were already certain Hauptmann was both the abductor and the killer of the child even though the extent of his culpability at the moment was that he had passed three ten-dollar bills of ransom money, had been in possession of a listed twenty-dollar note, and generally resembled the sketch of John. The cleanest and surest approach was to get Hauptmann to confess. NYPD brass was en route to lower Manhattan. So were H. Norman Schwarzkopf and J. Edgar Hoover.

  NYPD’s Second Precinct station house was at 130 Greenwich Street, a block away from the noisy Hudson Street elevated tracks. Dick Hauptmann arrived sometime after midday and was fingerprinted but not charged. It was the era of the third degree. Hauptmann was slapped into a straight-backed wooden armchair. The initial grilling was left to a New York City cop, with Schwarzkopf looking on. Investigators had been saying that the gold notes were counterfeit; now they came right out and accused the German of extorting ransom money from Lindbergh. Hauptmann denied the charge and insisted all he knew about the Lindbergh crime was what he had read in the papers. He rattled off his background and openly admitted that he had twice tried to enter the country illegally before succeeding. Asked if he had a police record in Europe, he lied and answered no.

  Dick Hauptmann readily took the handwriting test devised by Albert D. Osborn, knowing that it was intended to expose the true author of the ransom messages. Somewhere along the line investigators learned that his full name was Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Finn took credit for starting to address him as Bruno. Hauptmann objected to this. He wanted to be called Dick or Richard. Thus did he become forever Bruno. By 2:00 P.M. interrogators were openly accusing him of having kidnapped and murdered the Lindbergh baby.

  Dates became the thrust of the interrogation—where Bruno was on three specific evenings: March 1, 1932, when the baby was reported kidnapped; April 2, 1932, when Jafsie Condon handed fifty thousand dollars to Cemetery John; and November 26, 1933, when Cecile M. Barr, the cashier of the Greenwich Village movie house, received a tightly folded five-dollar bill from the ransom loot.

  Hauptmann recalled that on Tuesday, March 1, 1932, he spent the day working as a general handyman at the Majestic Apartments at Seventy-second Street and Central Park West in New York City. Between 5:00 P.M. and 6:00 P.M. he took the subway back home to the Bronx, got into his car, and by 7:00 P.M. was
at Fredricksen’s bakery-lunchroom in the Bronx, where his wife, Anna, worked every Tuesday and Friday and where every Tuesday and Friday he had dinner with her. After dinner on Tuesday, March 1, 1932, they drove home and went to bed. The next morning he left the car in the garage, as he always did when he didn’t drive Anna to the bakery, and took the subway to work at the Majestic. On the way he read about the Lindbergh kidnapping.

  Hauptmann flatly denied he was John or that he knew Jafsie Condon other than by reputation and by seeing his name and picture in the papers. Why could he remember so well where he had been on April 2, the day the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom was paid to John in St. Raymond’s Cemetery? For two reasons. It was his last full day of employment, the day he quit his job at the Majestic Apartments. It was also the first Saturday in the month, the evening of which was always reserved for music and his friend Hans Kloppenburg. Kloppenburg played the guitar, Bruno the mandolin. On April 2, 1932, like every other first Saturday evening of the month, Kloppenburg arrived at Bruno’s house after 6:00 P.M. They played their instruments and sang old German songs. As always, Kloppenburg left around midnight.

  As for Sunday evening, November 26, 1933—when a man bought a movie ticket from the cashier Cecile M. Barr with a tightly folded five-dollar Federal Reserve note—it happened to be Bruno’s birthday, which he was celebrating at his home in the Bronx with a few friends.

  Anna Hauptmann was brought to the station house and interrogated in a different room from her husband. Except for the few moments’ encounter at the apartment earlier in the day, she hadn’t seen or spoken to him since his apprehension. Asked the same questions he had been asked regarding the three dates, she gave essentially the same answers as to his whereabouts. When Anna finally learned Richard was being accused of the kidnapping and killing of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., a stunned slow take and her hand rising to cover an open mouth were enough to convince most observers she wasn’t in on it.

  By midnight it was beginning to look like Bruno himself might not be in on it. Preliminary follow-ups failed to disprove his alibi, and the possibility loomed that he was not John, that he was telling the truth about buying up gold certificates, which meant he couldn’t even be charged with extortion. So far he hadn’t been cited for any crime and was being held incommunicado.

  As the grilling approached its twelfth uninterrupted hour, investigators received their worst news yet. After analyzing the handwriting test Bruno had taken earlier, Albert D. Osborn refused to confirm that the German carpenter was the author of the ransom messages and asked to see additional and specific samples of his penmanship. Hauptmann was once again given pen and paper and instructed to write what Osborn had requested. The results were rushed over to Osborn’s apartment. The interrogators also had Bruno write verbatim what they dictated: entire passages from the ransom notes, in which the idiosyncratic phrasing and the misspelled words were copied exactly as they had appeared in the original text. At 4:00 A.M. Osborn telephoned Schwarzkopf, who was still at the Village station house, with his final conclusions: Hauptmann had not written the ransom messages. H. Norman told the expert in false documents that they had obtained additional writing samples that might change his mind. A none-too-enthusiastic Obsorn replied, “Well, send them over.”21

  According to Hauptmann’s account, the beatings got worse at dawn. His alibi hadn’t changed, which created a dilemma for the New York City police. They alone had Bruno in custody, and a growing number of senior city cops felt that since there was nothing of which to formally accuse him, they had better let him go before word reached the press that an uncharged suspect was being held incommunicado. Schwarzkopf and the state police would not hear of it.

  There was a reluctance to have witnesses identify Hauptmann. One reason for this was that the mere act of bringing six or so people to the station might alert the press and thereby limit the investigators’ time with Hauptmann, not to mention their interrogation techniques. Another cause for caution was the reliability of the available witnesses. The state police claimed to have turned up at least two men who might be able to place a suspect near the Lindbergh estate on March 1, 1932, thereby tying him into the kidnapping and murder. Condon and, to a lesser degree, Perrone, could say if Bruno was Cemetery John, thus establishing the charge of extortion. Several other people would know if the suspect had passed them money from the ransom loot. But for a good many officers on the joint task force who would later deny it, each of the witnesses seemed to have his or her own individual flaws. Taxi driver Joseph Perrone, whom Schwarzkopf himself had already called unreliable, was a case in point.

  Just when Perrone identified Hauptmann is questionable. One usually accurate source puts it around midnight,22 but it was most likely the following evening. Perrone had originally stated unequivocally that he would never be able to recognize the man who had paid him a dollar to deliver a ransom letter to Condon on Saturday, March 12, 1932.23 Since then he had identified several suspects as being that person. At the Greenwich Street station house Perrone was given a pep talk by officers, then taken in to a three-man police lineup, in which Hauptmann was flanked by two burly detectives, to whom he bore very little resemblance. Perrone picked Hauptmann out as the man who gave him the dollar and the envelope.

  By midmorning, September 20, Hauptmann, who was still in the chair undergoing interrogation, showed the effects of having been awake for nearly thirty hours. This was not random procedure. Policemen of the 1930s had long been practicing what the mind-bending experts of the decades to come would consider the linchpin of brainwashing: denial of sleep. Interrogators continued to carp on the fact that despite his not having had a job since the day the ransom disappeared into St. Raymond’s, he always seemed to have more than enough money. Bruno explained that he had been lucky with speculations in the stock market and in animal furs, such as the sealskins that had been found at the apartment. His partner in the fur business was a man named Isador Fisch. Investigators already had Hauptmann’s papers that seemed to reflect the stock market transactions. According to Bruno, the accounts for the fur trade were with Fisch, who had returned to Germany and died.

  As the morning wore on, the matter of charging the suspect grew critical. The continued police presence at the Hauptmann apartment, no matter how low-key, would eventually attract reporters. Then, at approximately 11:30 A.M., while searching the wood-frame garage with other task force officers, Detective James J. Petrosino of the NYPD noticed that a board had been nailed across two uprights above Bruno’s workbench. He tapped on it, then pried it off. Revealed in the recess behind was a narrow shelf. Resting on the shelf, wrapped in newspapers, were two bundles. Petrosino removed and opened one of the packages. Inside were one hundred ten-dollar gold certificates. The second package produced eighty-three ten-dollar notes. The serial numbers were checked. All $1,830 came from the ransom payment.

  Detective John Wallace of the New Jersey State Police hurried from the garage, drove to the nearest pay phone, rang up the downtown station house, and got Schwarzkopf on the line. Learning of the money, the trooper boss ordered, “Go back to the garage and find the rest of it. And when you find it, put it back like it was and bring the wife to the garage.” Wallace didn’t understand. Schwarzkopf elucidated. “I want the money found in the wife’s presence, to get her reaction.”24

  The packages were rewrapped and returned to their hiding place. At 12:40 P.M. another secret shelf was discovered. This one supported a one-gallon shellac can. Beneath several rags inside the can were twelve packages containing a total of $11,930, also from the ransom payment. The stash was wrapped in pages of the June 25, 1934, and September 6, 1934, editions of the New York Daily News. The $11,930, like the previous $1,830, was restored to its secret niche. Mrs. Hauptmann was brought down to the garage and watched as the officers feigned the search and discovery of the first two packages and the shellac can. When the contents of each were revealed—a grand total of $13,760—the astonished young woman again put a hand to her mouth. Af
ter the inspectors sat her down, she asked, “‘Where did this money come from?’ It was Lindbergh’s money, where did she think it came from? ‘I know nothing of this,’ she told them. Was she certain of that? ‘I am certain! I know nothing!’

  “‘Well, your husband knew about it, that’s for sure.’”25

  19

  The Most Hated Man in the World

  Any thought of Bruno Richard Hauptmann not being implicated in the crime vanished. Dispelled along with this, in the mind of most investigators, was a concept that had been embraced since the child was reported missing: that a gang, not an individual, had perpetrated the kidnapping. Others would continue to believe that it required more than one person to steal the child and that, therefore, Hauptmann had accomplices. But for the majority of Bruno’s captors, it was suddenly a one-man show. Hauptmann was the kidnapper-killer, the writer of the ransom notes, the receiver of fifty thousand dollars—a super criminal. All that was left was to prove it.

  Several investigators were confident a mathematical case could now be made for him being the sole recipient of the fifty-thousand-dollar ransom. In addition to the $13,760, a third cache of bills was found, amounting to $840, along with a tiny hand gun, concealed in his garage.1 They estimated he had put $25,000 into the stock market and made enough other expenditures since he quit his job two and a half years before to account for almost all the money given to John in St. Raymond’s.

  At 2:00 P.M. Hauptmann, bleary-eyed and mussed after spending more than a full day and night in the wooden armchair, was confronted by Inspector Lyons, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Buster Keaten, and Special Agent Sisk. Lyons, addressing him as Richard, asked that he think before he answered and then wanted to know, “Have you told us everything?” Hauptmann answered that yes, he had told all he knew. “You don’t have any gold notes hidden away, do you?” No, sir. “Are you sure?” Yes. “Well you’re a liar! You’re a goddamned lying son-of-a-bitch, aren’t you?” I am not! “You are, you are, you’re a lying son-of-a-bitch because we found the money, the Lindbergh money, in your garage. What do you say to that? And goddamnit, no more lies. We’re not going to listen to any more of your lies. We want to know everything and now! Do you hear me?”