SUMMATION BY THE DEFENSE: NEW JERSEY v BRUNO RICHARD HAUPTMANN

SUMMATION BY MR. REILLY

[Numbers in brackets are 

page numbers from the 

original transcript]

STATE vs. HAUPTMANN

Flemington, N. J., February 11, 1935.

THIRTIETH DAY

[4687] SUMMATION BY MR. REILLY: May it please your Honor, Mr. Attorney General, his staff, gentlemen of the defense, ladies and gentlemen of the jury: I believe in approaching this case that I do it with a great feeling of responsibility. I wish to give you a text from St. Matthew: “Judge not lest ye be judged,” and ask of you in the consideration of this case that you bring into your hearts and into your consciences the feeling that you are weighing that which you cannot give back, if you take away—life.

And I can readily appreciate, ladies and gentlemen, at this time, after hearing the distinguished Prosecutor of the Pleas of this County in his statement, that your condition of mind at the present time must be more or less to the effect that this defendant must prove his innocence—and that is not the law.

You are faced with a very, very difficult task. The responsibility, yes, is on your shoulders. But you are big enough, and you are American enough to be honest, and despite the position and the prestige and the wealth of the distinguished family who find themselves in the position here of being bereaved, the scales [4688] of justice under that flag which is over your heads will bring to your minds the realization that despite the fact that this carpenter from Germany is on trial, our Constitution and our laws and our justice and our decency, and your honesty will compel the great State of New Jersey to prove this case not according to the theories of the prosecution, but according to the law of this State and the law of every state of our Union. Not guesswork, not inference, not “maybe's,” and not speeches.

You want the law and you will get it from the distinguished jurist who sits here, but the evidence that comes from that witness stand has got to be evidence that convinces your conscience, your conscience, the still voice of your conscience, that it is good, and that it is honest and that it points toward this defendant as the murderer. And that is the only thing we are interested in in this courtroom today.

Now may I read to you the indictment. I am going to cut out all the legal phraseology, and I am going to talk the same kind of language that you understand; because only the Hudson River divides the town I live in, Tarrytown, from the Jersey shore across at Nyack and Alpine and other Jersey towns, so we can all speak the same language and try and get away from this legal phraseology which is so upsetting not only to laymen but to lawyers.

Now it says this, in plain language, but it is the pattern by which you must go; it says first that this defendant alone on the 1st day of March, and that doesn't mean the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, it means the 1st and the 1st only, in the township of East Amwell, nowhere else, not Mercer County, not the Bronx, not Niagara Falls, East Amwell alone and [4689] only therein, did wilfully, feloniously, and with malice aforethought kill the young Lindbergh baby.

Now what do I mean by “pattern?” There may be some pattern-makers on the jury. They get their pattern and they are obliged to make something according to that pattern. The women use a pattern for dressmaking. The men use it in machinery. Now, if you make some other kind of a dress it doesn't fit the pattern. The mother goes into the kitchen and she is going to make a cake, and she wants to make a chocolate cake, and if some other kind of a cake comes out of the oven it is not according to her desire. People play bridge; people play dominoes; people play all kinds of games. There are rules and then there are cards—or there are checkers, which fit the rules—and it is the same in a case at law.

It is not a game—by that I mean something to fool you. But here is the pattern which his Honor will charge you at the close of this case, and I believe he will charge you—and I have no desire to step outside or beyond the boundary line of my distinguished friend on the Bench—but I think I can go this far, to say, so that you will intelligently understand my resume of the evidence, that his Honor is going to say this: that the State of New Jersey are relying here on proving these facts: that this defendant, alone, planned this crime, alone. Nobody else. If you find it was a gang, or three or four others, the pattern is wrong.

Having planned it, he came here, alone; and, alone, he entered that house, and, alone, he committed a burglary; and while in the commission of that burglary or felony this unfor- [4690] tunate child was killed and was killed instantly. Now, that is what they said in their opening they would prove. And of course every defendant that comes into court is presumed to be innocent, but in this particular case it is quite apparent, from the very beginning, from the time he was arrested, that the burden shifted to him, subconsciously, or unconsciously, or no matter how you will have it, and he was placed in the position, not only of meeting that pattern, but of proving his innocence.

Now, we must begin somewhere at the beginning, and right at the very beginning let me say this: this is the crime of the century and you will have it howled into your ears by no matter how many gentlemen who make replying speech. There isn't any doubt about it, and I am not here to fool you. Let's face this thing, because this case has come down now, in my opinion to this—common ordinary horse sense. By that I mean we are going to look at the evidence given by each witness and say to ourselves, what would be the natural way for that person to act? And against that we are confronted with a lot of technicians and experts who, the best they can do, is at so much a day give us their opinions of things.

So I am appealing to your common, ordinary David Harum inherent American horse sense, that you gathered from this part of the country and which has been inherent since the days of the Revolution. So I say at the very beginning that this is the crime of the century and it is the worst crime and the lowest type of crime ever committed, to my knowledge, or according to any of the books I have ever read. But it is not the defendant who is guilty of it. And no one holds in higher admiration than myself the distinguished father of this unfortunate child. It was never my pleasure to meet the Colonel personally, but in line with my duties I remember the day he landed in New York after his wonderful flight. It was part of my duty to march with the sailors of my detachment ahead of him, in honor of him. And my opinion of Colonel Lindbergh and his wonderful flight has never changed and never will.

And the distinguished family into whose midst he married, I have great admiration for the family of the distinguished ex-Senator from this State, Dwight Morrow. And of course it was a terrible thing, but we cannot be swept off our feet when there is no evidence. And into your County came this distinguished Colonel and flier, and in your County he built his home, and he surrounded it with every safeguard for privacy, for quiet, for peace and for repose; and he only used it for week-ends, and here we have a sketch of this beautiful home that he built for his wife and for his baby boy—beautiful estate—all the protection around it. He thought he was safe and he thought he was secure.

But Bruno Richard Hauptmann never drove a nail in that house; Bruno Richard Hauptmann was never on those grounds; Bruno Richard Hauptmann was never standing on any road near Princeton, nor did any man, no matter who he was, see him standing on any road February 7th, 8th and 9th.

It is going to be rather difficult and it is going to take you quite some time, no doubt, in [4692] the sanctity of your jury room, to coordinate and gather together all of the evidence in this case, and then to sit down and say to yourselves, Does it fit with guilt?

Now, they would have you in one breath believe that this man Hauptmann was a master mind, that he planned this himself and, the next minute, they would have you believe that he was the worst fool in the world, that he was dumb, that he didn't know anything; he would wear gloves making a ladder so his fingerprints wouldn't be left behind; and he would sit an hour and a half talking to Condon with his face exposed; in one the careful master mind, in the other the perfect fool. Now you cannot carry water on both shoulders, and whether he stood at the Princeton Airport, which I don't believe he did, because people, hundreds of people have tried to crash into this case, hundreds of people have tried to say they saw this and they saw that and they saw the other thing, and no doubt the Attorney General has rejected them as fast as we have, publicity, a desire for publicity, mistaken identity, for some reason a man comes forward and says, “Yes, I saw him. I saw him outside of Princeton Airport, but I have got to testify in a hurry because I am going to Philadelphia.” And you remember that we suspended the examination of a witness to let this man, I think his name was Rossiter, take the stand. Did you look at him—shifty-eyed, sat around in his chair, he couldn't face you until finally I stood here and said, “Turn around and let the jury get a look at you.” And for four minutes he looked at Hauptmann, but he never took the number of his automobile license, nor did he have a perfect description of his car nor did he know [4693] anything about the neighborhood.

Did he know where the nearest house was? Did he know anything? Now you know and I know if we were looking at a man, if we were suspicious, especially a salesman, the first thing we would look at would be the automobile license on the back, and we would know whether it was a New York license, a Jersey license or a California license. But no, he didn't look, and he left the stand, a stranger to me and a stranger to you, and flies off to Philadelphia.

Now, that is part of this wonderful scenario, because that is about all it is—as we go through it you will see that this case has been pieced together as you would write as a scenario, but it is not founded on honest facts. If Hauptmann had said to this man, “How do you get from here to Hopewell? How can I get in the Lindbergh estate? What do you know about the Lindbergh house? Have they any guards? Have they any people around the place?” Or, asked some questions—it might be suspicious, but any man could be standing in the road by a car, hundreds of people were under suspicion in this case, and I suppose several of them were arrested and turned loose afterwards, so I don't believe Rossiter, who dashed off to Philadelphia, any more than I believe Whited, who says in February Hauptmann was somewheres around the Lindbergh estate, because, ladies and gentlemen, there are certain concrete facts in this case that stand out like sore thumbs, and the first thing that you have got to decide when you go into your jury room is this: How in God's name did Hauptmann in the Bronx know anything about the Lindbergh home?

Now, Colonel Lindbergh's home was a regular castle. Colonel Lindbergh's home must have been guarded in some way. Now, you can't get away from those facts. They are there. I don't care about handwriting. I don't care anything about wood. Nor do I care i:bout the ransom money for which this man stands indicted in The Bronx and for which he has to stand trial there. Nor am I going to allow you to pull the chestnuts out of the fire for Bronx County and say, “Well, because he had the money he must be guilty of something; therefore, we will send him away for something.” Let New York take care of that indictment.

But that has nothing to do with this fact: how did Hauptmann know anything about Lind bergh's home? And then it comes back to you, this indictment: Hauptmann alone, charged alone—and it can't be twisted now—charged alone. Now, is it possible, is it possible for any man, I don't care who he is—possibly for the architect, yes, or any of the people that worked on that house, but not a man in Bronx County, at least 75 to 100 miles away from Hopewell to know anything about Colonel Lindbergh's home.

Colonel Lindbergh was stabbed in the back by the disloyalty of those who worked for him, and despite the fact that he courageously believes that there was no disloyalty in the servants' quarters, I say now that no one could get into that house unless the information was supplied by those who worked for Colonel Lindbergh. And this is no fairy tale. I am talking now from the record; I am talking from the evidence in this case. [4695] And what is the evidence in the case? The evidence is, sir, that the first time in the history of Colonel Lindbergh's life that he ever stayed a Tuesday night in that house was this Tuesday night. Every other week-end was over Sunday night or early Monday morning. That is his own evidence. Who knew the baby had a cold and had to stay in Hopewell on Monday? Not Hauptmann. There was no doctor to give out the news. There were no trades people they suspected of giving out any news. Sunday night came and Sunday night passed, and this ridiculous assertion “I have planned this for a year” is ridiculous because nobody in God's world but Colonel Lindbergh, his lovely wife, his butler, his butler's wife, Betty Gow, the servants in the Morrow home, and Red Johnson, knew that Colonel Lindbergh was going to be in New York Monday night and would not be home Monday night. Now that's his own testimony.

Then comes Tuesday, and Mrs. Lindbergh, believing that the child's cold is sufficiently important enough, sends for Betty Gow. Now, the Colonel can have all the confidence in the world he pleases in Betty Gow. I have none. He doesn't know where she came from. She came from an ordinary employment agency, or she came recommended by some woman for whom she worked. She comes from Scotland, and she comes here when they give her $700; otherwise, she wouldn't come.

You don't know what her antecedents were before she entered Colonel Lindbergh's home, nor do I. I don't know what her background is, and you don't know what her background is, but she was the only living person who knew on Tuesday afternoon that Mrs. Lindbergh [4696] was going to stay at Hopewell Tuesday night, except the other servants in the Morrow estate.

And how many did they have? Many. They had a first chauffeur and a second chauffeur, who was afterwards replaced and now he is a watchman; they had five or six maids, they must have had gardeners. What do you know about the antecedents of those people? Nothing. How do we know who Betty Gow talked to when she got the message Tuesday afternoon from Mrs. Lindbergh, “Come over, the baby is not well?” But she never communicated with Hauptmann.

So that I say, nobody in God's world knew that baby was going to be there Tuesday night, but this Gow girl. And my learned friend and distinguished friend, the Attorney General may ask you to guess about this and may stand for thirty minutes giving Betty Gow the greatest recommendation in the world. I am saying to you this: Let's take her name out of it, let's call her No. 3.

Ask yourselves the question, from the evidence, who besides Mrs. Lindbergh knew they were going to stay Tuesday night? And then you will come back the same as I did and say, “Betty Gow,” and I don't know how many others she may have told over at the Morrow servants' quarters. Now, if, ladies and gentlemen, nobody knew where the Colonel was or when he would be home, and with regularity this family always returned to Englewood on Sunday night or Monday morning, how can we place that knowledge in Hauptmann's possession? You can't.

[4697] Now, as the house was constituted that night there was the butler, there was his wife, there was Betty Gow, Colonel, Mrs. Lindbergh and the baby; nobody else. But there was one agency in that house that would only respond to its master, and that was that fox terrier dog; and it is very important in this case. I hope there are some dog lovers on the jury and some that have kept fox terriers—the snappiest, scrappiest, quickest on the trigger dogs alive, when it comes to a watchdog. Who controlled that dog's movements that night? The butler. I don't care what sound, the sound of the wind, or anything else, inherently and instinctively, these dogs can smell a stranger on the grounds, and that dog never even barked. I don't know anything about these people, but I say the circumstances point absolutely along a straight line of guilt toward that butler and the servants who were disloyal to Colonel Lindbergh.

Here we have this beautiful mansion on top of the hill there on a March night, and the evidence is that the wind was howling, and up on the mountains there in Sourland there was a gale blowing. Mrs. Lindbergh, depending on Betty Gow, goes around the house performing her usual tasks of reading, having dinner, feeling secure in the safety of those she had brought into her home and placed her hand of protection over, her servants.

What happens? The little baby is put to bed with a cold. Now we can't get away from that. There are mothers and fathers on this jury. They know how children at that tender age, are susceptible within a half hour to a cold. And this little kiddy was so sick it [4698] couldn't be moved back to Englewood. That was why they sent for Betty Gow—protection for the child. To rub the child's chest, to give it a little physic, and tuck him into bed. This nurse who went on the stand and blandly told you she loved that wonderful little baby, allowed herself to stay away from the baby from before eight o'clock until ten o'clock at night. Do you believe that? Well, if she did it was part of the disloyal plan by which that baby was taken out of that house.

Now, I want you, if you will, please—and it is my earnest prayer that you do—to keep before you after I have finished my address to you these particularly important pieces of evidence; because before you begin to consider some of the outside matters that have been dragged in here—fingerprints and handwriting and boards—you have got to place Hauptmann in that room; because the State says that's the way the crime was committed: Hauptmann was in the room. Now, let's see if he was or not. The little baby is put to bed, the lights are put out, but before that Mrs. Lindbergh and Betty Gow, without any gloves on, they are in their own home, go from window to window, closing and locking every window in the room but one. You remember the French window was closed and locked, but the blinds were left in such a position where there would be some air. Now, the excuse is given that the nursery window was warped, couldn't be closed. Now, when did it become warped or when did it become so prepared as to leave the inference behind it that that was the window the kidnaper came in? Anyhow, it was drawn in so that outside that house that night these shutters [4699] were closed, not open, and around this side of the house (indicating); the French shutters were closed and locked. These shutters were locked; these shutters were drawn to as close as they possibly could be drawn. That's the evidence.

And despite what the Prosecutor says—I don't think he meant it—when they entered that room after this child had been taken from that window, the closed shutters were in the same condition as they were when they were closed and the baby put to bed. Now, in order to kidnap that baby, as they would have you believe it was done, Hauptmann would have to know a lot of other things about that house, wouldn't he? Now, a man can't be convicted—and now I am appealing to the ladies on the jury, because of this fact, a woman's intuition, and a woman's sense of reasoning concerning babies and concerning nurseries comes to her as a God-given gift, and it is your duty, ladies, in passing upon this, particularly to recall to your minds what you know about children, sick children and young children. If you do that you will have no difficulty in this case in acquitting this defendant.

Public clamor is not going to have, in the squares of Flemington, a man drawn to his death or life imprisonment because the mob wants it. You women and you men have too much respect for your conscience and for your oath and for your Americanism to do that. Hauptmann would have to know in addition to the fact that Colonel Lindbergh was going to stay there Tuesday night, he would have to know the exact room in which the baby was kept, wouldn't he? Now you remember the Colonel's testimony. He says, “My child was [4700] kept away from strangers; my child only knew the family and the servants who came in contact with it, Whateley, Mrs. Whateley, Betty Gow and the members of my family.” The child no doubt was a shy, retiring, lovely little boy. Now Hauptmann would have to know what room that child was in, and he would have to know whether the Colonel was home or not home; he would have to know whether Mrs. Lindbergh was home or not home; he would have to know who was home; he would have to know when the baby was put to bed; and he would have to know when there was no person in that house at that present minute in the nursery.

Is there any evidence he knew anything like that? Now you cannot infer and you cannot guess and you cannot say maybe, because before you go any further in the case you have got to put Hauptmann in that room. A man can't come up to a strange house with a ladder and stock it up against the wall and run up the ladder, push open a shutter, and walk into a room that he has never been in before. That is what they would have you believe. This is a scenario they have written. But it doesn't ring true to common sense, the common sense view of things. That is why they pick a jury, not composed of lawyers or judges—for the common sense view.

Now, they'd have you believe that Hauptmann came up to this house and, without knowing who was in the house, or whether his presence would be discovered, mounts a ladder 36 inches below the window sill, or 30 inches below the window sill. Here is your ladder, and it is resting in the mud. And there are two sections. Oh, they [4701] get around that by saying Colonel Lindbergh heard a noise; it sounded like a crate falling. It might just as well have been the branch of a tree cracking off, because there was a gale blowing. Whatever it was, it didn't concern the Colonel enough to make any inquiry, because it very likely did sound like the crash of the limb of a tree.

The ladder is put into the mud. They would have you believe that Hauptmann went up two sections of that ladder. That brings him 30 inches below this window sill. And they'd have you believe that he had gloves on—30 inches below this window sill. Now he has to reach up. There is no need of any chisel, no need of any chisel. He reaches up and he finds that the shutters are just closed together. He opens the shutters, one back and the other back. Now how long do you suppose two loose shutters would stay back with a gale howling? They would be banging, banging, banging, back and forth. But nevertheless, with those shutters banging back and forth and a gale blowing, this man has to take himself by his two hands, and I don't see how he could get above the second section of the ladder, because he would have to hold on to the side of it, and he would have to hold on to the wall as he went up, to steady himself; but finally he is on the top rung now, and he is reaching three feet through the air, gripping the bottom of the window sill, of a house he had never been in, of a house where he doesn't know who is inside the room—and any fool would know that a Colonel of the United States Army would have a gun somewheres around and put a bullet through your heart; but nevertheless [4702] he pulls himself up until he gets in such a position that he can shove this window up. That makes him at least five feet away from the top rung of the ladder. Now he has got to shove this window up, get a purchase underneath as the witness did here, and raise up this window; and here is a window with a shelf, and a beer stein on it for decorative purposes, and I don't care where it was, he didn't know it was there, if anybody ever went in that window, and a strange man is able to swing himself in the window without knocking the beer stein down, and a room that is absolutely dark, mind you, in which there are toys, furniture, table and chairs, and he has never been in the room before, and across the room is a crib that he never saw in his life—this man is able to navigate that room without bumping into the table or falling over a chair, gets over to. the crib, where there is a sick child, a fretful child, a child that has just been given a physic, just had its chest rubbed—why that child would sense immediately the presence in that room of a stranger.

And the moment anyone put their hand on that child, that child's cry ringing out would have brought the mother from the room across the hall. Now, I will leave it to you mothers if I am not right. The person that picked that child out of that crib, I give you my solemn word, the inference I draw, knew that child and that child knew that person. Nobody—it is humanly impossible to pick up a child 20 months old, unless that child had been doped—of course instead of a physic, if that child had been given paregoric or something, then the child wouldn't cry.

 But who gave the medicine? Not Haupt- [4703] mann. Who gave the physic? Not Hauptmann. And this little child is picked up, and they would have you believe that Hauptmann, this man who never saw the child and never knew the child and the child didn't know him, with a dog downstairs—now you have got a strange man in the house and all the doors open, goes back with a 25 or 30 pound child in his arms, swings himself out the window in the darkness and is able to find the top rung of that ladder, three feet below the window shelf, that rickety old ladder, and then as he finds himself on the window seat and his feet touching the top of the ladder, is able to turn, with a child in his arms and feel his way down the side wall and still hold on to the child and find the ladder, so that he can come down the ladder to the part where the dowel pin joins it together, and then they say the dowel pin broke—but unfortunately what they say is not evidence, because this is resting in mud, this is resting in mud. And of course it is away from the building because it is joined, one of these pieces. Now, let us assume, you gentlemen who have farms, or are familiar with farms, can get this illustration very quickly. Let's assume this is in the mud, and this breaks in the middle and goes in; wouldn't it throw up around the foot of this ladder mud? Wouldn't it throw mud up in the form of a mound?

May I have that photograph, please, of the foot of the ladder? Now, ladies and gentlemen, here is the photograph. There is the soft mud. There is no mound. That ladder was a plant and nobody went up that ladder that night, if it was ever up against the house. Nothing in that photo- [4704] graph but just two holes stuck in the mud. Now, you cannot overcome the law that applies to certain things. Two sticks in the mud; break the stick in half; move it forward; throws the stick back into the mud and throws up a mound of mud. Well now, what happens to the man on the ladder? The man on the ladder with the baby would fall, wouldn't he? He had nothing to grab onto, no handrail. He would fall with the baby and wouldn't he, in falling with the baby, make so much noise that the whole Lindbergh family would be out? But there isn't a sound. And if he fell in the mud, a man his weight, with a baby, wouldn't there be some impressions in the mud? None.

You can't get away from these physical facts. There is nothing in the mud that indicates Hauptmann or anybody else fell in that mud and there is nothing in the mud that indicates the baby fell in the mud—nothing. There is absolutely nothing, but one footprint of a man and one footprint of a woman. That is the evidence. I am not making it up: a footprint of a man and a footprint of a woman.

Did you take any plaster casts of that footprint? No. Why not? Well, I didn't think it could be done. But Dr. Condon's son-in-law could take one in St. Raymonds Cemetery, and I don't suppose he is a police officer. Yet the footprint in the ground and the footprint in St. Raymonds Cemetery, neither one of them fit the footprint of this defendant, because if it did, the [4705] Attorney General would have in twelve copies of it, one for each of you. I say that that points out very strongly that no one went up that ladder. A man coming through the darkness with that ladder, approaching Colonel Lindbergh's home, wouldn't dare use a flashlight because somebody might see it. So he is going by “dead reckoning” as the sailors say. He is going from wherever he started direct to that window, through the mud and through the mire and everything else that is there, and not a footprint, not one footprint, but one, is found.

Remember the evidence of the officer who found the ladder, the picture of the mud, the ladder over in the bushes, fifty to seventy-five feet away from the house, and not a footprint between the house and the ladder. Now you can't walk in mud without leaving footprints. Not a footprint between the house and the ladder. I say that ladder was a plant; that ladder was never up against the side of that house that night. I will tell you why. If it broke—you remember the evidence about where the second section of this ladder rested, somewhere up here, and some detective went up and he said he found little fragments of wood in the stucco and a little scrape. Well, now, that was from the ladder resting up against the house, no doubt, when they were photographing it. But if the ladder broke in the middle—and I wish I could do it here without tearing these maps, maybe I can do it here—if that went up against the house with the weight of a man and a baby, wouldn't that [4706] broken part as it slipped with the weight of the man and baby coming down the stucco make a gash all the way down? And you don't find anything like that in the evidence. And it would have thrown the man to the right or thrown him to the left. He might have broken his neck or broken his arm. Not a sound, mind you, not a sound! And the man that falls off the ladder—dead guesswork, nothing but guesswork; and you can't convict on guesswork.

They would have you believe the man fell off the ladder with the child, fell into the mud and left no impression that the child left no impression, only one footprint, no mud on the ladder as the man went up or came down, not a bit of mud on the ladder; and yet, if there wasn't any mud on the ladder, how in God's name could there be mud on the carpet in Colonel Lindbergh's nursery? No mud. They don't even say that there was mud on the bottom of it, where it was stuck into the mud; and yet it was examined within an hour, they brought the ladder into the house; no mud on the rungs, remember that, no mud on the bottom of the ladder, remember that; the ladder divided into two parts, two sections one part, one section another place. Now a man with a baby that he has just stolen from the most popular American of the day—what did he do with the baby? Did he put it down some place and direct his attention to carrying an old wooden ladder? Because that's what somebody must have done, if you believe the State. The baby must have been put down, and the man picks up one section of the ladder and puts it here, and goes back and gets two sections, joins them together, and puts them down here, all the time running the risk of detection and arrest, or [4707] maybe being shot. Now would a man that kidnapped the Lindbergh baby pay any attention to the ladder? Folding it up nicely and putting it under a bush, and putting another piece here, and then picking up the baby.

Well, how did he get off the ground? Nobody heard a motor; nobody heard an automobile; nobody heard anything. Now, am I right in saying that you have a right to assume from this evidence that somebody disloyal to the Colonel entered that nursery that knew the baby? Oh, it was so well planned by disloyal people, so well planned. Whateley is downstairs some place, with the dog that knows him—the dog that wouldn't bark when he makes a movement at him; and on the top floor, rear wing, over here (indicating), miles away, we might say, in the house from the sick baby is Mrs. Whateley and Betty Gow, talking about a masquerade dress; and the whole house between her and downstairs, second floor, left alone. And somebody comes in that knew that baby—I don't know whether it came from the Lindbergh house or from the Morrow house, or where it came from; but those are the only two houses that held servants that had contact with this child. And the Colonel is eating dinner, he is secure in the belief that he is safe, and his wife is there with him; and they are out of sight of the front door, and they are out of sight of the rear door, the servants' quarters, and all of a sudden comes the signal, “The coast is clear, they are at dinner.” The telephone call from Red Johnson that she had only left two hours before.

[4708] Now, what do you know about Red Johnson, or what do I know about him? I don't know a thing about him. But I do know this: he was Betty Gow's pal, and the State of New Jersey spent thousands of dollars to bring the Fisch family over here, with nurses and everything else—your money—and only being able to put one of them on the stand, and they didn't raise a finger to bring back from Denmark the man that talked to Betty Gow while the Colonel was eating his dinner—Red Johnson. Who is hiding things here? Who is hiding the truth?

Why wasn't Red Johnson brought back here? He entered this country illegally and he was allowed to go home. Was there any effort made to bring him back? No. Why? Ask yourselves that question. Why was the man that talked to Betty Gow while the Colonel was eating his dinner allowed to remain in the safety of Denmark? No, the signal was given, “The coast is clear” and that child came down neither one those two staircases, wrapped in the arms of some person the poor little child had confidence in and that's why it didn't cry, that's why it didn't scream and there was no more breaking of a ladder, no falling in the mud, no injury to the child, because it would be just like falling into a bed of mortar or a bed of lime or a bed of mud, the impact of a man 180 pounds, because that they claim was the breaking point of the ladder. Let's assume he weighed 175 pounds and went up the ladder and it didn't break, coming down he weighs 175 plus a 30-pound child. Now you know ladders, if it broke like that you could fall in and the man would receive an injury to his head or to his [4709] arm or to his body, and if the blow was strong enough to break the child's skull, it would be strong enough to do some damage to the man.

The man could have fallen to the right, he could have fallen to the left and make so much noise the whole neighborhood would have heard it. But in this bed of mortar, this soft mud at the foot of this ladder there would be an imprint of the man's body and possibly the imprint of a child and yet there is nothing there, nothing there. Now that's the first point you have to hurdle in this case. You have got to put Hauptmann in that room, and you have got to put him in through evidence and not guesswork. Now if the child—we must now take the Attorney General's theory of this case; that's all it is, just guesswork. He says, and he wasn't there, neither was I, neither were you, but he says the ladder broke; he says, “My theory is the ladder broke and my theory is that the child received a blow on the head which caused instantaneous death.” Well, unfortunately you can't convict anybody of disorderly conduct on theories, much less murder in a first degree. Now you must search this evidence, this case for evidence, and you must find that the child came to its death between the hours of the kidnaping and midnight March the 1st on the estate of Colonel Lindbergh. You must find that from the evidence.

Now, nobody saw it; nobody comes here and says, “Hauptmann, you fell off that ladder”; nobody comes here and says, “Hauptmann, you hit the child.” You haven't a particle of evidence in this case when that child died. All you have, and the law is very strict, and his Honor will tell you this, very strict, there must be no doubt, no circumstan- [4710] tial evidence or inferences or guesswork on this part of the case, the child's death must be established by direct evidence, direct evidence, and the cause of death by direct evidence; and of course they go for the cause of death to their medical examiner. Now where is there any evidence at all? Because they have a broken dowel pin and a cracked side of the ladder? Where is the evidence Hauptmann ever broke that or ever fell? There isn't any there.

And there is no proof of the cause of death except this doctor. Now what does he say? The best he can say is this: Whenever the child received the blow, death was instantaneous. That's what he says. Whenever this child received that blow, death was instantaneous. Well, “Whenever”—what does that mean? That doesn't mean March the 1st, 1932. That doesn't mean March the 1st, 1932, by falling off a broken ladder. That doesn't mean March the 1st, 1932, in the township of East Amwell. That child could have lived four or five days some place. There were hundreds of places around Hopewell to hide that child for four or five days, or for ten days, and then the child could have died from falling off a table, falling out of a crib, or being struck, if you will have it that way, though it is an awfully cruel thing to think of. But “whenever” does not mean March the 1st, 1932—and that is the pattern, that is the indictment.

Now they would have you believe—and this is more of their moving picture scenario—that with a gale blowing, this note was left there. Either the kidnaper had time to lay the note down on the window when he came in—and if he did I wonder how long this envelope would rest on that window ledge, with the window [4711] open, and over here the blinds of a window open so that there would be air and a draft, a howling gale outside, how long would this piece of paper rest on the ledge of that window before the breeze just took it and “st—st—st—st” across the room. It wasn't nailed and it wasn't pinned. There was nothing on top of it. It was just resting there. Or if he left it as he went out the window, he has a baby in his arm, holding the baby; whether he held it that way or under his arm, I don't know. He is fiddling for the ladder. He turns around and he lays the note down, because he has to lay the note down so quickly that he can shut the window behind him so it wouldn't blow away.

And the window was closed when they entered the room, and the shutters were drawn in when they entered the room, and the window hadn't been changed a bit when they entered the room. And yet this note is lying on the window seat, and the stein hasn't been knocked over, and the toys haven't been disturbed, and the chairs haven't been knocked over, and the table hasn't been moved. But when it was time, when the child was gone, and everything was clear, this little sick child in the crib, Betty Gow up in the wing suddenly decided at ten o'clock at night she had better go downstairs and look at the child.

And now again I appeal to you fathers and mothers who have raised children: don't you think that with a child sick with a cold and a child of that tender age, who has been given a physic, no matter whose child it was, that the natural thing for the nurse to do would be to visit that room between a little after eight o'clock and ten o'clock at night, to look at the baby, or to change its underwear, or to see if [4712] it rolled over, or see if it was fretful or wanted a little drink? Now, I am talking common sense, horse sense. Don't you think that is what would have happened unless this signal brought somebody there that took that child out? You can't get away from those facts. They are there. It is the testimony that they are there. The dog is quiet; nothing is disturbed. The window is in the same condition as it was before and there is a note lying there, and the child is gone.

Now they say there was mud on the floor. Well, Colonel Lindbergh said he dashed out of the house with his gun and he went through the woods and around the place with the butler, and of course he stepped in the mud and when he came back he went right upstairs again to the baby's room and he walked around the baby's room it is just as consistent that the mud came off his shoes as it is that it came off anybody else's shoes, because this mud on the window which they claim was there—where is the photograph of it? There isn't any. Where is the photograph of the footprint on the floor on the rug? There isn't any. So, if there isn't any photograph, it is fair to assume that there never was anything there, except some mud which may have come off the Colonel's shoes as he came in from looking for his baby.

And there was another thing there that no man 175 pounds wouldn't have gone through that dress suit case. Well, that that suit case was right under that window bench and a man coming in the window and putting his foot down and finding an ordinary suit case, he weighing 175 pounds, I will leave it to you [4713] whether his body wouldn't have forced his leg right through the suit case. No marks, no broken suit case. Now, a 175-pound man cannot stand on a suit case, that is the suit case they exhibited here, without going through it.

No, that baby came down those stairs, and all the circumstances and inferences they talk about the ladder, don't ring true according to good common sense. So the Colonel goes out and he notifies his friend, Colonel Breckenridge, and he notifies the State Troopers. And the first man that came in finds this note. Then they send for Kelly, the fingerprint man. What does Kelly do? It stands to reason and it is common sense that all over that room were fingerprints of Mrs. Lindbergh, Betty Gow, and maybe even the baby, as the baby restfully may have grabbed hold of the little crib. Now, you cannot obliterate fingerprints by blowing them off something; and this was within an hour after the baby left. But if somebody had been instructed, some of the disloyal servants of Colonel Lindbergh had been instructed, that by taking a handkerchief and wiping around the crib or anything else that they touched, fingerprints would be wiped off 3C—and somebody must have done it, because Kelly did not get a fingerprint of anybody in that room; he got some smudges, and he got some what appeared to be parts of a fingerprint. But certainly, when a mother leans over the cradle and grips the cradle with her hands like this, she doesn't go like that (illustrating). She doesn't smudge; she just puts her hands there, looking at the little sleeping infant. They didn't even find fingerprints on the [4714] glass that Betty Gow had handled when she gave the child the physic. Now, who rubbed them out? Who rubbed them out? The hand of Death in this case has rubbed out many a person connected with it. They have all gone, all gone swiftly—and to retribution—as all the others in time will feel the hand of retribution. But it won't be this defendant, because he wasn't there.

Now Kelly comes in and Kelly says, “I am the fingerprint expert of the State Police. I went all over the room, looking for fingerprints. I didn't find one.” Then hundreds and hundreds of others, detectives and people, arrive. Now, here is where the bungling of your State Police begins; and don't think that they didn't bungle it. And I am really surprised that a man like Colonel Schwarzkopf, a graduate of our great military academy, bungled this case, because within fifteen minutes after this case was discovered, what would you and I do? We would turn out every bloodhound and bulldog, hunting dog, in the neighborhood. We would turn out every bloodhound and bulldog, hunting dog in the neighborhood. This is the hunting section of Jersey. This isn't some cold asphalt street. A sniff of a child's garment to the bloodhounds or to any kind of a hound and they would have been in full cry; within an hour of Hopewell are some of the finest packs of hunting dogs to be found in the country. They will chase an anise seed bag, they will chase a fox, they will chase anything they are given a scent of and not an effort made that night to trace this child, and you don't call that bungling? Fingerprints of everything, would that be left to Kelly alone [4715]or would you send for the greatest fingerprint men you could possibly get—New York, Philadelphia, Washington or anywheres else immediately. No! But they just take this note and they put it away I suppose.

And the night passes. And of course Mrs. Lindbergh sat downstairs and prayed. Who wouldn't? Who wouldn't? Yes, and the Colonel prayed. Who wouldn't? But I can't imagine any prayers coming from the woman that contacted the man who is still in Denmark while the Colonel was having his dinner. I can't imagine any prayers coming from her. There were no prayers, no loud prayers. She just sat there. I don't know what was behind this kidnaping, whether it was for greed or for gain, for spite or hate or vengeance. I don't know. It was a horrible, a horrible thing. And, my God, it couldn't have been planned by any one person. It could not have been planned by one. It had to be planned by a group. But the State stands here and says, “Kill Hauptmann. Close the pages. Let everybody else sink into oblivion and security. Kill the German carpenter!” The mob wants the German carpenter killed as mobs for the past two thousand years have cried for the death of a person under hysteria when afterwards it was discovered that the person that was killed by the mob's vengeance wasn't guilty at all.

Circumstantial evidence is no evidence. You can't bring back life. You can't pay back a debt after a man has gone to prison for life by saying, “Well, I made an honest mistake.” Many a respected citizen of this county has been placed on trial, wrongfully. [4716] Right in this courtroom 19 years ago in the Wyckoff case, the prosecutor then cried to heaven for the blood of a man, tried before this very distinguished jurist who is now on the Bench, I believe, and defended by Judge Large, who is part of the prosecution—circumstantial evidence, they cried for the blood of that man, they cried for the blood of that man.

Mr. Wilentz: If your Honor please, there is no evidence of that. Mr. Reilly knows that. Unfortunately I am not familiar with the history of the county, but I know it is not in the evidence.

The Court: No, it is not in the evidence, I believe.

Mr. Reilly: I am only calling it to your minds, ladies and gentlemen, because when you go into that jury room you are supposed to take into the jury room the knowledge of life that you have gained by the years that you have lived, and that is why I appeal to your horse sense, your David Harum horse-sense, and your motherly intuition. It wouldn't have to be Hunterdon County that a person would be charged with circumstantial evidence—every county in the world very likely had it. What you and I want here is somebody that saw Hauptmann do something, not halfwits out on the road on the 17th and 18th of February to come in here and tell you a story about a man who stepped out on the road and looked at them—not college boys who come in here and tell you, “Yes, I saw a man in a dark car with a Jersey license,”—and [4717] Hauptmann's is New York—”And he resembles Hauptmann.” Yes, thousands of men resemble Hauptmann. Hans Wollenburg who was on the stand here, and Kloppenburg, look a great deal like Hauptmann—a great many other Germans look like Hauptmann, but looking like a man is not saying, “You are the man.”

What you and I want is somebody who is going to come in here and say, “I saw Hauptmann do something; I saw Hauptmann do something in connection with the murder,”—not having possession of ransom money or other money that New York County or Bronx County is interested in. So we go on with the bungling of your State Police. And they have bungled. I don't have to tell you any instances. You have read of them; you have known of them; you have come in contact with them right in this County where they have bungled. But I say it was their duty to set every dog in this neighborhood loose, close every avenue of escape, every ferry, every bridge; and if he only had 12 or 14 officers working under him, the National Guard could have been mobilized by your Governor within an hour; and there is a unit of it right here in this very town. And you say that isn't bungling? When the child of the greatest living American is taken from its cradle at ten o'clock at night on a mountain? It is immediate action that they want, not sit down looking at a lot of notes or something, or fooling around a ladder. And they have bungled it right down to date.

So everybody waited, everybody prayed. But there is no evidence that child died that night; no evidence that child was killed there. [4718] Now, if you want to convict Hauptmann because the mob wants you to—and by the mob I mean the people of the world—and think it should be done, then all my prayers and pleadings won't do him any good. But I don't think that that is the way you value your oaths. Citizenship under that flag means a great deal more than going to war for it. It means upholding the law and seeing that no guilty man escapes, and, by the same token, that no innocent man suffers.

So they waited, and I don't know what they did, because you don't know, it is rather vague what they did to try and find the child; but of course the child was off the premises, the child was hidden away some place. And then came the second note. Now I would like you—I think I will refer to it after lunch because it is getting near time and we are all hungry, I am going to leave this thought with you for lunch, because it was my intention today to do this, talk about the kidnaping, its physical aspects, and how you would have to hurdle that when you got into the jury room, hurdle the fact that there is no evidence in God's world, much less this case, that Hauptmann was ever in that room.

 But the learned Attorney General says, “We will now write the scenario and we will begin with this note, and we will proceed with the other notes, and if we can show that this is in his handwriting, A, then Z, the payment of the ransom money, must follow.”

Leaving in your mind for consideration during the luncheon period that salient point before you can get to any of this, where from the evidence is there any proof that Hauptmann was ever in that room or ever touched that [4719] baby; and where is there any proof in this case when the baby died, what place, and how, I shall ask his Honor if I may now stop for lunch.

[ARGUMENT CONTINUED AFTER LUNCH]

It would be utterly impossible for any lawyer to repeat all of the testimony that has been taken here in the period allotted to me for summation. I am going to do as well as I can with the highlights, the important parts of the testimony and, if I should pass anything, I don't want you to think that I passed it because I am afraid of it or that I considered it unimportant. Very likely the General, when he has his [4720] chance tomorrow to address you, he will talk to you about a great deal of evidence that I have not talked about, and I wouldn't want you to get the opinion or the impression that I had passed something by here, because I didn't consider it important. We have been 29 or 30 days here and to repeat the testimony of each witness would be more or less like a machine, so I hope that you will understand my position and the General's position, too, tomorrow, when he addresses you. He will very likely take less time than I am taking, but he will not stress points in his summation and don't get the impression that he is overlooking anything. I think that we have played along so fairly and so nicely in this trial that we can still continue to go along that way.

Now may I address my remarks to you for a little time on the question of these notes. It is not my intention to take the handwriting of each and every one of these experts. Expert evidence, his Honor will charge you, I believe, is nothing more nor less than opinion evidence. What does opinion evidence mean? Opinion evidence means this: that this man says, “I think it is this,” and another man says, “I think it is that.” And the wise courts and judges have decided for many years that a jury has a perfect right to disregard expert evidence altogether and use their own common sense and that is what I am going to ask you to do in considering that matter which I now address myself to—the ransom notes.

You were very patient when Trendley [the defense expert] was on the stand. [4721] Trendley is honest. There is no doubt about that. Trendley for the second time in his life volunteered his services in a defense. This State of New Jersey has had two and a half or three years to prepare this case for the ultimate arrest of any person they thought should be arrested. We have had a very short time. Unlimited means have been at the hands of the State, and you could see that by the parade of these experts in handwriting. We took gladly, because Mr. Trendley goes back as long as Osborn [the prosecution expert], and from the list of cases he mentioned before he was qualified—I think he mentioned the celebrated Molineau case of New York that some of you older members of the jury may recall, the Roland Molineau case, and other cases that you may remember from the newspapers, and he was honest enough to say that once or twice, maybe three times, in forty years, he made a mistake. Now I think a man who admits his mistake and comes before you honestly and fairly, and then gives his testimony as opinion evidence, stands in a much better position than the gentleman who took the stand, Mr. Osborn, who had written books and testified many, many times, and yet I think in my cross-examination I showed that he had made mistakes.

Now of course it is very important for the prosecution in this case to try and pin this nursery note on Hauptmann. That is part of what I call their scenario. But I ask you this, please, before finding that this is Hauptmann's handwriting, if you ever do, because he has denied it, keep in mind, please, the fact that there is no evidence except this produced by the prosecution which puts Hauptmann in the nursery March the 1st; and [4722] this places him there through the opinion or guesswork, we will call it, of Mr. Osborn and those who followed him.

Now, when a man is approached, and expert is approached, you have a right to assume, because you are business men and you are thinking women, that all they have to do is to examine these letters and then say that Hauptmann wrote them, and they immediately go on the State's list of witnesses, and they expect to be paid and paid well—out of your pockets. I cannot imagine what the bill will be for this procession of experts. And yet when you take this note, as you took it so carefully and examined it in the examination of Mr. Trendley, I think you will agree with me that to take one word, “is,” out of all those lines and compare that “is” to one “is” of Hauptmann's and say then that because that “is” in your opinion looks something like an “is” that he wrote, that is pretty slim evidence, opinion evidence, guesswork evidence, to put a man in a nursery of a house he knew nothing about it. And while on the nursery, may I once more revert to the evidence again by that fireman policeman. Now, you recall how he testified, how he had to go up the ladder in the daylight, when the conditions were perfect, he could see everything he was doing, and he had to use two hands, but he went up the ladder, the shutters were not closed, he had them open. The window was prepared for him to make his entrance into that nursery, and yet this trained fireman, now a policeman, was obliged to use two hands to pull himself to swing into the room, and when he came out he carried a package, an imitation of the baby—and remember [4723] his testimony—as he came out he had to lay the package down on the window seat and then swing around in the daylight, feel for the ladder, get on the ladder, get down a portion of the ladder and then reach up for the package. Now, just imagine the changed conditions of the night of the kidnaping—darkness, unusual room, unusual surroundings, a live baby, a sick baby, a crying baby, whether or not Hauptmann or anybody else could take that sick baby and lay it down on a window ledge and then go down the ladder and then pick the baby up, whether or not there wouldn't be an outcry from the baby.

So that when you come to consider Note No. I, please take into consideration all of the facts that lie behind the claim that Hauptmann left his note on a breezy window seat and pulled the window down after him and closed the shutters behind him and descended with this baby, and then the ladder broke.

Now I shan't go into each and every one of these letters because you will have them in the jury room. I want to trace their continuity. Every expert that took the stand said that this was disguised handwriting. Now what benefit is a disguise? If a person puts on a disguise and hides his own face and figure, characteristics, then he ceases to be what he was and assumes the character of the person he is attempting to disguise. If this is disguised handwriting where is there any standard by which it can be examined with that certainty with which you will send a man to his death or with that certainty with which you would send a man away for life imprisonment?

One “is,” one “is.” [4724] And again I say to you and I believe that I am justified in drawing the inference: no one person could have planned this kidnaping, kidnap the child, taken care of the child, written notes, run around the different states, New York and New Jersey, mailing these notes, followed up the notes, and still take care of the child. This, as I said, and intimated in my cross-examination, this kidnaping was the work of a gang, and by a gang I mean a collection of people, bent on an evil undertaking. Now here we have this letter, left on the window seat. What happens? They pick it up, they examine it for fingerprints, they don't find any. Now of course there has never been any claim made that the man that wrote this letter wrote it with gloves on. Mr. Trendley says it was written by a man with his left hand. Part of it is written and part of it is printed. If you will take that letter into your jury room and just look at it, just common sense good careful consideration, without being any experts at all, and then compare it with any one of these letters here, there isn't anything, by that I mean anything by which you or I can see—in other words, the picture of this letter, and the picture of this letter (indicating), as you look at it—there is no comparison at all.

There might be a comparison in the hook on the end of an “I,” or there might be a comparison on the end of the “t,” the way the “t” branches off, but there are thousands and thousands of people, and in all the claim is that every one of these ransom notes is disguised, the handwriting is disguised—well, if it is disguised, of what benefit is it? Opinion evidence, guesswork evidence, four, five, six, seven so-called experts, charts, photographs, carfare, [4725] all brought on here at an enormous expense.

Each and every one of those experts saw Osborn's records before they testified, and I will warrant that each and every one of them saw his photographs and his records before they made up their lists. And so one made up a list with “the's” in, and another made up a list with “those” in and another made up a list with “dears” in, so that they all fitted in the one picture, at your expense—opinion evidence, guesswork evidence, at its best, because nobody saw Hauptmann write this note and nobody say Hauptmann write any of these notes.

Well, now, what is the background of these notes? And that is very interesting. Let's check them. Let's take No. 2. It is the envelope that concerns me most. Here we are over in Hopewell, New Jersey, Note No. 1. Here we are, Brooklyn, New York; Brooklyn, New York, Note No. 2, March the 4th, 9 p. m., Colonel Lindbergh. Now, doesn't that show, doesn't it demonstrate clearly the work of a gang? Hopewell—Brooklyn—miles and miles apart; 75 to 100 miles away, note No. 2 is mailed; and what does it say? “We have warned you and to make anything public. Do not notify the police now you have to take the consequences.”—I shan't read it; I am going to leave it to you. I am going to have you take these notes into your jury room with magnifying glasses. You are just as competent, you are just as capable as any handwriting expert that ever took the witness stand.

You have got your God-given senses. You can see. You can study. You can look, and you must keep in mind at all times that all of this is disguised. [4726] Well, what happens when Colonel Lindbergh gets this second note? He puts it away and he waits. Then comes Colonel Breckenridge's note. It is some more stumbling, I think, of the State Police—and we must keep these facts in mind, friend. This child was kidnaped, came of a family that had all the influence in the world to compel and could compel by one word from your State Police, to either the Police Department of New York State or any other State, to watch every mail box, every mail box in the city of New York, after this second note was mailed from Brooklyn. If they had done that, before the third letter was mailed, the man that was mailing the letters would be caught at the mail box. But no, they didn't, they just sat down, they were in a fog.

They certainly didn't expect somebody to drive up with the baby and hand it back to them. They covered no agency, they covered no post office. All of these stamps from New York bear on them the substation where the letter was received and where it was stamped. Now, here we have Brooklyn, New York, with a “2” after it—Substation No. 2. The writer of these letters could have been arrested or the mailer of these letters could have been arrested within 48 hours if somebody hadn't stumbled and bungled—just another Battle of Jutland—stumbling, bungling and blocking the path.

Now, when this second letter came to the Colonel, certainly when a letter came to Colonel Breckenridge, New York, N. Y., Station D, the New York police were assisting the New Jersey police. The police agencies of this [4727] country were aroused, Federal, State, Internal Revenue, everybody; private detectives by the score. Don't you suppose, after the New York police saw that letters were being mailed in New York City that one word from Colonel Schwarzkopf, or somebody else, “Cover the letter boxes,” would have had some result? But no! Bungling, bungling all the time.

Then we come to the picture of what General Wilentz describes as a patriotic gentleman of the old school. Well, General Wilentz, you are entitled to your opinion of Dr. Condon as a gentleman of the old school. I don't share that opinion with you. I am trying to use common sense and I am going to ask you to use common sense. Condon stands behind something in this case that is unholy, and I will bear it out, I think, by his testimony and by his actions. I don't know Condon and you don't know Condon. I don't know his associates. I don't know who he associated with. I don't know who he met in that restaurant night after night in the Bronx, and they brought the owner down here. I don't know who he met on his different trips. I don't know anything about him.

But I do know that something stands out in this case that you and I have a right to inquire into before we will send anybody to jail for a day. Here over in the Bronx is this man, close to City Island, close to the waterfront, who has a background. He may have all the college degrees in the world. Many a criminal had that. That is no criterion, that because you are a [4728] college man you are the best person in the world, as far as character goes. You will hear the General tomorrow when he says, “Oh, Lupica,” and he will defame him. But he was studying for Princeton. You will hear the General defame the man from the gas station, a graduate of Princeton, who says he saw that ladder in a car with a man and a woman; but because he is a defense witness you will hear him defamed and yet the boy who was studying and the man that graduated, one studying for and one graduated from the same college that one of the distinguished gentlemen sitting at the prosecution table graduated from. So there is no criterion because you are on the side of the defense you must be defamed and because you are for the prosecution you must be glorified.

I don't know anything about Condon's background. I did ask him a question as to why he was transferred from one school to another. I tried to go into his past life. It was objected to. But the thing that sticks out in this case is this: Now I am reading from Dr. Condon's testimony. Just as soon as the kidnaping had happened the man in Denmark, who was a suspect, Red Johnson—but he was a suspect under cover, they were investigating him, they wanted to know more about him. The Condon in the Bronx knew nothing about Red Johnson unless he had a connection with him, and what is Condon's of the Bronx testimony concerning Red Johnson? It is hard to find here, because we weren't able to get a copy of the evidence, we didn't have the money. “Then why did you pick out a local borough paper with a circulation of 150,000 with all of [4729] New York's six million people, to insert your ad? A. Because these papers all led toward one poor miserable fellow that I thought was innocent. His name was Arthur Johnson.” Now, why should he think? What right did he have to think? Here was a man under suspicion, here is a man they haven't dared bring back, the man that received the telephone call from Betty Gow. Why should Condon come to the rescue of the only person in the world that they haven't brought back here if he didn't know him? Let's go on and see what else he said.

“Arthur Johnson never lived in the Bronx.”

“Answer: He lived at City Island.” And so did Condon visit City Island.

“On Lamont's yacht?”

“On a boat.”

“Correct. Which went sailing up and down.”

“Yes, sometimes.”

“Did you know Red Johnson?”

“I did not.”

“Then why should you, a doctor of philosophy, an A. B., a professor of Fordham, suddenly decide that you would protect Red Johnson, a sailor on a yacht, unless you knew him?”

“Answer: I will tell you why, because I hated to see an underdog and always gave him a chance throughout my life, and I had heard Arthur Johnson had nothing to do with it from many people.”

Now that was a lie, because Arthur Johnson had only been in the case as a suspect three or four days. Condon didn't know it; Condon didn't know anybody that knew Red Johnson. He didn't go around asking for Red Johnson, any more than he went around asking “What do you think about Betty Gow?”

“What do [4730] you think about Violet Sharpe?”

“What do you think about Whateley?”

“What do you think about Mrs. Whateley?”

“What do you think about the other servants on the Morrow and Lindbergh estate?”

“I was at that time going in and among people and questioning them concerning the probabilities of the case.”

“What people told you Red Johnson had nothing to do with it?” Meaning the kidnaping.

“A number of sailors.”

My Heavens, what sailors would know anything about this kidnaping! Why does this man lie when we pin him down to Red Johnson? “I visited every single shipyard up and down the Sound.” And mind you, this was within three or four days of the kidnaping before he got the first note, or before he put his ad in the paper. “What I could find and found out that Arthur Johnson was not that kind of a fellow.” Building up in 1935 an alibi for a man he knew was in Denmark and that they dared not return to this country.

Now, the next question—and I am through quoting from this, because I think you can recall it and, if you can't, I believe that you can have the testimony read to you in your deliberations. A few more questions and Dr. Condon was off his guard, voluble, acting, crafty, crooked, swinging around, telling hundreds of people, thousands of people, since the arrest of Hauptmann, “That's not John.”

“Maybe I did tell them that.”

“Maybe I didn't tell them that.”

Where is the security of this man? [4731] Then a question was popped at him quick: “Did you learn that he—meaning Johnson—phoned Betty Gow at half past eight the night of the kidnaping?”

“Did you know he phoned her at half past eight the night of the kidnaping?”

Caught off his guard, here is his answer: “I knew that the night of the kidnaping.” There is your record: “I knew that the night of the kidnaping.” Now, does he figure in this? Does he figure as part of this band that robbed Colonel Lindbergh of his child? Then all of a sudden an unheard-of thing happened. You wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it. Rewards are spread all over the country. You remember that. Anything from $25,000 up. Colonel Lindbergh would have given his last dime to get that child back. The Morrow fortune would be spent to the last nickel to get that child back. Every metropolitan daily, the Associated Press, the United Press, the International News with a spread all over the world, was trying to get a line on the kidnaper, and Mr. Condon goes to the Bronx News, as he tells us, and inserts a letter.

Did you ever see the letter? I never did. They had the editor of the Bronx News, they called his name here one day. He stood up here in the courtroom and he sat down again. I don't believe there ever was a letter, but I believe there was the same kind of a signal that passed between Betty Gow and Red Johnson at 8:15 or 8:30 that night when Condon put something in the Bronx News, a small inconspicuous paper.

Let us assume for the moment that somewhere in this State there is a small local paper [4732] and there is a question which concerns the whole country. The minute that ad appears in the Bronx News, a little bit of a paper up in the Bronx, instantly from Brooklyn comes a reply to Dr. Condon. There is no doubt about it. “If you are willing to—”—I will come to the letter later. But I find an envelope here which says, “New York, Station, New York, N. Y., Station T”—the same handwriting. Brooklyn before, another station downtown to Colonel Breckenridge. The ad was put in the paper, if my recollection is correct, on the 7th, printed on the 8th, the child kidnaped on the 1st. Between the 1st and the 2nd, before he put his ad in the paper, nobody asking him to, he says he is around investigating the background of Red Johnson.

March the 8th, ad in the paper. I have never seen it. I have never seen the letter. I don't know what the ad is—just another one of those little things they kept out. And here comes the answer right back. Now doesn't that indicate to you, ladies and gentlemen, somewhere a person was waiting for the signal from the Bronx News?

If it was put in the New York Times, or the New York Journal, with a million or a million and a half circulation, or the Mirror or the News, with a million or a million and a half daily circulation, with this thing planted on the front page, you might expect a reply. But here is a little paper tucked away and the minute it appears in the paper, the next day comes an answer: “If you are willing to act as go-between.” No, no, this was prepared. This was read and the alibi was the ad in the paper. And the [4733] moment the ad was printed the answer comes. What does Condon do? Does he go to a policeman? He does not. Does he go to a detective? He does not. He goes to a restaurant.

He doesn't call up New York Police headquarters. He doesn't call Inspector Bruckman who has been sitting here for days preparing the case to be tried in the Bronx. He doesn't call up any agency at all but he goes to a restaurant and he calls up Colonel Lindbergh and he insists on talking to him, and when he says—first he said, “I did not open the letter.” Now, you remember that. “I did not open this letter, and the Colonel told me to come down and bring the letter.” And I said, “Wasn't it after you opened the letter and told the Colonel you had a letter with the three symbols on it, that then he invited you to come down?”

“Yes. I forgot, I did open it. The Colonel told me to open it.” So he goes down there and he begins, and the letters keep on coming in, and all the other letters that Condon ever received, nobody ever saw him receive any, always Condon alone, always Condon alone, Condon alone. Now I don’t know anything about this man, but he stands out in this case, and whether the General says he is a fine patriotic gentleman, that's his opinion; I have a different opinion and it is based on the fact that he was investigating Red Johnson; and after his investigation he puts an ad in the paper which brings an immediate answer, and from that time on Condon is doing everything, always alone, alone, alone.

And it is just as secure as the testimony of Betty Gow, when she comes on here and [4734] blandly tells us on her oath that thousands of State Police, Government agents and investigators, photographers and everybody else had passed over for days, and days and days, and searched, no doubt with searchlights, flashlights, and fine-combed them with rakes, she is calmly walking down with her pal, Mrs. Whateley, in the afternoon of a lovely day, and she picks up the baby's thumbguard. Now, do you believe that? Do you believe the State Police bungled to that extent? Do you believe that all the photographers and investigators and people that went over that road day after day didn't have just as good eyes as she had? She didn't dig it up. She didn't scratch it up—lying right there was that thumbguard and not a particle of rust on it. But, the smart Attorney General, figuring that that would rest in your minds, that this thumbguard had no rust, brings on a man who makes them, and the best he could do is tell us that before he made them, somebody sent him a piece of wire which was made into a ring and he wore it on his finger, and because the wire ring did not rust, therefore he thought that would be rustproof steel and that is what he makes, Alice Blue, I think it is, or Baby Alice thumbguards out of. But this thumbguard, exposed to the elements of March, snow, rain, mud, dampness in Sourland Mountain, is picked up by Betty Gow as clean as the day it came out of the factory—a little bit bent, yes, a little bit bent, I suppose that is to show somebody walked on it.

Well, if the defendant as they charge tore that from the baby's sleeping garment, the thumbguard, why didn't he tear off two because [4735] the baby was wearing two, one on each thumb. Where is the other one? Why plant things in this case? This case is planted, planted and planted against this defendant, and that thumbguard stands out like a monument, because I don't believe it and you don't believe it. If it was found in the woods, if it was found in the leaves, if it was found in the snow, yes, but it was found on the roadway within one hundred feet of the headquarters of the State Police, the gate house, to Colonel Lindbergh's estate.

So we have Mr. Condon, now he is in contact with the Colonel, and the next letter comes and it says, “Make a box.”

“Make a box.” Now, there were hundreds of carpenters Colonel Schwarzkopf could have used to make a box. No doubt there were mechanics on the Morrow estate that could make the box, but no, Mr. Condon has to make the box, or have it made for him, five-ply and all this nonsense. “Well, who made the box?”

“Who made the box? Why, I don't just recall his name.” Well, you want to know and I want to know the carpenter that made that box. It wasn't Hauptmann. He makes the box and the letters keep on coming always to Condon.

And then they bring in a chauffeur, Johnnie Perrone, and he says, “Oh, I was riding through Gun Hill Road.” I am awfully sorry you couldn't be taken over to the Bronx to see this portion of the Bronx. I have gone through it many times—see if I can find it. Here it is. Now you see this is a very good map, that a lot of streets are indicated here, but it does not show truthfully the condition of the surrounding country. It does, however, indicate—here is Bronx Park. Bronx Park—I can only compare it to the pines and the scrub [4736] oak that run between Lakewood and Toms River, if you have ever gone over that road. This is a great big park, desolate at night; here and there a small park light, Gun Hill Road running through the park, where you wouldn't see one taxicab maybe in hours, and all of a sudden, as he is coming down from a call, a man steps out and says, “Take this to Dr. Condon, and here is a dollar.” Now, do you believe any such trash as that?

Why, any man could walk into a Western Union office and say, “Deliver this to Dr. Condon.”

“How much?”

“Sixty cents.” He could walk into a post office in the Bronx, put a special delivery stamp on it, and it would be delivered within an hour to Dr. Condon. But to stand in the Garden of Eden, you might as well say, waiting for a taxicab to come around the corner at night, on Gun Hill Road, the last place in the world you would see a taxicab, and suddenly step out and hail the man—now, what would Hauptmann or any one else be doing in the middle of Gun Hill Road and in the Middle of Bronx Park?

 Just the figment of Condon's imagination, plus no doubt his friendship for Perrone. He must have known him. There must be something behind that fellow too, because it is very significant that as these notes keep coming in, and everybody is on their toes, everybody is waiting for something even April the 2nd, “we are now waiting with the money, we are waiting for the signal,” a man walks up to Dr. Condon's door, rings the bell, hands him a note in front of his daughter, [4737] Mrs. Hacker, and nobody can identify the man, nobody grabbed him, Colonel Lindbergh in the house, Breckenridge in the house, New York City police available.

If they had grabbed the man and taken the note away from him, they could have followed the directions in the note and they would have had the bearer of the note under arrest. No. Nobody can identify the man that came to the door, but Perrone could identify the defendant in the middle of Bronx Park at eight o'clock in the night, and the only light from a street lamp or a park lamp, and you know how dull they are.

Talk about plants in this case—everything seems to be planted in this case since this defendant was arrested—and the impossible story that Condon has told us. I want the pictures, please, of those graveyards. (Captain Snook hands pictures to Mr. Reilly.) Now, here we have got Hauptmann with a sprained ankle or something, Mrs. Ochenbach, or whatever her name is—oh, yes, she did send her child over to Germany with Mrs. Hauptmann; Mrs. Hauptmann came back and said, “Yes, you owe me some money,” and Mrs. Hauptmann says it is still owing and “my husband paid it.”

Her husband is alive, they don't bring him in, do they? They don't bring him in to say, “Yes, I paid Mrs. Hauptmann.” It goes unchallenged, it is Mrs. Hauptmann's word. Now, I have just fallen off a ladder, and I have sprained my ankle and I am around to [4738] Mrs. Achenbach's and coming down a stoop and yet I am able to jump over a nine-foot all, run down the street with Condon after me. Do you believe that? Look at that gate, sir (handing photograph to jury), look at the size of that gate. Condon says the man was inside the cemetery and the gates were closed, he doesn't know whether they were locked or not, and the man shook a handkerchief or something and he went over and talked to him, and down the street is Al Reich, I think, in a car and, “Come out” he says, “come out, don't be a coward, come on out,” and the man climbs up nine feet, and of course he had to jump off the top, because there is a spiked gate, and he runs, and the 71-year athlete, the great American is able to run down the street and catch up with him.

Now imagine a man who is writing ransom notes and who has stolen Colonel Lindbergh's baby, sitting down on a bench with Condon for an hour and a half, and his face is not covered. Why, I don't believe any such fancy story in my life, neither do you. I believe there was a man inside that cemetery, and I believe that that man was talking to Condon, but he was well covered up by the bushes that you see there, and I believe that when the guard came, that Condon speaks of—and the guard they have not produced; they could produce the guard and say, “Yes, on such and such a night,” because I imagine it is only one night in a year maybe that a man is found in a cemetery after they close the gates, especially half past eight at night, and the guard must make a report of everything he sees and hears that is wrong, and the guards are not taking any chances on people coming there to rob vaults, steal bodies, or [4739] steal jewelry off bodies in vaults, and the guard is armed. The guard comes and the man hears the rustle, hears the guard coming, and he shimmies up and he goes over, and you bet he runs away. But he doesn't sit for an hour and a half, talking to Condon about his mother in Germany, and all that nonsense. Because, if that was the fact, why didn't Condon grab him? Why didn't Al Reich grab him? Why didn't somebody grab somebody in this case, before Hauptmann? Bungling, bungle somewheres, because I can't conceive, if Colonel Schwarzkopf and his officers knew that there was going to be a meeting over there at that cemetery or anywheres else, that they wouldn't have Condon shadowed and the people in contact with Condon arrested; and if they gave those suspects the same kind of a grilling and a beating that they gave this defendant, they would very likely get some information as to who wrote the letters.

But they never contradicted by anybody on this witness stand the fact that Hauptmann was beaten in a station house in New York. They beat him and they beat him and they beat him, and they kicked him, he testified, and yet he couldn't confess to an act he was not guilty of; and yet, when they had these people delivering these notes in their hands three times, they let them slip through their fingers. And then finally we come down to this preparing of the money. Colonel Lindbergh places too much confidence in those people who, he believes, should act right toward him. From the moment that child was taken out of that nursery, every suspect in this case should have been watched, followed and checked, and yet none of them were.

Condon was a stranger; [4740] they didn't know him from a hole in the ground. If he had told them “I am trying to protect Red Johnson,” as he told us here, you can bet they would have watched him. Now, I can't conceive why they would allow him to build any box. And if it was built by a carpenter, as he says it was, where is the carpenter, where is the box? You remember his testimony, “the man shoved the money into his pocket.” Where is the box? Where is the footprint of the man that took the money that night? Missing. So Dr. Condon says, “I have got a note April 2nd. We had better be ready.” And they bring the money up there, fifty, seventy thousand dollars, in the box.

Colonel Breckenridge is not a detective. Colonel Lindbergh is not a detective. Al Reich, I don't know what he is—ex-pug, hanging out with Condon, up in this cheap restaurant. But they have got within their hands the means and the power to pay the ransom that night. And what do they do? Somebody advised the Colonel, “You don't need any police.” Somebody advises Colonel Breckenridge, “You don't need any police.” I can't conceive of any father in the world, whose child has been missing for days, who is about to come in contact with the person who is going to receive the money, that wouldn't be there on the spot, and kill the dog as he took the money out of Condon's hands. I'd have torn him from limb to limb!

But they advised the poor Colonel to stay down on the street, in his car, a hundred feet away, and he hears a man, “Hey Docteur!” And he comes on the stand here with all the honesty of purpose and all the sincerity in his [4741] heart, because he believes it, and he says “The voice I heard was the voice of the defendant.” But, Colonel, I say to you, it is impossible that you having lived for years in airplanes, with the hum of the motor in your ears for years, with the noise of the motor and the change of climatic conditions that you have lived under since you made your wonderful flight, to say with any degree of stability that you can ever remember the voice of a man two and a half or three years afterwards, a voice you never heard before and never heard since. I don't challenge the Colonel's veracity or his truthfulness, but I can understand him. I can understand any father, torn by grief, a terrific grief, a silent grief. And there is no grief more lasting, no grief that hurts more than the silent grief. It is the man that can cry and the woman that can cry that give vent to themselves, but the man of iron who holds his grief within his heart, who tries and tries and tries not to crack, and sees before him a man charged with the crime can unconsciously and subconsciously make a mistake of judgment. And that, Colonel Lindbergh, I think you have done in this case.

But Condon, I have no excuse for him, because Condon says with his lies and his gestures that as he went down the street the voice again said, “Over this way, Docteur.” Colonel Lindbergh didn't hear that. “Over this way, Doctor,” or “Come over this way, Doctor.” You will remember the testimony. Why, that graveyard of St. Raymond's should have been surrounded by police. That man, as he reached over and grabbed, wanted to grab fifty [4742] thousand dollars, should have been pounced upon immediately. But it was Condon, Red Johnson's friend, Condon, the ad-putter, Condon, who received the letter within 24 hours, that must have advised the Colonel, “I have got everything under control; don't worry, I will get it; we don't need the police.”

And who saw Condon hand the $50,000 over the railing, or over a bush? Nobody—nobody in God's world but Condon. And if a man was there to receive it and he comes back and he has got another note—Condon alone—always Condon—gave him the money, Condon alone. Sitting on the bench, the golf bench in the park: Condon alone. Woodlawn Cemetery: Condon alone. Where is the guard that saw anything? They brought everybody else here, didn't they? Why not bring the guard? Because the guard saw nothing and the guard heard nothing, and to bring him here and have him admit that would make a liar out of Condon.

Over the fence in the graveyard, soft dirt, soft earth, a man kneels down and, of course, if he kneels down, he has got shoes on and he leaves impressions of some kind. Couldn't the police have been there an hour afterwards and roped off that space, as they roped off the footprint at Hopewell that night to preserve it, and in the morning couldn't they do what they did three days afterwards to the fresh-made grave, take a test of a foot and put it away and wait for a suspect to be arrested, and see if it fit his foot? No, they didn't do that. Bungling, Bungling. And they let Condon get away with that story—that he handed fifty thousand [4743] dollars across a bush, or a grave or something, to an unknown man, and took in exchange a receipt, which says, “The child is on the boat Nellie.”

And then he leads the Colonel off on a wild goose chase from Bridgeport at six or seven o'clock in the morning, and brings him back on Sunday night, landing in Long Island City airport. Did he go the next morning, Monday morning, to preserve the footprints? He did not. Did he send any detectives? He did not. But when he discovers three or four days afterwards—and he never explained to us how he discovered the fresh footprint in the fresh made grave, who does he take back with him—his son-in-law; and the amateur son-in-law was able to take a plaster of paris cast of this foot and I challenged them to bring it into court and I challenged them—I produced evidence that Condon repeated as best he could the voice he heard and it was made on a Victrola record and I challenged them to produce it and they admitted they had it and they don't bring it in here and they don't bring in the footprint.

Now why? Because the footprint does not fit the defendant and the voice is not the defendant's, even the imitation of it. And then they talk about justice! Justice! Hang this man and cover up our sins! Yes, hang him, cover up their sins. Hang him and ten years from now after he is dead, have somebody on their death bed just about to meet their Maker, turn over and say, “I want to make a confession, I was part of the Lindbergh gang” and then where is our conscience, where are our feelings [4744] when we have sent an innocent man to his death, and we think about the real culprit—he must be somewhere in the world. There must be two or three of them still alive, because no one man could do this. And then after poor Colonel Lindbergh comes back he must have had many bitter nights thinking of the inefficiency of the agency, over on a little hill, while the poor Colonel is out, I think, on a boat off the Virginia Capes led around by every harum scarum crackpot detective and everything else, but doing everything humanly possible to recover his child. He is off the Virginia Capes when the word comes the little baby's body is found at Mount Rose. And they pick up the poor little child's body and they bring it to a morgue. Now, I dislike very much to review that harrowing scene. I must speak about it briefly, because it is part of the case, but I don't want to make it any more difficult or more sad for the Colonel who is in the courtroom than I have to, because I have great respect for his feelings. But you remember the testimony, and this is very, very important; it goes right back to the pattern, it goes back to the indictment. Here was this little baby, who had lain some days in this shallow grave. No proof in the world that Hauptmann ever dug that grave, nobody ever saw him over here or anything, notwithstanding the speech of Mr. Hauck this morning that he ran there that night and was afraid and dug the grave and put the baby in there. That's all guesswork on the part of the prosecuting officers. But there is no evidence.

Now, they must prove the cause of death by direct evidence. So they called in the Coroner's Physician. [4745] You saw him—a big, swaggering, blustering individual, who says he is a doctor. “Are you connected with any “No.” hospital?” Now, you and I know from our experience that every respectable, high-standing professional man is always connected with some hospital if he is a physician, or if he is a lawyer, is connected with some Bar Association. He is either consulting surgeon or he is administrating medical man, or he is diagnostician, or he is something. It is his standing in the profession. He doesn't belong to anything. And the poor little baby's body was so badly decomposed that all of the important organs were missing, and the detective unfortunately, in lifting up the body—and even the Doctor had to admit that the baby's skull, of that tender age, and exposed to the elements as it was, would be more or less in the same condition that you might have a decaying orange or grapefruit: it would be easy to lay it aside, open it up.

Now, we have—and he did it, no doubt, with the best of intentions, this detective picking up the body with a sharp stick, and as a result of his picking up the head with the sharp stick, he with sufficient force punctured a hole in this little child's skull. Now, I say that the pressure is sufficient and I think it is borne out by the evidence, and it is a fair inference for you to draw—the pressure of that stick on the little baby's skull, which hadn't formed into bone yet—it was just more or less like muscular tissue—if it was sufficient to force into that, it would be sufficient to almost crack it open. [4746] And the cracks he found in the skull are no indication that the baby in life received a blow.

Then he tries to say in medical terms, “Oh, yes, it was a blow, because I found a clot of blood on the inside of the brain, which I believe,”—he believes—I would not take his word in an accident case, much less a case of death, a case of life and death like this—“I believe,” he says, “that that clot of blood inside shows me,”—he is a professional man—that that clot was formed before death.”

“Well, Doctor,” I said—and you would say the same thing—“did you have anybody come in and look at you perform the autopsy?”

“No.”

“You gave your report. Did you write it down?”

“No,”—but he filled out a form which is on file. No inquest, no Coroner's jury called, no inquest, no care and attention that you would expect to be given to the child of Colonel Lindbergh.

Now, where is there any security in a report of that kind of a medical man? “Supposing, Doctor, you had died before anybody was arrested: What would happen to your evidence?”

“Well, I don't know.” Now, supposing the State of New Jersey at some time did get the real kidnaper, the real culprit—not Hauptmann, who is innocent and Dr. Mitchell was dead. How would they prove anything? They couldn't—no photographs, no backing up by any other physician, no record that you could bring into court, except the filing of a form, Coroner's physician form No. 8, “Baby come to its death by blow, external.” But even that, he can't say, nor is there any doctor living-and I challenge them to bring one in here—is there a doctor living [4747] that can tell from the examination of that baby's body at that time, under those circumstances, when it died?

And remember, you are limited to March 1st, between ten o'clock at night and midnight. There isn't a doctor living that can tell when that poor unfortunate baby died, or what it came to its death from. The mere fact that he found the skull cracked might indicate a million things, but Mr. Wilentz in his opening said this: “I will show you that when the ladder broke the baby was smashed up against the wall and then fell, I think on the catwalk.” Now where is there any evidence of that? That's Mr. Wilentz's assumption, his guess, his inference, and he would like to have you believe it. Now you can't believe it when you take Dr. Mitchell's report. You can't hang a man on circumstantial evidence unless all of the innocent constructions covering the act are wiped away and only the guilty construction remains. Now you can't guess that this baby received its death blow, as Mr. Wilentz said, because he wasn't there, he knows nothing about it, he is the Prosecutor, he may believe it, he may think it fits in fine with this indictment, but that's not the fact and that's not the evidence. The pressure of that stick by that police officer, careless and clumsy, more bungling—that little child should have been treated with the greatest reverence in the world; it was very easy to allow the little baby's body to stay there until some trained mortician came with a little basket, and who knew how to gather up the child, and then you wouldn't have this careless bungling of a great big copper with a stick, unfortunately puncturing the head and the skull of this child, and of course there was force [4748] enough for that undoubtedly to cause the little skull to crack, and that was the condition Dr. Mitchell found it in.

Well, as I say they had the Colonel going from here, going there, and going everywhere. He came back, saw his baby for the last time, the baby's body was sent and was cremated. What is happening all this time around Hopewell? People are being questioned; people are being asked things. Now, a girl who is sophisticated and worldly enough as Violet Sharpe to go out on the road and flirt with fellows—that may be harmless—and ride off with them in cars, to speakeasies, even though she drinks coffee, I have my doubts about that, who can always get a position as a waitress, doesn't commit suicide because she fears she might lose her job. Life is too sweet. But the net is closing in; the net is closing in. Sharpe has said something; Sharpe has given a clue. That clue was investigated. I think it was Walsh of New Jersey had investigated Sharpe. It was the New Jersey Police that was doing the investigating. Suddenly detectives come back and they say, “Bring Violet down here again.”

“But you have just questioned her.”

“Never mind, we have got something we are going to ask her about now, bring her down.” And a poison which is never permitted in any home, cyanide of potassium, I think it was, the most deadly, effective and quick-acting poison in the world this girl drained when she knows Inspector Walsh and the police have checked up and found something. She didn't do it because she feared she would lose her job. She did it because the woman from Yonkers, Mrs. Bonesteel told the truth. She was at the ferry with a blanket and she was at 42nd Street with a [4749] child and that child was the Colonel's child, and while I have the greatest respect and always will have for the distinguished Mrs. Morrow, who appeared here at the last hearing of the court, I will say this: that I believe that she is honestly mistaken and I will tell you why, the inference I draw, and if my inference does not amount to anything, please reject it. In great houses like the Morrows, where there are any number of servants and the mistress of the house is living practically in exclusive privacy as she was after the death of the late Senator and where there was nobody there but Miss Elisabeth on March the 1st, it is a fair assumption to believe that the mistress of the house is served her dinner by the butler and the waitress serves the other members of the household who happen to be at the table.

And I have a right to assume from my knowledge of the world and the inference I draw, and I give this to you for your belief, that when Mrs. Morrow finished her dinner that evening she retired to her private quarters, very likely to read and to rest. People of her station in life do not associate with their servants. If Mrs. Morrow required a glass of water or a glass of milk that evening, or any attention, and she pressed the bell or pulled the rope, the butler would respond, and he was on duty that night. There were five other maids. Any personal attendance Mrs. Morrow required that evening undoubtedly was given to her by her personal maid and not a waitress; so I don't think that Mrs. Morrow remembers correctly that she saw Violet Sharpe at 11 o'clock or 12 o'clock March 1st, because it doesn't fit in with Violet Sharpe's suicide.

[4750] Whateley, who controlled the dog, his wife goes to Europe, he is suddenly stricken—he is dead. The sinister hand of Fate played strange tricks in Hopewell and in Englewood, concerning this unfortunate baby. The man that was there with the dog, the man that had charge of the ground floor, he is stricken while his wife is off to Europe—dead in two days. Sharpe—”bring her downstairs; I want to ask her something.”—Dead! And then you say—and you say that they had nothing to do with this kidnaping of this child, when Whateley was in control of that house that night, as butler, and controlled the dog, and Sharpe; that Mrs. Bonesteel—she is no convict, she is a respectable, decent woman,—do you suppose she comes down here and perjures herself? I don't believe it.

She saw that girl before that night; she was introduced by another maid; it was the end of the Alpine Ferry; the Alpine Ferry was the nearest Ferry from Jersey, from Englewood to New York. The girl was there over an hour, she has a blanket on her arm; a car pulls up, she waves, she runs out, and then they bring this parade in here of witnesses who say they were with her, they were with her on March 1st.

And what does this fellow say, the fellow that picked her up on the road? Let me have that evidence please. What does he say? It took a little cross-examination to get it. He says he was riding along in the car one night. It wasn't March the 1st, it was before March the 1st. There was a girl in the road. “She waved, I stopped, [4751] she gets in the car. She says, 'Oh, I took you for somebody else.'” That is a lie they have been handing out since the days of Eve.

Anyhow she doesn't get out of the car. She goes to the speakeasy. She has some coffee. And that is the only night he was out with her. And in that car was the other girl and the other boy. “Question: Where did you take her the very first night she got into your car?” Now he testified before that the very first night he met her was some time in February. “Where did you take her the very first night?”

“Orangeburg, Peanut Grill.”

“How long did you spend in her company?”

“From eight until eleven.”

“Well, did you ever see her again?”

“Yes, down in the morgue.”

Now I give you Violet Sharpe at Yonkers, New York side, and I give you Violet Sharpe at the 42nd Street Ferry with a baby, against this kind of truck that they bring in here, who swears under oath that the first time he met her was in February, that he took her to the Peanut Grill, and the next time he saw her was in the morgue. And when you ask his friends and associates for any other date in their lives they can't remember anything but March the 1st, 1932.

Now will you hang a man on that kind of evidence? Will you send a man to the chair on that? Then add to that her suicide; because in her guilty heart and conscience she knew what she did. But stricken with fear and stricken with her conscience, she didn't know how much the [4752] police had found out; and when they asked her the first time and she got away with it, she couldn't leave the Morrow estate without being subject very likely to arrest; but when they came back and said, “Bring her down again, we have got something this time we want to ask her,” then the realization came to her, “They have got me, but they will never take me.” Death was the quickest and the easiest way out of it. And this explanation that she did that because she was afraid that somebody would know that she was in a speakeasy is ridiculous.

I am asking for an application of common horse sense; David Harum sense, please. This girl never killed herself because she feared the loss of her job, any more than Whateley was suddenly stricken with appendicitis or something. He was stricken with something that they dare not bring in and didn't bring in the record of his death; but he was dead and he died while his wife was in Europe, and he died—I don't know how he died or why he died. But he is the man that had the dog and muzzled the dog and kept the dog quiet the night that this unfortunate child was taken out of that house, down those stairs, and not down any ladder.

 $50,000 handed over a grave; $50,000 given to a stranger. Immediately the United States Government finally wakes up. Something must be done. This is getting to be a scandal. The New York Police don't seem to be doing anything, because it is not in New York State. The New Jersey Police are falling down. Now here is $50,000 handed over; who is this man Condon that can take the Colonel for $50,000?

Where were the police? Where were the detectives? Let's stop this nonsense. Let's issue [4753] to every bank in the country, trust company, savings loan, anybody that touches money, a circular, thousands of them, all over the world, “Here are the numbers of the bills.” And what's the reply? What's the response? One bobs up in Albany; one bobs up here, one bobs up there. About $150 or $200 bobs up, because the man that got the money over the fence or over the grave had it, and it wasn't Hauptmann. And I will tell you why it wasn't Hauptmann. You couldn't get one of those gold notes through Wall Street for 15 minutes before it would be discovered. And not a note was ever found in the Wall Street district—not a note!

There is! $35,000 of this money missing. Where is it? If it was in circulation they would spot it immediately. He had fourteen thousand some odd dollars in his garage and in his house; a couple of hundred dollars were spent. Secret Service men said they picked up an odd dollar here, an odd bill there, something else. $35,000 missing, that never went through a bank, trust company, or anywheres else.

But the inference I draw is this: that somewhere, in a safe deposit box, under an assumed name, that $35,000 that Isidor Fisch had is resting there under a name that some day, when the payment isn't made on that box long enough, years to come, that box will be opened by Government authorities and they will find the $35,000 of this ransom money. And how will you feel? And how would I feel if, when that money is found, because it must be some place, and Hauptmann hasn't got it—it never passed through any bank, because the Government would know it—and all this [4754] nonsense about this fellow from Washington telling you the money came in so fast and so furious that they didn't look for ransom money is a lie. They weren't looking for ransom money from you and I—they were looking for ransom money of a relative of the Senator from the State of New Jersey, the former Ambassador to Mexico, and one of the closest men in his lifetime to any President that ever served, and they weren't passing up any bets. It wasn't John Jones' money that they were sliding through. Every man in the Treasury was on his buttons, right on his toes, he was looking for that, and if he discovered it, he would expect commendation, he might get reward. The friendship of the Senator, the friendship of Colonel Lindbergh, advancement, and no money went through the United States Treasury in this hodgepodge manner, as this fellow tells you from the witness stand. That wasn't my money, that was the money of a man who stood so high with the Government that we send him to a foreign government to represent us.

Now I am asking for an application of good horse sense, please. Is it reasonable? Why, if anything should happen that the President of the United States should lose a thousand or fifteen hundred in cash and they had the numbers of the bills, they would pay just as much attention trying to find that money as they did Senator Morrow's money, Senator Morrow's son-in-law's money. And to tell you that they didn't check up is a joke. Thirty-five thousand dollars of that money is some place.

They write the scenario and they say, “Well, look at what Hauptmann did. He went into [4755] Wall Street. He spent money in Wall Street.” They add up a set of figures and they show you that from the 2nd of April, 1932, down to the time of his arrest, he spent $50,000, or $35,000, just enough to make, with the $15,000 found in the garage, the $50,000 of the Lindbergh money.

And when we took the accounts with Hauptmann and their inspector for the United States Government was sitting here—I think his name was Ward or something like that, the man that was sitting here checking with them—we ask, “Did you buy this?”

“Yes.”

“Did you sell it the next day?”

“Yes.” The sales offset the buying. He showed it clearly. Nobody went back on the stand and contradicted him. He lost $5,000. They would have you think that he was spending Lindbergh money down to the day of his arrest, and yet when you look at the accounts, as you will, you will see that in July, 1933, when Isidor Fisch gave him the last $4,500 to balance the account, from July 2nd, I think it was, 1933, down to the day of his arrest, this defendant didn't put a dollar into his Wall Street account excepting one or two small dividend checks that came in that were credited to his account.

Now why try to fool you? Why try to drag this poor defendant in here and have you people fooled, send a man to the electric chair, send him away for life, in order to close this unfortunate chapter in American home life? It isn't right and it isn't decent. Not a dollar of that money, of that ransom money, ever went through Wall Street or ever went through [4756] a bank. One bank might slip up. But there was a bank in Mount Vernon. There was a Central Savings Bank. There was the bank that the brokers did business with. Then there was another brokerage account. I think there were three brokerage accounts. There were three or more banks. And not a brokerage account, not a bank account from anybody in the world found a dollar of this money. Now, how can you say or anybody else say that Hauptmann used ransom money just because a set of figures added up on one side, but they forgot to correspond with the sales on the other side.

And I think we have demonstrated that this defendant who was in the market long before the baby was kidnaped, who had money before the baby was kidnaped, who saved his money, went into the market, played, as the man said on the witness stand, that you could go into the market with three or four thousand dollars and you could shoestring it up to a million as many-a-man has done if he was fortunate in his tips. Then Hauptmann up in the Bronx, in August, finds a box. Now what is unusual about that? He says Fisch gave it to him. Was there such a man as Fisch? Yes. Was he in the fur business? Yes. Was he in the fur business with Hauptmann? Yes. Was he down in Wall Street with Hauptmann? Yes. Who says so? Their witness from Wall Street, who testified concerning the account, says, “I saw Isidor Fisch in that room, in that market room, time and time again, with Hauptmann.” They didn't expect that to come out, but he told the truth. Fisch was down there. And the defendant finds this box, shoe box, cardboard box. Now, we are not trying this [4757] defendant for possession of Lindbergh money, and he can't be convicted of murder in New Jersey because he was in possession of Lindbergh money in New York; but that's what they have tried to build up here—a perfect case of attempted extortion, in the hope it will strike home and register with you people in a murder in the first degree verdict. Whatever he did in the Bronx subsequent to March the 1st, 1932, in this case lies in the indictment now against him in that count.

Now, if Hauptmann—in one breath they say, “Hauptmann, you are a master mind; you are clever, you are not wearing gloves; you are wearing gloves; you are shinning up poles and coming down poles,” and all this thing; and the next thing say, “You are a dummy; you are talking for an hour and a half to Condon.” All right, for a minute the master mind, let's say he has got this money and he knows it is Lindbergh money, and he goes around the Bronx, leaving it in stores where he deals all the time; he goes to a gas station where they can write down his number; he uses ten or twelve of these bills, openly and aboveboard, in full sight of everybody. He doesn't change his name, he doesn't move out of his house; he doesn't move out of the city; he doesn't go back to Germany; he doesn't go to Mexico, he doesn't go to another State—but he starts to spend ten or fifteen of these bills in his own neighborhood, where anybody can check him—buying a pair of shoes for his wife, buying gasoline, and when the man said to him, “Have you any more home?”—instead of saying to the fellow, “Now, don't bother me, I just got that from a cigar man down the street,” evasive or crooked, [4758] he said, “Sure, I have got ten or twelve or a hundred more home,”—and the man writes down his automobile license.

Now, if he had the guilty knowledge, if he had the guilty knowledge that this was Lindbergh money, wouldn't that inquiry from the gasoline man put him on his guard? And if he had the guilty knowledge and the guilty conscience, wouldn't he go home and pack a bag and go in the garage and take the rest of the money and leave the Bronx, so that four or five or six or seven days afterwards, when they came back looking for him, after the bill had gone through the bank, they wouldn't find him?

Doesn't it strike you that he was acting just as an innocent man would act? He didn't run away. He placed no significance, because he didn't know it was money that belonged to Colonel Lindbergh—it was money that Fisch had left, and Fisch owed him money, and he saw no reason to turn it over to Fisch's relatives. Now, whether morally, legally, or ethically you approve of that conduct, that conduct is not sufficient to find him guilty of murder. And so he was arrested and they find another twenty-dollar bill in his pocket. He hasn't tried to pass that on anybody. And he says that when they asked him, “Have you any more money home,” as he testified in the Bronx under oath, “Have you any more money home? Did you tell the police you had any more money home?” He said, “Yes, I told them there was some money in the garage.” Well, of course they have got to overcome that, so they don't go and get a detective, they go and get former Police Commissioner O'Ryan of New York, [4759] just because he has got a title. We have had colonels and generals, so now we must bring a general from New York State. If his name had been Grover Whalen or if his name had been Arthur Woods, former Police Commissioner, they wouldn't bring him down here at all. But let's parade this stuff, Major General John F. O'Ryan, U. S. A. Army retired. “Did he tell you in the Bronx anything about this money?”

“No.”

“Well, General, were you in the garage when the money was found?”

“No.” Just a bluff, to sort of impress you by a high sounding title of a man that has ceased to be police commissioner of New York City quite recently for very good reasons.

But they bring Hauptmann in. They take care of him down in Greenwich Street. And they try to get him to confess or make a statement, and he says, “I don't know anything about this at all.” And then they say, “Will you write?” He says, “Sure, I will write. I am anxious to write. I want to be cleared of this thing.” Now, is that the natural reaction of an innocent man, “I want to write. I want to be cleared of this thing.” And they say, “Write this and write that.” And Hauptmann says, “I wrote as I was told to write. They spelled words for me and I spelled those words as they told me to.” And not one soul went back on that witness stand in all the rebuttal to contradict Hauptmann on that score. “Write s-i-n-g-n-a-t-u-r-e, singnature,” and he wrote it. And Mr. Osborn, and they lay great stress on “singnature,” great stress, and Mr. Osborn, the dean of all handwriting experts of the world, who is breaking his son in now so that he will take his place, gets up and has a chart “singnature.” Here it is, from the ran [4760] som note. “All right, Mr. Osborn, what did you compare that with, taken from Hauptmann's handwriting?”

“Nothing.” There it is, i-n-g, he has got, nothing to compare it with. “What did you compare?” I-s, is. Here it is. Osborn says this i-s is the same as that i-s. All right, I will stake all of Osborn's and all of his pals' and very likely $500 a day of your money on whether that looks like that (indicating), and I want to say to you, will you hang a man on that comparison? And that's the only i-s or anything else he has taken from the nursery note; and here is his “singnature,” and there is no comparison, he has nothing to compare it with.

 Hauptmann says, “Sure, I will write and I will spell what you tell me to spell,” and nobody goes back and contradicts it. Well, of course, he is then in the hands of the New York City Police, not Jersey. There is not bungling over there, because if there is anything lacking they will make it themselves. You have had Bruckmann here and you have had him every day except today. Maybe he is around today. I haven't seen him. And all of his staff, one after the other, found things: one found this and one found that—the same old gang—in order to get ten or fifteen detectives in on a case you will find one fellow finding one chisel and the other fellow finding the tools, then the third one finds an old hat, and in time you have got ten fellows with blue cards all on the Lindbergh case—and when they come up for promotion they pull out the old cards.

[4761] So they'd have you believe, the New York City police—not your Jersey police now—past masters in fixing evidence on people, that a man that never had a telephone in his life—because there is no evidence here that Hauptmann had a telephone—would crawl into a closet and would turn around in the dark closet and would take a board—I don't want it; you have seen it—a dark closet, mind you, that you have got to get into like this, and over in a corner on a board he would write Dr. Condon's telephone number as it was three or four years ago, before they made the change. If he had it in a book, if he had it out in the kitchen where he used to write down the numbers, if he had it in his pocket, if he had it some place where he could use it when he wanted it, and in order to get it all he had to do was to walk into any drug store, any United Cigar Store or any other store, and pick up a book and look for Condon, and after he used it once or twice, if he ever did, he would memorize it, but of all the crookedness in this case, of all the plants that were ever put into a case, this board on the inside of a closet is the worst example of police crookedness that I have seen in a great many years.

And who found it? Did the ordinary patrolman find it? No. Did a detective find it? No. Did a lieutenant find it? No. Did a captain find it? No. And you go all the way up the grades, with all of these fellows, these blood hounds all over the house, a little voice led big husky Inspector Bruckmann into the closet and he turns around in the dark closet, and he says, “Aha! I have found it.” The Chief Inspector of the Bronx. That puts him in the case. Condon's telephone number and [4762] Condon's address from a man they claim was writing to Condon on and after March 8th, 1932.

Why, if Hauptmann, as dumb as they want you to believe in one minute, or as smart as they want you to believe in the next minute, ever wrote to Dr. Condon, you can bet he would never write down anything on wood in a closet that you have got to back into to find it. Well, they haven't a very good case in the Bronx against Hauptmann up to now, but now they have got the telephone and they rip out the board—telephone number—and they rip out the board. Well, that won't do, there has got to be something else. Go out and get something else on this fellow now. We will rent the apartment to the New Jersey State Police at sixty or seventy-five dollars a month, and we won't let anybody in to look at it, and when we are getting ready for trial, and during the trial, when we ask permission to go into the attic and into the Hauptmann apartment it is denied. What are they hiding? What are they hiding from us that they don't want us to see where this board was ripped out, if it ever was ripped out? What is the State of New Jersey, if it is on the level in this case, hiding from the defense? Even after the trial starts we can't get in the house. We go over and Mrs. Rauch says, “No, the State Police have got it, you can't go in.” Go to the State Police and they say, well, we can't get in. What are they hiding?

Your great State and its prosecuting officers are supposed to be absolutely free from anything in the line of hiding, and I think the prosecuting officers are free, but I put all of the bungling and all of the monkey [4763] business in this case on the State Police here and the City of New York Police; and no doubt tomorrow the General will say every lawyer that ever stood before the Bar when he has a weak case damns the police. I am not damning them because I have a weak case. I say that a house that is inspected day after day by detectives who are supposed to be bright and know their business, and go over every inch, it is a mighty peculiar thing that they cannot find anything. But the big inspector backing into the closet, he can find a number that nobody else could find.

I wonder if just about that time O'Ryan had resigned and maybe this man was looking for Valentine's job. I wonder was there anything like that in his mind when he backed into that closet. Because you know the Mayor did pick a copper—Valentine—and make him Commissioner, and he wasn't an Inspector until they raised him up. I wonder what was in the mind of the man who suddenly discovered Dr. Condon. Oh, the District Attorney, the Attorney General, will say, “But in the Bronx, Hauptmann said it was his handwriting.” Now, he didn't anything of the kind. He said this;—I can remember it. He was taken into the Bronx for a hearing as to whether or not there was sufficient evidence to bring him to the State of New Jersey. Now that is his constitutional right. He has that right. Anybody that lives in this country, illegally here or legally here, has a perfect right to compel the asking State to show, when you deny that you were there, to show by evidence sufficient to move you from one State to another. He wasn't taking advantage of fighting some new law.

[4764] His lawyers at that time thought it was the proper thing, in view of his denial, that he was in Jersey March the 1st, 1932, to ask the Court over there to entertain a writ, and the Court entertained a writ, and I imagine from reading this record that he was not accorded the time or the courteous treatment he was accorded here when he was on the witness stand. Will you find that for me, please?

Mr. Pope: I will.

Mr. Reilly: Thank you.

And they put him on the stand, and the record will show—firing questions at him—the Attorney General objecting, asking another question; and he said, “It looks like my handwriting.” But the very last answer he gave he said, “I can't say whether it is or whether it is not my handwriting.”

And I will tell you why: They had all of his request writings and all of his figures and anybody could go in there, Bruchmann, Inspector Bruchmann, a German, Hauptmann a German, and Bruchmann could get a pretty fair imitation of German Hauptmann's figures and handwriting. They didn't send in a Kelly or a Polish detective or someone who would write maybe with a round hand, but they sent in a German, Bruchmann, and Bruchmann undoubtedly writes German script English, and he came out with a pretty good imitation of what this man said. He said, “It looks like my handwriting. I will not say yes, I will not say no, but I know I never wrote Dr. Condon's telephone number or address or anything else on anything, unless I wrote it in the kitchen; if I [4765] was reading something and wanted to remember some little item I'd write it,” I think he said, “over the clock or over the sink or something.” Even that wasn't strong enough for them.

So then they go in and rip out a board. While I am getting the board, I am going to ask for five minutes recess. May I ask, your Honor, for five minutes?

[Recess]

Mr. Reilly (continuing summation): I just appreciate about how tired you all are listening to me. I ask your indulgence for a few more minutes; then I will be through. This is a job we both have to do. Now, the Attorney General said, when he started his case in his opening: “I will hang this ladder around Hauptmann's neck.” Now, there isn't any doubt but what Hauptmann is a carpenter, and that was demonstrated by his employment for the Majestic Apartments, and there was another little plant, [4766] as we call it in these cases, in the Majestic Apartments. Now, if Hauptmann is guilty and all of this evidence is on the level, why plant something in the case? Hauptmann did not work April 2nd, that is what they say, and with a big hullaballo they brought a man down here with a time book. April 2nd was a Saturday. The time book shows that on the 4th of April, when he came back for his tools, he didn't work, he resigned. April the 3rd was Sunday. This man testified, the timekeeper, “Yes, I kept that book. He was there on April the 2nd.” There was a check mark—rather, April the 1st was a check mark, April the 2nd a circle. When you go into the jury room and get that time book, please put the magnifying glass on it, and underneath the circle you will find a check mark. They didn't know that I had in my possession a photostatic copy of the payroll, but I knew it, and I let the fellow go, I cross-examined him, and let him go. But he would be willing to send a man to the electric chair by changing the record of the man's employment.

And we brought down the payroll beginning April the 1st, they paid off on the 15th. It shows on that payroll, because it was photostated in time and before the original payroll could be destroyed, because you haven't seen the original payroll, and I haven't, but the original photostatic copy of the payroll shows that Hauptmann was paid for working April the 1st and April the 2nd. Of course they wouldn't pay him for Sunday, he didn't work, and they wouldn't pay him for the day he resigned, because he didn't work, he came down to get his tools, and that company wasn't paying anybody that didn't work. But it was a [4767] nice little plant to show that on April the 2nd he was only concerned in the ransom money, therefore he didn't work.

Well, he worked there and he worked there as a carpenter. I only hope there are some carpenters on the jury and I hope they examine this ladder very carefully, because this ladder was never made by any carpenter. I don't know who made it. It's been knocked down, put together, photographed—planted photographed, if you please, planted to deceive you, planted to make the crime to send this man to the electric chair, because you and I know that when a policeman takes a photograph of anything and he wants to identify it in court where he has no suspect, that on the plate they write down the date and the place they took the picture.

Now I want you to examine this ladder very carefully and when you examine it, please take into consideration some of the inconsistent things that the prosecution talk about. First they have got Hauptmann out in Hopewell, a week before the kidnaping, two weeks, looking over the ground. He is looking over the ground. Well, if he looked over the ground he would know just about how much ladder he would need to get up from the ground to get into a window and still not have the ladder sticking up in the air over the window. In other words, he would know he needed two sections and not three.

So then he goes home and he starts to build the ladder, I suppose, and he builds three sections, and this section that they talked about and talked about he never used. It was the other two sections that were used apparently, they say, put up to the house, and this section [4768] was left alone. This is the top section and this is the board. Well, I think you got a pretty fair impression of Dr. Hudson. Dr. Hudson is not like Dr. Mitchell, an altogether different type. Dr. Hudson is a distinguished looking gentleman, a practicing physician, a man who has given a life work of intensive study to medicine or anything else that he tackles. He looked like a man that had studied and was earnest, was honest in his convictions. He was good enough for the State Police to send for when they wanted to get fingerprints, wasn't he? We didn't ring him in. They sent for him. They couldn't find a fingerprint on anything.

Perrone got a note from the defendant Hauptmann in Gun Hill Road, from the defendant's bare hands, because Perrone put no gloves on him, and that note, Perrone says, he gave to Condon—no fingerprints, no defendant's fingerprints on this (ladder). Oh, the Attorney General said, he built it with gloves on. Who says so? That is not evidence. Who says he built it with gloves on? Five hundred fingerprints taken off the ladder, and while it is true Dr. Hudson's test will not take fingerprints from paper or from glass, yet the black powder does, and they all use that.

Not a fingerprint. Well, that didn't help them very much, but they had to pin this crime on Hauptmann, that is all there was about it. It was going to be pinned on him if they tore his house to pieces or tore down his garage. Now, Hauptmann didn't build the garage and didn't build the house, and whoever built the house, and whoever built the garage, of [4769] course put some lumber in it. So, we have them finding a brace, an arm brace from the garage, and then you have got them coming in and tearing up a board from the attic.

Now, do you suppose this board was ever taken out of any attic floor? Examine it carefully. There isn't a mark on this board from any hammer. Now you have got a board that is supposed to be nailed down, covering a catwalk in an attic, and the distance between the bottom of this board and the top of the ceiling of the room below is about eight inches. “Oh,” the detective said, “all I had to do was to reach in with my hand or something and pull it up. The nails came right out.” You might think this board was putty or something. Now you know they would have to take a pinch bar and pry it in and lift it up, and those nails that had been in there for all the time that house was built, seven years, would be in there so solidly that they would be part of the house. It would be a toss between these nails, square cut nails, as to whether they would stay in the cross piece they had been driven into, or whether they would come out with the board. Not a mark of a hammer, not a mark of a pinch bar, not a mark of anything!

Now Dr. Hudson says, “I examined this ladder at the request of the State Police. I went all over it. A miscroscopic camera went over every inch of this ladder. Over five hundred photographs of fingerprints were taken.” Now I would like to see, and so would you, the microscopic camera prints, the little prints, that show the four holes in this side of the ladder that they say were there March the 8th, 10th, 9th, 10th, 11th, or whenever Dr. Hud- [4770] son was down there, 12th, 13th or 14th, 1932. You didn't see it and I didn't see it. Let me have those photographs, please, the big photographs with the four holes. Dr. Hudson, I don't believe, would commit perjury for President Roosevelt. I don't think he would commit perjury for anybody, much less for Hauptmann. Dr. Hudson stakes his professional integrity and honor on that witness stand. He says there was one hole: “Oh, we will get around that; we will bring in the photograph taken when Koehler saw it in 1932,” and they bring in a great big photograph that was so fresh, so nice, and so clean you could almost see that it had been printed within 48 hours. His photographs that were taken 'way back last September or October; see the way they have been handled and torn. Now, watch these when they come in—if they find them-brand new, lovely, clean, big photographs.

“When were they taken, Officer?” He is sitting up there looking at his boss down here. “Oh, they were taken in 1932, May the 13th.”

“Where?” “Down at Hopewell.”

“When you examined the ladder?”

“Yes.”

“Where is the plate?”

“I don't know where the plate is; that is an enlargement.”

“Where is the date on the back of the plate?”

“I don't know.”

“Was there ever a date?”

 “I don't know.”

[4771] “Who was there when you took it?”

“I don't know.”

“Have you got any proof?”

“I don't know.”

I will ask you, looking at those photographs, those enlargements, nice and clean and lovely as they are, whether you believe they were made in 1932, showing the holes in this board here and the side of the ladder and all this stuff. Now why plant these things in the case? Why are they so desperate? Dr. Hudson says, “I examined this and I found one hole.”

“Well, if you saw photographs would you change your testimony?”

“I would not, I would not.”

Well, Mr. Koehler comes in, and we come back now to expert evidence against horse sense. Mr. Koehler comes on. I don't know why he got into the case. I assume that the importance of the case compelled those in Washington at that time to send him up. He is nothing more nor less than what we call a “lumber cruiser.” He goes around the country spotting groves of trees to see what they are good for, and reports down to Washington. Remember this ladies and gentlemen of the jury: He never testified in his life before in a case like this. He never testified in his life before—he said so—in a case like this. Now he'd have you believe by his testimony—and I don't see how he can sleep at night after giving that testimony where a man's life is at stake—that this carpenter, this defendant Hauptmann, who could buy any kind of wood in a lumber yard up in the Bronx, went out and got two or three different kinds of wood to [4772] make this ladder: North Carolina pine, some other kind of pine, some fir in it, too. And he says to himself, “My goodness, I am short a piece of lumber! What am I going to do?” There is a lumber yard around the corner. There is wood in the cellar, belonging to Rausch, so he crawls up into his attic and tears up a board. So he crawls up into his attic and tears up a board and takes it downstairs some place and saws it lengthwise and crosswise and every other wise to make the side of a ladder, the upper joint of which he never used or never needed.

I don't know as much about lumber as Mr. Pope. I wish I did. Mr. Pope is a very distinguished lawyer who has other good qualities. He has been close to Nature, living out here in Jersey, I suppose he has been more or less a man who has been in the woods and in gardens and everything else and understands those things. Maybe he is somewhat of a mechanic. I couldn't drive a nail without busting my thumbnail. He could very likely build a house. We brought down here a man from Massachusetts, and I will stake his common, good old garden variety type of horse sense against any Koehler. Here is a fellow who has been up in Massachusetts for years, yes, he is a builder, a contractor, and an excavator. He has thirty thousand or more trees on his different estates. He plants them and he grows them and he watches them grow. He knows North Carolina pine because he grows it. Not Koehler, from the books. This fellow grows it, lives with it, brings it down here, shows it to you. He says, “You see this mark in here? That is a bruise, that is a bruise, that tree got a bruise [4773] early in life.” Koehler says, “I don't know, it might be some of the chemical left over from washing the board.”

Now, whose word are you going to take? I am going to go all over Koehler's evidence. You got it and you got DeBisschop's evidence and you have got old Mielke, an old gentleman who has his own mill. Now, the standard, as I understand, in these mills is the same the world over. A two-foot measurement of gauge in a mill in North Carolina is the same two feet in Alaska. The difference doesn't change the two-foot rule. And the bevel is the same. The log goes into the mill and it is cut, I believe, into one or two inch boards; then it is taken out and it is planed down. You men on the jury have handled boards. Here we have down in North Carolina, South Carolina, billions and billions of board feet a year; and then Koehler has the nerve to come in here and tell us, I suppose they are like fingerprints—there never were two boards in all the billion feet alike; and he says, “This board here was once a part of this board here.” De Bisschop says, “Nothing of the kind. The grain isn't alike; the knots are not alike. The general appearance and the general characteristics of this board are nothing like this board.”

“How do you know?” says the Attorney General.

“Well, here are two boards,” he says; “they perfectly match.” He shows it to you. One, he says, forty seven years old; the other, five years old. Both the same age when their individual and respect- [4774] tive trees were cut, and they match perfectly, the grain, the age. Mr. Pope's examination developed, as you will remember, perfect markings in these two. Koehler goes on the stand; his reputation is at stake; he is a great man from Washington. He looks at it and he says, “Ridiculousl” because he can't go back to Washington and face all the other fellows in the different departments and get laughed at. De Bisschop gives his reasons, good, honest, conscientious reasons. Koehler is testifying for glory, vanity, preferment, advancement. De Bisschop, not a dime; carfare not even paid; never saw Hauptmann in his life. His sense of justice—and that's one of the grandest things of this country—it is the sense of justice that our people have. When I say “our people” I don't mean the immigrants that just got off the boat, but you go into the valleys of New Jersey and go into rock-ribbed old valleys of Connecticut where they have been growing tobacco since the Indians lived there and you get these old fellows up there in Connecticut and Massachusetts and Vermont and they know their stuff, because they live with nature. You can say they live with God, peaceful, quiet people that go about their business in the daytime and they go home at night, no carousing, no cabarets, no running wild—out in the garden, out in their woods, out in the trout streams, close to nature, close to God and De Bisschop grew his trees, lived with them, from the bottom of his heart honest, and conscientious, good old American stock, comes down here, because he has a sense of justice; goes to all the trouble of bringing down his specimens, cutting down trees—what [4775] for? Notoriety? What can he sell? Because he read in the paper this fellow Koehler's testimony.

We started this case with practically nothing, but we sent an appeal out through the radio and through the news and in the theaters: “If there is any soul on God's earth that knows anything about this case, please come forward and tell us.” And this man up in Massachusetts, who doesn't know a soul in this courtroom, reading the Koehler testimony, says, “That fellow is wrong, and I am going down there and I am going to show he is wrong.” Now would he come down here and commit perjury, come down here and make a fool of himself, go to all this trouble? And his stuff rings true. He points it out to you that it is true and he says that board and that board were never the same. We can't get in the attic and see where the board came from. I don't know who cooked up this idea of trying to make this ladder and this board agree but I don't think this jury is going to stand for that kind of evidence.

Koehler was wrong many times. He was wrong on his measurements. They look alike; they are alike; they are absolutely the same. Mr. Pope took them over with a measuring instrument and found, I think it was 1/16th or 1/12th of an inch out of the way, planed differently, different saw marks. Now, what are you going to do with that kind of testimony?

This case is too perfect from the prosecution's viewpoint and what they produced here. There isn't a man in the world with brains enough to plan this kidnaping alone and not with a gang—that master mind wouldn't be a [4776] carpenter—and then sit down and make the foolish mistake of ripping a board out of his attic and leaving the other half of it there to make the side of a ladder, a portion of which he never used. You have got to use horse sense, and you have got to use common sense. This board doesn't even look alike. Look at the knots in this rail and then look at the knots in this board, and then have you tell, have them tell us that you could push the nails in with your finger.

Every carpenter in the world knows, I think, that these nail holes are about 16 inches apart on all boards nailed on joists. No, I am afraid this board was prepared; I am afraid this board was prepared for this trial. I am pretty certain that these pictures were prepared. You and I take pictures with our little camera, and we write on the little film the date and the place.

Here we are dealing with a police agency. They are trying to perpetuate and keep something for a future trial. No date, no name. Again I say to you, What would happen to these photographs if the man who took them died, and a trial came up after his death? How could you put them in here? Well, I will tell you how they would put them in: they would put some other copper on the stand and he would swear that he took them. But there isn't any date, there isn't any place, and there is no witness that saw him take them, and they come in here so lovely and fresh. Now, of course, this board is important. It is important. If this ladder was built by Hauptmann and if the ladder was taken out to [4777] Hopewell and this was one-half of this board, of course, it is important, and it brings us back where we first started from: How did Hauptmann get in the house, and how did he get in the room, and how did he know what was going on?

So in this case you come right back where you started from, perfect circle of circumstantial evidence. Now what does Hauptmann say? Hauptmann says, “I was not there. I don't know anything about Hopewell. I wasn't there. I never visited the Lindbergh estate. I was up in Fredericksen's calling for my wife.” Mr. and Mrs. Fredericksen come down here. Mrs. Fredericksen says, “I was out. That is my regular Tuesday night.” Fredericksen says, “I was there. I didn't see him, but Anna was waiting on the place.” And I can imagine in a restaurant, a bakery like that, people coming in and going out, and eating, Hauptmann calling every Tuesday and Friday night for his wife, wouldn't be asking these customers who they were, wouldn't be bothering about them at all, never anticipating a kidnaping trial, minding his own business.

So the appeal goes out and the response comes back. Young Christenson says, “I was there,” and he comes down here as clean an individual as took the stand in this case. “I was there. I went up to see a girl. It was too late and I didn't see her. I liked her.” He wouldn't be the first boy that liked a girl that the girl didn't like. He was only just a poor, little laborer. “And I went in and I ate. Hauptmann was there.” Maybe you didn't pay particular attention, I was hoping you would, at the cross-examination of Christenson. The General just sat here [4778] and he stalled along and he asked him about his grandmother, his grandfather, while the messengers dashed for that room back and forth, wires opened to New York, back and forth, wires opened to New York. The little boy said, “I told Mrs. Strauss in her kitchen down in Lindbrook,” I think it was, “Long Island, when I read this in the paper. I said 'Mrs. Strauss, I know that man, I was there that night.' Well, Mrs. Strauss didn't come over here and tell you that he didn't tell her, did she?

And they bring over poor old Larson. Now what does Larson know? Larson against Christenson, who had a birthday March the 1st, and produced a proof of it. He says. “March the 1st he slept in the house with me.”

“What was he doing February 28th?”

“I don't know.”

“What was he doing February 29th?”

He says, “Was there a 29th that year?”

There is no other night that Larson can remember in the world but March the 1st. Now, I believe Christenson. All right, we bring in the man about the dog. The Fredericksen's had a dog, and Hauptmann walked the dog, and the man said, “That looks like my dog.” Perfectly natural. “I lost a dog.”

“Did you report the loss of the dog?”

“Yes, I reported it to the New York pound,” where dogs that are lost should be reported as lost. Anybody come here from the pound and say he didn't report it? And you know these wires have been opened and they are open now. “Oh, you got a funny name, haven't you, [4779] Mister? You changed your name a couple of times, didn't you?”

Yes, I guess he did. He said he had had a little family trouble. He changed his bank account. Safety first. That is no crime. So he must be discredited, he was not there, because he changed his name. “You run a speakeasy, don't you? You run a saloon or a hotel or something?”

“Yes.” But he was there and that was his dog. Manley came down here. Now, when you put this behind each and every witness's testimony here, what impels these good, honest people to come here if they are not telling the truth. Manley came out of a sick bed, you saw him—there is no power on earth, unless we have a long investigation in New York before a Supreme Court Judge, that will bring a person into this state on a subpoena. Manley leaves his sick bed—not for a movie contract like some of the witnesses for the prosecution, but because his sense of justice and decency tells him, “I saw that man and even though I am sick, get out of bed, I have got to go down there and tell them that man was in Fredericksen's restaurant March the 1st when I was there.”

Not a dime from us, no bought and paid testimony like these experts for the State. He was there, he said. Well, if he was there, he wasn't in Hopewell.

Mrs. Bonesteel, “I saw Violet Sharpe.”

Sommer's: “I saw Violet Sharpe.”

“But, you were a witness in the Halls-Mills case, weren't you?”

“Yes.” Well, we can't go out and pick these people out of colleges. Anybody could be on a [4780] trolley car or a ferryboat, whether they had been Halls-Mills witnesses or whether they had testified in a civil case, or no matter how they testified, they were there. Sommer says—and here is the sincerity of his story: “I reported the next morning to a detective in the Ralph Avenue Station House.” Now, I don't care whether Sommer had been in Sing Sing 25 times, if he saw Violet Sharpe with a baby and a man, and a blanket, and he went to the station house the next day and said to a detective, “I saw this, here is my name and address,” if he didn't, why don't they bring the detective down here? And you know they checked him, and of course the reason why he is not here is because Sommer didn't report it, and so it goes all the way down the line with our witnesses. This man who says, “I saw that ladder, I felt that ladder.” The Princeton graduate. “I felt that ladder and I saw that ladder twice and I saw the man and woman in the car and the man was not Hauptmann.” He is no crook. He is an honest, decent citizen from this State, right around here. And then they say Lou Harding, “Why, you beat your wife and you stabbed a fellow.”

“Sure, I did,” he says, “and I will do thirty days again any time a man pulls a knife on me.” He must have had a terrible conviction; they sent him away for assaulting a woman and they give him four days and call him back, so I guess there must have been something the matter with the conviction—four days! Throwing dust in your eyes. But whether he got four days or four years he was a good enough witness to be brought to Colonel Lindbergh's home March the 2nd, 1932, and asked, “What did you see?”

“I saw a car and [4781] I saw a ladder in it.” And if they didn't bring him before Hauptmann after Hauptmann's arrest and ask him “Is this the man that was in the car?” That's more bungling. So he answered our appeal. People came in here—we are to be criticized because these people once or twice, some of them, have been in trouble. And all of a sudden the trial is suspended to bring in this girl from the Bronx. Dr. Condon never, in all his testimony said he ever was in the Pelham station sending a telegram or having an argument with anybody. But they bring this dizzy young lady from the Bronx who is looking for a movie contract or something and she tells the impossible story—plant number 999. Now why put people like that into the case if your case is on the level? In the Pelham railroad station that she couldn't pick out on the map after coming home on the subway she walks downstairs, across the street into this railroad station where she passed telephone booths galore in the subway station and Dr. Condon is having an argument at the counter with the telegraph operator and Mr. Hauptmann standing over behind him with his arms crossed like Hawkshaw the detective, and she looks. But why didn't they call back Condon and have Condon tell us that he ever was in that station or ever talked to that man? Of course not. She was a liar and they realized it as soon as she left the stand. Now, why plant people in this case?

Then they are going to have him pass money. “Oh, yes, we will have him passing money; long before he met Fisch we will have him passing money.” [4782] And who do they bring in? Cecelia Barr, from the moving picture theater, November the 26th, which just happened to be Hauptmann's birthday, Sunday night, about 15 or 20 miles away from Hauptmann's house, down in Greenwich Village, at the New York entrance of the Holland Tunnel, and he lives almost to the Yonkers line, this man would walk in with a folded five-dollar bill, folded, I think, in eight pieces, and give it to her; and after all these years she can come down and say, “Yes, that's Hauptmann.” A notoriety hunting young woman, trying to get her picture in the paper, and got it there. Very likely she thought she was advertising her theater, that everybody in New York would flock to her theater and buy tickets from her, to look at her.

Well, do you believe the people that were at his birthday party: good, honest, decent people? Yes, they are friends of his; but you saw the kind of people they were: hardworking, industrious people; no crooks, no convicts. April the 2nd, he is supposed to be in St. Raymond's, behind a fence, getting $50,000. Kloppenburg said, “I was in his house.” The records show he worked all day. They played cards, they played music. Yes, Kloppenburg is a friend of his, but he is telling the truth.

And so it goes down the list and down the line and witness after witness comes here and testifies for this defendant. The man in the brokerage house says, “Yes, Fisch was there.” And all of a sudden Isidor Fisch, who has not been absolved from this case, but who is very much in this case, goes to Mrs. Hoff, with Budreau, upon whose farm she lived, and he [4783] has some bundles, and he wants to leave them. She says, “No, you can't leave them here.” And they bring Budreau in. He says, “I haven't seen her in seven or eight years.” Well, I will take that lady's word, because that lady doesn't know Hauptmann at all. She said so on the stand. She is no friend of Hauptmann's, but she knew Budreau and she knew Isidor Fisch when he came to her house. Why would this mother come down here to commit perjury for a man she doesn't know?

And Isidor Fisch gives him the bundle and he puts it up in the closet, shoves it in the back, he doesn't know what is in it, and because Mrs. Hauptmann doesn't climb up and clean the top shelf off of a book closet, she isn't telling the truth. Well, I wonder how many women of her size, who are going to have a baby are going to reach and climb up into a broom closet. The baby, I think, was born about sixteen or seventeen days before that birthday party, and after that, in 1934, she is nursing the baby and she is not climbing up—the poor little woman is not climbing up into a broom closet to look at a top shelf. And the water comes down and the closet is wet, and the plumber comes here and he says, “I looked at it and I went up in the attic and the board was not missing.” You will remember the picture. In order to get over to the window that was leaking—the photograph is here you would have to walk along the catwalk and all he had was a little candle, and if that board was missing, it is a hundred to one he could fall right into that hole. But he didn't find anything missing. Now, what is he lying for? He doesn't know [4784] Hauptmann except that he lived there. He was Rauch's plumber. Everybody connected with the defense, because for the sake of humanity and justice they came here to help this man who is unjustly charged with crime, must be a perjurer.

But, the girl who saw Condon, she is no perjurer; Celia Barr, she is no perjurer, she can remember every five-dollar bill she ever saw when she was at that place—she is no perjurer, they must be treated with kid gloves, they are the prosecution witnesses, but everybody who comes here because the inherent drive of their soul and conscience sent them here, they are crooks. Young Heier goes on the stand, he says, “I was outside of St. Raymonds”—he is a terrible convict, young Heier, he was convicted of running a cabaret without a license—terrible crime, plastered all over the world as a perjurer and a crook, because he was convicted of running a cabaret without a license. “I saw Isidor Fisch jump over the wall. My headlights were good.” And because he said that, he is a perjurer. And because he tried to protect the name of a young lady who has since passed away, and several of us very likely have different ideas of his chivalry—some think it was a mighty fine thing to do, others think he should have disclosed it without all the hesitation. That is in your lap, you can think about it.

But knowing these people and from whence they come as well as I do, from our Metropolitan city, here was a young man who was going out with a young lady, and there must have been some reason—maybe it was financial—that she married somebody else, maybe she [4785] loved somebody else. And within a month after her marriage, she dies. And he comes down here because he found something in a closet, a memorandum of something—I cannot go into it, because it was not in evidence, but he found something and he read it and it recalled to his mind the incident, and he comes down to testify about it. So he is a perjurer, he is a crook, he has been convicted, you cannot believe him. I don't think you are going to weigh the evidence of those people that way, that wouldn't be right, it wouldn't be just.

We put on three men from the hills as to Whited, three of the people that have lived up there since they were born, they can smell a fellow's reputation, they can size him up. You don't have to have any rules up there. A fellow is either good or he isn't any good. He pays his bills or he don't pay his bills; he is on the level or he is not on the level, and they come down out of the hills—why? To be belittled and to be degraded and made little of because they are people from Sourland Mountain, because they come down here, because they are not well dressed? They are honest. They are American citizens, and they can go back in their ancestry in this country, some of them, to the days of Washington and his Army, and they have got no excuse to offer to anyone as to their heritage under that flag; they may not be able to spell and they may not be able to talk our language the way we do, but they come down here and they tell you that their neighbor can't be believed. So because they are not city folks, they have got to be derided because they are witnesses for the defense.

And so I could go on all the way down the line, but I am not going to. I am through. [4786] There has been a lot I haven't discussed, because I said I would limit my summation to one day. I have faith and confidence in your recollection that you will remember the evidence I have a firm belief that you all believe in the Golden Rule. I believe, looking in your faces, that that is what has carried you onward and forward all through your lives. The sturdy stock of this part of the country is notorious for its square-shooting. The women, as I said before, inherently courageous and they have that gift of intuition that has come down from a long line. The men, good, sturdy stock, that cannot be fooled, and I haven't tried to fool you. I have tried to be honest and I have pled this case to the best of my ability. I believe this man is absolutely innocent of murder. Whatever other charge there is against him in the Bronx will be disposed of. I don't think you are going to pick any cherries or chestnuts or anything else out of the fire for the District Attorney of the Bronx.

In closing, I wish to say to you that I appreciate the care and consideration that you have given us and the patience that you have given to this case. And may I just extend to the distinguished jurist on the Bench, at this time, my thanks for his courtesy, and to all the lawyers connected with the case. And I feel sure, in closing, even Colonel Lindbergh wouldn't expect you and doesn't expect you to do anything but your duty under the law and under the evidence. May I say to him, in passing, that he has my profound respect and I feel sorry for him in his deep grief, and I am quite sure that all of [4787] you agree with me, his lovely son is now within the gates of heaven.