Lindbergh
Page 32
In 1932, the commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Motor Vehicles, Harold Hoffman, was outraged that the state’s number-one family had been victimized. The thirty-six-year-old war hero was a man in a hurry. His position as head of the Motor Vehicles department provided a power base in an already-promising political career known for brash and dramatic moves. Tracking down the infant’s abductors excited the adventure-craving Bulldog Drummond-aspect of his character, but competition and politics came first. Nothing could have better suited Hoffman, a Republican, then coming up with the Lindbergh baby before anyone else did, especially the state-police boss, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who had been installed in his position by a Democrat.
One perk available to a New Jersey motor vehicle boss, which few of Hoffman’s predecessors had taken full advantage of, was having a small but private investigatory force available. Automobiles were a new phenomenon. Even newer were the ordinances regarding their use. The department’s team of inspectors usually concentrated on investigating auto-related crimes, such as theft, but the events of March 1, 1932, saw Harold Hoffman broaden those parameters.
In the wake of the Eaglet’s disappearance, the DMV erected roadblocks throughout New Jersey, inspected cars and trucks, and put traces on all out-of-state license plates. A file search was initiated that provided the state police with lists of license plate numbers of missing or stolen cars. The troopers readily accepted the information but displayed a cavalier indifference to helpful hints from the Motor Vehicle boys. This was fine with Commissioner Harold Hoffman, who hadn’t bother to check with Superintendent H. Norman Schwarzkopf before expanding his investigation of auto thieves to include other criminals.
Harold Hoffman rather liked Schwarzkopf, but he did think the West Point graduate would be better served shaving off his Charlie Chaplin mustache. H. Norman hadn’t appreciated the grooming hint. Hoffman hadn’t relished what he considered the high-handed manner in which he and his personnel were being treated by the state police and their boss during the early stages of the Lindbergh crime. Nor was Hoffman blind to the vote-getting potential should he, the commissioner of motor vehicles, rather than the superintendent of the state police, capture the kidnappers. Harold was a team player as long as it was his team. What better man to add to your manhunt roster than New Jersey’s greatest detective? Ellis Parker, his services snubbed by Governor Moore and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, accepted the commissioner’s offer and joined Motor Vehicle’s investigation. Hoffman assigned his most trusted aide to assist the Old Chief, Inspector Gustave (“Gus”) Lockwood, who the state police claimed was the governor’s part-time driver.
Installed with the DMV’s inquiry, Ellis Parker wasted little time putting out feelers to various underworld contacts, particularly in the area of the Lindbergh estate. The ominous Sourland Mountain provided a safe haven for the area’s moonshine and bootlegging industries, not to mention an ample variety of other nefarious pursuits. No one knew the individual criminals involved in these activities better than Ellis, whose favorite tactic was to infiltrate illicit societies with a network of well-placed informants. One of his earliest contacts on behalf of Harold Hoffman’s department was Sam Cucchiara, owner of the Hopewell barbershop, who arranged for Gus Lockwood to buy a stolen car from one Caspar Oliver.
The Oliver farm was on Rocky Hill Road in Blawenburg, only two miles from the Lindbergh estate. Auto parts littered the ground. Lockwood, posing as a gangster, was grilled by the craggy Caspar. Satisfied that Gus was a genuine illicit article, he agreed to sell him a 1929 Buick sedan. When and where Gus could take delivery was vague. Oliver, believed to have served ten years in Sing Sing, was suspected of working as a henchman for a Brooklyn bootlegger called Liddle, who had connections with Chicago’s Capone mob. Groups of men from New York often gathered at the Oliver farm, and on one occasion over the summer as many as forty had arrived in a bus. There was more. At 4:00 P.M. March 1, an auburn sedan with New York license plates and three men inside had been seen at Oliver’s farmhouse. The shades were pulled down at 7:00 P.M. and had remained down until March 4.2
On Wednesday, March 16, after several days of waiting, Gus Lockwood had been shown where the car he wanted to purchase was being kept: in Oliver’s barn—under a ton of hay. On March 19, a strike force from the DMV swept down on the farm and barn. Caspar took to the woods, where he was found hiding. The car under the hay was not connected to the Lindbergh kidnapping case, but it led to a protracted investigation of an auto-theft ring that had been operating in the area.
Ellis Parker was a past master at public relations and dealing with the media. Harold Hoffman was even better at it than Parker. The commissioner wasn’t sure exactly what political office he would be running for next, but he knew that good press never hurt. On March 20, 1932, to the surprise of H. Norman Schwarzkopf and the state police, the Trenton Evening Times reproduced a photograph of the automobile concealed under the ton of hay only two miles from the Lindbergh estate. Also included was an insert picture of Caspar Oliver. The caption gave Inspector Gus Lockwood sole credit for the discovery. The story and pictures had been supplied by the Associated Press, but Harold Hoffman was also in direct contact with many newspapers regarding the progress of his department’s search, including the New York Sun. So was the greatest detective in New Jersey.
Nearly three years later, on January 15, 1935, while standing outdoors on a snow-swept platform, making his inaugural address before a chilly crowd of seven thousand, the newly sworn-in governor of New Jersey, Harold Giles Hoffman, suggested a 2-percent excise tax to help the depression-racked state. He was in immediate, and big, political trouble. Taxes were anathema to Jerseyites—they had brought down politicians more unbeatable than this governor of less than a day.
Politics in New Jersey, Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson once said, is like being a whore with bad eyesight: You’re never sure who you’re in bed with. Boss Frank Hague provided proof that Big Bill was prescient. Hague, a pro-tax advocate, immediately began to rally support against the governor’s impending tax bill. In this he found himself in bed with a majority of the state’s old guard Republican leaders.
The Little Captain had a reputation for bold strokes when confronted by crisis. Cutting a deal with Frank Hague and the Democrats to get his tax bill passed in June of 1935 was an example of this. But the wildfire objections to the law, particularly among his fellow GOP pols, was something he had not expected, nor was it something he seemed to know how to cope with. Old political allies abandoned him. Other sources of support eroded.
On October 9, 1935, Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s appeal was turned down by the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals. The following day, during a special session of the New Jersey State Legislature, the assembly voted fifty to three, and the senate ten to zero, for repeal of the governor’s four-month-old sales tax law. Harold Hoffman had suffered the greatest defeat of his political career.
Governor Hoffman desperately needed to reestablish his popularity and political power base. But dare he try another bold stroke? He had come a cropper with the last one, and this had contributed to his being in the mess he was in. Did another potential grand design even exist? Was it the Lindbergh-Hauptmann case? Possibly. With local GOP pols viewing the Hauptmann trial as a political defeat, what could be bolder than proving that Wilentz and the Democrats had convicted the wrong man? This was a perilous path to travel. The public and the media overwhelmingly wanted Bruno Richard Hauptmann electrocuted and the Lindbergh affair done with. The governor was on record as saying that he trusted David Wilentz and believed the Flemington jury had rendered a fair and considered verdict. Whatever was to be done in this direction must be done with discretion.
In early October, Colonel Mark O. Kimberling, principal keeper of the New Jersey state prisons, had come to the governor with a private and fateful message. Kimberling was a founding member of the New Jersey State Police and a political ally of Hoffman’s. The word he brought was that Bruno Richard Hauptmann wanted t
o see the governor. Hoffman, plagued by continuing mass political defections and a hostile press and fighting tooth and nail to save his doomed tax law, ignored Hauptmann’s request.
During the trial it had been hoped, if not expected, that the defendant would “crack” or “thaw” under prosecuting attorney David Wilentz’s searing cross-examination and admit to the crime and reveal his accomplices. But the dour German carpenter had stuck to his alibi and conceded nothing. Now, in mid-October, reconsidering the condemned man’s request for an interview and speculating that Hauptmann might have ‘’thawed,” the benefits of receiving Bruno’s confession took on new dimensions for a governor desperately in need of a little bit of magic.
23
Bold Strokes and Bruno
Had Harold Hoffman arranged for the secret meeting in a less impetuous fashion and gone to see the prisoner alone, the political hurricane that was to follow might have been avoided. He did neither. The governor was by legislation a member of the court of pardons, the jury of last resort should all Hauptmann’s appeals be rejected, as appeared would be the situation. There was a precedent for individual court members’ visiting condemned men, but not in the dead of night, timing that gave the impression of secrecy, or under circumstances that might be considered capricious.
According to Hoffman, the opportunity to see Hauptmann arose on October 16, 1935.1 “My recollection is that there had been a last minute cancellation of an evening engagement,” he stated.
I know that it was not until after dinner on that evening that I thought of visiting Hauptmann that night.
From my suite in the Hotel Hildebrecht I called Colonel Kimberling. “Mark,” I said, “I’m coming down to see that fellow. Will tonight be O.K.?” Mark Kimberling answered in the affirmative.
I had been given to understand that Hauptmann could not express himself very well in English, and I thought I might need an interpreter. And of course I figured I might need a stenographer, particularly if he wanted to make a confession. My first thought therefore had been of Mrs. Bading. She was an expert stenographer, spoke German fluently and could be depended upon to maintain the confidence that I thought essential to my plan.
Mrs. Bading was Anna Bading, Ellis Parker’s longtime secretary and sometime investigator, on whom a local chapter of the Eastern Star organization had conferred the honor of Worthy Matron. When she received the governor’s call on the night of October 16, saying to meet him within the hour at Mark Kimberling’s residence adjoining the state prison, she had been in Mount Holly, New Jersey at another Eastern Star function. Stopping only long enough to grab a steno pad and several sharp pencils, Mrs. Bading reached Kimberling’s residence still in her party garb: an evening gown and silk slippers. Told she was to accompany Kimberling and Hoffman to death row to an interview with Bruno Richard Hauptmann, she protested, “‘Governor, I simply can’t go in there dressed like this.’” Mark Kimberling gave her one of his overcoats, which she put on.
Kimberling drove Bading and the governor around to the Third Street gate of the prison, where he had posted Deputy Warden George Selby, a World War I lieutenant colonel who had served overseas with Hoffman’s 114th Infantry Regiment. Once through the gate, they turned to the right and followed a prison guard to the death house. As the door opened, the guard’s flashlight picked up the muslin-covered electric chair.
Bading took a seat on a small bench near the white-shrouded chair and waited, should she be needed inside to take dictation and translate. On Kimberling’s order the iron door separating the death chamber and death row was opened. He ushered Governor Hoffman through. A quick turn to the right, and they were standing before the bars of cell 9. “‘Richard,’” Kimberling said softly to the occupant, “‘the Governor to see you.’”
A guard unlocked and opened the metal door. Harold Hoffman entered. The door was shut and locked behind him, with Kimberling saying from outside, “‘Call me, Governor, if you want me.’” Then he walked down the corridor and joined the guard.
The most hated man in the world wore a blue-gray shirt open at the neck and dark prison trousers. The governor told him to sit down on his cot, and he did. A pitcher and basin rested on a stand nearby. There was a table in the cell that was covered with papers and books—a Bible, several works of philosophy and astronomy, and the transcripts of the trial. Also on the table was a photograph of the prisoner’s wife and young son, Manfried. Fifteen feet away, on the other side of the cell’s wall, stood the electric chair.
A New Jersey governor could temporarily stay an execution but did not have the power to commute a death sentence. The only power that could do that at this stage was New Jersey’s court of appeals, of which the governor was the president.
“I sat down beside him,” Harold Hoffman explained, “I said something, just what I don’t recall, designed to put him at ease; but I did not then, or at any time during my visit, promise him aid or make any expression of sympathy or belief in his statement to me.”
Jafsie Condon and John Hughes Curtiss had each used an ersatz German accent in relating to the media what their respective Johns had said to them during ransom negotiations. When later writing of his visit to Bruno Richard Hauptmann on death row, Governor Hoffman utilized the same technique.
“‘Governor, vy does your state do to me all this?’” he reported that the condemned man asked him in cell 9. “‘Vy do they vant my life for something somebody else have done?’”
Replied the governor, “‘Well, you have been found guilty. The courts—’”
“‘Lies! Lies!’” Hauptmann pointed to one of the trial records. “‘All lies. Vould I kill a baby? I am a man. Vould I built that ladder? I am a carpenter.’”
Hauptmann’s most “earnest plea” had been to take a lie detector test. “‘Vy vont they use on me that? And on Doctor Condon also use it? They haf too some kind of drug, I haf heard. Vy don’t they use on me that drug? And on Doctor Condon use it too?’”
Harold Hoffman was now certain that Hauptmann hadn’t thawed, that he would not be confessing. “Here was no cringing criminal pitifully begging for mercy,” the governor wrote, “but a man making a vehement claim of innocence, bitter in his denunciation of the police and of the prosecution and their methods.” And bitter, too, in his excoriation of his former chief counsel, Death House Reilly.
“‘Could a man do for dollars vat Reilly haf done to me?’” Hauptmann asked. “‘Only once, for about five minutes, did I haf a chance to explain my case to him, really. Sometimes he came to see me, not often, for a few minutes. How could I then talk to him?’”
Hauptmann’s complaints against the police began with his footprints, which apparently didn’t match the one found under the nursery window or the one found at the graveyard where the ransom was paid.
“Vy do they take from me all my shoes? When I was arrested they took from me, among many things, my shoes. Vot for I could not imagine, but now I have found out. Because they have a footprint—a footprint of a man, who according to the prosecutor, climbed the ladder to get the unfortunate child.… Vy did they not produce at the trial the impression of which they cast a model? Vy? They cannot say that my foot has become larger or smaller—
“So too the footprint which was found at the graveyard from where Doctor Condon swore that he gave to John fifty thousand dollars. Also here my shoe certainly did not fit. Vy did they not produce here the plaster model that they made?”
Following his meeting with Cemetery John, Jafsie Condon also made a phonograph recording of the conversation, which was widely reported in the press but was not entered in evidence by the prosecution and which the state police in one instance denied existed. “‘Does any one think that these footprints and this record have been held back out of pity for me? Oh no. For me, not pity!’”
As for fingerprints,
“Is it not true that in every case when a person is arrested they take his fingerprints? So they did vith me [at the NYPD station house in Greenwich Village]. A fe
w days after, two New Jersey state police came to me in a Bronx prison and vanted further prints. I told them these had already been taken. These men replied the ones they took haf not been clear enough, so they take firmly about six sets. Then one or two days later they come again with the statement that still there are several spots not plain enough. So they took more—and also the sides of my hands, which they did not take before, and then especially the joints of the fingers and the hollow parts of my hand.… Then at the trial, when my counsel asks about fingerprints the prosecutor say simply, ‘There are no fingerprints.’ If that is so, no fingerprints on the ladder, on the letters, on the window sill, in the room, vy they want so many times my fingerprints? I can only think they have fingerprints, but they are not like mine, so they say they haf none.…
“But they invent another story. They say I haf worked vith gloves. Is this not a worthless lie? Because since in that room they found no other fingerprints—not of the parents, or the child’s nurse or the other servants—can’t this statement be possible? It is even said that Mrs. Lindbergh and the nurse Betty together pulled down the window which was stuck, but there are no fingerprints found on the window frame. Do the parents, then, ven they go to the room to take joy in their child, and all the servants, also wear gloves?”