The Kidnap Years: by David Stout (popular books of all time TXT) 📗

Honest Americans wanted goods and services that only criminals provided—that was the basic, contradictory fact of life in America at the time. The gangsters were not only corrupt. They were corrupting.

CHAPTER FIVE

BELOVED INNOCENT

Hopewell, New Jersey

Tuesday, March 1, 1932

Charles and Anne Lindbergh had finished dinner and were relaxing in the living room of their new home. They could hear gusts rattling the tree branches on this cold and rainy night.

Here, in a wooded and hilly region of western New Jersey, Lindbergh had the privacy he so needed. He had found something close to happiness. “Colonel Lindbergh,” as he was formally known, had become quite well-to-do, his celebrity having opened various boardroom doors for him. Yet though he was acquainted with titans of business and industry, he had few close relationships outside his family.

Adorable Charles Jr., not quite two years old, was asleep in his upstairs room as nurse Betty Gow peeked in on him around 8:30. She was relieved to see the baby blissfully somnolent in his night robe. He had a cold, for which he had been given medicine.

Around 9:10 or 9:15, Lindbergh heard a noise that sounded to him (as he would testify later) like pieces of wood clattering.

“What is that?” he said to his wife, who answered with a shrug.*

The Lindberghs were not concerned enough to get up and check. They had a playful little terrier that was known to get into things. There was a crate of oranges in the kitchen; perhaps it had fallen off a counter. Or maybe it was the wind.

Around 10:00 p.m., Gow went to look in on the baby once more—and got the shock of her life. The crib was empty. There were muddy footprints on the floor, leading from the crib to a nearby window, which appeared to have been pried open. On the window sill was an envelope containing a note demanding $50,000 in twenty-, ten-, and five-dollar bills. It was signed with a symbol of two overlapping rings in blue ink and a smaller center circle in red.

The nurse raced downstairs. “The baby’s been kidnapped!” she shouted.

Lindbergh and his wife rushed up to see for themselves. Then Lindbergh called the Hopewell police chief, Charles Williamson, who called state police headquarters in Trenton, then drove to the Lindbergh home with another officer.

Philadelphia police were notified, as were New York City police. Special guards were posted at the Holland Tunnel, ferry terminals, and the George Washington Bridge, which had opened just the previous summer.

Meanwhile, Lindbergh and a bevy of police officers searched the grounds of his property. Two sets of footprints and marks from a ladder were found under the nursery window. A chisel lay nearby. Soon, a makeshift wooden ladder was found about seventy feet from the house. It was broken in the middle. Later, Lindbergh would speculate that the wood-clatter sound he thought had come from the kitchen was really the sound of a ladder falling outside the house.

The ransom note contained the word were when obviously where was meant. It said the child was “in gute care.” And it warned Lindbergh “for making anyding public or for notify the police.”19 It seemed clear that the author was either a foreigner or pretending to be one. Or if he was an American, he was not an educated person.

Just after 11:00 p.m. on March 1, the night supervisor at the FBI called J. Edgar Hoover at home to tell him that a police teletype had just reported the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby. Hoover knew that the FBI had no jurisdiction in the case, since kidnapping was not a federal offense. Still, he ordered that he be kept informed of any developments. He was called again about two hours later with the information that a ransom note had been found at the crime scene.

At once, Hoover summoned his driver and went to bureau headquarters. Most of his aides were already there. It was quickly decided that the bureau would offer “unofficial” assistance to Charles and Anne Lindbergh. A special squad of about twenty men was set up for that purpose.

No doubt, Hoover felt sympathy for the parents. Nor could he have failed to realize that if the FBI could help recover the child, the prestige of the agency would increase enormously.20

The New York Times devoted four front-page stories to the kidnapping the next day. The main story noted that a woman was believed to be involved, since some footprints below the window were considerably smaller than others. The police in New Jersey and nearby states were told to be on the alert for suspicious-looking couples, especially any who may have asked for directions to the Lindbergh home.

The police theorized early on that the kidnapper or kidnappers would have used a stolen car. The license plate numbers of sixteen cars stolen in New Jersey between noon and midnight were transmitted to police in several states.

A front-page story in the Times reported the reaction of Senator Patterson of Missouri, cosponsor of the federal kidnapping law pending on Capitol Hill. “It is a shock to me to hear of this outrage,” he said. “I hope the child will soon be returned… This filthy act will aid us in passing the needed legislation.”21

That prediction turned out to be right, of course. But some initial “facts” were quickly shot down. The smaller footprints beneath the window were indeed those of a woman—Anne Lindbergh. So perhaps there was only one kidnapper.

On the very back page of the New York Times of March 2, 1932, was a seemingly routine article. It told of a dinner the night before at the Waldorf-Astoria where more than sixteen hundred alumni of New York University had celebrated their alma mater’s centennial. Thirty-four alumni received the newly created meritorious service award from Chancellor Elmer Ellsworth Brown, the Times reported. The article listed several people who spoke at the dinner.

But the most important fact about the dinner concerned someone who was expected