by Noel Behn
Wally Stroh and William Pelletreau were not the only ones concerned with dollars. The Great Depression still gripped the land. People needed money. In the crunch Harold Hoffman would pay a needy investigator out of pocket, and the source of some of these funds would come back to haunt him. Harold (“K-4”) Keyes focused a good part of a January 20 letter to the governor on his own particular financial bind. Keyes claimed that he was still owed over twenty-one hundred dollars by Lloyd Fisher and Mrs. Hauptmann, who hadn’t paid him for the twenty-one weeks that he was in their employ. To do his current work for the governor, he had to borrow and pawn. Now he was behind by at least two hundred dollars and needed to keep on renting a car. K-4’s suggested solution to his predicament was for Harold Hoffman to put him on the state payroll.14 Zoe Hobbs, via a series of desperate telegrams, would soon be putting in her requests for expenses also.15
As February began, Hobbs was industriously following up leads on the Morrow and Lindbergh families. The search for Nosovitsky had been unproductive, and Ellis Parker’s only concern seemed to be Paul Wendel. Others in the investigation focused on more esoteric clues as well as on reexamining the trial and the state-police investigation. Many of their objectives were set down by the governor in his January 30 letter to Schwarzkopf, which ordered the state-police boss not only to reopen the investigation but also to answer nineteen questions regarding the troopers’ investigation.
Despite the fact that the press had printed his claim of having received ten thousand letters regarding the reprieve and that 80 percent voiced approval of his decision, Harold Hoffman’s action in behalf of Hauptmann had triggered a bitter in-house battle over his right to lead his own Republican party. Rumors that the state legislature, which had never impeached a governor, was about to impeach him proved false, but in a rare action the state committee of Jersey’s GOP requested that he attend their January 21 meeting in Trenton.16 Hoffman appeared and was roundly criticized for granting the reprieve. Warnings were issued that his activities in behalf of Hauptmann were unpopular with voters. Some committee members suggested that he not attend the party’s upcoming national convention at Cleveland. The governor insisted on being a delegate.
The same day as the GOP meeting in Trenton, the New York American, which had initiated the search for Nosovitsky and given more linage to the reinvestigation than any other New York City newspaper, printed an editorial condemning Hauptmann’s reprieve and accusing the governor of PLAYING A LONE HAND—FOR WHAT STAKES, HE ALONE KNOWS. Twelve days later, on February 2, Henry W. Jeffers, chairman of the New Jersey Republican State Committee, emphatically denied that the GOP intended to repudiate Governor Hoffman for his policies. Jeffers, a close friend of the governor’s who had become head of the committee when Hoffman was elected, made no mention of the reprieve or investigation but did admit that some committee members were at odds with the state’s chief executive over policy and patronage. “In spite of these personal differences,” said Jeffers, “I think I speak for all members of the committee in saying that the Governor has been fearless and sincere and probably has devoted more time and thought to State problems than any chief executive in the history of New Jersey.”17
Three days later, and seventy-two hours shy of his fortieth birthday, on February 7, in a devastating political setback Governor Harold Hoffman, with a vote of fourteen to nine, was stripped of his party’s leadership by the New Jersey Republican State Committee. His supporters were quick to insist that this drastic action was not due to the Lindbergh case but to intraparty fighting, a condition the governor helped exacerbate when he came out swinging during the sixth annual HGH Birthday Club banquet at New York’s Commodore Hotel. It was Thursday night, February 6, and Hoffman told a spirited gathering of a thousand-strong dinner guests that if his political enemies wanted war, war he would give them. He had particular venom for the Evening News of Newark and a New Jersey state senator named Everett Colby, whom he accused, in so many words, of possessing a society Blue Book mentality and of never having gotten over the fact that the people elected Hoffman governor. Colby, Hoffman told his delighted guests, was no newcomer to ruining the GOP in New Jersey; it was a skill he had begun perfecting way back in 1906.18
The Trenton Evening Times’s birthday message to the governor was contained in yet another editorial attacking him, which was headed DEATH BEGINS AT FORTY!19
On February 9, the governor checked into the Mercer Hospital in Trenton—for what was called a minor nasal operation. Rumor spread that it was a heart attack or a nervous breakdown. It could have been neither, or both. But Harold Hoffman needed the rest.
The reality of execution had begun to affect Hauptmann. He had already seen seven of his death row cellmates walk past on their way to the electric chair. Richard, as he still wanted to be called, cried more often, got on well with the guards, and seemed to have lost a good deal of his arrogance. There was one point on which he remained uncompromising and intransigent: his innocence. Deals to save his life had been offered—some including money, which he desperately needed—if he would only name his accomplices. Richard would not hear of it. Then, in a surprise move, he dismissed Lloyd Fisher, who had believed in his innocence, and replaced him with forty-three-year-old Samuel Simon Leibowitz, the high-profile defender of the Scottsboro boys and Al Capone who was acclaimed for his daily radio analysis during the Hauptmann trial and who was certain Bruno was guilty.
The action came as a result of Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean’s avid belief that Hauptmann hadn’t acted alone and that his trial had been a mockery. It was at her recommendation that Harold Hoffman had taken on Robert Hicks as one of his investigators. McLean continued to pay a portion of Hicks’s salary; now she conferred with him to see what action could be taken in Bruno’s behalf. She met with Leibowitz at her Washington abode. The New York lawyer was cocksure of Hauptmann’s complicity but considered it nonsense to believe that only one man perpetrated the crime. He would take the case and obtain a confession and agreed to a ten-thousand-dollar retainer plus a bonus of fifteen thousand dollars if successful, all to be paid by McLean. McLean was also willing to give money to the badly strapped Hauptmanns. Hicks sought out Anna Hauptmann, got her approval of the plan, and sent her to see her husband. On February 11, Hauptmann wrote to Mark O. Kimberling that until notified to the contrary, he no longer wanted to see Lloyd Fisher or his other attorneys. “For your information,” he continued, “I am desirous of seeing Mr. Samuel Leibowitz. It is my definite understanding that arrangements have been made by my wife to such an interview.”20 Learning of his dismissal, a dismayed and livid Lloyd Fisher told reporters he saw little that Leibowitz could accomplish.
Leibowitz’s initial meeting with Hauptmann was on February 13, the first anniversary of the condemned man’s conviction—and four days before the reprieve was to run out. Anna looked on as the famed attorney shook hands with the prisoner through the bars of death row cell 9, saying that he only wanted to get at the truth and that whatever Bruno told him would be reported back to the governor and Mrs. McLean. The encounter was brief, with Hauptmann’s professing his innocence. Before leaving, Leibowitz asked him to think over how the child was taken and express his opinions at the next meeting.
The governor was back from the hospital, and Leibowitz contacted him the next day with assurances that he could crack Hauptmann, despite the fact that so far everyone else had failed. But the celebrated lawyer needed help in getting the confession and asked the governor to assist. In Leibowitz’s opinion Lloyd Fisher was the reason Hauptmann had never cracked. He wanted Harold Hoffman to get Fisher to come with him to see Hauptmann, to tell Hauptmann that he knew he was guilty. Fisher couldn’t believe what he was hearing when two days later the governor relayed the Leibowitz proposal. He refused to be part of it.21
Leibowitz’s second visit with Hauptmann was on February 17, the day the reprieve expired. As requested at the previous meeting, Bruno provided his theory on how he would have perpetrated the crime: by having acc
omplices, including one on the Lindbergh staff, and using the inside staircase rather than the ladder. Leibowitz began pounding away at him to tell the truth—“Tell the truth, Hauptmann, or you’re sure to die!” By day’s end Justice Trenchard had rescheduled Hauptmann’s execution for the week of March 30.22
Faced by reporters on leaving the meeting with Hauptmann, Leibowitz refused to say whether his client had confessed. Asked if he thought Bruno was innocent, the barrister replied, “No, I said all along he was guilty.” Reading the accusation in the next day’s papers, a highly agitated Anna Hauptmann called Hicks, who suggested she get hold of Fisher. At a meeting with Anna and Hicks, Fisher rejected the idea that Leibowitz be immediately replaced by him. It might give the erroneous appearance that Leibowitz was being dismissed because he was about to get Richard to break and confess. No, let Leibowitz play out his hand his own way.23
That night Fisher heatedly confronted Leibowitz, with Harold Hoffman looking on. The Great Defender, as Leibowitz was known, held to his guns, insisting that the only way to get Hauptmann to confess was for Fisher to shift his position and accuse the condemned man of having taken part in the crime. Fisher consented with one proviso: If Hauptmann did not admit his guilt, Leibowitz would publicly announce that he had changed his mind and now believed Bruno was innocent. Leibowitz agreed. On February 19, he and Fisher met with Hauptmann. For three and a half hours Leibowitz cajoled, reasoned, provided vivid descriptions of electrocution, pleaded with the prisoner—and with Fisher’s tacit consent, bluntly accused Bruno of being implicated. Hauptmann maintained his innocence and did not crack. Fisher had won. Leibowitz reneged on his deal to proclaim Hauptmann’s innocence, telling waiting reporters he was withdrawing from the case and that Bruno was guilty.
In New York on Valentine’s Day, Paul Wendel was kidnapped by Harry Weiss, Martin Schlossman, and Murray Bleefeld, who had been sworn in by Governor Hoffman to assist the Burlington County detective, Ellis Parker, Sr. Wendel was driven to the Brooklyn home of Bleefeld’s father, told he was the captive of an Italian mob that was holding him accountable for activities that damaged them, taken to the basement, chained to a chair, and for six days systematically beaten, starved, and interrogated. One of those asking the questions was Ellis Parker, Jr., who remained in constant contact with his father by telephone. The calls were all charged to Ellis Sr.’s office in Burlington County. On February 20, Paul Wendel confessed to kidnapping Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Several revisions of his confession were made. In the early versions he insisted on signing his name as Doc. He was forced to write his own name, and the final confession was sent on to Ellis Parker, Sr. Wendel was patched up and made presentable. When his clothes came back from the dry cleaners, his captors neglected to remove the laundry tag.24
On February 24, he was bundled up and driven through the Holland Tunnel into New Jersey, his captors thereby violating the newly enacted federal statute against kidnapping, being called the Lindbergh law. Weiss intermittently prodded Wendel with a pistol, warning him to stick by his confession. At Mount Holly they shoved Wendel out of the car in front of Parker’s house. Not suspecting Parker of complicity, Paul banged on the Old Chief’s door. Once inside he became aware that Parker was more interested in his forced confession than in his insistence on innocence. Parker met with a fellow member of the New Jersey Crime Commission, William J. Ellis, who was also the commissioner of a mental institution at New Lisbon, New Jersey. Ellis not only accepted Wendel as a mental patient, but he had him housed in his own quarters. Wendel’s questioning at the institution was conducted by Ellis Sr. with assists from Anna Bading, Ellis Jr., and Gus Lockwood. An even more detailed confession was soon extracted. On February 28, Ellis Jr. informed Wendel’s son that his father had confessed to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. According the Bleefeld, the son said, “I always knew they’d get my father for this.”25
A leak was detected among the governor’s investigators and traced to Hicks, who by now had been cut off by Mrs. McLean and the American Astrology editor, Paul G. Clancy. Zoe Hobbs was also proving to be a liability.
Zoe Hobbs had written to the governor, “It is my opinion that the person who committed the crime is too well protected by persons, or a person, high up, who knows that the solving of the crime would reveal a skeleton in the closet of either the Morrow or Lindbergh families. The easiest way out is to kill Hauptmann and to forget it.”26 Zoe, in her quest to discover this skeleton, cut an eclectic path. She had begun her investigation of the families with the 1929 kidnapping threat against Constance Morrow, attempted to tie it to the 1932 disappearance of the Eaglet, and ended up somewhere between Indian symbols that members of the Morrow family might have seen when Dwight was ambassador to Mexico and the symbol on the ransom note, not to mention the symbols Jafsie referred to in a Massachusetts speech. By the beginning of February, Hobbs was pursing the nervous breakdown of Dwight Morrow, Jr., in January of 1928 and Elisabeth Morrow’s rumored engagement to Rev. Roddy in the spring of 1931. Zoe became progressively more scattered, if not delusional. In a March 27 letter to the governor, she said, “I am personally known to Adolph Hitler” and then went on to suggest that she ask Hitler to help Bruno Richard Hauptmann. The governor’s telegrammed reply, two days later, was “ABSOLUTELY SEND NO WIRE OVERSEAS!”27
The latest investigation news the governor’s people were providing journalists focused on Millard Whited and Amandus Hochmuth, two pivotal prosecution witnesses who had placed Hauptmann near Hopewell at the time of the kidnapping. Records showed that Hochmuth was nearly blind from cataracts—when later interviewed by Hoffman, he could not see an object two feet away on the desk. Public accusations that Whited had perjured himself at the Hauptmann trial and that the governor might present this and other findings before the court of pardons brought David Wilentz back prematurely from his Florida vacation—and reintroduced Charles Lindbergh into the fray. Wilentz contacted the exiled Lone Eagle, who confirmed long distance that Whited was telling the truth regarding his postkidnapping statements to the Lone Eagle.
On leap year day—four years since the fatal 1932 weekend before leap year day when the baby disappeared—the New York Herald Tribune headlined a state-police accusation that the governor’s men were trying to tempt certain troopers into admitting the case against Hauptmann had been framed. Hoffman responded with a scolding letter to the paper, in which he unbraided Schwarzkopf, proclaimed that the Lindbergh case had been bungled, hinted that the state police had quit on the job vis-à-vis his reinvestigation, challenged the current charges as to the bribed troopers, and demanded the names of his men accused of perpetrating the temptation.28
One bit of Lindbergh-Morrow data presented to the governor by Leo Mead, head of the Mead Detective Agency, was the rumor that the Morrow family suffered from epilepsy and that this may have contributed to the death of Elisabeth and the troubles of Dwight Jr. The report also speculated that when Anna and Charles Lindbergh learned the Eaglet had inherited epilepsy, “they arrived at the conclusion it was better to lose the child than to have it grow up and become an imbecile or a degenerate of some type.”29
On March 1, Dwight Morrow, Jr., a student at Harvard University, returned to his Cambridge, Massachusetts, living quarters and discovered that some of his papers were missing. He called the police and reported his suspicion that they had been stolen.
Schwarzkopf’s allies announced they would try to pass a bill in the state legislature that would prevent H. Norman from being ousted as superintendent of the state police when his five-year term expired in June. Within the week the governor promised his old friend the Democratic boss Frank Hague additional patronage jobs. The price for these desperately needed positions, according to Schwarzkopf’s supporters, was Schwarzkopf’s departure from the state-police organization he had founded.
Lloyd Fisher planned a new appeal.30 Jafsie Condon returned from Panama and announced no plans to visit New Jersey. Gaston B. Means, from Leavenworth prison, confessed that a mentally unbala
nced relative of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s hired him to steal and kill the baby, which he did with an unnamed female accomplice and two male accomplices who were now dead.
On March 20, a new execution date was set by Mark O. Kimberling: 8:00 P.M. March 31.
Robert Hicks reported on Nosovitsky’s activities in New Jersey but did not know his current whereabouts. Jafsie agreed to be interviewed by the governor at his Bronx home, then ensured that this would not occur by demanding that Wilentz be present and that the questions he was to be asked be submitted to him in writing beforehand. Hunterdon County’s prosecutor, Anthony Hauck, was outraged to learn that Hoffman and a U.S. agent had visited Hauptmann’s attic and studied the controversial floorboard.
Paul Wendel, who had signed a confession that the public had not seen, was being held at the mental facility, where his baby-sitters included Gus Lockwood, Ellis Parker, Jr., and Anna Bading. Wally Stroh was in place at the Tombs and ready to testify against Nosovitsky. He was in the care of Bill Pelletreau, who, like Stroh, would gain financially if Nosovitsky could be found and proved to be involved with the crime.
Gus Lockwood took a breather from guarding Paul Wendel, drove over to his favorite watering hole near the statehouse in Trenton, got drunk, and during a boastful lapse let it slip that Parker had the Lindbergh kidnapper. Whether the reporter from the Trenton Labor News actually overheard Lockwood or was told what Gus said is debatable. The next day the Labor News ran the story that Parker had a suspect. His secret out, the Old Chief straightaway mailed copies of Wendel’s confession to all eight members of the New Jersey Court of Pardons, which on the coming Monday would hear Hauptmann’s zero hour bid for clemency. The confession reached the jurors Friday, March 27. It was a compelling twenty-five-page typewritten statement, signed by Wendel, that meticulously detailed how he alone had entered the Lindbergh house, taken the baby, and disposed of him. There was no note or covering letter to tell the jurors who had sent them the confession. Since Wendel had confessed to Parker, it wasn’t all that hard to figure out.