by Noel Behn
Many of the reporters waiting for a verdict across the street in Nellie’s tap room at the Union Hotel were drinking hard and heavy and intermittently giving forth with raucous renditions of what they called their “schnitzel-bank song”:
Ist das nicht ein ransom box?
Ja, das ist ein ransom box.
Ist das Fisch ein clever fox?
Ja, Fisch ist ein clever fox.
Ransom box?
Clever fox!
Ist das nicht ein dowel pin?
Ja, das ist ein dowel pin.
Fitted das not nicely in?
Ja, it fitted nicely in.
Dowel pin?
Nicely in!
Ist das nicht ein ransom note?
Ja, das ist ein ransom note.
Ist das nicht ein Nelly Boad?
Ja, das ist ein Nelly Boad.22
The reference to “Nelly Boad” was not the Union’s Hotel’s Nellie’s tap room, but the boat Nelly on which the final message from the kidnappers had said the baby could be found, safe and well.
At 10:00 P.M. word spread inside the courthouse that the jury had reached a verdict. The scramble into the trial room was accompanied by shouts and hysterical singing. Someone threw a stone that shattered a portico window. Suddenly the lights went off. Matches were lighted and the pandemonium continued. Inexplicably the lights were restored. Wilentz shouted to the state police, “Close and lock those doors. I want every man in this room seated. I want the noise stopped.”23 An AP reporter who had smuggled a shortwave radio inside in his briefcase flashed the wrong signal number to a wire-room operator, who interpreted it to mean that Hauptmann had been convicted and was sentenced to life imprisonment. AP relayed the false information across the country.24
At 10:28 P.M. the tiny bell in the courthouse steeple tolled, signifying that the jury was ready with its verdict. Crowds spilled out to join the throng already waiting on Main Street. As they stood jammed together and silent under the glare of newsreel-camera floodlights, the police fought to keep open the lane through which news messengers would leave the building.
At 10:29 P.M. Hauptmann was led into the courtroom, manacled to his guards. The jury entered and took its place at 10:30. Fourteen minutes later Justice Trenchard appeared. The defendant was ordered to stand and did, clutching the hand of one of his guards.25
The county clerk said, “Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, have you arrived at a verdict?”
“We have.”
“Who shall speak for you?”
“The foreman.”
“How say you, Mr. Foreman? Do you find the defendant guilty or not guilty?”26
“The foreman spoke in a whisper, ‘Guilty.’ There were shouts of approval and laughter, and applause. The foreman’s hand fumbled in his pocket. His fingers shook as he brought out a folded piece of paper, which he had trouble opening. The clerk suggested he read in a louder voice and he did. ‘We the jury, find the defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, guilty of murder in the first degree.’”27
A first-degree murder verdict without a recommendation for life imprisonment meant an automatic penalty of death. The jury made no recommendation for life imprisonment.
Ed Reilly polled the jurors, and the court asked if the prosecution wished to make a motion for sentencing. David Wilentz, who had expected a much harder courtroom battle and possibly a more lenient verdict had to be reminded by the judge of the next step to be taken: “Do you wish to make a motion for sentence, Mr. Attorney General?” After a start Wilentz said he did, and Hauptmann was ordered to stand again.
“Bruno Richard Hauptmann, you have been convicted of murder in the first degree,” said Justice Trenchard. “The sentence of the Court is that you suffer death at the time and place and in the manner provided by law.”28
The time was in the coming month, Monday, March 18, 1935. The manner and place of death was the electric chair at Trenton State Prison.
Guards rushed the manacled prisoner out as clapping began in the jury room. A roar of cheers and applause was heard as word of the decision reached the crowd in front of the courthouse and was relayed on into the dining room and Nellie’s tap room at the Union Hotel. Somewhat later two drunken reporters staggered out onto the hotel porch. One played the kazoo, the other danced a jig to a familiar ditty:
Ist das nicht ein ransom note?
Ja, das ist ein ransom note.
Book Four
THE FORTY-FIRST GOVERNOR
Prelude
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was on death row at Trenton State Prison, and all the legal procedures were in play to keep him alive.
Not far away, at the New Jersey Statehouse, popular Harold G. Hoffman was the new governor of the state. Hoffman had no particular interest in the Hauptmann trial, which was in progress when he took office. Ellis Parker, debatably New Jersey’s greatest county detective, remained certain that the baby was alive and in the possession of Paul Wendel. The governor placed great trust in Parker but refrained from getting involved with the Hauptmann affair—until, ostensibly, he ran into political trouble.
Harold Hoffman was a Republican in an age and land of Democrats. And those in charge of the kidnapping-murder trial—particularly the governor’s long-time rival, David Wilentz, attorney general of the Garden State, who was acting as state’s prosecutor—were Democrats. The hard-hitting Wilentz had failed to get Bruno Hauptmann to “thaw” or “crack”—to confess to the crime and name his accomplices. Made aware of the political advantages should he be the one who got Hauptmann to talk, the governor discreetly, if not clandestinely, interviewed Bruno on death row—and came to believe that the doomed prisoner was not implicated in the child’s demise and probably had no part in the extortion plot. But what of the trial that convicted Hauptmann—the witnesses and the evidence? How much of this could have been altered? Tampered with?
Ultimately three things combined to get Hoffman involved in the Hauptmann case. His proposed tax legislation ran into trouble, his political base began to erode, and he was told the identity of the true killer of the Lindbergh baby. Which course of action he would follow and for what reason seemed dependent on the crisis of the moment—and for the combative Little Captain there was no end to reversals and cliff-hanging.
When it came to the Hauptmann matter, one thing was certain: Caution must rule the day—secrecy. And secretly he launched a reinvestigation into the kidnapping and trial.
For Charles Lindbergh a probe of the facts was unnerving, and assuming he had concocted the kidnapping-murder scenario, it could reveal the true happenings over the weekend of February 27, 1932. On learning of Harold Hoffman’s investigation and assertion that the case would be reopened, Lindbergh covertly fled the country, taking up exile with his family in England, tacitly blaming the governor for his disaffection.
Condemned and blocked at every turn, Harold Hoffman became nearly as unpopular as Hauptmann. When all else failed to establish Hauptmann’s innocence, the governor issued a thirty-day reprieve from execution, and the heavens thundered with disapproval. The race was on to save Hauptmann. Funds were short, and the quality of his investigators second-rate. Harold Hoffman could not, and would not, give up. He was certain he had learned the secret of Sorrel Hill, that he knew who the actual killer was and Lindbergh’s part in the cover-up. But was there time enough to prove it?
Why would a man as active as Harold Hoffman risk his entire political career on this issue? The scenario we are about to sketch provides virtually the only explanation.
22
Harold Giles Hoffman
A descendant of the Scottish sandstone sculptor James Crawford Thoms and of the original Dutch colonizers of New Amsterdam, Harold Giles Hoffman was born in South Amboy, New Jersey, on February 7, 1896. A fascination with journalism began in high school when he became a reporter for the South Amboy Citizen and an occasional stringer for the New York Times and the New Brunswick Daily Home News. After graduation he took a full-time job at the Perth Amboy Eveni
ng News, where he quickly rose to assistant city editor and then sports editor. His career was terminated by a disagreement with the paper’s owner, one of many altercations and feuds that would mark his life.
With America’s entry into World War I, Hoffman enlisted in a New Jersey National Guard infantry company that became part of the American Expeditionary Force’s Blue and Gray Division. He graduated third in his class at officer’s training school, saw action in the Meuse-Argonne offensive, and at the age of twenty-one received a battlefield promotion to captain. Returning home a war hero with the nickname Little Captain, he became the treasurer for the South Amboy Trust Company and during the ensuing decade was vice-president of his own bank, president of the Hoffman-Lehar Real Estate Corporation, president of the Mid-State Title Guaranty and Mortgage Company, treasurer of the National Realty and Investment Corporation, and the director of the Investor Building and Loan Association. In 1919 he married Lillie May Moss, the daughter of a prominent South Amboy dentist.
A Republican, young Harold made his debut into elected politics in 1923, when he became Middlesex County’s assemblyman. As a 1925 write-in candidate, he won the fall election for mayor of South Amboy. The following November he invaded a traditionally Democratic stronghold, New Jersey’s Third District, and handily defeated the candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives. His congressional record was hardly stellar, but the Republican leader of New Jersey awarded him the powerful party chairmanship of the Middlesex County organization. In 1930 he was appointed to a four-year term as commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Motor Vehicles. It was a high-visibility position, which Hoffman wanted, and it paid ten thousand dollars per annum, which he needed. Controversy erupted when Harold refused to give up his seat in Congress. He finally did rebate his congressional salary, but he served out the balance of his elected term on Capitol Hill while simultaneously running the DMV.
As commissioner of the Department of Motor Vehicles, Hoffman had been provided with a statewide platform for showing off his rhetorical skills. It was on this circuit that he gained national attention as the spokesman for a new concept in America: highway safety. An indefatigable showman who loved a crowd, he also used those speaking engagements to campaign energetically for local and national Republican candidates, which obligated them to him. It paid off splendidly when he called in old debts to help win the governor’s race.
A cuddlesome bear of a man and a snappy dresser who seldom could resist making a pun or playing a practical joke on a pal, Hal Hoffman was infectiously amiable and lucid, characteristics that made him a perfect ringmaster for the frequent galas given at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel by the Circus, Saints and Sinners Association, a power club that boasted some of the most famous names in the land among its all-male membership and put on the Waldorf fetes to raise money for a retirement home for the circus performers it sponsored. The highest honor that an individual Saint and Sinner could receive came once a year at a roast-type initiation in which the inductee took to the stage and publicly made a fool of himself before being dubbed a Fall Guy. William Randolph Hearst, Frank Buck, Robert Ripley, Eddie Rickenbacker, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, Rudy Vallee, and Gene Tunney were among the elite group that made Fall Guys. A CS&S bash wasn’t something the press could overlook. Most of the media liked Hoffman.
Harold Hoffman’s gubernatorial win proved particularly humiliating for Frank Hague, mayor of Jersey City and head of the powerful Hudson County Democratic machine. A record-breaking number of Americans to vote in an off-year election voiced their approval of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal policies and provided an overwhelming victory for Democratic candidates. In New Jersey’s Senate race, ex-governor A. Harry Moore easily defeated the incumbent Republican. But Moore’s former governorship had been filched from the pocket of the Democratic machine by an ebullient GOP charm merchant. Media speculation that Hague’s power and influence were in a state of permanent remission was immediate.
Adding insult to injury for local Democrats was not only that Hoffman had been one of the rare Republicans to win a significant contest in America this election but that the popularity of the ubiquitous governor-elect continued to soar. Hoffman seemed to be everywhere at once, talking, gibing, glad-handing, and being feted, photographed, and interviewed. National magazines and radio made him into a major political figure, a GOP golden boy who stood a chance of being his party’s standard-bearer in the coming presidential election. The Democratic National Committee was concerned, but as the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann grew closer, New Jersey’s party leaders thought they might possibly have the person to counteract the high-riding governor-elect, a man who had once bested Harold Hoffman in an election: Attorney General Wilentz.
Thirty-nine-year-old David Theodore Wilentz was a longtime friend and rival of Harold Hoffman. Both men had grown up in the Amboys area and knew one another since boyhood. Both had been reporters for the Perth Amboy Evening News, and when Hoffman left as the paper’s sports editor, Wilentz had replaced him. Hoffman had been manager of a local basketball team, and when he quit, Wilentz had taken over. They had both served in the army during World War I: Hoffman reached the rank of captain; Wilentz, the rank of lieutenant. Both men entered politics at approximately the same time. Wilentz was elected chairman of the Middlesex County Democratic party and carried the county for the first time in ten years. The chairman of the vanquished Middlesex Republican party was Harold Hoffman, suffering the first defeat in his political career. During the 1934 state election Wilentz helped his old friend and adversary Harold Hoffman in his bid for the governorship.
Hoffman and Wilentz were both married and fathers; the governor had three young daughters; the attorney general, two sons. Each man was extremely ambitious. In appearance, style, and public appeal they were strikingly different: Hoffman was a short, round-faced, big-bodied man who had a tendency to overeat. His attire, though tasteful, was usually casual. He was enormously outgoing and likable and quick to laugh. He made friends easily and kept them. David Wilentz was small, slim, and swarthy—and looked a little like John Cassavetes. His dress was on the flashy side: tight, Broadway-style double-breasted suits, a white silk scarf, a velvet-collared chesterfield overcoat, and an off-white felt hat worn at an angle. He was a serious, shut-off type of fellow who, though quick-witted, had trouble smiling and disliked perfunctory conversation. Wilentz trained like an athlete, was in excellent physical condition, and lived a religious and disciplined life.
Governor Harold Hoffman was not unaware of the Lindbergh trial. Ellis Parker, an old friend, was among those who kept him posted. And Ellis didn’t give a hoot what David Wilentz and the Democrats were saying; Hauptmann had nothing to do with the kidnapping, and the child probably wasn’t dead.
Ellis Parker, Sr., was county detective of Burlington County. Skeptical that the baby in woods was Charles Lindbergh, Jr., he had a pretty good fix on where the Eaglet was and how to have the child returned to his parents. Right or wrong, Parker’s involvement in the affair would have long-term and dire consequences for himself, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, and the new governor of New Jersey, Harold Hoffman.
The Old Chief, as Ellis Parker, Sr., was known, came from an era in which most towns and rural villages in the state of New Jersey, whether they had a constable or not, relied on the county detective in matters of serious crime. No one had fared better under the system than Ellis. During forty years of service, he had solved hundreds of cases and gained a national reputation as New Jersey’s premier detective. The Old Chief was also in the forefront of those who had opposed the formation of a state-police organization and was one of the earliest to complain of its inefficiency after the first troopers took to the roads in December of 1921. He relished the difficulty the troopers—or anyone, for that matter—had in coping with New Jersey’s thriving bootlegging industry. Parker did amazingly well intercepting shipments of illicit whiskey and tracking down remote distilleries, an achievement he attributed to his ability to
develop underworld informants. The Old Chief’s critics suggested that he himself was a bootlegger who was putting the competition out of business.
Parker and Schwarzkopf had been antagonists for as long as most people could remember. Each did what he could to discredit and embarrass the other. Parker, who was good with the press, had a distinct advantage in this department—and with choosing assignments. Parker refused an invitation to get involved with the infamous Hall-Mills murders of 1922, a case in which Schwarzkopf and his troopers were ordered to participate. Hall-Mills went unsolved, becoming an albatross for investigators who were part of it.
In 1932, with the ghosts of Hall-Mills barely a decade old, H. Norman Schwarzkopf assumed nominal control of the Lindbergh kidnapping investigation. At the onset no lessons seemed to have been learned from the Hall-Mills incident. As with Hall-Mills, the scene of the crime was not preserved, and vital physical evidence, such as footprints, were destroyed. Once again reporters were allowed to roam the area of the crime and talk to almost anyone they wanted other than the Lindberghs and the household staff—until Schwarzkopf’s men overreacted in evicting them from the grounds of Sorrel Hill and, as best they could, isolating them from the facts. As blunder followed blunder in the Lindbergh disappearance, H. Norman again appeared not to know how to respond when he came under fire from the press. The Hall-Mills killings still ranked as one of the most bungled investigations in modern history—but the New Jersey State Police, for some obscure reason, seemed to take pride in being involved with the case.
Ellis Parker very much wanted to be included in the state’s official investigation of the Lindbergh snatch. On March 11, ten days after the child disappeared, George M. Hillman, a Democratic committeeman from the Old Chief’s home county, wrote to Governor A. Harry Moore’s secretary, suggesting that it might be to the governor’s advantage to get in touch with Parker. Moore did just that in a letter dated March 13, 1932. While encouraging the Old Chief to work on the “Lindbergh matter,” as he assumed Parker was doing, the governor failed to invite him to join the manhunt officially. Parker profusely thanked the governor for his letter and pledged to do what he could in the matter.1 He did pursue the case on his own, only to be denied requested information by H. Norman Schwarzkopf. Not long after, he took over then-commissioner Harold Hoffman’s investigation of the crime on behalf of the Motor Vehicles department. Like that of Parker, the destiny of Hoffman was to be intrinsically linked to that of H. Norman Schwarzkopf and the Lindbergh case.