“The prisoner,” the UPI wire service reported, “was a shaken and hesitant figure when he mounted the platform. . . . He was nervous and at times slightly uncertain.”
Condon faced New York Police Inspector John J. Lyons and asked if he could proceed with the lineup “by elimination?”
The witness walked straight up to Hauptmann and set him aside with three detectives who were taking part in the lineup. He lined up the four men and asked each of them to say and spell their names. Condon bowed his head and listened intently.
Next he had each man read aloud the following lines, which “Cemetery John” had said in person to him before delivering the ransom: “I always keep my word. If the baby is returned in good health, I will do everything to help you.”
The UPI wire service indicated that Hauptmann was “nervous, inclined to tremble.”
After having Hauptmann and only Hauptmann read one more statement aloud, Condon asked all four men, “Did you see me before?” Each answered, “No.”
The UPI reported, “Condon came as close to Hauptmann as he could. Loudly, directly into his face, he repeated the question, emphasizing ‘you.’ ‘No, I never saw you before,’ Hauptmann answered stolidly.”
Then, in an unusual twist, Condon asked for and was granted permission to talk to Hauptmann alone. They talked in the corner for a few minutes before Condon turned away without comment. The NYPD would report that he had made a “partial identification” of Hauptmann.
If Condon was hesitant to conclusively identify Hauptmann, the taxi driver whom the kidnapper had paid one dollar back in March 1932 to deliver one of the ransom notes to Condon’s home was not. “That’s the man,” John Perrone told detectives. “That’s the guy who gave me a dollar to take a note to Dr. Jafsie.”
Hauptmann, seemingly incredulous, denied ever having seen Perrone before.
“You’re the man and there’s no doubt about it,” the driver replied to Hauptmann.
The suspect was arraigned and held without bail on a charge of “unlawfully receiving the Lindbergh case ransom money,” the UPI reported.
“There is no doubt in my mind about this man,” NYPD Assistant Chief John J. O’Sullivan told reporters after questioning Hauptmann. “We have a perfect extortion case. The other case, far more serious [the kidnapping and murder] is developing rapidly.”
Twenty-four hours later, Arthur Koehler woke up early, eager to hear the latest news. It was a cloudy day in Madison, with a light breeze, high humidity, and highs reaching the mid-fifties. He opened his paper and read about how the warden from the Ohio state penitentiary had released a letter received in early 1932 and allegedly signed by Hauptmann to an inmate that stated, “Will kidnap Lindbergh’s baby. Hope for me.” A New York detective had been sent to Germany to investigate possible angles there, including Hauptmann’s story to the police that he had received the money from his friend Isidor Fisch before Fisch went back to Germany. Fisch had recently died, making the story unprovable, but the authorities were hoping to learn something in Hauptmann’s native land.
At the bottom of the page one article, Koehler’s attention was piqued at the following line, “Kidnap ladder traced to lumber yard where Hauptmann worked in 1931–32.” A page later and buried under another eighteen paragraphs was more on the earlier assertion.
“A new link in the chain of circumstantial evidence, authorities disclosed was the tracing of Hauptmann’s past to the lumber yard of the National [Lumber and] Millwork Corp. in the Bronx,” the paper read. “The lumber used in the kidnaper’s ladder came from this yard. Hauptmann worked in the yard on odd jobs only a few months before the crime.”
Koehler exhaled for the first time in what seemed to be minutes. He hadn’t realized the impact of his work until now. His research and scientific detective work had led authorities to that lumber yard. He had no doubt that Rails 12 and 13 came from that facility. If only National Lumber and Millwork had kept receipts of whom it had sold lumber to, Koehler could have helped solve the case months earlier.
He had been told back in December in a meeting with Detective Bornmann and Lieutenant Keaten that “National Lumber and Millwork Company at 3541 White Plains Avenue had been investigated and nothing suspicious was found concerning the owners and employees.” Apparently they had not looked into past employees.
Koehler turned to page three and discovered a bank of ten photographs in a section called, “Camera Catches Kidnaping Suspect’s Tumble Into Police Net.” There were images of a young Hauptmann in a German army uniform and a close-up shot of him at the courthouse for his arraignment. There were pictures of his wife, Anna, and their ten-month-old son, Manfred. Other images included a smiling Walter Lyle, the gas station attendant who’d flagged the ten-dollar gold note Hauptmann passed that had led to his arrest, and the hundreds of people crowded outside the police station where he was being held.
However, the pictures that drew Koehler’s attention were at the top. The first, on the left, showed Hauptmann’s home in the Bronx. The second, next to it, showed his garage with officers inside of it. But it was all the wood in that second image that really piqued Koehler’s curiosity.
He immediately got into his Studebaker, drove into work, and crafted a telegram, which he sent by Western Union to Captain Lamb in New Jersey: “Newspaper pictures show garage with scraps of wood and wood brackets on wall and vise stop Vise possibly used for clamping rails together when sawing and may have left mark Suggest guard everything. Arthur Koehler.”
He was convinced there were clues there. If only they would let him continue his work. However, the New Jersey State Police, the New York City Police Department, and the Bureau of Investigation were focused on other areas of the investigation: finding more of the ransom money, discovering the device that had made the distinctive marks on each of the ransom letters, and uncovering any connection between Hauptmann and his alibi, Isidor Fisch.
The three agencies swarmed over Hauptmann’s home to find evidence. After the initial find of ransom money on September 20, three officers from New Jersey and four NYPD detectives went back to 1279 East 222nd Street to turn the place upside down looking for clues.
Sergeant Andrew Zapolsky, one of the New Jersey officers, wrote in his report that he was specifically tasked to find “an instrument which may have [been] used in making the symbols on the Lindbergh Ransom notes.” He was also told to search the attic and “pick up anything that we thought was the property of Isidor Fisch and also to be on the lookout for the instrument stated above.”
Access to the attic inside Hauptmann’s apartment was available only to those of a particular girth. One got in through a narrow closet space about eight feet tall and twenty-two and a half inches wide, and by climbing up four shelves that served as steps, about eighteen inches apart. Getting into the attic actually required an individual to use his hands to pull himself through the small opening.
Newspaper photos of Hauptmann’s garage, showing wood scraps everywhere, inspired Koehler to send a telegram to his New Jersey State Police sources encouraging them to “guard everything.” (Courtesy: Dr. Regis Miller/Forest Products Laboratory)
Zapolsky was the first detective to look inside the attic. He removed an empty suitcase, two pieces of bent pipe, a ruler, a plane blade, and a canvas mason’s bag. The evidence was taken to the Bronx County Court House and placed in a closet in the district attorney’s office.
The next day, Sunday, September 23, Koehler resorted to getting his information once again from his local paper, still not having heard anything from Lamb or Schwarzkopf. The grand jury was set to meet on Monday to indict Hauptmann on the extortion charges. Koehler also read about Hauptmann’s alleged 1932 confession letter to the Ohio prisoner and speculation from Germany that Fisch had not died from natural causes in Germany but had been “murdered, neighbors whispered.”
A noteworthy handwriting expert, Albert S. Osborn, wh
om Koehler coincidentally had met more than a decade earlier when he too was an expert witness in the Magnuson murder trial, concluded “positively” that Hauptmann’s writing matched that in the ransom notes. Nothing more was mentioned in the news about the ladder or the National Lumber and Millwork Company.
Koehler had finished reading the paper when his phone rang. It was his boss, Carlisle Winslow, who said he was planning on releasing the lab’s involvement in the case and that a newspaper photographer would be taking pictures of Koehler in his lab first thing on Monday morning for a story in that day’s Wisconsin State Journal. Winslow wanted to be reminded of the details of the investigation for the statement he would provide to the reporter.
The secrecy Koehler had sworn to for the last year and a half was about to be blown up.
The next morning, dressed in his traditional dark suit, dark tie, and white shirt and wearing a stoic face, Koehler posed with a magnifying glass in one hand and the other holding one of the rails used in the kidnap ladder. The page-one headline would read, “Madison Lab Scientist Traces Lindy Kidnap Ladder to Hauptmann’s Bronx Lumberyard.” A subhead stated, “Arthur Koehler Adds Link to Chain About Suspect After Long Probe at Forest Products Building.”
“Lumber in the ladder used by the kidnaper of the Lindbergh baby was traced by the U.S. forest products laboratory here to a Bronx lumberyard where Bruno Hauptmann was employed, Director C. P. Winslow announced today,” the story began.
“Early in the case, Col. H. Norman Schwarzkopf, superintendent of the New Jersey police, requested the assistance of the Forest Products laboratory in developing any clues from the wood in the ladder used in the kidnaping of the Lindbergh baby,” Winslow stated. “The laboratory at once assigned Mr. Koehler, its leading wood technologist, to work on the case in cooperation with the New Jersey state police.
“Mr. Koehler’s intensive technical examination of the wood in the ladder disclosed not only the species of wood but also certain very distinctive and peculiar markings of the wood. With his conclusions as to the cause of these markings as a basis, and working in close cooperation with Col. Schwarzkopf’s organization, more than 1,000 lumber mills from New Jersey to Alabama were canvassed and lumber samples from many of the them were intensively examined by him at the Forest Products laboratory.
“From this study, Mr. Koehler and representatives of the New Jersey state police traced to destination and intensively examined many lumber shipments of the species and dimensions used in the ladder until lumber with the identical distinctive markings occurring in the ladder was found at the retail yard of the National Lumber and Millwork co. in the Bronx.
“This is the company where it is now reported that Bruno Hauptmann was sporadically employed shortly before and after the kidnaping,” Winslow explained.
Still no word came from New Jersey, but Lamb had read Koehler’s note and dispatched the scientist’s partner throughout the investigation, Detective Lewis Bornmann, to go to Hauptmann’s home for the first time on September 25. Bornmann had been assigned after the arrest to guard duty over the prisoner and to canvass the area around the Lindbergh estate in Hopewell to see if anyone recognized Hauptmann.
Bornmann reported to the State Police Training School that Tuesday morning and later wrote in his report that he was dispatched by Lamb to meet Detective Maurice Tobin and two NYPD carpenters, Anselm Cramer Sr. and Charles Enkler, to “conduct a thorough search of the house and garage and to pay particular attention to any wood that might be of the type that was used in the construction of the ladder.”
But even Bornmann was intrigued with the idea of finding more ransom money. On September 25, he found writing on the closet door of the middle room of the four-room apartment, a room that the Hauptmanns had used as a nursery. Near an upper hinge, he discovered a notation: “$500 1928 B-00007162A 1928 B-00009272A.”
The detectives looked at the list of bills paid out in the ransom and found that the last four numbers of each notation matched one of the five- and one of the ten-dollar ransom bills.
The left inside part of the closet door revealed, “in what appeared to be Hauptmann’s handwriting,” the address 2974 Decauter and underneath it the numbers 3-7154. They would prove to be the 1932 home address and phone number of Dr. James F. “Jafsie” Condon, the intermediary between Lindbergh and the kidnappers.
The closet door was removed, and Bornmann took it to the Bronx County Court House for storage.
The next morning at nine, Bornmann met the carpenters and one of the Bronx detectives at Hauptmann’s apartment again. They immediately went into the attic.
“Nothing of value was found,” Bornmann would later write, “with the exception of several small pieces of wood and shavings and several cut nails that may possibly have a bearing on the case.” He collected them so Arthur Koehler could analyze them later.
The carpenters had been tasked with demolishing the garage to see if any more ransom money was hidden, so the group spent only a short time inside the house before heading outside. The garage was roughly fifty feet to the east and rear of the home.
Behind where the workbench had been removed were numerous 2x4-inch pieces of wood used to bolster the garage walls. Bornmann stated in his report that he noticed one of them “showed signs of having been removed and replaced on a previous occasion and upon it being pried loose disclosed on its inner side (that is the side which had been flush against the right wall of the garage) five one and an eighth inch by approximately four inch holes had been bored and inserted in each of these holes were tightly rolled rolls of ten dollar gold certificates.”
Bornmann also found a hole in that 2x4 that held a small automatic revolver. At roughly 11:25 am, Bornmann and his Bronx detective counterpart took the money and the gun to the Bronx district attorney’s office. An hour later, they were instructed to remove the money from the holes in the wood, to count it, and to check the serial numbers against the ransom bill list.
Hole number 1 held nineteen ten-dollar bills. Holes 2 and 4 held twenty bills. Hole 3 held fifteen bills, and hole 5 held ten bills. A total of $840 had been secreted away in that 2x4. The serial numbers matched bills given by Lindbergh as part of the ransom.
Bornmann and Tobin headed back to the house to continue their search for material related to the ladder. Immediately they secured “several pieces of ponderosa pine” found inside Hauptmann’s garage for Koehler to compare with pieces of the kidnapping ladder.
Then Bornmann, Tobin, and the carpenters went back into the attic. Their first search had been hasty, as everyone involved wanted to get out to the garage where the majority of exposed wood on the property existed. But now Bornmann saw that the flooring in the attic was unfinished. He remembered one of his many conversations with Koehler. He thought of all the interviews they had done with lumber workers, all the mentions of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir. He and Koehler had heard over and over that the wood used in the uprights of the kidnap ladder, the 1x4 stock, was used for crating on the docks and in big cities for under-flooring, roof boards, and attic floors.
As Bornmann would later write in his official report, Hauptmann’s attic contained twenty-seven pieces of 1x6 North Carolina pine tongue-and-groove roofing, approximately twenty and a half inches long. The boards crossed the attic from east to west and were nailed to the rafters with cut nails.
“It was noticed the last board of the flooring on the south side was not the same length as the others and further investigation disclosed that a piece of this board approximately 8 foot long had been removed,” Bornmann wrote. “A small quantity of sawdust between the joists and also nail holes on the joists and a small saw mark on the adjoining board affirmed the fact that this particular board had been the same length as the others and a piece about 8 ft long had been removed.”
Not waiting for the carpenters to do their jobs, Bornmann pulled off another section from the board, about nine feet in leng
th, to look at it more closely.
“Being familiar with the various kinds of wood used in the construction of the ladder and as the flooring appeared to be of the same type wood as one of the rails in the ladder, this particular section was removed to be turned over to Arthur Koehler, Wood Technologist,” he continued.
Bornmann had one of the carpenters remove the cut nails that had been used to connect the board with the joist to compare them “with the nail holes on rail #16 of the ladder.”
Numerous detectives had visited the attic before Bornmann, and none had discovered what he found. But no one else who had been to the house, not Wallace or Zapolsky or any of the other New Jersey State Police officers, had ever worked directly with Koehler. The scientist’s contacts at the NJSP had been Lamb and Schwarzkopf at the highest levels and Bornmann and to a far lesser degree DeGaetano at the field level.
Further, the other investigators hadn’t been looking for wood; they had been looking for ransom money, the instrument that had made a mark on the ransom notes, and anything connected with Isidor Fisch. They may even have seen what Bornmann finally noticed on the afternoon of September 26, but if so, they did not understand its significance.
In Hauptmann’s attic, the last board of the flooring on the south side was not the same length as the others. Another section of that board was pulled off, so Koehler could study if it matched the wood in Rail 16. (Courtesy: Dr. Regis Miller/Forest Products Laboratory)
Because while the other New Jersey officers may have known about the ladder investigation and Koehler’s role in it, no one knew the specifics about Koehler’s research like Bornmann did. Those car rides visiting dozens of lumber mills and yards all over the Atlantic seaboard had given Bornmann an insight into Koehler’s work that no one else possessed—not even Lamb and Schwarzkopf. Koehler jokingly referred to Bornmann as his “Siamese twin” throughout the investigation.
The Sixteenth Rail Page 17