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

wait no longer. So Condon told him to drive to a small house, vacant for the time being, that he owned about a mile from St. Raymond’s Cemetery.

With privacy guaranteed, they opened the envelope. The note inside lacked the familiar signature symbol the kidnapper had been using, but the handwriting was the same. The note said the child was being cared for by two “innosent” persons on the twenty-eight foot “Boad Nelly” located “between Horseneck Beach and Gay Head near Elizabeth Island.”44 The allusion was apparently to the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

Somewhat surprisingly, the serial numbers of all the bills in the ransom had been recorded only after Frank J. Wilson, a special agent in the intelligence unit of the Internal Revenue Service, discovered that that little detail had been overlooked. Recording the numbers was no small task in those pre-Xerox days, but it was vital.

The $50,000 portion of the ransom was in twenties, tens, and fives, with a good portion of the money in gold notes. While still legal tender, gold notes were being withdrawn from circulation. Increasingly, they attracted attention when used for everyday transactions.

And the Treasury Department had been especially clever with the $20,000 in the separate packet. That money was in the form of four hundred gold certificates of $50 each. The gold fifties were much less common than the twenties, tens, and fives and were sure to attract the attention of clerks or bank tellers and be the easiest to trace should the kidnapper or kidnappers spend them.

Of course, because Condon had talked Cemetery John out of taking the extra $20,000, the ploy with the gold fifties had been spoiled. It seemed that no one in the know had bothered to tell Condon about it. He learned of it just after the cemetery rendezvous as he boasted to an IRS agent about saving Lindbergh some money.

Desperate to recover his son, Lindbergh arranged to borrow a seaplane from the navy. In the middle of the night, he drove to an airport in Connecticut. He was accompanied by Breckinridge, a man from the IRS, Reich, and Condon. It was agreed that Reich would stay on the ground and drive Lindbergh’s car to an airport on Long Island so he could pick up the searchers when they landed. (Why was Condon along? Perhaps Lindbergh thought an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt, even the eyes of an old man. Anyhow, Condon had already shown his ability to insinuate himself into just about any situation.)

By dawn’s early light, Lindbergh took the navy plane into the air. It flew over Cape Cod and circled Martha’s Vineyard, sometimes dipping to within a few feet of fishing boats. After several hours, Lindbergh landed near Cuttyhunk Island and taxied to a dock—where a gaggle of reporters awaited. Lindbergh and his companions pushed their way through the scrum, had lunch, and took off again. They searched until dark, seeing nothing that looked like a twenty-eight-foot boat named Nelly. Lindbergh flew the plane to Long Island, where Reich met them and drove the party to New York City. Then a tired Lindbergh drove to his home.

The next morning, Lindbergh took off again, this time in a plane of his own and alone. He flew over the water off New England, then as far south as Virginia, looking for a boat named Nelly. He must have been as tired as he’d been while flying across the Atlantic. But this time, there was no prize. He returned to his home without his son or any clue where he might be.

*Cahill, Robert T. Jr. Hauptmann’s Ladder, a Step-by-Step Analysis of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014), 77.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHASING THE MONEY

New York City

April 1932

On Wednesday, April 6, 1932, David Isaacs, a retired clothing merchant in Upper Manhattan, withdrew $47 in interest that he had accrued from a savings account at the Ninety-Sixth Street branch of the East River Savings Bank. The withdrawal was in the form of two twenty-dollar bills, a five-dollar bill, and two one-dollar bills.

On April 13, Isaacs stopped at a branch of the Corn Exchange Bank at Broadway and Ninety-First Street to exchange one of the twenties for smaller currency. By this time, banks across the country had been given circulars listing the serial numbers of the Lindbergh ransom money. But the human element was all-important. Considering all the money they handled in a given day, would clerks and tellers be alert enough to spot a ransom bill?

Yes. A Corn Exchange Bank teller checked the circular and saw that the twenty that Isaacs wanted to exchange was from the ransom.

At once, the teller and Isaacs notified the Secret Service. Isaacs said the bill had been in his wallet for a full week. Officials at the East River Savings Bank branch said the bill probably was included with some sixteen hundred deposits made on April 4 and 5. Several detectives were assigned to try to track down the depositors, though it seemed a virtually impossible task.

But at least someone out there was spending the money.

Yet the manhunt was hampered by bureaucratic and jurisdictional issues. New Jersey police were investigating the kidnapping itself. New York police were investigating the extortion committed when the man in the Bronx cemetery got Lindbergh’s money. The two police factions cooperated only half-heartedly. They were engaged in the kind of turf battle not uncommon between police agencies. And there was precious little state-to-state coordination among the lawmen—a problem that the federal anti-kidnapping statute, which was still working its way through Congress, was supposed to correct.

Meanwhile, efforts went on behind the scenes to reconnect with the kidnapper or kidnappers. Condon continued to place ads in the Bronx paper. “What is wrong?” an ad on April 6 began. “Have you crossed me? Please better directions. Jafsie.”45

Major Schoeffel, the deputy commander of the New Jersey State Police, booked passage for England, there to confer with Scotland Yard and pursue a rumor that the child had been taken overseas