[NB: Numbers in brackets represent the page numbers of the original record on appeal.]
STATE vs. HAUPTMANN
Flemington, N. J., January 3, 1935.
SECOND DAY
Present:
Hon. Thomas W. Trenchard.
Appearances: Mr. Wilentz, Mr. Lanigan, Mr. Hauck, Mr.
Peacock, Mr. Large, For the State.
Mr. Reilly, Mr. Fisher, Mr. Pope, Mr. Rosecrans, For the Defendant.
[1] MR. WILENTZ: May it please
your Honor, Mr. Foreman, men and women of the jury: A Grand Jury that was
composed of citizens of this County has returned an indictment charging that
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., was murdered. It is the law, men and women, as will
be pointed out to you by the Court, that where the death of anyone ensues in
the commission of a burglary, that killing is murder, murder in the first
degree. It is also the law, as the Court will point out to you, that if a
person in the murder is feloniously stricken in one county, that is, the blow
is given in one county, but death ensues in another county, notwithstanding the
fact that the death ensues in the other county, it is murder in this county if
the felonious striking took place here, or if the death occurs here.
I just point that out to you, not
that I expect it will have any particular effect, because we are going to prove
that not only the striking but the death took place in Hunterdon County. Now,
on the first day of March, 1932, the State will prove to you that a very
distinguished citizen of this country was a resident of Hunterdon County and on
that day the household, the Lindbergh household, consisted of Betty Gow, Mr.
and Mrs. Whatley, Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, his wife, and their only and
infant son, who was twenty months of age, I think it was, twenty months old or
young.
The child was a happy, normal,
jovial, delightful little tot that age, blue eyed, curly headed, blond haired.
He had been playing around that entire day with the family, and on the night of
March 1, 1932, that child was killed; and the State will prove to you jurors
that the man who killed and murdered that child sits in this very court
room—the gentleman in the custody of the Sheriff’s guards right in the rear of
the distinguished [2] members of the Bar who make up the defense counsel.
This crime had been planned for
some time. This defendant Hauptmann had conceived this plan and had undertaken
it, had plotted it, prepared it, and we will show you that by the fact that he
was in and about the vicinity of this Lindbergh home on many occasions before
as well as at the time of the crime. He came there with his ladder, placed it
against that house. He broke into and entered at night the Lindbergh home with
the intent to commit a battery upon that child and with the intent to steal the
child and its clothing. And he did. Not only with the intent, but he actually
committed a battery upon the child and did steal it and did steal its clothing.
I will refer to its clothing and its stealing a little while later.
Then as he went out that window
and down that ladder of his, the ladder broke. He had more weight going down
than he had when he was coming up. And down he went with this child. In the
commission of that burglary, that child was instantaneously killed when it
received that first blow. It received a horrible fracture, the dimensions of
which when you hear about it will convince you that death was instantaneous.
Getting down there he took the
ladder and about 70 feet away the load was too heavy. In the one hand he had
the ladder and in the other he had this bundle, this dead package to him. The
ladder was of no particular use to him. He abandoned that. Then he proceeded on
his way until he had gotten about a half mile, the child dead. Knowing it was
dead, he wasn’t a bit concerned about it and there, three thousand or more feet
away and still on the Lindbergh estate, he yanked and ripped the sleeping
garment of that child off its body.
[3] Though it was cold and raw,
he yanked and ripped that sleeping garment off that child, because he didn’t
need the child, as we will show you, he needed the sleeping garment. Then, of
course, at the very first convenient spot, some few miles away, he scooped up a
hastily improvised and shallow grave and put this child in face downwards and
on he went on his way to complete the rest of his plans in this horrible
criminal endeavor.
Well, pretty soon, about ten o’clock,
the Lindberghs found out that their child was missing and you can, of course,
imagine the excitement, you can imagine how hysterical some of the members must
have been—and the first thing, as soon as Colonel Lindbergh heard about it, he
immediately asked Whatley to call the police, and then he grabbed his rifle and
went through the woods, and up and down the roads, while Mrs. Lindbergh and the
rest of the family looked through closets, looked here and there, looked
through places they knew the child would not be, but just looked, in the hope
that springs eternal in the human breast; and then of course the world knew.
Of course, they didn’t know their
child had been murdered. There was left a note in the room by the defendant,
and that note indicated that the person responsible for this crime would get in
touch with the Lindberghs again in a few days. And he did. He wrote ,Colonel
Breckenridge and in a few days after crying to ‘Colonel Breckenridge, the world
having become aroused, a very distinguished and aged educator and scholar and
teacher in the Bronx, in a desire to serve society and in a desire to serve the
Lindberghs inserted an advertisement in the Bronx
Home News, and that advertisement Mr. Hauptmann answered. He said, [4] “We
will take you Condon, we will take you as the intermediary.”
We will show you that this
defendant Hauptmann personally delivered a note to a taxi driver and said, “Take
this down to Condon’s home, down where Decatur Avenue is.” That note was not
mailed, that note was delivered and delivered for a purpose, because in that
note he gave Condon, I think it was three-quarters of an hour to get to the
place to meet him. The aged gentleman went down there, to Woodlawn Cemetery and
on the inside of the cemetery was Mr. Hauptmann, on the inside of the gates and
Condon there on the outside until Hauptmann, becoming alarmed because somebody
was coming somewhere in the distance, he scaled and climbed a nine or ten foot
cemetery gate and then jumped down, ran across the street to a park there and
finally, when he realized he wasn’t being followed by police, but only had this
aged man to contend with, he stopped and there they talked.
They talked for an hour and ten
or an hour and twenty minutes, and in that talk this defendant said, “Will I
burn if the, child dies?” Oh, he tried to sell Condon the idea to give up Lindbergh’s
money without seeing the child, and Condon had no authority.
The doctor said, “Please let me
see the child; take me as a hostage; don’t worry, I can’t do anything to you.
Just let me see the child so I can tell Mrs. Lindbergh I saw it. You can keep
me there, until the money is paid, if you want to.”
“Oh,” he said, “Number One would
smack me out; Number One would smack me out.” And so finally Hauptmann says, “Doesn’t
Lindbergh know we are the people that kidnaped his child? Doesn’t he know we
are the right people? Doesn’t he see the symbol on the note, the two circles
with the big red circle in the center [5] and the holes? If he doesn’t, and
that isn’t enough, we will send him the baby’s sleeping garment. We will send
him the baby’s sleeping garment.”
And it took them two or three
days to send it. I suppose he had to have it washed. And then within a few
days, while Colonel Breckenridge was at the Condon home, he had been there
every day since the day Condon received the first message, while Colonel
Lindbergh was there, that sleeping garment came in the mail from Mr. Hauptmann,
with his circles and with his holes, as positive proof that it was him. And then
Hauptmann says, “Now, no more terms. The Lindberghs don’t see this child until
they put up the money; and if you don’t take those terms we can wait. Lindy has
got to come to us. We can wait; but if he waits until after April 8th the price
is $100,000—it is $70,000 now.”
And so, finally, here at this
Condon home in the Bronx—all of this thing taking place in the Bronx right
alongside of Hauptmann’s back yard, waiting there, finally Jafsie answered for
Colonel Lindbergh, “The money is ready, we accept. — We accept, the money is
ready.” And so on Saturday, April 2nd, $50,000 prepared for Colonel Lindbergh
was bundled into a box. Oh, I have got to tell you about that box.
Why, the carpenter put a picture
of the box in his notes. He not only put a picture in it, he gave you the
dimensions—six by seven by fourteen in his own handwriting. He told them how to
bundle it up, he measured it, mind you, in his own imagination and there he put
this picture, in this note, of this box with the dimensions. Why, he might just
as well have put his picture in there. And so, they prepared a box, put the money
in the bundle and then along came another [6] messenger on a Saturday night and
said, within three-quarters of an hour you come here or you come there, and of
course they did.
Well, you can imagine, you can
imagine the condition of Colonel Lindbergh then. There he was about to get his
child. He only needed the money, and he had that money to give up, it was all
prepared. And so, he said, “I will go with you, Dr. Condon,” and Colonel
Lindbergh drove that little automobile on that night with Condon to follow the
directions to a green house and there they would turn over a stone and under
that stone they would get further directions, and they did.
And Condon lifted up that stone
or table or whatever it was and there it was, “Cross the street and go to
Whittemore Avenue,” or something like that. He showed it to Colonel Lindbergh,
and they did that. Right across the street he had picked out another cemetery
for his next meeting place. And there was Condon in the middle of the road. Now
don’t imagine that that particular section of the Bronx is any more populated
than it is right here in Flemington, and particularly in the vicinity of the
cemetery.
And there stood Condon waiting to
see where Hauptmann was. Finally Hauptmann hollered, “Hey, Doctor, hey Doctor,”
– twice. In the still of the night you could have heard it for two blocks and
particularly in the vicinity of the Bronx. So finally Dr. Condon went down, followed
him along, he on the inside of this St. Raymond’s Cemetery, Condon on the
outside, until they got to a hedge.
And as they got down to that
hedge Condon said, “Won’t you please let me see the baby first?”
“Now, no use about that.”
Well you know in 1932 times were
awfully bad, [7] even for Colonel Lindbergh. $70,000 was a lot of money. He
wanted $70,000 then.
“Won’t you please cut it down to
$50,000? That is all we ask.”
The boss said, “Yes, I will cut
it down to fifty.”
So Dr. Condon said to him, “Now
here, after all it is just you and I. Now give me a receipt, give me the
directions where we are going to find the child.”
He said, “All right, all right.
You go back. Who is over there in the car with you?”
“Colonel Lindbergh.”
“Is he there?”
“Yes, Colonel Lindbergh is there.
He has got the money.”
“You go back to Colonel Lindbergh
and you get the money and we will meet here in five minutes and I will give you
the directions.”
He wasn’t worried about being
apprehended. He was relying upon the word of honor of Colonel Charles A.
Lindbergh, that all he wanted was his child. Not only that but he actually had
followed and traced Condon—we will prove it to you—to see that he wasn’t being
accompanied by detectives. He knew he was taking no chances, that he wanted the
child, that was all. So he went back somewhere and he wrote a little note and
he came back. And there over that hedge he received that box with $50,000.
What do you think he said? “Wait
a minute, doctor, until I see if it is all right. Wait a minute.” Then he
dipped his hand into this box and up he looked at Condon and he said, “Your
work is perfect.” Shakes hands with him. “Your work is perfect.” So within two
hours in accordance with instructions given by Hauptmann they looked at [8] this
note and the note directed them to go up to some place in Massachusetts, Bay
Head, I think it was.
Colonel Lindbergh, Dr. Condon,
Colonel Breckenridge, and a representative of the United States ‘Government got
into a plane. And Lindy who could find a speck at the end of the earth couldn’t
find his child because Hauptmann had murdered it. Up and around the waters he searched
and returned. Up again in another plane he searched and he returned, and of
course finally back home. Breckenridge still stayed at Condon’s home, still
stayed there with Condon. Condon began in the papers to advertise for better instructions.
But Mr. Hauptmann was no longer interested in Dr. Condon and no better
instructions came.
Not only did Colonel Lindbergh
with the men who accompanied him as I indicated a minute ago search for this
mysterious and mythical boat but the Coast Guard of the United States went out too
to try to find it. Of course it wasn’t there. When he took that $50,000 across
the hedge of that cemetery he took it knowing that that baby was lying face
down in that grave in New Jersey. We will prove that.
So back again to New Jersey for
Colonel Lindbergh and to the home of sorrow. Then on May 12th, on May 12th,
1932, some colored gentleman, driving along the highway, got off the beaten
path of the road and into a woods, to answer the call of nature—or whatever it
was—and there he was horrified by the sight of what appeared to him to be the
body of an infant; and of course he rushed away, but not until he had told
somebody about it; and pretty soon, pretty soon, Colonel Lindbergh and Betty
Gow and others had turned the body of that child up, face up. The moisture [9] in
the ground had still preserved the face a little bit, so that it was white when
it was turned up, and twenty minutes after the air struck it, it had turned
black.
The body was horribly decomposed;
one leg had been eaten away and carried away, one hand had been taken away, a
great part of its body had been eaten away, the rest of it decomposed, the skin,
the flesh, rotted away, in that hole, the grave that Hauptmann had placed for
it. But there was that little sleeping shirt that Betty Gow had prepared and
that Mrs. Lindbergh had helped her prepare that day; there was the forehead and
the brown curls and the curly headed prominent forehead under the blond hair; there
was that typical nose, and there were the toes overlapping, the overlapping
toes of the Lindbergh child.
Anybody that knew that child, any
member of the family, would know right away that was the “Little Eagle,” and so
of course they took the child and cremated the body and the ashes were delivered
to Colonel Lindbergh.
The Lord moves in a mysterious
way his wonders to perform, as you well know, and the first thing you know a
little gas station attendant in the Bronx found the man that murdered the
Lindbergh child. He came there with a ten-dollar bill, he had to get rid of the
money. He came there with a ten dollar bill; it was a gold note, and the station
attendant who was taking money all day long hadn’t seen much of that lately,
because the President of the United States had called that gold in and it was
against the law to have it and to hoard it. He said to Hauptmann, “What about this,
where did you get this?” Oh, then, Hauptmann knew he was in for a little
trouble. What do you think he said?
He said, “Oh, I have got a [10] hundred
of those,” just nonchalantly, “Oh, I have a hundred of those.”
And off he drove. And so they
finally arrested him. They arrested him, and what do you think he said when
they found on his person another Lindbergh bill?
“Where did you get this?” they
said.
Now, if he had gotten it honestly
he would have told them right then. But what did he do? He said, “This is one
of three hundred dollars that I have saved up, because I thought gold would be more
valuable, and I got it from my friends and from the banks, and I had three
hundred, but this is the last;” so they took him to his home and they started a
search.
He knew they would not find it in
his home. He had prepared for that. They took him to the police station and
they pleaded with him and they talked to him. And then what? Carpenters dug up
thirteen thousand some hundred dollars of United States money—Lindbergh money,
ransom money. And he was confronted with that and he said, “Yes, I buried that away.
“
“Where did you get it?”
“Why, a partner of mine, an
associate of mine, a friend of mine, now dead, gave it to me.”
“Is that all that you have got?”
“Yes, that is all.”
And at that very minute, when he
was again saying that that was all he had and that the story which he first
told about the twenty dollar bill, when he admitted that that was untrue, and
then he gave this story, at that very minute the police had more money, but he
insisted that was all, and when he finished that statement, District Attorney
Samuel Foley said to him, “How about this eight hundred and some dollars?”
And he said, “Yes, I didn’t tell
you the truth; that is Lindbergh money too;” that is Lindbergh [11] money too.”
And there, right in the house, hidden
on an inside closet wall in his own admitted handwriting, there was the address
and telephone number of Dr. John F. Condon, in his baby’s closet, on the
inside. A little closet; you would have to get in on the inside and be well, you
would have to be the type of man of Hauptmann to get in there.
In his own handwriting, and he is
asked, “Why did you write Condon’s name on there?”
“Why, you know, I had a funny
habit, I liked to write telephone numbers or addresses.”
He didn’t have anything else in
the whole house. And in that search, in that search we found the answer to the
ladder. Now, one year about, before Hauptmann was arrested, one year before any
of us knew that there was such a person in existence, the United States
Government had traced to the Bronx Lumber Yard Company, or the Bronx Lumber
Corporation, they had traced some of the lumber, they knew that ladder had been
made of lumber, some parts of which came from the Bronx lumber yards.
When Hauptmann was arrested, what
do you suppose we find? We find he worked at the Bronx lumber yards, he bought
lumber there, but not only that, he has got this ladder right around his neck;
he took part of that attic of his and built the ladder with it,-and we will
prove that to you beyond any doubt. One rung of that ladder, one side of that
ladder, comes right from his attic, put on there with his tools, and we will
prove it to you, no matter how difficult it may sound, we will prove it to you
so that there will be no doubt about it.
Now, of course, this is like most
crimes. There has to be a motive for it, and you probably know it by this time.
You can be sure [12] Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. did not attack Hauptmann; it was
not in self-defense; it was not because of any provocation or anything that he
had against Colonel Lindbergh. He committed this crime, he had planned it for months,
because he wanted money—money. What do you suppose he wanted it for, money—lots
of money he wanted, and he got it. And what do you suppose he did with it? He
wanted that money so he could do as he did: live a life of luxury and ease so
he would not have to work.
He quit his job the day he
collected the $50,000, the very day; they had to replace him, so that he could
do as he did: live a life of luxury and ease. So he could go to Florida, so he
could have a boat on Hunter’s Island, and other places, so he could have a
radio. In the midst of the worst depression of this land, in May 1932, he
spends four hundred dollars for a radio. Not only that; so that he could as he
did gamble and speculate with thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars.
Why, he poured money into these accounts. In July, 1933 alone what do you
suppose this gentleman did? Forty-five hundred dollars in the account of Mrs.
Schoenfeld or whatever her name is, the wife, the maiden name, the delightful
wife of Mr. Hauptmann; forty-five hundred in the same month, two thousand more
in cash in a savings account. That is besides this money found in the garage.
He poured those moneys in there to satisfy his desire to gamble and speculate.
Why, he used Lindy’s money to buy Sweepstake tickets with! What do you think of
that?
Now men and women of the jury, if
we do not prove these facts to you, why, you acquit him. You acquit him; if we
do not prove them to you, you acquit him. But if we do, as we are confident we
[13] will be able to, and as we expect to, let me just tell you, representing
the State of New Jersey, that this State will not compromise with murder or
murderers. We demand the penalty of murder in the first degree.
[Defense moves for a mistrial.
Denied after extensive argument.]
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