Lindbergh

by Noel Behn

  Time was running out on the life of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. December had begun, and the governor’s hope that Hauptmann himself would thaw and name a conspirator had not been realized. Ellis Parker was no more successful at establishing that Paul Wendel was the kidnapper or that the baby in the woods was not Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Investigators had gathered a considerable amount of information that discredited much of the prosecution’s case against Hauptmann, but it could hardly assure that a retrial would result.

  Other aspects of the secret inquiry had reached a point where the governor might soon have to step in, at the risk of considerable public outcry, and interview the Lindberghs. He might even have to interview Betty Gow and possibly Jafsie Condon.

  Ellis Parker, with a strong assist from Lloyd Fisher, had homed in on the two prosecution witnesses whose testimony had been particularly detrimental to Hauptmann at the Flemington trial: Amandus Hochmuth and Millard Whited. He was hellfire certain they had lied under oath by testifying to having seen Hauptmann near the Lindbergh estate at the time of the crime. The Old Chief was equally sure he could discredit them. What he wasn’t able to achieve when he set about to do this was secrecy. Word got out around New Jersey that Parker was investigating the crime—at the governor’s behest Confronted by the accusation, Harold Hoffman issued a press statement, which was released from Parker’s Mount Holly headquarters.

  “When I went into the office, the first thing Mr. Parker did was to come in and talk over the matter with me,” the governor was quoted as saying. “I am interested in it, naturally, because I am a member of the Court of Pardons, which is a court of mercy.” The governor denied directing Parker to reinvestigate the Lindbergh case but allowed that “all along, since I have been in office, [Parker] has discussed the matter with me whenever there were new developments.”7

  Following a speaking engagement in New Jersey on Wednesday evening, December 4, 1935, Harold Hoffman traveled to New York City and dropped in at Madison Square Garden, where a six-day bicycle race was in progress. He accepted an invitation by one of the race officials to visit “the boys” in the press room and was soon ensconced among the sports writers, listening to their tales and trading gibes. He was caught off guard when one scribe abruptly turned the conversation away from athletics. The writer had covered the Hauptmann trial and, predicated on the evidence he had seen produced, expressed doubts that the German should have been convicted. He went so far as to say that some of what he observed in the courtroom was “phony.”

  “I replied that Ellis Parker had expressed the same thing to me,” Harold Hoffman related. “The writer asked me if Parker was investigating the case, and I told him that he had been working on it since a few days after the commission of the crime.”8

  The governor returned to his New York City hotel and went to sleep. Of the next morning, December 5, he wrote, “I was handed a metropolitan newspaper containing a two paragraph story and the rather modest headline, ‘Lindbergh Case Reopened.’”9 The text quoted Hoffman as saying that Parker was investigating the Lindbergh matter and implied that the governor had engaged him to do so.

  The luncheon—speaking engagement Hoffman had come to town to attend took place on schedule at the New York Ad Club. Seated at the head table along with the governor was Henry Breckinridge. Hoffman gave a speech on the influence of advertising on the nation’s economic situation and avoided any reference to the Lindbergh case. Leaving the dais, he was surrounded by ten or twelve reporters from the New York newspapers as well as the national press services who wanted to know if the governor had indeed engaged Parker to reinvestigate the Lindbergh case and what had been found out so far. An impromptu press conference was arranged in a nearby room, at which the governor tried to field an onslaught of questions. Amid the barrage Pat Grady of the Associated Press posed a fateful query: “Governor, have you ever seen Hauptmann?”

  “Yes,” Hoffman answered.

  “Where?”

  “In the State Prison.”10

  After a few more questions the reporters scrambled to the phones. Despite having worked on a newspaper during his youth and having adroitly manipulated the press for years as a politician, the governor headed away without paying much mind to the brief exchange with Pat Grady.

  By the time Harold Hoffman returned home that night, front pages across the land had announced that he had secretly seen Hauptmann in jail and that the case had been reopened. The press corps, which was heading for New Jersey in numbers reminiscent of the original kidnapping night, was one manifestation of the immediate and nationwide public outcry against the governor’s actions. Mark O. Kimberling exacerbated the matter by first denying that the visit to death row took place, then claiming he did only what he was ordered to do—by Harold Hoffman. Nor did the governor help his own public relations cause by explaining that his only interest was ensuring that justice was done but refusing to tell reporters exactly why he had gone to see Hauptmann or what he had learned. The chief executive of New Jersey repeated, as he had done before, that Ellis Parker had always believed Hauptmann was innocent and that he found some merit in this.

  What dismayed the governor as much as the extent of the protest was the rancor with which it was leveled. He complained that he was being treated like a national villain. In retrospect, that isn’t surprising. Americans, who had agonized over the disappearance and death of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., for almost three years and who trusted mightily in the courts of the land, sincerely believed that justice had been served with the guilty verdict and death penalty. They wanted the matter closed and done with and had expected it would be. Now Harold Hoffman was denying them this.

  The national surge of criticism against the governor was nowhere more biting than in the Trenton Evening Times, which along with extensive hard-news coverage of the continuing controversy, ran scathing editorials on him for the better part of two weeks. Among other things suggested by the Evening Times was that his visit to Hauptmann was illegal and unethical; a publicity stunt to help gain the prisoner a new trial; a decoy meant to distract the public from his impending racetrack-betting referendum; a ploy motivated by other political considerations; a defamation of the entire judicial system of New Jersey; and a smoke screen for his imminent firing of H. Norman Schwarzkopf. “What a tragedy it would be,” proclaimed the Evening Times editorial of Friday, December 6, 1935, “if the slayer of the Lindbergh baby should receive the undeserved mercy of maudlin sentimentality because of superficial publicity-seeking and a gubernatorial flair for Broadway theatricals.” The next day’s editorial ended by saying, “Once more Hoffman’s administrative actions have done nothing but cause thoughtful Jerseymen to hang their heads in shame.” Adding insult to injury for Harold Hoffman was that even the Perth Amboy Evening News, where he had worked as a young man, was critical of him—for having broken the story to New York City reporters rather than the New Jersey press.

  On December 7, bowing to pressure on him to make a public statement on his position, the governor said in part:

  The case of Bruno Richard Hauptmann is one with which the dimensions of American justice will be measured by all Americans and the world. Because of the unprecedented prominence given to the trial of this man, there have been thousands of rumors in circulation. Some of these allege other conditions disadvantageous to either the prosecution or defense. The offense charged was a dastardly crime, threatening our whole system of living in mutual confidence. No person participating in this crime can be allowed to escape the full penalty.…

  If the defendant in this case is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, he must pay the penalty demanded by the law. That is required for the protection of society against the criminal. If he is not guilty, he should not be punished. That is required for the protection of society against itself.11

  Though his comments did little to counteract the massive flow of criticism, there was an increase in the letters of support he had been receiving.

  On Monday, December 9, the U.S. Supreme C
ourt refused to review Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s conviction. December 13 was Justice Trenchard’s seventy-second birthday, and the venerable jurist set a new date for the execution: January 17, 1936. December 13 also saw leaders of the New Jersey State Legislature refuse to call a special session, thereby dooming the governor’s proposed referendum to permit racetrack gambling.

  Three days later, on December 16, the governor received a letter from the condemned man:

  With clear conscience I have fought my case. In my heart I can not believe that this state will break the life of an innocent man. I would be very thankful for permitting any able person, who are free of any opinion in this case, to take a test with so-called lied detector, serum or whatever science may offer. I hope for myself and in the course of justice that this, my wish, may inspire Dr. Condon to do the same. I have a deep interest in what kind of force made him change his saying. Because when he was visiting me in my Flemington cell, he said all excited to the prosecutor, “I can not testify against this man.…”12

  The timing of the letter was not good. Besides the fact that the racetrack legislation had been defeated, a battle had been shaping up in Trenton over whether Frederick Brodesser, an ally of the governor’s, would continue on as clerk in the house of assembly for 1936. On December 20, as an ominous certification of the governor’s political down-slide, his own Republican party rejected Brodesser.

  It is doubtful that word of a reinvestigation made Charles Lindbergh happy. Not only would it put him and his family back in the spotlight, but it might also jeopardize something else. Assuming his cover-up plot was an actuality, Lindy had been lucky until now, but close scrutiny of the facts at this late date might very well pick up what had previously been overlooked. An even worse possibility existed: that the governor had already learned the secret of Sorrel Hill; that he knew the child had died on Saturday, not Tuesday; that he knew why.

  Lindbergh, ever clear-eyed and methodical, made his move—in a clandestine act that was truly catastrophic for the beleaguered Harold Hoffman. It occurred the next evening at 11:30 P.M., when Charles and Anne Lindbergh, with their young son, Jon, secretly boarded the freighter American Importer in New York Harbor and sailed off for England and self-imposed exile. The covert exodus was announced with headline fanfare on December 23. The Lindberghs did nothing to refute the statements of their friends and allies that Harold Hoffman’s capricious opening up of old wounds had caused their flight. Their destination was exile in England, where Elisabeth Morrow’s widowed husband would act as Lindy’s spokesman.

  A savage new round of headline stories and editorials berated the governor and his investigation for having driven America’s royal couple into exile.13 Impeachment rumors circulated around Trenton. Hate letters poured in, and threats. Harold Giles Hoffman, who less than a year before had been among the most popular young politicians in the country, was gaining on Bruno Richard Hauptmann as being the most disliked man in America. Worse was to come.

  25

  The Rocky Road to Reprieve

  On December 23, 1935, the day the Lindberghs’ exile from the United States broke into the headlines, Bruno Richard Hauptmann filed an application with the court of pardons, in which he asked for clemency and stated that he was not guilty of the crime charged.

  Since the U.S. Supreme Court had already rejected the prisoner’s appeal and because a New Jersey governor was not invested with the power to commute a death sentence, the court of pardons was Hauptmann’s last practical hope of avoiding the electric chair. As far back as Monday, December 9, the Trenton Evening Times had warned against Governor Hoffman’s trying to manipulate this court into reversing Hauptmann’s death sentence. With the new year approaching, anti-mercy hard-liners contended that the state’s constitution did not grant the court of pardons the specific right of commutation. The Evening Times was among them, and it also spearheaded a protest meant to discourage Harold Hoffman from invoking the primary legal right he did have in the matter: a gubernatorial reprieve with which he could stay the execution for up to ninety days in three increments of thirty days each.

  A majority of the governor’s supporters not only wanted him to heed the pressures and back away from a reprieve, which if issued, was bound to result in a national protest, but they also desperately urged him to abandon the investigation. Only when Bruno Richard Hauptmann was dead would the dust settle, and only then could they busy themselves with trying to rebuild his political base. But Harold Hoffman wasn’t letting that many friends know what he was about. A few who did know suspected that his career had been so badly damaged that the only chance to salvage it was by sticking to his guns and regaining credibility by proving that Hauptmann was either innocent or hadn’t acted alone. Others of the inner circle felt that even this wouldn’t be good enough. For them the only hope was a long shot: coming up with the actual kidnapper-murderer. Hoffman’s investigators were intent on doing just that, and in the opinion of Bill Pelletreau the true perpetrator had already contacted them.

  Back on December 13, 1935, a letter mailed from Brooklyn and addressed to Dr. E. M. Hudson, Gotham Private Hospital, 30 East Seventy-sixth Street, New York City, was delivered. The text was written in disguised handwriting:

  Mr. Dear Dr. Hudson

  You whant know about Lindbergh boy please going or got to 440 1st Brooklyn. Please do not tell police the boy is dear an ist Blonde blue eyes you see a big man in the basement

  Hautpman is not guilty

  a friend of

  Dr. Condon

  Jhon

  On the back of the page was this:

  (Keep this to yourself or …)

  The following day, December 14, Mary McGill, Dr. Hudson’s aide, summoned Pelletreau, who checked the handwriting in the letter against samples of the ransom messages he had as well as against a copy of J. J. Faulkner’s signature.1 Ever since working for Brooklyn attorney James M. Fawcett as part of Hauptmann’s extortion and extradition defense team, Pelletreau had been on the alert for a k similar to the distinctive one that the mysterious Faulkner had written on the bank-deposit receipt for $2,980 in ransom currency on May 1, 1933. Now the Jersey City private eye found what he considered to be an identical k in the message to Dr. Hudson. After further comparisons and analysis, particularly with the letter m and the transposition of the h in the name Jhon, Pelletreau was certain that the author of the Hudson letter had also written the ransom notes received by Lindbergh, Breckinridge, and Jafsie Condon. No blue-eyed baby was found at 440 1st, but as the message urged, the matter was kept quiet.

  Bill Pelletreau puzzled over why the authentic author of the ransom letters would bother to write to Dr. Hudson only to lead him on a wild-goose chase regarding the Brooklyn address. In late December, after returning from a lead he had checked out in Texas, Pelletreau came up with a tentative answer. “It was my opinion that this letter had been written primarily so as to reach the hands of the authorities and cause doubt as to the guilt of Hauptmann.”2 This may have been hindsight.

  On January 2, 1936, with fifteen days left before Bruno Richard Hauptmann’s electrocution and as insistence that the death occur per schedule became a nationwide cry, Pelletreau was called to Harold Hoffman’s suite in New York City’s New Yorker Hotel. The governor took the private detective into the bedroom, produced an envelope, and said, “I would like to have you read this letter, Bill, and tell me what you think of it.”3 Then he left.

  New-York, Jan. 1.st 36

  To his Excellency

  the Governor of the State of N.J.

  Mr. Harold G. Hoffman.

  Sir: As the Zero hour in the Hauptmann Case draws near, I feel impelled to direct these few lines to Your Excellency in order to dispell the preconceived idea of the guilt of Hauptmann or rather to sustain and affirm you in your own and rightly-so formed idea of his innocence.

  In spite of all the confusion and artificially created hateful atmosphere attending his trial, you seem to have been the only person, who was capable of
preserving an objective view of the case, notwithstanding all the animosity and antagonistic feeling and outside pressure which factors combined were able to sway a Jersey Jury of twelve good but spine-less people to return a Verdict of guilt against an innocent man in a Capital Case on purely superficial-yea-artificially created evidence.

  Hauptmann, an expert carpenter, made the kidnap ladder, the work of which an apprentice boy of one months standing would be ashamed of. Hauptmann, guilty of this crime he stand convicted of?

  Does Your Excellency believe that, in the own words of the most famous judge in the case, who exercised undue and unconstitutional control over 12 simple minded good people. Of course, I know you don’t. I cannot help but admiring you for the fact that you are about the only person in dominant position who was capable of sustaining an un-biased and wide perspective of the case. Hauptmann is not guilty, not of the crime he stands convicted of.

  All the poor bum is guilty of is his money madness, which made him risk a Thousand Dollars or so of his own good money, in the belief and greedy notion, that he could get independently rich and by hiding this cheaply acquired hoard he brought himself in all this trouble, nearly causing him to lose his life, which I hope will now be spared.

  Now that I have communicated to Your Excellency and given you some of the inside dope, You will readly understand that for personal reasons I am not interested to go into further details and your Honor will also believe me that these lines are not dictated by a desire to be an informative.