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History See other History Articles Title: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case One of the most sensational criminal cases in American history was the fatal kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's baby boy in 1932. The case remains controversial to this day, and I had always assumed there was some real doubt about what had happened. Recently, however, I did a little reading on the subject and was surprised to discover that for the most part the resolution of the case was pretty straightforward. There really shouldn't be much controversy at all. The major bone of contention involves Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a young German who was illegally in the United States. Hauptmann's English was poor, making it difficult for him to defend himself, and his nationality made him the target of widespread prejudice. For this and other reasons, some people have always insisted that Hauptmann did not receive a fair trial. And this may well be true. The jury was quite likely predisposed to find Hauptmann guilty and took only a few hours to do so. Nevertheless, it is a big leap to go from saying that the trial had some irregularities to saying that Hauptmann was actually innocent. Let's look at the evidence against him. A large portion of the ransom money was found hidden in Hauptmann's garage. Hauptmann was known to have been spending the money; in fact, it was traced back to him through one of the purchases he had made. (The serial numbers on the bills had been recorded.) Hauptmann's handwriting matched the handwriting on the ransom notes. His characteristic misspellings, some of which were quite eccentric, also matched the misspellings in the notes. A homemade ladder with a hinge mechanism was used in the commission of the crime. Hauptmann was a carpenter. A diagram of a ladder of exactly this type was found in one of his notebooks. Some of the wood used in the ladder was purchased at the lumberyard that Hauptmann frequented. Another piece of wood came from Hauptmann's attic; one of the attic's horizontal crossbeams had been cannibalized to complete the ladder. Hauptmann had a criminal record in Germany and had escaped from prison before coming to the United States. One of his crimes was burglary. He committed the burglary by propping a ladder against the side of the building and climbing in through the second story window -- exactly the modus operandi used in the Lindbergh case. A man named John Condon was used as the go-between in the ransom negotiations. Condon's address and phone number were found a written on the wall of Hauptmann's closet. Hauptmann admitted that the writing was his and had no coherent explanation of why he had written down the information. John Condon identified Hauptmann as the man with whom he had negotiated. Hauptmann had been absent from his job on the day when the ransom payment was made and quit his job the next day, claiming he had come into a large amount of money by playing the stock market. There was more evidence, but you get the idea. People who insist that Hauptmann was innocent have to claim that all of the evidence against him was manufactured or manipulated in some sinister way. It's essentially the argument used by the O.J. Simpson "dream team" of defense lawyers. Maybe if Hauptmann had been able to retain a dream team of his own, he would have been acquitted, but it's hard to say that justice would have been done. If there is so much evidence against Hauptmann, why does anyone continue to defend him? I think there are four reasons. First, Hauptmann went to his death refusing to confess, even when the governor offered to commute his sentence to life in prison if he would take responsibility for the crime. Hauptmann's defenders say that only an innocent man would take such a stand. But there are other possible reasons for his intransigence. He might have genuinely preferred a quick death to the prospect of spending the next fifty years in a prison cell. Or he might have feared that his wife, who was never arrested, would become the target of retribution by accomplices in the crime if he began to sing. This leads us to the second point of controversy: Did Hauptmann act alone? Here his defenders have a legitimate point. There is a considerable amount of evidence suggesting that more than one person was involved in the kidnapping. Hauptmann may have taken the fall for his associates. But of course, this doesn't make him innocent; it only means that one or more other guilty parties escaped justice. Third, some of Hauptmann's defenders are politically motivated. Charles Lindbergh became famous -- or infamous -- as an isolationist on the eve of World War II, insisting that the United States stay out of a European war. For taking this stand, he was denounced in some quarters as a fascist or a Nazi sympathizer, though he does not appear to have been particularly enamored of Hitler. He simply felt that Russia and Germany should be left to fight it out between themselves, while the US stayed on the sidelines. This was a fairly popular position at the time; the nation committed itself to war only after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, people who regard Lindbergh as a proto-Nazi are inclined to see the worst of him in all respects; they go so far as to suggest that he killed his own baby and then conspired with the authorities to frame Hauptmann. Needless to say, there is not a scintilla of evidence to back up this claim. Finally, we cannot discount the natural human tendency to want the "crime of the century," as the Lindbergh kidnapping case was dubbed, to be as dramatic as possible. Bruno Hauptmann was an insignificant figure, and some people simply find it hard to believe that a nobody like him could be responsible for the crime that captured the attention of the world. It just had to be more complicated than that, they think. But it probably wasn't. Even if Hauptmann had one or two people helping him, an objective look at the evidence shows that he was deeply involved in the crime. It was no grand scheme concocted by a criminal mastermind. It was a poorly conceived and ineptly executed plot that ultimately failed, resulting in the demise of little Charles Lindbergh Jr. and sending Bruno Richard Hauptmann to his death in the electric chair.
Poster Comment: At least one poster here claims Lindbergh killed his own baby.
Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 9.
#9. To: YertleTurtle (#0)
Haha...who was that?
#11. To: Eoghan (#9)
Haha...who was that? At least one poster here claims Lindbergh killed his own baby. Haha...who was that?
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