by Susan Hertog
Congratulating each other like old war buddies, Lindbergh and Condon drove to Manhattan to meet Breckinridge and Irey for a debriefing at the Morrow apartment on East Sixty-sixth Street. Irey was less than pleased. If Condon had been surprised by Lindbergh’s conscience, Irey was taken aback by Condon’s lack of judgment. He claimed that Condon had made a crucial error in withholding the second bundle. That was the bundle that contained the gold notes, and when the country went off the gold standard in the following year, all gold coins and gold certificates would be recalled. The serial numbers on those gold notes might have accelerated the apprehension of the kidnappers. Since Irey thought the baby was dead, he regarded the ransom payment as a gambit in a game of chess. And they seemed to be losing the game.
Condon was crestfallen at the possibility that he had unwittingly obstructed justice. Irey retracted his accusation and blamed Schwarzkopf for relinquishing his authority.
Lindbergh waited the requisite six hours, putting the time to good use. Enlisting the help of President Hoover, Lindbergh requested that navy planes assist in his surveillance, and he arranged to have a Sikorsky amphibious aircraft waiting at the airport on the outskirts of Bridgeport, Connecticut. At two A.M., Lindbergh, Breckinridge, and Condon drove there and at dawn they flew east to the Connecticut shore, and then northeast up Long Island Sound toward Martha’s Vineyard. The three men were in high spirits and had high expectations as they flew up the coast. Later Breckinridge said that Condon had acted strangely, spouting Shakespeare and the Bible above the din of the airplane engine. But for the moment they were comrades on a grand mission.
Lindbergh wove between the islands, flying so low that they could scan the boats beneath them. None, however, matched the description of the Nelly. As the morning wore on, the excitement waned and Lindbergh’s desperation grew. How could he have trusted the kidnappers? Why would they risk exposure; why would they remain with the baby on the boat? He flew randomly, inspecting everything that sailed. By noon, he was exhausted. When they stopped for lunch, Lindbergh refused to eat. All day they continued to search the waters off southern Massachusetts. By nightfall, there was nothing to do but go home.
Lindbergh landed at Teterboro airport at six-thirty. Carrying a small suitcase and the baby’s favorite blanket, which he had taken with him, Lindbergh got into his car and drove to Hopewell. It was dark when he pulled into the driveway, but the house was blazing with light. Anne ran downstairs to greet him. His face said everything.
“I’m sorry,” he said, as they embraced. And then it was Anne’s turn to comfort Charles.71 Perhaps it was only a delay. Perhaps the navy planes had scared them off. But Anne knew it was time to prepare herself for the worst. Hope was becoming a delusion.
A month had passed since the baby’s abduction, and the press was at a loss. The Curtis rumors dominated the newspapers. Schwarzkopf denied everything, including speculations about Charles’s mysterious excursions. But the next day, the story broke. After scanning the waters of the Atlantic coastline from Massachusetts to Virginia without success, Charles was ready to talk. The press blasted the story over the open wire: Lindbergh had paid the ransom and had been double-crossed.72 Within two days, the U.S. Treasury Department authorized the distribution of a 57–page pamphlet listing the serial numbers of the 4750 bills that had been given to Cemetery John.
Condon later said that he had been shocked by Charles’s naïveté; he himself thought from the beginning that the kidnappers could not be trusted. How could Charles believe that the people who had kidnapped his baby would keep their word about returning the child?73
Yet Charles continued to hope. Perhaps Curtis’s story was true. Maybe the gang wanted a double payoff. It was not unusual for kidnappers to demand more than one ransom. Charles resolved to become his own investigator, ignoring, even defying, the advice of the police. Buoyed, once again, by Charles’s determination, Anne maintained the semblance of optimism. She had permitted Charles to construct their reality, and she could not bear to let it crumble—if only for his sake.
John Curtis was finally in the spotlight, and for the first time everyone listened to him. There was, he told the press, no doubt about it. “I made contact with the person I went to see regarding the kidnapped son of Colonel Lindbergh and was informed that the child is well.”74
The let-down after the week of high tension gave Charles a chance to rest. Anne closeted herself in her room with her mother; Charles did target practice with the state troopers in his woods. Even the public was beginning to calm down. Letters fell off to about a hundred a day, and fewer people called. The demands for money, however, were constant. Anne was astonished how many people promised the safe return of the child for payment without assurance or credentials of any kind.75
Anne blamed the press. She wrote to her mother-in-law on April 10 that the baby would be back if it had not been for the incessant publicity. The tabloids, she noted, were unconscionable. But the tone of her letters was changing. For the first time, she raised the possibility that the baby was dead. Although the police still offered her consolation, and Charles continued to encourage her, she was beginning to lose hope.76
While the newspapers rode the wave of the latest gossip, the magazines sought distance and meaning. Most blamed the kidnapping and the double-cross on a laissez-faire government that did not rein in American “individualism.” It was the dark side of the courageous individualism that had made Lindbergh a hero: too much power, too little government. Mirroring public sentiment, the press could not accept that all hope was lost. The Boston Herald saw the double-cross as a reason for optimism: “If contact has been established with the kidnapper, it should not be impossible to re-establish it.”77
Condon agreed. He would do his best to set things right. He put another ad in the Bronx Home News: “Please, better direction.” As usual, Breckinridge arrived every evening between six and ten o’clock, hoping for a phone call or a message. Meanwhile, the banks were given the serial numbers of the bills.
Schwarzkopf tried to press the newspapers into silence, but they would not be governed. Condon was prime material; he was the closest reporters could get to the Lindbergh case, and they would not let him go. Condon, caught in the Lindbergh glitter, was treated with much the same mixture of deference and abuse. He was praised for his courage and accused of complicity. Most of all, he was hounded, day and night, by the public and the press.
Condon’s standing with the police also changed. Now, even he was a suspect, no different from the servants who worked at the Lindbergh home. Schwarzkopf realized that he could not alienate Condon, the only one who had seen Cemetery John. So he treated him gently, even as he began a slow, steady, and thorough interrogation. Condon was cooperative but subtly antagonistic, ashamed, and even angry that he who had jeopardized his life was being treated like a criminal.78
Schwarzkopf believed there was more to be learned from the servants as well. The questions he had asked the very first day were still not fully answered. Violet Sharpe had lost her virtue and her reputation; she had nearly given up thoughts of marrying Banks. But was she desperate enough to barter the spoils of Charlie’s abduction for the penniless future of a domestic servant? Had Betty Gow, in her loneliness and desire to marry, been duped by an ingratiating thug? And why had she made the baby a new shirt? Did she know he was going to be exposed to the cold night air? Had Henry Ellerson, a nomad with a thirst for booze, finally succumbed to his wild streak? Had Banks, demoralized by poverty and liquor, sold his honor for a “gentleman’s cut?” And why was Marguerite Jantzen Junge, the American with a taste for money, trusted as a friend of the Morrows? Was she the docile woman she appeared to be? A calculating conspirator with Red Johnson? The scheming wife of a penniless German refugee? The liaison between the two worlds, the servants and the hitmen?
Why, on an ordinary Tuesday night, in the wake of a rainstorm, did the servants exchange a flurry of phone calls to confirm their scheduled meetings and dates? Was Red Johnson
in Englewood when he called Betty? Did he go for a ride with the Junges as they had planned? Violet, too, had a date on Tuesday night—who was she with and where did they go? Had the Whateleys conspired with Ellerson, Red, Violet, and the Junges, providing a cover for their tracks?
Now that Lindbergh’s attempts had failed, Schwarzkopf finally took control. Violet Sharpe was first on his list. On April 13, he sent Inspector Harry Walsh, a colleague and friend, to interview her at the Morrows’ home. Violet’s responses, unclear and contradictory, raised more questions than they answered.
The investigation, Anne was certain, had come to a halt. Every clue seemed to lead them nowhere.79
But on April 12, nine days after the ransom was paid, the first bill surfaced. In a bakery in Greenwich, Connecticut, “a smartly-dressed middle-aged woman” used it to pay for her purchases. When she saw that the shopkeeper recognized the bill, she snatched it back and walked out to her green chauffeur-driven sedan.80 No one thought to record the license number.
By now, Condon’s name was all over the newspapers. Reporters rang his doorbell, tapped on his window, and trampled over his frontyard. Condon studiously tried to finesse the truth, hoping not to alienate the kidnappers, to protect himself, and to stay in the game. Speaking from his front porch, he said:
I had contacts with the kidnappers and have direct contacts with them still. I have never identified them nor said a word against them. I value my life as they value theirs, and I know my life would not be worth anything if I said anything against them. I would be the happiest man in the world if I could place the baby’s arms around his mother’s neck.81
The press continued to hound him, camping at his door and badgering him for more information. Lindbergh was worried, communication was impossible. Blaming the kidnappers’ silence on the press, Anne and Charles issued a statement on April 15:
It is still of the utmost importance for us and our representatives to move about without being questioned and followed, and we are again requesting the complete cooperation of the press to that end.82
Then another bill surfaced. In New York, David Isaacs, a retired clothing merchant, found that a twenty-dollar bill given to him was marked, and he turned it over to a Secret Service agent. He received it on April 6 from the East River Saving Bank, not long after the ransom was paid. Apparently the kidnappers had tried to dispose of some of the money before the banks were alerted.83 And soon a pattern began to emerge: the notes were passing north and south along the East Side.
In a letter to Evangeline on April 18, Anne expressed her anger at the many rumors and unsubstantiated claims.84 As if in response, Schwarzkopf issued an explanatory statement, and then shut down communication with the press. But, public interest gained new momentum. A constant stream of cars, thousands of them, passed along the road leading to the Lindbergh estate.85 The only good news, Anne wrote, was her doctor’s assurance that her pregnancy was going well.
When Elisabeth came to Hopewell the following weekend, Anne managed to maintain an air of quiet stoicism. But, in truth, she was exhausted and didn’t know how much longer she could keep up her spirits.86 Yet Elisabeth wrote to Connie Chilton, on April 22, that they had spent a lovely day exploring the woods, which were beginning to burst with bloom. Anne was magnificent, she wrote, praising her strength and fortitude. Never once did she appear to break down. And yet, Elisabeth observed that Anne had withdrawn from the horror of the event, blocking out the chaos around her. The newspapers, the reporters, and the police meant nothing to Anne. What did they have to do with Charlie?87
Betty Morrow, however, was terrified. She seemed to have absorbed all the tension and fear. She wondered how much Anne could endure before endangering herself or her pregnancy. Like Betty’s saintlike mother, who had tended her twin sister, she spent all her time making sure that Anne was sleeping and eating well.
Life at Hopewell adopted a predictable pattern. Police activity, which was distant from the Lindberghs’ living quarters, grew less as expectations diminished. Even Condon was beginning to doubt that the baby would be found alive.
On April 23, fifty-two days after the kidnapping and three weeks after the payment of the ransom, Condon stopped running his ad in the Bronx Home News. The press concluded that the Lindbergh baby hunt was “futile;” Charles thought otherwise. Unknown to the press, Charles had agreed to accompany John Curtis on a search along the Virginia coast for a ship called the Mary B. Moss, now said to be the one housing his baby.
With a detailed description of the kidnappers as well as an explanation for their motives and movement, Curtis had finally convinced Lindbergh that his story was true. Schwarzkopf, who thought Curtis’s story to be a hoax, acknowledged that he had produced nothing, so once again he permitted Charles to have his way. But after a week at sea in stormy waters off the Virginia coast, Lindbergh and Curtis had had no sight of the Mary B. Moss. Lindbergh, exhausted, irritable, and furious at the press, somehow continued to believe that Curtis held out the only hope. By the first week in May, the press, having got word of Lindbergh’s whereabouts, plastered the coastline with ships. Curtis said it was time to move to a sturdier boat. The gang was probably moving to rougher waters up north for the rendezvous. Lindbergh was elated. This was surely the last stop. The baby, Curtis told him, was in the waters near Cape May, off the coast of New Jersey.
After weeks of waiting for Charles to return, Anne was now convinced that Curtis was a liar. No one believed his story—no one but Charles.88 Anne and the police tried to dissuade him, but Charles insisted on sailing Curtis’s yacht, the Cachelot.
He set sail for Cape May on May 9. For three days he and Curtis sailed aimlessly in search of the Mary B. while Curtis spun stories of gang dissension and fragmentation. Though Lindbergh continued to take Curtis’s word, Anne had had enough. Tired of the talk and deception, she turned inward, trying to find consolation in her own thoughts and memories. After three months of silence, Anne began to write in her diary. On May 11, 1932, she wrote that the kidnapping had an “eternal quality.” She was condemned to see her boy “lifted out of his crib forever and ever, like Dante’s hell.”89
Anne didn’t want to possess the baby; she wanted only to see him, to comfort him, to touch his beauty. She didn’t want what she couldn’t have; she wanted only that life would make sense.
Schwarzkopf tried to encourage her, and Anne was grateful, but she knew that he could not sway Charles. Commander, interrogator, and now family friend, Schwarzkopf was as frustrated as she. He had tried to keep in touch with Lindbergh on the yacht, but the storms at sea had prevented communication. On May 12, however, there was a message that demanded Lindbergh’s immediate attention.
Once again defeated by storms, Curtis and Lindbergh had dropped anchor along the New Jersey coast. Curtis went ashore, telling Lindbergh he needed to talk to the kidnappers through his gang contacts. Lindbergh, helpless, did some menial chores on the ship to keep himself busy. On reaching shore, Curtis received the coded message from Schwarzkopf and, unable to decipher its meaning, called police headquarters in New York. Immediately, two detectives set out for Cape May.
While the news was hitting the wires and the evening papers, Schwarzkopf drove to the Lindbergh estate, where he spoke briefly with Mrs. Morrow. Together they walked up the center stairs to Anne, sitting in her bedroom and reading in the light of a dreary afternoon. Schwarzkopf told her that the baby’s decomposed body had been found an hour earlier, buried beneath dirt and leaves in the woodlands of Melrose, no more than five miles southeast of the Lindbergh home.
Rocking her daughter in her arms, Betty said the words as gently as she could: “Anne, the baby is with Daddy.”90
13
Ascent
Anne and Charles, after the kidnapping, fall 1932. (Sygma)
Plunge deep
Into the sky
O wing
Of the Soul.
Reach
Past the last pinnacle
of speech
> Into the vast
Inarticulate face
of Silence.
—ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH1
MAY 12, 1932, HOPEWELL, NEW JERSEY
Standing on the deck of Curtis’s Cachelot as it sailed north toward Cape May, defying all that seemed logical, Charles had never been more certain he would bring the baby home to Anne. Each day he had cabled her from the ship, buoying her hope, raising her expectations. And Anne had so much wanted to believe that this time Curtis’s story would be true. Even when she could no longer bear it, even when Curtis seemed to her just another melting “face,” she took hope because Charles believed him. Now that she knew the baby was dead, she had to summon enough strength for both of them. She had to think clearly and stay in control.
Within half an hour of learning of her baby’s death, Anne wrote once again to her mother-in-law. Her cool words and measured phrases turned the death of her blue-eyed lamb with the golden curls she loved to touch into an event she had to process and document. He was no longer “Charlie,” but merely a body identified by its teeth and hair, dressed in a nightsuit and killed in an instant2 by a savage stranger indifferent to her pain.
Anne blamed the baby’s death on the press, as if it had conspired with the kidnappers. But on the discovery of the baby’s body, the reporters turned their rancor, only days before directed toward the Lindberghs, toward the perpetrators of the crime. The media saw the kidnapping as a desecration of America, a crime against the hero and his state. The editors of the New York Times wrote that those who committed this “most merciless, perfidious, and despicable of deeds” against “the ‘Little Friend of all the World’” were less than human, not even welcomed “by fallen angels in hell.” Their crime, wrote the Times, was more hideous than Pharaoh’s, more fiendish than Herod’s, because, while theirs were intended to defend of the state, the killing of the Lindbergh baby was a gratuitous act.3