by Noel Behn
March 18 was the day after Elisabeth’s twenty-eighth birthday, and in light of the tragedy that had just befallen the family, Anne’s letter is remarkably contained and often trivial. She describes little flowers in the room and their mother hanging a hand mirror on the wall. Elisabeth is told that life at the house has become regular once more. As for the missing child, Anne admits to not realizing anything emotional except when some small annoyance sets her off. She says it is possible to live there and think nothing about the baby. She wonders if she sounds crass and indifferent but admits she would do anything to maintain her self-control because it is necessary—something like sitting in church and fighting back the memories of her father on those Sundays of yore, not giving in to the tears.
Was Anne talking about a child who was missing or one who had already passed away? And was she writing to a sister who was implicated in the death or one who knew nothing of it? Nowhere in the text does Anne speculate on getting the baby back from his abductors or discuss the efforts to do so. She mentions that Lindbergh and Breckinridge are working with great zeal and with infinite patience, caution, and cheerfulness, but she fails to say what they are working at. Recovering a kidnapped child? Or pretending that the expired boy has been kidnapped?
Anne writes on, admitting that it did not feel like Elisabeth’s birthday the previous day. She speaks eloquently of her mood shifts, of there being no sense of continuity, of their minds being too weak to grasp joy or sorrow. She returns again to the great sorrow caused by their father’s death. Then she apologizes for the length of the letter, lets Elisabeth know she is relieved to have written it, and hopes that her sister doesn’t mind.27
If Harold Hoffman had ever seen or heard of this letter, which he hadn’t, he might have interpreted the text as saying that the child had already died, something that supposedly would not be discovered for another eight weeks. Holding to the supposition that Elisabeth was connected to the baby’s demise and that Lindbergh had created the kidnapping ruse to save her from incarceration and shame, then Anne’s letter could also be construed as an attempt to make her older sister feel that she was still part of the family circle.
There is no letter to Elisabeth regarding the discovery of a child’s body in the woods on May 12, 1932, but Anne wrote to their mother about it, and again she appears remarkably unruffled in recounting the facts. Once more the wording could be interpreted as referring to a child who had been known to be dead prior to his reported disappearance.
In the first section of the June 10, 1932, letter to Elisabeth, who is now abroad, Anne writes chitchat. In the second section of the same letter, she reports that Violet Sharpe has just killed herself and refers to the misery and sorrow the crime has evoked. She questions whether the consequences will ever end.28 Her next day’s diary entry talks about how they have once more found themselves smeared all over the paper’s front pages (because of Violet Sharpe’s suicide). She goes on to say that the avalanche of the crime is burying the memory of her dead son.29
Anne’s last mention of her older sister in Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead is a diary entry for December 28, 1932. She recounts Elisabeth Reeve Morrow’s marriage that day to Aubrey Neil Morgan of Wales, how there were rose petals, and how Elisabeth, in a brown suit, raised her hands and waved as she ran through the crowd.30
Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead is divided into two sections, each with its own introduction. The first is “Hour of Gold,” the 1929–32 golden years, during which she and Charles Lindbergh were married, had a child, and built a dream estate near Hopewell. “Hour of Lead” deals with the tragic year of 1932. In its introduction, most likely written in 1972, Anne addresses the subject of her behavior back in March of 1932, forty years earlier—behavior Laura Vitray and Charles Williamson had witnessed in part and pondered. Anne wonders how she could have written those letters she only recently recovered, correspondence she hasn’t seen since the day it was composed.
Why even bother to publish the letters and diary extracts regarding the event? She presents her reasons, some of which deal with the grief and pain at losing a child—but none that specifically says, or strongly suggests, when and how that child was killed and by whom.31 Some forty years after the fact, could it be conceivable that Anne has gone back to keep the fib intact, to make sure the record supports her husband’s scenario and there are no slipups that could point to her sister? Harry Green thought yes.32 The author tends to agree.
29
Endgame
There is no single, irrefutable item of evidence that links Elisabeth Morrow to the death of her nephew, Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Even the affidavits Harry Green swore to have had in his possession were at best hearsay and, if true, related to an incident to which there were no witnesses other than Elisabeth herself. In the sixty years since her death, new channels of information have provided access to previously unavailable documents. In addition, this author has been the recipient of unique data, and has conducted, with researchers, an exhaustive search of local New Jersey newspapers. As I examined the material, old and new, a pattern emerged, an overview in which the accusation regarding Miss Morrow gained a curious credulity—and provided tentative answers to many previously unanswerable questions.
Radio had brought Harry Green and Harold Hoffman together. Green, a New Jersey attorney with a night-school law diploma, was a one-fourth owner of a local radio station whose beam had been blocking the signal of a far more powerful New York City transmitter. The conflicting parties agreed to abide by the decision of an arbitrator, in this instance Harold Hoffman, who was then a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Green and the congressman were to remain lifelong friends. When Hoffman moved on to the New Jersey Department of Motor Vehicles and introduced a method of vehicle registration intended to cut down on the epidemic of auto thefts, Green was appointed to supervise the operation. Though he had campaigned rigorously for Hoffman’s election in 1934, Green had no official position in the governor’s administration. Monitoring the Hauptmann trial was one of the first assignments given him by the state’s newly installed chief executive. “Governor Hoffman asked me to do it and I did,” Green stated. “I was there every day. I reported back to him every few days. He was interested, but he was involved with his tax program. He was trying to save the legislation whatever it took when he heard about Elisabeth.”1
Harry Green believed that he was one of the few Harold Hoffman associates who knew the allegations regarding Elisabeth Morrow Morgan—allegations made in mid- or late August of 1935.
According to him, the child’s death had indeed occurred at the Lindbergh estate. “He was lying on the ground with his head bashed open, and she [Elisabeth] was upstairs ranting. After Hauptmann was convicted is when the chauffeur came to see Governor Hoffman with the information. He was the first to say what happened. There were more.”
Green was not clear as to the name, but the chauffeur seems to have been Henry Ellerson of the Morrow household staff, who claimed that other servants at the Englewood estate knew the truth about the child’s demise. Had anyone witnessed Elisabeth kill the child? Green said no but pointed out that there was nobody at the house except the two of them. Had the child’s head been “bashed in” inside or outside the house? Harry Green couldn’t say. Had the child been thrown out the window or carried out to the spot where he was found? Green didn’t know. Had the bashing in resulted from the fall from the window or from an instrument, and if it was due to an instrument, was the instrument recovered? Harry Green had no answers, nor could he say what constituted Elisabeth’s ranting or just how out of control she was.
The chauffeur had not only come to Governor Hoffman with the tale, but he had also signed an affidavit detailing the information. It was an act of conscience on the chauffeur’s part, in Green’s opinion. Elisabeth was already dead, and Hauptmann was appealing his sentence. The chauffeur didn’t want to see Hauptmann die for a crime of which he was innocent.
Had Green seen this affidavit?
Could Green produce these affidavits?
No. “I had them in my storeroom, and there was a flood,” he explained. “The janitor, without consulting me, just dumped them. Threw them out on the dump because all the papers were ruined.”
Had Ellis Parker seen the affidavits?
Green wouldn’t say, but he doubted if many people had. “The governor needed absolute proof before mentioning her. What he found out made him sure she was the answer. I believe it, too. But it took a while before he began looking. Maybe he should have acted faster.
“When you put it all together, you can see Lindbergh’s thinking. It wasn’t mean. He did it all to save her.”
The earliest conspiracy scenario evolved by Harry Green and Harold Hoffman had the crime begin on Saturday, February 27, 1932, and proceeded somewhat as follows:
The Whateleys, Elisabeth, and the baby had been at Sorrel Hill. Disobeying the order never to leave Elisabeth alone with the Eaglet, the Whateleys drove in to Hopewell to do some quick shopping. The Whateleys returned from Hopewell to the Lindbergh estate and found the baby on the ground, dead from a head injury. Elisabeth was out of control. No one else was at the house. Lindbergh was contacted and told by Ollie Whateley what had occurred. Whether Anne knew at this juncture is moot. Lindbergh went to the estate and was joined by Henry Breckinridge. The publicity-phobic pair contemplated what to do. Notifying the police was synonymous with calling the media. Word that the child had died, even of natural causes, would be page-one news around the world. Revealing that he had been killed by his aunt guaranteed headlines and a scandal. It would be the end of Elisabeth. Even if she avoided criminal charges and received medical treatment at a private facility, the fragile beauty would be stigmatized for the rest of her life. So would the Morrow and Lindbergh families. Was there a way to avoid this? A way of distancing her from the death?
The child’s injuries were too specific and severe for them to say that the damage had been incurred accidentally, by his falling out of his crib or from the nursery window. Could they claim an intruder had entered the nursery and killed him? For what motive? Hatred of Lindbergh? Other grievances? Fabricating an alibi along these lines would require cooperation from the Whateleys. Could they be counted on? Trusted? What of Elisabeth’s whereabouts that fateful Saturday?
But was it even necessary to mention Elisabeth to the authorities? Suppose they behaved as if she had never been there? What of the Morrow employees who knew she had gone to the Lindbergh estate that Saturday morning? The chauffeur who had driven her, the household maids, others? What of the school employees, if any, who were aware of her trip? How many actually had known she was there?
Lindbergh and Breckinridge—the team that had astutely hoodwinked the media on numerous occasions, including Charles’s marriage to Anne—had no practical knowledge of crime. To formulate one would require expert advice, such as that possessed by William J. Donovan, who had been assistant attorney general of the United States. Was this Donovan’s connection with the case, to act as adviser? Or had they conferred with someone else? Anyone with Donovan’s knowledge could have described the type of police interrogation the staff and family members would have to endure as the result of a murder investigation, even for accidental homicide.
Another category of bogus crime had come under discussion, one with advantages for the predicament at hand: kidnapping. To claim the child had been kidnapped meant that no corpse need be produced at the present time. It also afforded a degree of latitude in their saying when the baby disappeared, which not only gave the planners more time to prepare their conspiracy but took Elisabeth off the spot. They could now claim that the child had been stolen well after Elisabeth left the estate—with no staff members other than the Whateleys knowing this wasn’t so. Of equal importance, the police and press would concentrate on tracking down the kidnapper, and this might greatly minimize the investigatory attention paid to the family and, particularly, to Elisabeth.
The delay in reporting the child’s demise was not by itself a crime. To delay for the purpose of falsifying the facts concerning the death constitutes, at the very least, a conspiracy to obstruct justice. Sometime over the weekend of February 27, the decision was reached to conspire and say the Eaglet had been kidnapped.
Harry Green and the governor had no idea when and by whom Elisabeth was taken from the Lindbergh estate that weekend. Green had no idea what became of the child’s body. Neither did the governor, who paid a degree of attention to Ellis Parker’s insistence that the baby in the woods was not the Eaglet. When Anne Lindbergh was told also remains a mystery.
Preparations to stage the bogus kidnapping covered at least two days. Lindbergh, the compulsive and exquisite planner, saw to almost every detail. Someone other than Breckinridge had filled him in on the fine points of ransom-kidnapping. A ransom note was written, and the Whateleys rehearsed their alibis. The plan required one more participant, and she reached the estate around noon, March 1: Betty Gow. She, too, was rehearsed. The nursery was wiped clean of incriminating fingerprints. The baby’s crib was arranged with the blankets pinned in place and an indentation made on the pillow. A two-section ladder was positioned under the nursery window, then taken some seventy-five feet away and left on the ground near its third section. Untraceable footprints were carefully made in the mud. At 10:20 P.M. Ollie Whateley picked up the phone and asked the operator to put him through to the police. When Constable Williamson answered, Ollie calmly said, “Colonel Lindbergh’s son has been stolen. Will you please come at once.”
Lindbergh and Breckinridge managed to take charge of the investigation, which allowed them to further isolate Elisabeth and the family from the tragedy. This control was partially achieved because of Schwarzkopf. His adulation of Lindbergh and natural xenophobia resulted in all law-enforcement agencies other than the troopers and certain local police investigators being kept out of the initial inquiry. Because of Schwarzkopf’s acquiescence, Lindbergh managed to prevent his wife and members of the household staff from being interviewed in the immediate wake of the so-called crime. Only when one trooper overtly disobeyed his orders and chatted up Betty Gow did Red Johnsen become a suspect and the object of headlines. Despite the seemingly severe news controls invoked by the troopers, Henry Breckinridge saw to it that the crime stayed in the headlines as long as possible.
Green and Hoffman didn’t speculate about whether Lindbergh and Breckinridge were sophisticated enough in matters of crime to have known that the families of kidnapping victims were a prime target for extortionists. But as the author has shown, William J. Donovan may have been aware of this. So may have the young lawyer in Donovan’s office with underworld connections, Robert Thayer. It was Thayer who brought Morris Rosner to Lindbergh one day after the child was reported missing. That same night it was Rosner who took the original ransom note, or a copy, to New York City, a major kidnapping and extortion center, and displayed it to underworld characters proficient in the art of the snatch, as well as forgeries on the pretext that they might recognize who the author was. One of the city’s most publicized forgers was also a celebrated extortionist, J. J. Nosovitsky, a man with whom Donovan once had truck.
Harold Hoffman, in his series of articles for Liberty magazine published during the early months of 1938, mentions Elisabeth, but only in passing and not as a suspect. The name of Jacob Nosovitsky does not appear, nor is reference made to the mysterious Russian Pole whose discovery Harold Hoffman had depicted as holding “dramatic possibilities which may overshadow anything that has thus far occurred in the case.”2 At the same time the ex-governor did not shut the door on either Elisabeth’s or Nosovitsky’s involvement with the case. “I do have a theory,” he wrote in the January 29, 1938, issue of Liberty, “but it is only a theory, unsupported by convincing evidence and made up of irregular little pieces of
fact, testimony and conjecture fitted into sort of an incomplete mental jigsaw puzzle. I would not dare to display that incomplete picture to the public.”3
Signs that the governor had been pursuing a secret suspect, or suspects, can be found in his investigatory files at the tiny East Brunswick Museum in East Brunswick, New Jersey, which has been collecting the governor’s artifacts and personal papers. Going through both the state police and the East Brunswick collections, the author was left with a distinct impression that the governor had been pursuing objectives not found in the reports—which lent credence to Harry Green’s subsequent assertion that Harold Hoffman had kept Elisabeth-related intelligence out of the general file.
The cornerstone of the conspirators’ plot was time and magic: The world had been tricked into believing that the child had disappeared on Tuesday, March 1, rather than dying on Saturday, February 27, back in 1932.
So where were the major players of the conspiracy that Saturday, Sunday, and Monday?
According to the sworn affidavits eventually given the police by the Lindberghs and their household staff in the wake of the child’s disappearance, Henry and Aida Breckinridge had come from New York to spend the weekend at Sorrel Hill with Anne, Charles, and the baby. The Whateleys were there, of course, but Betty Gow, as usual, had the weekend off. A Morrow maid by the name of Miss Root had escorted the baby from Mrs. Morrow’s estate in Englewood and remained at Sorrel Hill until Sunday evening, when the Lindberghs drove her and the Breckinridges to the railroad station at nearby Princeton Junction for their respective journeys home.4