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BAD PEOPLE			Date Added
	Bruno Hauptmann		November 2002

	Bio
	Full Name	Bruno Richard Hauptmann
	Date of Birth	26th November 1899
	Date of Death	3rd April 1936
	Known Also As	UNKNOWN
	Hit Count	1
	Information & Pictures
	It was a damp, windy evening. Colonel Charles Lindbergh, the most famous aviator in the world, was chatting with his wife Anne in the living room of their mansion in New Jersey, near the village of Hopewell. Lindbergh relaxed by the log fire. He had forgotten that this evening, Tuesday 1st March 1932, he had been due to speak at New York University. It was almost five years since Lindbergh, then twenty five years old, had become the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean. His thrilling journey of thirty three and a half hours from New York to Paris had created a legend of which Lindbergh - dubbed 'The Lone Eagle' - had soon tired. His mansion, still incomplete, and its 200ha (500 acres) of land were intended to shield the aloof pilot and his family from the glare of public curiosity. Usually, the Lindbergh's stayed at Hopewell on weekends and spent the week at Mrs Lindbergh's family home at Eaglewood, New Jersey, opposite New York City. However, their twenty month old son, Charles Jnr, had developed a cold and his mother, who was three months pregnant, did not want him to make the journey back to Eaglewood until he was well again.
	[ Anne Lindbergh ] Anne Lindbergh, the mother of the kidnapped baby, was the second daughter of the banker and diplomat Dwight Morrow. Born in 1906, she spent her childhood in the comfort of homes in New Jersey , Maine and New York City. A dark haired passionate girl, Anne loved to read literature and record her own thoughts in a diary. In public, she often appeared shy and reticent, feeling eclipsed by her more flamboyant elder sister, Elisabeth. In December 1927, Dwight Morrow, then US Ambassador to Mexico, invited America's newest hero, Charles Lindbergh, to make a goodwill visit to Mexico City. Anne was there too, having returned from college in Massachusetts for Christmas. Her diary conveys her admiration for the self-possessed pilot with blonde hair and a sudden, broad smile. Anne and Charles were married at Anne's family home in Eaglewood, in May 1929. Charles Jnr was born on 22nd June 1930, Anne's birthday.
	Lindbergh had arrived home at 8.30pm to be told that his son was much better and was soundly asleep in the nursery. After dinner, he and his wife had gone into the living room, while their housekeeper, Elsie Whately, and her husband Oliver, their butler, cleared away the dishes. Soon after 9pm, while they were chatting, Lindbergh heard something that caught his attention. It sounded like wood cracking. His wife said she had heard nothing. They both listened intently for a moment, but heard only the wind in the chimney. Ten minutes later, they went upstairs to their bedroom to run baths. At about 9.40pm, Lindbergh went back downstairs to work in the library. He was a technical consultant to America's two leading airlines, Transcontinental Air Transport and Pan Am. Upstairs, Mrs Lindbergh rang for Mrs Whately and asked for a hot lemonade. At the same time, Betty Gow, the nurse went to check that the baby was comfortable. It was shortly after 10pm when Gow entered the nursery, which lay alongside the Lindbergh's suite and overlooked the southeast corner of the estate. The nurse did not switch the nursery light on, to avoid waking Charles Jnr, but she did turn on an electric heater to warm her hands before touching the baby. While waiting, she became aware that she could not hear the child's breathing.
	[ Charles Lindbergh Jnr ] Charles Lindbergh Jnr was born on 22nd June 1930. Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jnr was a happy, robust child with an independent nature. On the night of the kidnap, he should have been at his grandparents' home, but as he had a cold he wasn't taken there.
	Miss Gow walked across to the solid wooden crib, which was lit by light from the hallway and peered into it. The crib was empty. Concerned, she knocked at her mistress's door and entered. 'Mrs Lindbergh, do you have the baby?' she asked. The child's mother looked worried. 'Why, no,' she said. The nurse quickly suggested that Charles Jnr might be with his father. Hurrying downstairs, Miss Gow tried without success to conceal her anxiety when she entered the library and asked about the baby. 'Isn't he in his crib?' Lindbergh asked her. Moments later, the tall, lithe figure was running up the stairs to the nursery. His wife was already there. They found the bed unruffled. The impression left by their son lay cleanly in the bedclothes. The baby could not have left the crib by himself. 'Anne,' Lindbergh cried out to his wife, 'they've stolen our baby!'
	[ Charles Lindbergh ] At dawn on 20th May 1927, Charles Lindbergh, a twenty five year old Swedish-American with a boyish face, lifted his tiny aircraft, the Spirit of St Louis, into the drizzle over New York City and headed shakily out towards the Atlantic Ocean. His destination was Paris, France. Millions prayed for Lindbergh's success, including 40,000 boxing fans who stood with bowed heads at New York's Yankee Stadium that evening. Without possessing a radio or sextant, Lindbergh had to navigate by dead reckoning through turbulent winds. After flying 5,415km (3,610 miles) in thirty three and a half hours, the single-engine aircraft landed at Le Bourget airport in Paris on the evening of the 21 May. Its exhausted pilot had survived hair-raising dangers and hallucinations to become the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic. 'It was the first time I'd been abroad,' he was to say.
	Lindbergh knew how to act decisively and shrewdly at the worst moment of a crisis. He saw an unfamiliar envelope lying on a radiator grille by the sash window in the corner. The window had been closed, but its shutters were ill-fitting and could not be sealed from within. There were reddish clay marks on a chest near the window and the floor. Lindbergh told his wife and their servants to touch nothing until the room could be checked for fingerprints. Whately, the butler, telephoned the local Hopewell police and Lindbergh personally rang the New Jersey state police and his own attorney, Colonel Henry Breckinridge in New York City. The women searched the house and found nothing. Lindbergh and Whately tried to search the land to the southeast of the house, using vehicle headlights as a guide, but gave up. Whately was sent into the village to fetch a flashlight for their search.
	[ Colonel Henry Breckinridge ] Colonel Henry Breckinridge, Lindbergh's lawyer and former US Assistant Secretary for War, was Lindbergh's right hand man in his campaign to free his son.
	Soon the local police Chief, Harry Wolfe, arrived with his assistant. Lindbergh showed them the nursery, but would not let the officers touch anything. Mrs Lindbergh sat in silence in the living room as police searched outside the southeast window. There were two indentations in the clay beneath the window. Some 18m (60 feet) away lay the bottom two sections of a poorly-assembled, collapsible ladder. The side rails fitted into the imprints on the soil and the top rung of the lower section was split. Lindbergh remembered the sound of cracking wood he had heard soon after 9pm. The top section of the ladder lay three metres (10 feet) from the other sections. A chisel also lay nearby. At this stage, a squad of state detectives arrived, led by the force commander, Colonel Norman Schwartzkopf, and his deputy, Major Charles Schoeffel. An examination of the nursery was begun, but it was after midnight before a fingerprint expert, Corporal Frank Kelly, arrived. His test found no prints on the envelope. Schoeffel read the note inside, and gestured for the local police to leave.
	[ Searching the Nursery ] A detective examines the nursery window by which the kidnapper entered the Lindbergh house. The crude ladder, with its widely spaced rungs, was replaced there by the police after being found in the grounds.
	When they had gone, Lindbergh was given the note. Written in pencil, it read: Dear Sir! Have 50 000 $ redy 25 000 $ in 20 $ bills 15 000 $ in 10 $ bills and 10 000 $ 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 chld is in gute care. Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holds. The letter ended, not with a conventional signature, but with two interlinked blue circles, at the centre of which was a round red blob. Three holes were punched in a line across the symbol. Lindbergh had became an immensely wealthy man since his transatlantic flight, with assets around $500,000 at the time of the kidnapping. The $50,000 demand was well within his means. Lindbergh told the detectives in the nursery that there must be no interference in the payment of the ransom. No one seriously challenged him. The main aim was to retrieve his child.
	[ Ransom Letter ] Analysis of the handwriting on the ransom note suggests that the kidnapper is mentally disturbed, with manic depressive tendencies. He was also aggressive and resentful and his neuroses could lead to explosive hostility and aggression. The analysis also suggests that the kidnapper was a daydreamer who, through a sense of inferiority, liked being the centre of attention. The writer was also liable to be coarse and occasionally vulgar. He appears to have strong physical resources. He could be inhibited, over-cautious, self-disciplined and economical. A - Unusually shaped 'r' = eccentric character B - Long loop on 'y' = mother fixation C - Enrolled 's' = shrewd and calculating
	Lindbergh and his attorney, Henry Breckinridge, were convinced that they were dealing with a professional gang of kidnappers, who would understand that his overriding aim was to have his son back. Ignoring the wishes of Colonel Schwartzkopf, the New Jersey police chief who had by now turned the garage at Hopewell into his headquarters, Lindbergh put out feelers to the underworld for information. On 4th march 1932, two days after the kidnapping, the press published a statement by Lindbergh in which he promised he would 'not try to injure in anyway' the kidnappers if a ransom could be exchanged. The state's Attorney General, William Stevens, publicly announced that Lindbergh had no authority to offer immunity from prosecution. However, on 5th and 6th March, Lindbergh received two letters, both posted in the New York City area and signed with the interlocking circles seen on the original ransom note. The first remonstrated with Lindbergh for involving the police, saying the ransom had been raised from $50,000 to $70,000, and that there would be no deal until 'the Police is out... and the Pappers are quiet'. The second note told Lindbergh that his son was well, but that the kidnappers would not deal with any go between selected by Lindbergh. 'Our dinaping was pland for a year allredy,' it said.
	[ Information Wanted Poster ] The police issued this Information Wanted Poster in their search for the Lindbergh child. The height of 29 inches was a mistake, later corrected, for 2ft 9in.
	As Lindbergh waited for his underworld contacts to report, a little-noticed article appeared in a local newspaper in a New York borough. The Bronx Home News of 8th March ran a front page advertisement by a local man Dr John Condon, who offered 'all my life's savings' as well as the Lindbergh ransom if the kidnappers would use him as a confidential go-between. 'I am ready, at my own expense, to go anywhere,' Condon wrote. His purpose was to show Lindbergh that 'the American people are grateful for the honour bestowed upon them by his pluck and daring'. Condon, a seventy two year old teacher in semi-retirement, was gently ridiculed, even by his family. However, the next day, he returned from giving a lecture to find a pencil written envelope. Inside was a not accepting Condon as negotiator, and a second smaller, white envelope. The note told Condon to 'handel incloced personaly to Mr Lindberg' and that, when the ransom was prepared, a message reading 'Money is redy' should be placed in the New York American Newspaper. Condon rang Lindbergh at Hopewell, but aroused little interest until he mentioned two interlocking circles at the end of the note. There was an excited response. Two hours later, Condon was welcomed at Hopewell. Plans were quickly formulated. To avoid using Condon's name, messages to the kidnappers would be signed 'Jafsie' (pronounced Jay-eff-see) - John Francis Condon's initials when spoken.
	[ Dr John Condon ] Dr John Condon was the elderly New Yorker who offered to be an intermediary between Lindbergh and the kidnappers. In his new role, he took on the nom de plume 'Jafsie'.
	The first message appeared in New York American on 11th March. It read, 'Money is ready - Jafsie' and avoided the kidnappers misspellings. That evening, Condon took a phone call from a man with what he thought was a Scandinavian or German accent. The caller told him to stay in from 6pm to midnight for the rest of the week. While on the phone, Condon heard what sounded to him like Italian voices in the background. Suddenly, a man said 'Statti zitto!', which Condon knew meant 'Shut up!' in Italian. From then on, events gathered pace. On the following night, 12th March, a taxi driver delivered an envelope to Condon's house at 2974 Decatur Avenue, in the Bronx. It set in motion a plan to make direct contact with the kidnappers. Breckinridge, who was staying at Condon's house in order to monitor developments, approved the plan.
	[ Charles and Anne Lindbergh ] Charles Lindbergh poses with his wife Anne shortly after there marriage in 1929. Some three years later came the kidnap of their first child.
	Later that evening, Condon and a friend Al Reich, a former boxer, followed the kidnapper's instructions. They took up positions by the western fence of Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx. Condon saw an Italian-looking man with a handkerchief over his face walk by, and decided he was a look out. Shortly after, in Condon's account, a white handkerchief was waved at him from inside the cemetery. In the shadows by the gate, he found a man in a dark coat his hat pulled down and a handkerchief in front of his face. 'He spoke,' Condon was to write in his book Jafsie Tells All, published in 1936, 'and I recognised at once the guttural voice that had talked to me over the telephone the night before.' Condon described the man as about 1.73m (5ft 8in), aged 30-35, with light brown hair. He gave his name as 'John", and said the kidnap gang had six members. Two, were women looking after the baby on a boat six hours' travelling time away. Suddenly, John asked, 'Would I burn if the baby is dead?... Would I burn if I did not kill it?' Condon understood that John was asking if he would be executed in the electric chair if the baby died, but not by John's hand directly. Worried Condon asked about the boy, but John said he was in good health. Arrangements were made for further negotiations, and John slipped away into the darkness. After another flurry of messages, a package arrived at Condon's house on 16th March. Breckinridge then phoned Lindbergh, who arrived in disguise to avoid reporters.
	[ Gangster Aid ] Immediately after the kidnapping, the Chicago gangster Al Capone, serving a long jail sentence for tax evasion, offered to secure the return of the Lindbergh baby in exchange for his freedom. The US government dismissed his offer. However, Lindbergh and his lawyer, Henry Breckinridge, believed that underworld contact were needed to negotiate with the kidnappers. On 6th March, Charles Lindbergh authorised two racketeers, Salvy Spitale and Irving Bitz - suggesed by a man named Morris Rosner - to act as go-betweens. For this, the aviator was loudly condemned by police chiefs and religious ministers. On 11th March, Rosner announced that the child was well and would be home soon. But Spitale, speaking a few days later, acknowledged that 'this one was pulled by an independent' - meaning amateurs.
	The package contained his son's sleeping suit and a note making arrangements for the ransom payment. The $70,000 was assembled at the J.P. Morgan bank. Lindbergh ordered the bank to keep no record of the serial numbers, but the US Treasury refused to allow the kidnappers off so leniently. It insisted that the bulk of the ransom be paid in gold certificate bills, which were the easiest to trace.
	[ Colonel Norman Schwartzkopf ] Colonel Schwartzkopf, head of the New Jersey State Police, was one of the first officers to arrive at the scene of the kidnapping.
	Colonel Schwartzkopf of the New Jersey police, and senior detectives in the New York Police Department, were aware of the imminent exchange. They disapproved of Lindbergh conducting matters on his own, but his influence was such that they promised not to interfere. There were to be no police undercover agents in the vicinity of the ransom payment, and effectively no attempt to catch the kidnappers until the baby was home. Finally, at 7.45pm on Saturday, 2nd April 1932, an envelope was delivered by a taxi driver to Condon's house. Following instructions, Condon and Lindbergh set off with the money. Less than an hour later, with Lindbergh waiting in the car, Condon was inside the darkness of St Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx. Both men heard a voice shout, 'Hey Doc!' Soon, the man known as 'Cemetery John' approached Condon. He was again wearing dark clothes, and this time had a fedora pulled down over his face. Condon told him that only $50,000 had been raised, but that it was available there and then. Cemetery John agreed to accept it. They arranged to meet by the same hedge a few minutes later to exchange the ransom for a note describing where the child could be found. Fifteen minutes later, the exchange was carried out. 'The gang says your work is perfect,' Cemetery John told Condon. The note was not intended to be opened for six hours, but Cemetery John said the boy was on a boat named Nelly near the Elizabeth Islands, along the coast of Massachusetts. Then they parted.
	[ The Letters ] Many experts were puzzled by the ransom note found at Hopewell, and the kidnapper's notes to Dr Condon and Lindbergh. Simple words, such as 'ready', 'good' and 'child' were misspelt as 'redy', 'gute' and 'chld', while more difficult ones, such as 'indication', 'notify' and 'instructions', were spelt correctly. There was no constant pattern, as many long words were misspelt also. The deputy commander of the New Jersey police, Major Charles Schoeffel, was sent to Europe in March 1932 to consult experts in Britain and Germany. Scotland Yard decided the letters were the work of inexperienced villains, and confirmed the view of the American police that they were written by a Germanic person. Major Schoeffel found out little more in Germany or Austria. It was never established if the interlocking circles on each of the ransom letters carried any significance.
	In the car, the boy's father read the note. 'The boy is on Boad Nelly...' it said, '...two person are on the Boad, the are innosent.' Next morning, Lindbergh set off alone by plane to scour the region near the Elizabeth Islands. Day after day he searched, but he never found the boat, Nelly or his son. The New Jersey and New York police were exasperated. They had deferred to Lindbergh's wishes, only to discover that he had been easily deceived. Little had emerged in the way of clues - a footprint left by Cemetery John during the handover, a footprint outside the nursery at Hopewell, unidentified fingerprints on the ladder in the Hopewell grounds, and the misspellings of the kidnapper's ransom notes.
	[ William Allen ] Truck driver William Allen points to the spot in the wood near Hopewell where he found the body of Charles Lindbergh Jnr. Beside Allen stands Orville Wilson, who was in the truck with him at the time.
	On 12th May, ten weeks and three days after the kidnapping, two truck drivers found the badly decomposed body of Charles Lindbergh Jnr in some woods about eight kilometres (five miles) from the Hopewell mansion. A post mortem indicated that he died of a fractured skull, perhaps sustained immediately after the kidnapping. For the police, the investigation now depended on tracing the ransom money. By the end of 1932, the banks - all of them in New York - reported the deposit of only 27 marked bills in various denominations. So, the police inquiries came to nothing.
	[ Lindbergh Baby Discovered ]
	On 16th September 1934, the manager of the Warner-Quinlan filling station, on New York's East Side, took a $10 gold certificate bill from a customer. The government were withdrawing gold bills and the manager Walter Lyle, remarked, 'You don't see these around much any more.' The customer replied, 'I have only about a hundred of them left.' Fearing that his bank might reject the gold bill, Lyle jotted down the registration number of the customers car : 4U13-41. Two days later, when the police called, Lyle remembered it was a 1931 Dodge sedan. Its owner was well dressed and spoke with an accent.
	[ Bruno Hauptmann ] A mug shot taken or Bruno Hauptmann on 21st September 1934, two days after his arrest by the New York City Police. Throughout, he insisted that he had nothing to do with the kidnapping.
	The police quickly traced the Dodge to a thirty four year old German carpenter, who lived at 1279 on East 222nd Street, the Bronx. His name was Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Hauptmann had a German accent and was a man who could make ladders. He also lived in the right area to have noticed Dr Condon's appeal in the Bronx Home News, and he still had 100 gold bills left in 1934. He was just the man that the police were looking for. Bruno Hauptmann was arrested on 19th September in his car. 'What is happening? What is this?' he asked. Another gold bill, worth $20, was fund in his trouser pocket. Its serial number matched that of one of the ransom bills. Hauptmann was driven to a police station on the Lower West Side. FBI agents were present, as well as Colonel Schwartzkopf, his New Jersey team, and a squad of New York detectives. Their suspect, dressed in a dark suit was about 1.78m (5ft 10in) tall, had lightish brown hair and matched Condon's description of Cemetery John. Hauptmann said that on 1st March 1932 - the day of the child's abduction - he had been working at the Majestic Apartments on 72nd Street in New York. Officers were sent to check the story. Hauptmann firmly denied ever having been in Hopewell. He answered rounds of questions calmly until he was accused of kidnapping and killing the child. 'No,' he shouted with mounting fury. 'No, I did not.' Within hours of his arrest, Hauptmann had been charged with kidnapping, murder and extortion.
	[ Bruno Hauptmann ] At the age of nineteen, Richard Hauptmann - he disliked the name Bruno, preferring his second name - was called into the German army and sent to the Western Front where he was a machine gunner. Wounded, he was in a hospital when the war ended.
	A small number of those present felt that Hauptmann seemed more puzzled than sinister. But the mood hardened when he was asked about the gold bills. Hauptmann said he had saved $300 to guard against inflation. But e seemed to have become increasingly nervous. Later, his wife Anna was questioned. Her recollection of how she and her husband spent the vital days of 1st March and 2nd April, the dates of the kidnapping and the ransom payment, matched that of her husband. She created a picture of a close knit family, who enjoyed musical evenings with immigrant friends and neighbours and their baby son, Manfred. Hauptmann was asked to take a handwriting test. 'I'll be glad to because it'll help me get out of this thing,' he said. The tests and the questions continued for most the night. On the following morning, 20th September, police turned over the house on 222nd Street, in the Bronx. In the garage, detectives found a huge stash of gold bills, carefully hidden. It totalled $13,760. The serial numbers on the bills showed it was all Lindbergh ransom money.
	[ Hauptmann's Garage ] Police digging up the floor of Hauptmann's garage in search for the ransom money. They found $11,930 in a shellac tin hidden under rags and $1,830 wrapped in newspapers. More finds were to come.
	They asked Hauptmann why he had lied. He told them that the gold bills had been left at his house, in an unmarked package, by a German business associate, Isidor Fisch. According to Hauptmann, Fisch had left the package shortly before returning to Germany on 6th December 1933. Hauptmann did not realise what the packet contained until it accidentally soaked one day. Since Fisch had owed him about $7,500, Hauptmann had felt free to spend some of the gold bills. Fisch, he said, had died in Leipzig from consumption in March 1934, without reclaiming his money. The detectives asked why he had lied. From fear, Hauptmann answered. They asked why he had not sent Fisch's money to his next of kin, a brother in Germany with whom Hauptmann corresponded. Fisch owed him money, Hauptmann insisted. But what about the balance, persisted police, the other $6,000? Hauptmann said nothing.
	[ Isidor Fisch ] The shadowy figure of Isidor Fisch haunted Hauptmann throughout his interrogation. Evasive and shy, with the smile of a predator, Fisch specialised in conning friends and associates into investing in bogus or bankrupt companies. Almost none saw their money again. Fisch, a Polish Jew brought up in Germany, immigrated to New York in the 1920's. For a while, he worked steadily as a cutter in the fur trade. But from 1930 onwards, he began fleecing people of their savings. Later in 1932, he decided that Hauptmann, a shrewd and honest investor on the stock market, would be a useful partner, able to turn Fisch's illicit earnings into sound investments. The partnership proved lucrative though Hauptmann had only a hazy idea of what Fisch was up to. Among other things, Fisch was involved in selling 'hot' Lindbergh ransom money at a discount. Indeed, he paid for his own sea journey to Germany, in 1933, with 'hot' gold certificate bills.
	Hauptmann was paraded before the world's press photographers. The Police Commissioner of New York, General O'Ryan, announced that the case was solved. On 22nd September, Hauptmann - the target of sustained newspaper vilification - was indicted for extortion by a Grand Jury in the Bronx, and committed for trial in two weeks time. On the same day, police found another $840 in gold bills, and a pistol, concealed at 222nd Street. Hauptmann again assured the detectives that there was no more. The Bronx District Attorney, Samuel Foley, commented to news reporters, 'He told us the same story last week after we found the first money.' Hauptmann also lied to the police over his past, saying he had never been arrested. A check with the German authorities revealed that he had once spent four years in prison for a series of robberies. Since the kidnapping and murder were New Jersey crimes, legal moved were started to extradite Hauptmann from New York to New Jersey. By this time, he was represented by an attorney, James Fawcett, who quickly became convinced that his client was innocent. The US Attorney General was asked publicly if Hauptmann was guilty, 'I didn't know anyone doubted it,' he replied. Extradition was quickly granted. On 19th October, after losing his appeal against it, Hauptmann was transferred to the County Jail at Flemington, New Jersey, to await trial on the most serious charges - kidnapping and murder. Detectives had been busy trying to link Hauptmann to the footprints at Hopewell and St Raymond's Cemetery, to the ladder and to the handwriting of the ransom notes. At this stage, Dr Condon was unsure that Hauptmann was Cemetery John and did not want to commit himself, knowing that Hauptmann had a family. 'If I identify him, it will mean the electric chair.'
	[ James M Fawcett ] Defence attorney James M Fawcett attends the arraignment of Bruno Richard Hauptmann at the Bronx County Court on 24th September 1934. The judge set bail at $100,000.
	The trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, for the murder of Charles Lindbergh Jnr opened on 2nd January 1935. It was held at Hunterdon County Court in Flemington, New Jersey, before Judge Thomas Trenchard, who had presided at 91 previous murder trials. The prosecution was led by the Attorney General of New Jersey, David Wilentz, and the defence team by Edward Reilly, a seasoned trial lawyer from New York. The first day passed in selecting the jury of eight local men and four women. When the trial proper began the next day, the small courtroom was packed with hundreds of people. Newspapers and radio stations across the USA and the world had sent reporters and commentators.
	[ David Wilentz ] The Chief Prosecutor David Wilentz. The Prosecution's approach, appealing to patriotism, was crude but effective with the jury.
	In the well of the court were the tables for both sides' counsels. Hauptmann sat just behind wearing a dark suit looking pale. The jury sat to his right, facing a plain wooden chair where each witness would sit and give evidence. Hauptmann, who was guarded by State Troopers throughout the trial, pleaded not guilty. He looked defiantly confident as Wilentz rose to outline what was known about the case, the actual kidnapping at Hopewell. 'He came there with his ladder, placed it against the house... then as he went out that window and down the ladder of his, the ladder broke... and down he went with this child,' Wilentz said. 'In the commission of that burglary the child was instantaneously killed when it received that first blow...' Wilentz promised the jury that expert witnesses would link the ladder at Hopewell to Hauptmann and identify him as a lone kidnapper, murderer and extortionist. The prosecutor appealed shamelessly to the emotions of the jury, leaning heavily on the public desire for vengeance and heroic adulation that Lindbergh, sitting with his wife a short way from Hauptmann, still commanded.
	[ Hauptmann with State Troopers ] At his trial in Flemington, New Jersey, Hauptmann (second from left) sits flanked by a uniformed state trooper and Deputy Sheriff Hovey Low. He was confident and relaxed evening allowing an occasional smile.
	Soon, Lindbergh was called to testify. He looked exactly like the gaunt, tall, quiet hero of his photographs. Lindbergh described the night the ransom money was handed over at St Raymond's Cemetery. He asserted that he had heard a man cry out 'Hey Doctor!' in a foreign accent. He had previously testified that the cry was 'Hey Doc!' and had certainly made no mention of an accent. Wilentz was unperturbed. 'Whose voice was it, Colonel?' he asked. 'That was Hauptmann's voice,' he replied. Reilly, for the defence, missed the opportunity to cast doubt on Lindbergh's memory and on his ability to identify a man from two syllables that were uttered a long way away and two and a half years previously. Reilly was to forsake many similar opportunities during the trial. A succession of witnesses was called to describe events at the Lindbergh mansion. There had been conflicting statements over how many sets of footprints were found leading away from the house. State Troopers Joseph Wolfe and Nuncio de Gaetano, who at the time reported finding two sets of footprints, now swore that they had only found one. The state was intent on proving that Hauptmann alone was responsible. As the trial entered its second week, the prosecution called in a nearly blind eighty seven year old witness. He claimed to have seen Hauptmann at Hopewell, with a ladder in his car, on the day of the kidnapping. The defence did little to discredit such unreliable testimony.
	[ Bruno & Anna Hauptmann ] Hauptmann met his wife Anna in 1924, the year he slipped ashore as an illegal immigrant to the USA. Anna Schoeffler worked as a maid for a rich Jewish couple in New York and the couple met at the seaside resort of Coney Island. Hauptmann was to admit that, during their courtship, he glossed over his crimes and prison record for fear 'that I might lose her love'. But Anna, a year older than Hauptmann, knew what the poverty and despair of Germany had done to many young men after the First World War, and urged him to put the past out of his mind. They were married on 10th October 1925, in Brooklyn. Their only child Manfred, was born in November 1933, less than a year before Hauptmann's arrest.
	On 9th January, the sixth day of the trial, Dr Condon - the celebrated 'Jafsie' of the ransom negotiations - took the stand. By dawn, a thousand people were queuing for a few spectators' seats. ' I come here clear across the country to see Jafsie on that stand,' said one woman. Condon, examined by Wilentz, described his first meeting with Cemetery John at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx on 12 March 1932. "And who is John?' Wilentz asked. 'John is Bruno Richard Hauptmann,' the witness answered, emphasizing each name and pointing to the defendant. When finally Reilly rose to cross examine Condon, the atmosphere in court grew more tense. It was generally agreed that if Reilly could not shake Condon's evidence, then Hauptmann would be convicted. Prior to the trial, Condon had several times refused to identify Hauptmann as Cemetery John, but he now put up a smokescreen of words to justify his u-turn. Reilly had met his match, and proved unable to discredit Condon.
	[ Edward Reilly ] The Chief defence council, Edward Reilly, fifty two, was a tall, florid, hard-drinking dandy. He frequently took on un-winnable murder cases, and was nicknamed 'The Bull of Brooklyn' for his flamboyant courtroom style. Throughout the Hauptmann trial he was in the pay of the anti-Hauptmann Hearst Press, and he had long been an ardent admirer of Lindbergh. In court, Reilly's grasp of his brief was inadequate and he often muddled names and facts. His worst fault was his failure to secure damaging admissions from hostile witnesses. This became so obvious that Lloyd Fisher, number two on the defence team, accused Reilly in open court of 'conceding Hauptmann to the electric chair'. Reilly's relationship with the local lawyers in his defence team deteriorated and he quit before the appeals - but only after submitting a hefty bill to the Hauptmann's. The local men believed Hauptmann was innocent, but Reilly, initially at least, thought him guilty. He visited his client in prison just four times, for a total of thirty eight minutes. Reilly was the worst defender Hauptmann could have chosen.
	The prosecution produced further witnesses who testified to seeing Hauptmann near the Lindbergh's house, or who linked him to the ransom notes or the ransom money in New York. Government experts then took the court through Hauptmann's complex financial affairs. They were followed by eight prosecution handwriting experts, led by the Osborn father and son team, who swore that the ransom notes were written by Hauptmann. The younger Osborn had by this time changed his mind. Reilly had only one expert to disagree with them. Wilentz had promised to link the ladder at Hopewell to the defendant. He called a government wood expert, Arthur Koehler, who testified that one of the rail lengths on the ladder used in the kidnapping matched a stretch of wood in the floorboards of Hauptmann's attic.
	[ Amandus Hochmuth ] Though barely able to see without his glasses, trial witness Amandus Hochmuth, eighty seven, claimed he saw Hauptmann in a car that had turned onto the Lindbergh drive on the morning of the kidnapping. For his tale, Hochmuth got $1,000 in reward money.
	The defence began its case on the afternoon of the 17th day of the trial, 24th January. Lloyd Fisher, a younger, more sincere attorney than Reilly, made a simple opening speech. Hauptmann, he said, would prove that on 1st March and 2nd April 1932, the days of the kidnapping and the ransom payment, he was nowhere near Hopewell or St Raymond's Cemetery. Hauptmann walked confidently to the witness chair. He wore a double breasted grey suit with a white handkerchief in his breast pocket. The Troopers moved to either side of the chair to guard him. In his evidence, Hauptmann explained that the misspellings in his handwriting samples had been 'because of the dictation' by police and officials who had wanted him to write it that way, and not because he was a writer of the ransom notes.
	[ Charles Lindbergh ] Lindbergh, seen here giving evidence at the trial, was a most damning prosecution witness. He seemed a paragon of integrity as he pointed to Hauptmann as the man whose voice he heard at St Raymond's Cemetery during the ransom handover.
	His Chief counsel, Reilly, pointed to the kidnapper's ramshackle ladder, which stood in the well of the court. 'Did you build that ladder?' 'I am a carpenter,' Hauptmann said with a smile. There was loud laughter in the court. 'Did you build this ladder?' 'Certainly not,' Hauptmann said. Hauptmann told Reilly how he found the gold certificate bills in the package left by Isidor Fischer, of the money Fisch owed him, and of being beaten up by police at Greenwich Street in New York. Then, cross examined by Wilentz, Hauptmann admitting lying in custody. The clashes between the men became more heated. Wilentz was vengeful and high voiced. Hauptmann was coldly determined. He seemed assured, and when he made a telling reply, he tended to smile. This irritated Wilentz. 'You are smiling at me every five minutes,' Wilentz said. 'No.' 'You think you are bigger than everybody, don't you?' Wilentz continued. 'No,' replied the defendant, 'but I know I am innocent.' This knowledge gave Hauptmann an inner strength.
	[ The Ladder ] The ladder found in the grounds at Hopewell was a crude, home-made effort. It was six metres (20 feet) long when extended and had rungs 46 cm (18 inches) apart, rather than the usual 30 cm (12 inches). Police confirmed that it fell several feet short of the nursery window. This would have made it extremely difficult for a lone kidnapper to climb unaided out of the window when carrying the Lindbergh baby. The prosecution however, set out to prove that Hauptmann had done just that. A New York detective, Lewis Bornmann, and a government wood expert, Arthur Koehler, spent months trying to trace the yard where the timber for the ladder was bought. The wood was widely used, but they decided with little justification that it came from a lumber yard used by Hauptmann. Bornmann then assert that one of the ladder's rails came from a floorboard in Hauptmann's attic. The defence lawyers protested that they had been denied access to the house to test the Bornmann - Koehler findings. In court, defence wood experts largely demolished the findings, but to no avail.
	Hauptmann was, however, uncertain in some of his evidence. He was unsure of the exact dates he worked at the Majestic Apartments. Records subsequently proved that he did, in fact, work there on 1st March 1932. Wilentz asked about the telephone number of Dr Condon, which was written on a closet door in Hauptmann's home. Naively, Hauptmann said he had no recollection of writing it, but, since the handwriting resembled his own, he much have written it. He could not explain why. (After the trial, it emerged that a reporter with the Daily News in New York, named Tom Cassidy, had written it there, after Hauptmann's arrest, as a joke and because it would make a good story.) In his final speech for Hauptmann, Reilly derided the prosecution contention that Hauptmann was the kidnapper at Hopewell. 'How in God's name did Hauptmann in the Bronx know anything about the Lindbergh home?' he asked. He demanded to know what evidence had been produced to show that Hauptmann knew the baby was to stay at Hopewell on Tuesday for the first time or how he knew the layout of the house. Step by step, Reilly tried to show how flimsy the case against Hauptmann as the maker of the ladder, the writer of the ransom notes and the recipient of Lindbergh's $50,000 payment. He suggested that the police, desperate for evidence, had fabricated their own or placed pressure on witnesses.
	[ Justice Thomas Trenchard ] In his summing up, Justice Thomas Trenchard seemed to be fair to Hauptmann, but a number of those present, such as the English author Ford Madox Ford, detected a bias in his emphasis on certain words.
	The mob wants the German carpenter killed,' Reilly ended, 'as mobs for the past 2,000 years have cried for the death of a person... where are our feelings when we have sent an innocent man to his death?' Wilentz, in his own final speech, preferred character assassination to a resume of evidence. He described Hauptmann as 'Public Enemy Number One of the World!... Look at him as he walks out into this room, panther-like, gloating, feeling good.' The prosecutor played upon a wide-spread anti-German sentiment. 'Now what type of man would kill the child of Colonel Lindbergh?' he asked. 'He wouldn't be an American... the federal authorities have found that animal, and animal lower than the lowest form in the animal kingdom.' The following morning, 13th February 1935, Judge Thomas Trenchard began his summing up. It lasted one hour and ten minutes. At 11.23am, the jury retired to consider it's verdict.
	[ Bruno Hauptmann ] Bruno Hauptmann stands behind bars in Flemington Jail. Though found guilty, many voiced their concern about the evidence. The famous criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow said: 'I haven't seen anything there to indicate murder, have you?'
	At 10.44pm that night, the twelve jury members returned. The foreman, Charles Walton, rose to his feet to announce the jury's decision. It had found Hauptmann guilty of murder in the first degree. Reilly then made each one repeat the finding. The defendant, made to stand, kept his grip while Judge Trenchard sentenced him to death; then he was taken back to his cell where he collapsed. Inside the death cell of Trenton State Prison, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, Prisoner 17400, began writing the story of his life to raise money for an appeal. There was also a market for his signature. At fund-raising meetings in the Bronx, several thousand people, many German immigrants, paid to hear Hauptmann's wife Anna and his counsel declare his innocence. Some $20,000 was needed to finance an appeal. Hauptmann sacked his attorney, Reilly, after being presented with a legal bill of $25,000 which Hauptmann thought to be excessive considering his circumstances. The public mood was beginning to slowly turn. Lindbergh ransom bills were still appearing on the street, and Millard Whited - a vital witness who placed Hauptmann in the vicinity of Hopewell on 1st March 1932 - had been jailed for theft. Many public figures and members of the public who believed that Hauptmann was, to some degree, implicated in the kidnapping expressed disgust at the way he had been prosecuted, and the lack of solid evidence.
	[ Charles Lindbergh ] The claim of Lindbergh that it was Hauptmann's voice he heard at the Cemetery virtually assured the German's conviction. No one at the trial doubted Lindbergh's memory.
	On 2nd May 1935, New Jersey's Court of Error and Appeals began hearing Hauptmann's appeal in Trenton. His lawyers criticized the legal basis of the case, and the prosecuting style of David Wilentz, the state Attorney General. Wilentz, who was present, repeated his statement that Hauptmann was an animal. On 9th October, the court announced its ruling. 'The evidence,' said the judges, 'pointed to guilt from so many directions that no reasonable doubt was left.' The case did, however, disturb the Governor of New Jersey, Harold Hoffman, who, at thirty nine, was among the younger and more independent minded national politicians. Hoffman spent an hour with Hauptmann in the death cell on 16th October, and was impressed by the fact that the prisoner did not ask for mercy, but a further investigation. Hoffman agreed to one.
	[ Governor Harold Hoffman ] The only one in authority to champion Hauptmann after his conviction was Governor Harold Hoffman of New Jersey. A shrewd politician, he had worked as a sports writer and been an army captain in the First World War, before becoming, at thirty nine, the youngest State Governor in the USA. Already dismayed by the atmosphere of the trial, Hoffman was deeply affected by the way Hauptmann, whom he visited with in the death cell, and his wife Anna asserted Hauptmann's innocence. The intensity and eloquence of their denials could not, he felt, be mere theatre to cheat the law. 'I do doubt that this crime could have been committed by any one man,' Hoffman stated publicly. He tried hard to secure fresh evidence, especially from Dr Condon, the go between, but was outwitted by the prosecution lawyers. Hoffman's efforts to save Hauptmann cost him much public support. He was voted out of office in 1938.
	The Governor, who was also chairman of the Court of Pardons in New Jersey, seemed Hauptmann's only hope. On 9th December, the Supreme Court refused to hear his case, and on 27th December, Lindbergh sailed to England with his family. A single expression of doubt from Lindbergh would have been enough to commute Hauptmann's sentence to life imprisonment. Hauptmann's execution had been set for the week beginning 13th January 1936. On 11th January, the Court of Pardons confirmed the death sentence - by now set for 17th January. Hoffman alone had voted for commutation. He became more convinced than ever of Hauptmann's innocence when he read that Hauptmann had rejected a newspapers offer of $90,000, payable to his wife, in return for a confession. On 16th January, Hoffman granted a temporary reprieve, and continued his investigation. Concrete proof all but emerged that Hauptmann had been working at the Majestic Apartments on 1st March 1932, but again, the time sheets could not be found.
	[ The Protests ] The verdict against Hauptmann led to some of the most respected figures in American public life expressing their disquiet. President Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor (above), commented, 'The entire trial has left me with a question in my mind.' In July 1935, six months after the trial ended, the American Bar Association criticized both sides. 'To treat a simple trial as a public show... is to cheapen life itself,' it said. America's most famous criminal lawyer, Clarence Darrow, described the prosecution's evidence as flimsy.
	In accordance to the law, a new execution date was set. Intense pressure was brought to bear on Hauptmann to confess, and settle all doubts once and for all. New York's leading criminal lawyer, Samuel Leibowitz, was among those who pleaded with Hauptmann to admit to the crime. Hauptmann insisted he was innocent of kidnapping and murder. The Court of Pardons refused to reprieve Hauptmann again.
	[ Samuel Leibowitz ] In the final weeks before the execution, many lawyers and politicians who thought Hauptmann guilty were increasingly unsettled by criticism of the conduct of the trial, and by the doubts that were being voiced about Hauptmann's guilt. For their own peace of mind, they were determined to get a confession, and so settle matters. Samuel Leibowitz, a fast talking New York lawyer who had once got the Chicago gangster Al Capone acquitted on a triple murder charge, believe Hauptmann guilty, but felt the trial was unjust. Leibowitz visited Hauptmann in his cell three times, on the last occasion describing an electrocution in brutal detail to shock Hauptmann. But, Hauptmann would not change his story; he had nothing to confess. These visits were highly publicized and Leibowitz had to explain his failure to the press. Lamely, he said Hauptmann had been evasive and deceitful. Like many others, Leibowitz was unable to accept that Hauptmann might be telling the truth.
	On 2nd April 1936, Hauptmann wrote, thanking Governor Hoffman for his efforts and addressed a passage to David Wilentz, his prosecutor, saying '... I swear by God that you convicted an innocent man. Once you will stand before the same judge to whom I go in a few hours. You know you have done wrong on me... I beg you, Attorney General, believe at least a dying man. Please investigate, because this case is not solved, it only adds another dead to the Lindbergh case.'
	[ Anna Hauptmann ] Anna Hauptmann supported by a newspaper reporter, clasps her head in anguish at the news of her husband's execution. Ghoulishly, the press had gathered outside her hotel room in Trenton to see her reactions. Hours later she returned home to the Bronx.
	On 3rd April 1936, Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair at Trenton State Prison, New Jersey.
	[ Charles Lindbergh ] Lindbergh speaks at a rally of the America First Committee - an isolationist movement of which he was chairman - at Philadelphia in early 1941. America entered the war that December after the attack on Pearl Harbour.
	In 1936, Lindbergh visited Germany as a guest of the Nazi Government. His visits to aviation centres led him to warn the British and American governments against the growing power of the Nazi's. Lindbergh came to admire the Nazi's and, after war broke out in 1939, he made several radio broadcasts urging America not to join in. The American President Franklin D. Roosevelt attacked Lindbergh's pro-Nazi and isolationist stance, and Lindbergh resigned his reserve commission in the Army Air Corps (AAC). When America went to war in 1941, Lindbergh offered his services to the AAC, but was rejected - a deep humiliation. Still, as a civilian, he became a consultant to an aircraft corporation in the Pacific, flying many dangerous combat missions against the Japanese. Lindbergh later worked for Pan Am as a technical consultant, wrote a book about his famous solo flight and became interested in ecology. He died in Hawaii in 1974, aged seventy two. He and Anne had six more children after the death of Charles Jnr.
	[ Discovery at Hauptmann's ] A few days after the discovery of the money in Hauptmann's garage, police also found there a tiny pistol and a further $840 hidden in the holes of a wooden drill stand.
	Harold Hoffman lost his office of Governor in 1938. In 1954, rumours that he had plundered state funds led to his resignation from the Division of Employment Security. He died six weeks later, admitting that he had embezzled money.
	[ District Attorney Samuel J Foley ]
	Edward Reilly died of a stroke aged sixty four, in 1940. He had suffered from untreated syphilis.
	[ Bruno & Manfred Hauptmann ] Hauptmann found his baby son Manfred a source of joy. He wrote: 'My wife and child! My heaven on earth.' Father and son are pictured here enjoying life on rural Hunters Island, a promontory off the Bronx.
	Anna Hauptmann faded into obscurity, but in 1984, aged eighty five, was living near her son Manfred and his family in Philadelphia.
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