1935: Lindbergh baby-killer goes to the chair
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was the German-born carpenter who was convicted of the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end, but he was convicted of first degree murder and executed. Hauptmann was born Bruno Richard Hauptmann in Kamenz, near Dresden in what was then the German Empire; he was the youngest of five children. Neither he nor his family or friends used the name ‘Bruno’, although prosecutors in the Lindbergh kidnapping trial referred to him by that name. On February 12, 1935, the judge sentenced him to die on the electric chair.
Charles Lindbergh, who made the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, paid a $50 000 ransom after his son was snatched. At 7.30pm on March 1, 1932, the baby’s father Charles Lindbergh realised his son was missing from the crib. The nurse, Betty Gow, also found that the baby was not with his mother, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who had just come out of the bathtub.
Gow then alerted Charles Lindbergh, who immediately went to the child’s room, where he found the kidnapper’s ransom note in an envelope on the windowsill; the note contained bad grammar and handwriting. He then took a gun and went around the house and grounds with butler Olly Whateley. They found impressions in the ground under the window of the child’s room and pieces of a cleverly designed wooden ladder. They also found a baby’s blanket. Whateley telephoned the Hopewell police department to inform them of the missing child. Charles Lindbergh then contacted his attorney and friend, Henry Breckinridge, and the New Jersey state police. Within 20 minutes, police were en route to the home.
Hopewell Borough police and New Jersey State Police officers conducted an extensive search of the home and its surrounding area. After midnight, a fingerprint expert examined the ransom note and ladder; no usable fingerprints or footprints were found, leading experts to conclude that the kidnapper(s) wore gloves and had some type of cloth on the soles of their shoes. No adult fingerprints were found in the baby’s room, including in areas witnesses admitted to touching, such as the window, but the baby’s fingerprints were found. The brief, handwritten ransom note was riddled with spelling mistakes and grammatical irregularities:
The ransom note:
Dear Sir!
Have 50.000$ redy 25 000$ in
20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and
10000$ in 5$ bills After 2–4 days
we will inform you were to deliver
the mony.
We warn you for making
anyding public or for notify the Police
the child is in gut care.
Indication for all letters are
Singnature [Symbol to right]
and 3 hohls
John F Condon – a well-known Bronx personality and retired school teacher, offered $1 000 if the kidnapper would turn the child over to a Catholic priest. Condon received a letter reportedly written by the kidnappers: It authorised Condon to be their intermediary with Lindbergh. Lindbergh accepted the letter as genuine. Following the kidnapper’s latest instructions, Condon placed a classified ad in the New York American reading: ‘Money is Ready. Jafsie’. Condon then waited for further instructions from the culprits.
A meeting between ‘Jafsie’ and a representative of the group that claimed to be the kidnappers was eventually scheduled for late one evening at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. According to Condon, the man sounded foreign but stayed in the shadows during the conversation, and Condon was thus unable to get a close look at his face. The man said his name was John, and he related his story: He was a ‘Scandinavian’ sailor, part of a gang of three men and two women. The baby was being held on a boat, unharmed, but would be returned only for ransom. When Condon expressed doubt that ‘John’ actually had the baby, he promised some proof: the kidnapper would soon return the baby’s sleeping suit. The stranger asked Condon, “… would I ‘burn’ if the package were dead?” When questioned further, he assured Condon that the baby was alive.
On March 16, Condon received a toddler’s sleeping suit by mail, and a seventh ransom note. After Lindbergh identified the sleeping suit, Condon placed a new ad in the Home News: ‘Money is ready. No cops. No secret service. I come alone, like last time.’ On April 1 Condon received a letter saying it was time for the ransom to be delivered.
The ransom was packaged in a wooden box that was custom-made in the hope that it could later be identified. The ransom money included a number of gold certificates – gold certificates which were about to be withdrawn from circulation, and it was hoped this would draw attention to anyone who was spending them. The bills were not marked but their serial numbers were recorded. Some sources credit this idea to Frank J Wilson, others to Elmer Lincoln Irey.
On April 2, Condon was given a note by an intermediary, an unknown cab driver. Condon met ‘John’ and told him that they had been able to raise only $50 000. The man accepted the money and gave Condon a note saying that the child was in the care of two innocent women.
On May 12, delivery truck driver Orville Wilson and his assistant William Allen pulled to the side of a road about 4.5 miles (7.2 km) south of the Lindbergh home near the hamlet of Mount Rose in neighboring Hopewell Township. When Allen went into a grove of trees to relieve himself, he discovered the body of a toddler. Allen notified the police, who took the body to a morgue in nearby Trenton, New Jersey. The skull was badly fractured and the body decomposed, having been chewed on by animals; there were indications of an attempt at a hasty burial. Gow identified the baby as the missing infant from the overlapping toes of the right foot and a shirt that she had made. It appeared the child had been killed by a blow to the head. Lindbergh insisted on cremation.
On April 3, 1936, Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison. Reporters present said he made no statement. His spiritual advisor said that Hauptmann told him, before being taken from his cell, “Ich bin absolut unschuldig an den Verbrechen, die man mir zur Last legt.” (“I am absolutely innocent of the crimes with which I am charged.”) Hauptmann’s widow Anna had his body cremated. Two Lutheran pastors conducted a private memorial service in German, but a crowd of some 2 000 gathered outside. Anna Hauptmann died in 1994 at age 95.
Most notable historic snippets or facts extracted from the book ‘On This Day’ first published in 1992 by Octopus Publishing Group Ltd, London, as well as additional supplementary information extracted from Wikipedia.
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