by Noel Behn
All I intend to do is to follow the impelling power of my conscience and the desire to friendly assist you to prevent the State of N.J. from committing a legal blunder and murder, and you will not rue the day when you granted commutation, for clemency I cannot possibly invite, because I cannot come out in the open.
You are comparatively young yet and you might live to see the day when the whole truth will likely come out perhaps as a death-bed story. As far as Condon is concerned … You would be well advised to take his assertion with a grain of salt. He has reasons.
Having done my duty as I see it before me, and assuring your Excellency of my highest regards and my firmest belief in your highest integrity, who will know how to act in matters Hauptmann,
I am closing
most respectfully
J. J. FAULKNER4
Analyzing the two-page Faulkner letter, Pelletreau found the signature to be identical with the one J. J. Faulkner had left on the 1933 bank-deposit slip. More important, the writing was the same as in the ransom messages, as well as in the letter to Dr. Hudson. Despite the fact that photographic copies of the bank-deposit signature and the ransom communications had been reproduced in the newspapers, Pelletreau was convinced that the hand that had written them had also written the letter to Harold Hoffman. For the “poor bum” paragraph of the letter strengthened a theory that had been debated off and on since Hauptmann’s arrest: that one of the illegal enterprises the German carpenter may have speculated in, with or without Isador Fisch, was the buying up of “hot” currency at a fraction of its worth and hoping to exchange it at full value on the street.
On January 3, Governor Hoffman, in his capacity as president of the court of pardons, sent H. Norman Schwarzkopf a letter in which the trooper superintendent was directed to deliver to the clerk of the pardons court “documents, exhibits or articles of evidence in connection with the murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.” The list of material the governor wanted from the state police took up four pages and covered thirty specific categories.5
The following day the first shipment of requested evidence was turned over to the governor by the state police. It included some seventy individual items plus twenty photographs and also the complete files on Betty Gow, the Whateleys, and seven other people. The second delivery of the day contained the troopers’ complete Condon file, three other files, and thirty-six additional items. Inspector Harry Walsh, it turned out, did not write up reports on his investigatory findings, so all the troopers could provide regarding the Jersey City policeman’s part in the Lindbergh investigation was newspaper coverage or statements made by his co-workers. More requested material was sent to the governor on January 6.
The next day something else was being sent out. Mark O. Kimberling, principal keeper of the New Jersey state prisons, issued invitations asking eighteen people to attend the January 17 electrocution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, with instructions that “The hour of 8:00 P.M. has been designated by me for such execution and you will kindly be at my office in this Prison not later than 7:15 P.M.”6
The court of pardons had scheduled Saturday, January 11, for hearing Hauptmann’s petition for clemency. His attorneys and the governor’s investigators had been working hand in hand on a presentation, and to date their strongest case for commuting the death penalty was eclectic and occasionally bizarre. They had grounds on which to claim that the state police had bungled the investigation and that false testimony had been given at the trial, particularly in regard to placing Hauptmann at the scene. They were also confident they could disprove much of what the wood expert had testified to at the trial, thereby negating the importance of the ladder. Jafsie Condon was certainly a target. Ellis Parker’s claim that the baby in the woods was not Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., had Dr. Van Ingen’s prekidnapping examination and a good deal of hearsay evidence to support it but nothing that was unassailable. Even so, the Old Chief, who had gone public with the theory back in 1932, was insistent that the wrong-baby issue be brought up.
The governor’s investigators were busy elsewhere. Robert Hicks rented the Hauptmanns’ former apartment in the Bronx—Lieutenant Bornmann of the NJSP had done the same thing months earlier—and microscopically studied the attic from which the prosecution’s wood expert had claimed a runner on the ladder had come. Hicks also spent time at St. Raymond’s Cemetery, taking measurements and timing, with a stopwatch, a reenactment of Jafsie’s ransom payment to John.
Other information sent the governor’s men to a spot in St. Raymond’s Cemetery where the Westchester Creek flowed. Digging began along the muddy bank for the wooden box in which Jafsie had delivered the ransom money to John. Data was also developed that linked a male German who was the keeper of a rooming house on West Ninetieth Street with the mysterious woman who was supposed to have talked to Condon at the charity bazaar. Investigators put him under surveillance and instigated an extensive background check, which included discreetly examining a bank account that was in his wife’s name. Still another lead brought Hoffman’s agents to a salesgirl in a Bronx store, who insisted that her sister, living on Long Island, could name at least one person who purchased four thousand dollars in ransom bills.
Probers found no wooden box in Westchester Creek, surveillance on the man who ran the rooming house proved unproductive, and on being questioned, the sister of the Bronx salesgirl claimed to have forgotten the name of the buyer of four thousand dollars in ransom notes. They fared no better following up on a letter from a friend of Fisch’s from Leipzig, which was written in German and asked a New York furrier to sell the 220 dressed skins left there by Fisch. The letter authorized the furrier to deduct his sales commission, asking to remit whatever was left because his family needed the money. On being confronted by investigators, the furrier explained that since dress furs of that type brought a dollar each, he had ignored the request.
It was debatable whether any or all of the information on hand and its corroborating evidence would persuade the court of pardons to stay the death sentence and call for another trial. Nor could this likely be achieved by the letter from J. J. Faulkner to the governor, which was now being examined by additional partisan experts. What was needed was either the actual living Lindbergh baby or J. J. Faulkner himself. The New York American had a hunch who the latter might be: a German-speaking Russian Pole.7 At the same time the Old Chief received a letter from Dennis Doyle, a sneak thief claiming to be a relative of Jafsie Condon’s.8
On January 10, the day before the court of pardons was to meet, the final edition of the New York Daily News exclusively reproduced photographed segments of Faulkner’s January 1 letter to the governor under the headline J.J. FAULKNER “CLEARS” BRUNO. That night John F. Condon, whose upcoming articles in Liberty magazine, “Jafsie Tells All,” had been widely quoted as saying that Hauptmann had not acted alone, suddenly sailed for South America. An incensed governor let it be known he wanted Jafsie arrested and brought home.
Standing at the entrance of the New Jersey Statehouse the next day and facing a crowd of the curious while movienewsreel cameras mounted on trucks swept the scene, Harold Hoffman, referring to the impending Liberty magazine revelations, proclaimed, “Condon makes the flat statement that more than one person was involved in the plan. He goes so far as to write he knew two of those involved. If Dr. Condon knows these things, I feel the authorities should have the information.”9 The governor said that Attorney General Wilentz was the man he would ask to take Condon into custody.
When told of the governor’s statement, Dave Wilentz, who was in conference with his prosecution staff, replied that he had not yet been informed of the apprehension request and that he “would not anticipate what the Governor will do.”10 He and his office, like most of the reporters and cameramen gathered at the statehouse, had something else on their mind: the court of pardons’s consideration of Hauptmann’s final petition for clemency, which was slated to begin at 10:00 A.M. The attorney general and his aides were preparing their argume
nts against its being granted.
That Saturday, January 11, 1936, a New York American reporter, Sanford E. Stanton, accompanied Governor Hoffman’s most trusted lieutenant, Gus (“Popeye”) Lockwood, to the New York City jail at 100 Centre Street, known as the Tombs, to meet Wally Stroh, who was serving time for a burglary conviction.11 Also in attendance was Dennis Doyle, a convict incarcerated at the Riker’s Island Penitentiary. With Doyle was a Mr. Badian, secretary to the warden of Riker’s Island, who acted as stenographer for the interviews.
Lockwood wanted Stroh to repeat the story regarding the German-speaking Russian Pole Jacob Nosovitsky’s involvement in the Lindbergh kidnapping that he had given to the American nearly three and a half years before. Stroh would later claim that Lockwood told him they hoped the information he supplied could be presented to the court of pardons on the coming Monday, even though the court was meeting that day. The motive for the information, in any case, was to “secure a reprieve or some consideration” for Bruno Richard Hauptmann or, if that failed, to provide a sufficient basis on which the governor could issue a stay of execution.12
Stroh did not perceive Nosovitsky as merely an extortionist who had somehow intercepted a copy of the original ransom note.13 For Wally he was the kidnapper-killer as well. Stroh had met Nosovitsky when they were inmates at the Hart’s Island jail in New York City. He stated that the Doc, as Nosovitsky was known, was an authentic doctor who had often mentioned the possibilities in the “snatch racket.” After their release from Hart’s Island, Nosovitsky persuaded Stroh to finance him in the ill-fated manufacture of a dermatological panacea called the Skin Peeler. When the venture went belly-up, Nosovitsky found them work as private detectives with the Eagle Detective Agency at 1440 Broadway. Eagle was run by Max Sherwood, also known as Max Schlansky, who Stroh believed was a relative of Nosovitsky’s. This was back in 1931. By 1936, Max Sherwood was investigating for Governor Hoffman.14
Stroh recalled Nosovitsky’s continual chat about scams and snatch jobs they should pull. At one point he went into detail, and revealed that he had teamed up with a New Jersey gang. Nosovitsky’s plan, according to Stroh, was as follows: “Information obtained from this New Jersey bunch, whose part it was to do the actual kidnapping and our part was as he put it, would be collecting the ransom money.”
Nosovitsky had fallen on unhappy days and was desperately in need of money. Stroh helped him out as best he could. The last time they saw each other, Stroh paid for a cab so Nosovitsky could go and meet a friend he was sure would lend him money “if he explained what he intended to do the next morning.” A week before the Lindbergh kidnapping Stroh received a card from Cleveland, in which Nosovitsky said everything was all right and that he would be in touch later.
There was another thing Stroh mentioned: Nosovitsky had used the initials J. J. not only in front of his own name but as part of his favorite alias, J. J. Shannon. J. J., just as in J. J. Faulkner.
The matter of Condon’s lurid past—charges of his impairing the morals of minors when he conducted a kindergarten for young girls—Stroh left to his associate, Dennis Doyle. Doyle claimed to be related to Condon, whom he suspected of lying about the Lindbergh kidnapping. Doyle let it be known that he had never been an informant, that he wasn’t about to start now, and that his motive was establishing the innocence or guilt of Hauptmann. He made no mention of the reward money. Doyle didn’t want to get into the rumors and printed newspaper accounts that his cousin Jafsie molested young girls and had actually been arrested for it. Though he stated that the family never discussed the young girls, he did recall once asking his mother about it. She told him, “It was just some girl looking for publicity.”15
Stroh’s and Doyle’s statements to Gus Lockwood and the American reporter had been taken down as they talked. Affidavits were prepared, which both prisoners signed.
The pivotal legal event of that Saturday took approximately six and a half hours to unfold. The eight members of the New Jersey Court of Pardons—five judges, a retired butcher, the publisher of the Jersey City Journal, and Governor Hoffman—four of whom were Republicans and four of whom were Democrats, began hearing Hauptmann’s petition to commute his death sentence to life in prison at 10:37 A.M. Five of the members had heard most of the case when they sat on the court of errors and appeals, and they were expected to again refuse Hauptmann’s request. The secret session took place around a long conference table in a room behind the court of errors and appeals chamber in the statehouse annex with Wilentz, Schwarzkopf, and the defense lawyers in attendance. Two of the most detrimental witnesses to Hauptmann at the Flemington trial were not available: Charles Lindbergh and John F. Condon. Because Jafsie had fled the country, there was speculation that the court might grant Hauptmann’s request on a temporary basis until he could be talked to. Many “experts” felt that if the defense lived up to its promise of introducing irrefutable new evidence, there was an outside chance Bruno might just win.
Wilentz began the session with a summation of the Flemington trial; Schwarzkopf then reviewed the state-police investigation that preceded it. Lloyd Fisher took over for the defense. Since the court had rejected an earlier suggestion of hearing directly from Hauptmann, either on death row or in the hearing chamber, Fisher would have to rely on the two suitcases of reputedly new evidence that had been brought to support his claims.16
Damon Runyon, who reported on the court of pardons session in his syndicated newspaper column, found the event to be a “small time revival” of the original Hauptmann trial, which he had also covered.17 The newsreel cameras, gawkers, and hawkers were certainly reminiscent of the carnival spirit back then, and the nostalgic Runyon even paid a visit to Nellie, the pooch, after whom Nellie’s tap room in Flemington had been named. She was now fat, lazy, and happily snoozing her days away in the luxurious surroundings of Trenton’s Stacy-Trent Hotel.
At 4:05 P.M., after hearing almost five and a half hours of testimony, the court of pardons began its vote in executive session. The rejection for clemency was handed down shortly after 5:00 P.M. Bruno Richard Hauptmann would die in the electric chair as scheduled, the coming Friday, January 17 at 8:00 P.M.
The court proceedings had been secret, but it became common knowledge that Governor Hoffman was the lone member of the eight-man body who voted to keep Hauptmann alive.18 Word also leaked out that the governor “went far afield to search out new evidence in the case.”19 Newspapers reported that advance copies of Condon’s forthcoming magazine series had been introduced before the official proceedings got under way, not after. The two suitcases of “new” evidence the defense had brought into the hearing room was said to have been nothing more than old evidence. The New York American wrote that Lloyd Fisher had cited an affidavit by John Hughes Curtiss claiming that a gang of seven men had committed the crime.20 Wilentz had countered this by insisting that the matter of accomplices was not relevant to Hauptmann’s conviction. He further argued that evidence that the condemned man had written the ransom notes tied him to the crime; and this being so, regardless of whether Hauptmann was alone or had many accomplices, he was guilty, and the nature of the crime warranted his execution. The Faulkner letter to Governor Hauptmann was also said to have been introduced, along with the opinion of the defense’s document expert that the handwriting matched that of the ransom notes. Nothing establishing who Faulkner was seems to have been brought up.
The posthearing interviews that newsmen had requested with the usually cooperative governor were rejected, not by Harold Hoffman, who hurried away a vision of displeasure, but by his press secretary, William S. Conklin.21 The question on the media’s mind, which already appeared in print, was whether the governor would now grant Hauptmann a reprieve so that his private investigation could continue trying to develop information. The matter of whether new evidence could affect the prisoner’s destiny was muddled. New Jersey’s legal establishment generally concurred that either the trial judge or the court of pardons still had the power to reverse
Hauptmann’s death sentence if new information warranted such an action. A vociferous minority of judicial scholars doubted that such a right existed.
As newsboys in America shouted Hauptmann’s fate from street corners, newspeople who had gathered outside the Llandaff, Wales, estate of Aubrey Morgan waited patiently to speak with the Lindberghs, who were staying there. Aubrey Morgan had been married to Anne Lindbergh’s older sister, Elisabeth, who died December 3, 1934. Since going into exile, the Lindberghs had made no public statements concerning the events in Trenton, and Morgan informed reporters that the Colonel intended to keep it that way.
In Kamenz, Germany, told of the American court’s refusal to commute her son’s death sentence, Frau Pauline Hauptmann collapsed in her chair and moaned, “That’s terrible. How can it be.” She declared, “Colonel Lindbergh will take a terrible responsibility on himself if he permits the execution.”22 Back in Trenton, Frau Hauptmann’s daughter-in-law, Anna, did what she could to tolerate reporters, went to church, conferred with her lawyers, and sent a cable to her mother-in-law: “Beloved mother, don’t despair. There is still hope. The truth will come to light before it is too late, for Richard is guiltless. With love, Annie.”23
Ralph Hacker, John F. Condon’s son-in-law, couldn’t understand Governor Hoffman’s eleventh hour decision to question Jafsie. “Why, he has been willing to be questioned at all times,” Hacker told reporters. He explained that the ocean voyage was Condon’s regular vacation, coupled with a desire to get sea air for his daughter, Hacker’s wife, whose health was not good. “Before leaving on this trip he had an inquiry made of the attorney general if there was any reason why he should not go at this time and was assured there was not.” Hacker revealed that his wife and Jafsie had not taken along passports, which meant they wouldn’t be visiting any foreign country. He said they were staying with friends in the Canal Zone, and he had no idea how long they would be away.24