Lindbergh
Page 34
Action must be taken—that was the nature of Harold Hoffman. Which action and for what reason, he wasn’t sure. Reassessing the Lindbergh case would be sticky business and dangerous. The Lindbergh-Morrow clan was as well connected and powerful a family as existed. Lindy himself was manipulative. Vengeful. A head-on confrontation must be avoided. But could it?
For Charles Lindbergh a probe of the facts would open old, painful wounds of the child’s death. It might also expose a plot he had concocted to obscure the truth regarding that demise—assuming there was such a plot and the truth had been altered. Would the obdurate, self-assured Lone Eagle tolerate another investigation into the case and, possibly, into his involvement? Did he still have the power to stop such a challenge if he chose? Lindbergh at this juncture appeared to have no warning that this was about to happen—or that his antagonist, Harold Hoffman, was every bit as compulsive and flawed as the Lone Eagle.
24
The Bubble Bursts
On October 29, 1935, the New Jersey Court of Pardons met for the final session of its current term. Governor Harold Hoffman, the nominal president of the body, was there and in passing mentioned that he had visited death row and talked with the condemned prisoner Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a dubious but technically not proscribed practice under the rules of the court. “This case will soon be in our laps,” he told the others. “Frankly, I’m puzzled about a lot of things in connection with it. I wish that some of you judges, when you are at the prison, would talk to this man. I’d be interested in having your opinions.”1
By now Harold Hoffman had read the trial transcripts as well as having discussed the matter with Ellis Parker, Sr., and C. Lloyd Fisher, the assistant defense attorney who had taken over as Hauptmann’s main lawyer. What the governor didn’t mention to the other members of the court of pardons that October 29, or to almost anyone else, was that he had given his OK for the formation of a secret task force to look into the crime and conviction.
One of the principal figures in the governor’s investigation was the Old Chief, Ellis Parker, Sr., the county detective of Burlington County. His office was at the county court building on Main Street, Mount Holly, directly across from the grand old house in which he resided. Parker’s staff included his secretary-sometime sleuth, Anna Bading, and his son Ellis Jr.
Parker was unwavering in his belief that Paul Wendel, a disbarred New Jersey lawyer and ex-convict, had stolen the Lindbergh baby and that the child might still be alive. One of the first people he personally recruited for the governor’s operation was Murray Bleefeld, a dapper New York City underworld character with connections to Trenton’s dyeing and cleaning trades. When Bleefeld’s brother was sentenced to jail in New Jersey, Murray sought out Parker for assistance. The Old Chief arranged a meeting between Bleefeld and the keeper of the prisons for New Jersey, Colonel Mark O. Kimberling, at Kimberling’s residence.2 Murray tried to discuss his brother’s situation, but Parker insisted on talking about the Lindbergh-Hauptmann case. Bleefeld’s brother was transferred from a prison to a prison farm. Murray agreed to help Parker in the investigation.
Bleefeld was taken to the Hotel Hildebrecht in Trenton and introduced to Governor Hoffman, who swore him in as a special deputy. The assignment given Bleefeld by Parker was to locate Paul Wendel. Wendel, wanted on a check-kiting rap, had disappeared and was believed to be hiding out somewhere in New York City. Bleefeld was encouraged by Parker to recruit his brother-in-law, Martin Schlossman, a laundry owner, and a friend, cab driver Harry Weiss, to assist in the search.
Liaison between Parker and the governor was left to Mark O. Kimberling and Gus Lockwood. Kimberling and Lockwood, who was still an inspector with the Department of Motor Vehicles, also acted as the chief recruiters and operation heads for other aspects of the investigation, which were far broader than Parker’s obsessive quest for Wendel. Because of his mobility Lockwood also had a major hand in the surreptitious recruitment of investigators.
Since there were no official funds available for man power, and because day-to-day expenses for the secret probe were paid from the governor’s pocket, the coin of the realm became cronyism and outstanding political debts, many dating back to the days when Harold Hoffman ran the Department of Motor Vehicles, an organization that boasted its own detective corps. Quite a few of these former investigators now worked for one or another of New Jersey’s numerous private detective agencies, an active field that fed on the ongoing strife between industry and a labor movement revitalized by the support of the pro-union Roosevelt administration. When scabs or goons were needed to break a strike or resituate sit-ins, management could count on detective agencies to provide them. Despite his connivance with several of the state’s most powerful Democratic bosses, Harold Hoffman was a pro-management Republican and, ergo, partial to a private detective industry that curried favor.
One expert hired to assist the governor’s investigation, Erastus Mead Hudson, was neither a crony nor a private detective. During Hauptmann’s trial Dr. Hudson had been frustrated by the defense’s inability to sway the jury with his fingerprint findings. He also did not take kindly to what he considered to be attempts at private intimidation and public humiliation by the police and prosecution. In today’s legal climate he might have brought suit for libel or defamation of character; back in the winter of 1935, his best way to reinstate his reputation was by proving that his silver nitrate system was valid and, therefore, his conclusion was correct: Since Hauptmann’s fingerprints had not been among those he found in the nursery or on the ladder, chances were Hauptmann was not implicated in the kidnapping.
Dr. Hudson had taken Hauptmann’s cause a step further by delving into the handwriting of the ransom notes, but for expertise in this area he suggested that the governor get hold of Jesse William Pelletreau, a Jersey City private detective who had served as an investigator for defense attorney James M. Fawcett when Hauptmann was being charged with extortion by the Bronx County district attorney in September of 1934 and who had copies of all the handwriting connected with the case.
In the early part of November, Gus Lockwood delivered a letter to Bill Pelletreau, wanting to know if the gruff, round-faced private eye had any interest in becoming a member of the governor’s investigatory team. Bill’s answer was affirmative, and the next day Lockwood picked him up in Jersey City and drove him to Mount Holly for an interview with Ellis Parker, whom Pelletreau had first met when working on the Bradway Brown murder case.3 The Old Chief questioned the Jersey City PI on his investigation for Fawcett as well as on his views on the crime. Then as later Bill Pelletreau was certain that Hauptmann had not authored the ransom notes. He was equally certain that his ability to analyze handwriting would prove this. Following the interview with Parker, Lockwood drove him to Trenton, where he met with Mark O. Kimberling and repeated what he had told the Old Chief. Kimberling made an appointment for Pelletreau to meet the governor at the Hotel Hildebrecht on November 29. As per schedule, Bill arrived at Harold Hoffman’s suite with display charts and blowups.
“I understand that you don’t agree with the experts that Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes,” the governor said.
“That is my finding,” Pelletreau answered.
“Do you have any idea who did write the ransom notes?”4
Pelletreau did not, but for him a possible answer lay with the mysterious J. J. Faulkner. During the kidnapping trial the state’s handwriting experts had agreed that Hauptmann had not written Faulkner’s name on the bank deposit that had been used to exchange $2,980 in ransom loot for non-gold-certificate currency. In Pelletreau’s mind this proved that at least one other person was involved in the case.
Governor Harold Hoffman invited Jesse William Pelletreau to join his team of investigators. The Jersey City private eye accepted.
Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean’s contribution to the governor’s highly discreet inquiry was Robert W. Hicks, a Washington lawyer and well-thought-of criminal theorist, whom she had hired to reexamine the crime—
and whom she agreed to go on paying while he was on loan to the Hoffman inquiry. Hicks had once submitted a ballistics report to H. Norman Schwarzkopf that projected, but did not prove, that the dead baby found in the woods might have been killed by the tiny Lilliput gun found hidden in the work area of Hauptmann’s garage. Since that time Hicks had come to believe, as Parker did, that Hauptmann had nothing to do with the crime.
Other investigators participating in the secret probe, or soon to be recruited, and who the governor would subsequently acknowledge had helped his cause included Harold C. Keyes, a former government operative recently in the employ of Mrs. Bruno Richard Hauptmann, who was given the code name K-4; George Foster, who along with Pelletreau had been an investigator for James M. Fawcett during Hauptmann’s extortion and extradition trials; Leon Ho-age, a meticulous paper chaser who would scrutinize the state-police files for discrepancies, contradictions, and irregularities vis-à-vis the investigation and trial; Samuel Small, a career penman and lay handwriting specialist with dubious professional standing in the field of disputed documents.
There were others whom the governor, for whatever his reasons, did not acknowledge but who played, or were to play, an active role in his investigation: Elizabeth J. McLaughlin, his private secretary; R. William Lagay, an aide-de-camp; his press secretary, William S. Conklin; his friend and sometime attorney Harry Green; Dr. Hudson’s secretary, Mary McGill; private investigator Winslow P. Humphrey, code-named C-D-1; private eyes William Lewis and Leo F. Mead of the Mead Detective Bureau; and Max Sherwood of the Sherwood Detective Agency.
Another unmentioned set of allies, and possibly the governor’s prime covert source of information, was to be found among the ranks of the New Jersey State Police. The troopers, though seemingly united in the belief that Hauptmann alone committed the crime, were not in agreement. Some members of the force even suspected he might be innocent but never dared say so openly. No state cop liked the accusations that his organization had mishandled the investigation and rigged evidence, but one or two quietly allowed that it might be so and expressed the opinion that H. Norman Schwarzkopf, if not directly responsible for this, had afforded a clique of favored subordinates the free rein with which to disgrace the organization. More than one trooper was troubled by the fact that rather than examining new information objectively, the state police had lapsed into a defensive stance and seemed willing to go to unspeakable lengths to discredit anyone who challenged their findings and conclusions. Factionalism had always existed in the ranks, just as some had always been disenchanted by Schwarzkopf’s posturing and pomp. Then, too, there was the political practicality of staying on the good side of Governor Harold Hoffman, who had the power to replace H. Norman when the superintendent’s term as state-police boss expired in June.
Back on January 17, 1935, in an effort to dispel the contention that the corpse found in the woods was not that of the Lindbergh infant but most likely the remains of a child from St. Michael’s Orphanage, which owned the adjoining land, the prosecution at Hauptmann’s trial had elicited testimony from Mrs. Elmira Dormer, the custodian of St. Michael’s. Dormer had told the jury that in February and March of 1932 all of the institution’s children were accounted for. Ten months later Ellis Parker still wasn’t buying this and assigned Bill Pelletreau to check out the enrollment of the orphanage in early 1932 and learn which of the children had died.
Whereas Parker seemed unclear as to the fate of the Lindbergh infant after he was kidnapped, he was quite positive as to what became of the ransom Wendel received in St. Raymond’s: Wendel gave it to a former client of his: Isador Fisch. According to information developed by Parker, when Paul Wendel was still practicing law in New Jersey, he had successfully defended Fisch in a smuggling case, which most likely involved narcotics. Not knowing what to do with the fifty thousand dollars in gold notes that Jafsie Condon had given him in the cemetery, Wendel sought out Fisch. He lied about the origin of the currency and said he wanted to get rid of a stash of counterfeit bills. Fisch, who immediately recognized samples of the money as being ransom loot, lied in return and said yes, for a stipulated percentage he would sell off the counterfeit. Wendel delivered some twenty thousand dollars in gold notes. Later, when Wendel demanded his money from the sale, Fisch told him to get lost, letting him know that he knew the bills were ransom loot.5
Robert Hicks agreed with Ellis Parker that Isador Fisch had ended up with ransom money, but for a set of reasons different from those subscribed to by the Old Chief. Hicks was convinced that Fisch, not Wendel, had written the ransom messages and that Fisch, not Wendel, had been given the fifty thousand dollars by Jafsie Condon. At five feet five and a half inches, Fisch was shorter than what had come to be the generally accepted pre-arrest description Jafsie provided of John. Hicks opted for believing Condon’s earlier statements to the Bronx grand jury: that he had never clearly seen John’s face. Fisch’s protruding ears and hacking cigarette cough fit the profile provided by Condon at the time. Jafsie had also said John had a Scandinavian or German accent. Fisch, a Polish Jew who was raised in Germany, spoke with a German Yiddish accent One statistic supporting the possibility that Fisch also kidnapped and killed the baby was his lightness. Isador tipped the scale at 150 pounds, a far better weight at which to climb and descend the rickety ladder than the 160 pounds John was estimated to be by the contradictory Condon.
Isador Fisch was born in Poland in 1905, and when he was still very young his family moved to Leipzig, Germany, where he grew up. Leaving school at seventeen, he spent three years apprenticing to a local fur company. Like many young people in those days, Fisch and a fellow apprentice, Henry Uhlig, worked on the black market to make ends meet. Uhlig raised the fare for a steamship ticket, came to New York City, and stayed with their former foreman at the fur company, who had become a bootlegger. Uhlig got a job and sent Fisch the money to join him. Once in New York, Fisch found employment as a fur cutter and soon was making a hundred dollars a week. Uhlig was as large and outgoing as Fisch was small and withdrawn. They shared an apartment and, due mainly to the gregarious Uhlig, developed a small circle of friends, many of whom Fisch persuaded to invest in shaky, if not fraudulent, speculations.
In addition to cutting furs, Isador Fisch was developing into a small-time con artist. Speculation in pelts was one of his hustles; another was eliciting investments in a pie factory, of which he himself had been conned into becoming president by a convicted gambler and a fugitive hoodlum. Uhlig later estimated that Fisch had fleeced nearly thirteen thousand dollars from their friends with his investment schemes. Fisch’s brother thought the amount was closer to seventeen thousand dollars.6 What became of the money was anybody’s guess. By the time Fisch and Hauptmann grew friendly and started doing business together in 1932, the penurious little German-Pole had given up his job in the fur industry and was spending $3.50 a week rent for the cheapest room in a boardinghouse. Many of his friends believed he was destitute.
One of the joint ventures with which Hauptmann and Fisch involved themselves was playing the stock market, Hauptmann’s specialty. Another was purchasing furs, conceivably stolen pelts, Fisch’s forte. By the summer of 1933, they had formed a partnership in which each man was to put up $17,500 for the purchase of furs and stocks. Hauptmann claimed that their speculation in furs alone that year netted more than $6,000. Fisch died in Germany of tuberculosis in 1934, leaving Hauptmann with four hundred sealskins and a shoe box full of ransom money.
Robert Hicks’s scenario, in which Isador Fisch was John and had received the ransom, generated few supporters from the ranks of investigators working for the governor. It is questionable how many actually knew what Hicks was about. Though accessible and good-natured, Harold Hoffman was an extremely secretive man, a past master at not letting one group of trusted aides know what the next group was up to. The true measure of this clandestine bent was to come in a stunning posthumous confession that would shock a nation. Thus in the ongoing investigation, Ellis Parker, Sr., and
Bleefeld’s people pursued Paul Wendel without the knowledge of other probers. Hicks tended to go his own way.
The discreet investigation accounted for only a small part of Governor Harold Hoffman’s hectic schedule in the early winter of 1935. First and foremost he had to run the state and try to find the money needed to do so. With his tax law rescinded on October 10, 1935, one solution he came up with to solve the financial crisis facing New Jersey was the legalization of racetrack betting, which in itself was tempestuously controversial. Besides the governor’s administrative and legislative problems, there were official functions he had to attend in and out of New Jersey and the speeches he had to make. Just as important was mending the political fences the tax battle had caused within his own Republican party. This wasn’t all that easy, because in most of his speeches Harold Hoffman couldn’t resist berating anyone who had voted against his ill-fated law or who was now opposing his racetrack measure. As had been the case with the tax bill, his own Republican party was against the legal-betting action. Among the governor’s growing number of media critics was New Jersey’s influential Trenton Evening Times, which seemed never to miss a chance to write an uncomplimentary editorial on the state’s chief executive.
Try as Harold Hoffman might, he was not the sort of man who could hide what was on his mind—or sit still for very long. Over a five-day period in early November, he attended election-night festivities in his home state, visited Cleveland, Ohio, spoke before a Buffalo, New York, teacher’s group, and dropped in on the Niagara Falls, New York, Chamber of Commerce. His favorite away-from-home events were the raucous Circus, Saints and Sinners bashes in New York City, where he found time to don his ringmaster’s costume and emcee at least a portion of the evening’s high jinks.