What's New in Academe
Recent books by Rutgers faculty
Archived article from Nov 1, 2004
Books included in this story:
• The Case that Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping by Lloyd C. Gardner
• Black Trials: Citizenship from the Beginnings of Slavery to the End of Caste by Mark Weiner
• Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It by Alison Isenberg
• The Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers by Jane Miller and From Numbers to Words: Reporting Statistical Results for the Social Sciences by Susan Morgan
• Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip-Hop by Imani Perry
• Ordinary Heroes and American Democracy by Gerald M. Pomper
• Un-Making the Law: The Conservative Campaign to Roll Back the Common Law by Jay Feinman
The Lindbergh legacy
As Bruno Richard Hauptmann went to his death in New Jersey’s electric chair nearly 70 years ago, he didn’t cry or beg. Facing eternity, he insisted that he was innocent of the kidnapping and murder of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of the pioneering aviator, Charles Lindbergh.
From the moment Lindbergh’s son went missing from his family’s home in Hopewell on March 1, 1932, it seemed that nearly everyone in America had a theory or angle, and many sought roles in the evolving drama. There were the competing hordes of local, state and federal police officers and prosecutors. Then, there were those who just wanted attention, and, having gotten some, wanted more. John F. Condon, the retired Bronx educator who identified Hauptmann as the person to whom he passed Lindbergh ransom money, may have found several roles: intermediary between Lindbergh and the kidnappers, star witness for the prosecution and – in the minds of some detectives, at least – suspect.
Lloyd C. Gardner, professor emeritus of history, has brought his professional skills to the task of explaining the three-year freak show that was the Lindbergh kidnapping case in “The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping” (Rutgers University Press, 2004).
Why does the Lindbergh case never die?
“First of all, there was the absolute fame of the case,” Gardner says.” This was way beyond O.J. Simpson. Think of it: the most famous child in America is kidnapped, and the whole world is on pins and needles.”
Gardner points out that Charles Lindbergh, more than any other celebrity of his time, fused America’s mythic past with its future hopes. “He was Tom Mix (cowboy actor of the 1920s) and Buck Rogers all mixed up in one person – the old frontier and the new frontier of the air.”
There were no eyewitnesses to the crime; Hauptmann was convicted on forensic evidence. That evidence came into question almost immediately, Gardner says. The governor of New Jersey, Harold Hoffman, became personally involved in the case between Hauptmann’s conviction and execution, to the extent of hiring private investigators to go over the evidence gathered by the police.
Finally, people keep popping up with what they say is new evidence. A Plainfield man, repairing a table in 1948, found a “confession” written in pencil, in German, on its brace, in which the unidentified author claimed he was part of a gang that kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Over the years, 16 people have asserted that they are Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.
Gardner’s book makes clear that hardly anyone touched by the case wholly resisted the pressure to help the prosecution and cut a figure for himself. Experts, in particular, were vulnerable. Arthur Koehler, a technician in the U.S. Forest Products Laboratory in Madison, Wis., volunteered his services to the Lindbergh family in analyzing the kidnapper's homemade ladder and was quick to identify one of the rungs on the ladder as coming from the boards of Hauptmann’s attic. The same was true of handwriting experts and psychologists. Once Hauptmann was found to have thousands of dollars in ransom money in his garage, the pressure to bend and stretch evidence and recollections to convict him was relentless.
Anna Hauptmann sued the state of New Jersey for wrongful execution. Her suit was thrown out, and she died shortly afterward. Charles and Anne Lindbergh, David Wilentz, and nearly everyone else who had anything to do with the case have long since died. But as recently as Oct. 3, the Los Angeles Times Magazine carried an article about a man in California who, in an effort to explain gaps in his childhood memories, has decided that he is Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. The case lives on.
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