CLOSING SUMMATION BY THE PROSECUTION: NEW JERSEY v HAUPTMANN

SUMMATION BY MR. WILENTZ

STATE vs. HAUPTMANN.

FLEMINGTON, N. J., February 12, 1935.

THIRTY-FIRST DAY.

[4358] SUMMATION BY MR. WILENTZ: May it please your Honor and men and women of the jury: You men and women with whom we have spent all these days, I want you to know how I feel about the very patient and kindly consideration that you have given us. Of course, we are also very deeply appreciative of the very kindly help that has come from the Court.

As far as I am concerned, I have been obsessed and possessed during this entire trial with the feeling and the knowledge that we are bound by the ethics of the profession that has always been honored and which we hope will continue in the future to be honored. [4359] As far as I am concerned, too, of course, I have been governed with the thought that has always been with me that I am here as the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey and I am not only here for the State of New Jersey, men and women, but I am here representing the people of this country.

My delightful adversary says that you are not to be governed by the clamor of the mob that wants the life of this man. Let me say to you that if there is such a clamor, if there is such a demand for the life or for the sentence of this man, it is not because of anything that you have done or that I have done. It must be because of the evidence that has come from the lips of credible witnesses sitting here under oath.

If there is such a clamor from the American people as is indicated by my adversary, the American people aren't swung so easily as a people, it seems to me that if there is such a clamor so far as they are concerned, there must be a good basis for it. But after all you are the judges of the fact, and you are to determine whether or not that clamor, if there is such a clamor, is based upon the truth.

Now, I have come here at the request of your Prosecutor. I have come here at the direction of the Governor of the State, the then Governor and the present Governor; and I have spent every minute since October, 1934, and applied myself every moment; and each day and each night, as I proceeded along in this cause, the more I proceeded, the more convinced I was that I was pursuing a righteous and proper cause.

 “Judge not, lest ye be judged,” my adversary says, but forgets the other biblical admonition, [4360] “And he that killeth any man shall surely be killed,” “Shall surely be put to death.” For all these months since October, 1934, not during one moment has there been anything that has come to the surface or light that has indicated anything but the guilt of this defendant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and no one else. Every avenue of evidence, every little thoroughfare that we traveled along, every one leads to the same door: Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

Now, it is a great distinction, men and women, and it is a great honor to represent the people in this cause, but that distinction and that honor, just as it is in every other case, is only the child of responsibility, and I feel my responsibility and have felt it. I have lost more weight in this case than this defendant, only because I wanted to be sure, only because I wanted to be certain, only because I wanted to be positive.

I have never prosecuted a man in my life. Why, the very thought of prosecuting a man for a crime goes against the very soul and the very grain of my system. I wouldn't take the job of Prosecutor from any Governor. It just so happens by a freak of circumstances that I happened to be the Attorney General when this case comes, and it is in a small county. There is no staff of the Prosecutor, just one lone prosecutor, and I am called. I have to do my duty. And so it is a responsibility upon which is borne this situation. But I am unafraid. No defense counsel can worry me or frighten me or intimidate me—what if ten years from now somebody else confesses! That is the old army game, of trying to intimi- [4361] date men and women sitting in a jury box that maybe, possibly—why, everything is possible, everything is possible.

If it were the law of the land that we were to be governed merely by possibilities, we wouldn't try these cases. No, my responsibility is going to come to an end soon, and I welcome that end, let me tell you. I want to return to my family, too, and get away from this business of running up every morning with these maddening crowds and publicity seekers. I want to get away from it all. I am naturally a home loving person. I want to get back evenings to my children.

I know how it must be with you who have been locked up. At least, I have seen them over the weekend. I know how it must be with you; weeks and weeks locked up. But that is not my fault. That is not the Court's fault. Everything that has happened in this courtroom, men and women, everything, you may lay to the door of the gentleman sitting over there between the guards. And so it is not only my responsibility, but now comes yours, and yours is a distinction, too, and an honor. As long as you live, and as long as your children's children's children live, they will remember that you as citizens made this sacrifice, that you sat night after night closed in a hotel room and walking up and down a balcony, without the right sometimes to go out for a ride, without the right to see a moving picture show or to have any form of recreation at all; that you served this county and served the State and served this Nation.

If you are going to do your duty, do it right. All we ask of you, we do ourselves. [4362] My friend, the Prosecutor, Tony Hauck, Judge Large, the rest of the staff, Colonel Lindbergh and all of us—we don't ask from you one thing that we would not do ourselves, and that is to do your duty. You have substantially the same oath that I have and we don't want you to compromise. You can't compromise with murder and murderers. If you get the feeling that this case is what Mr. Reilly says, a perfect case, it is your solemn duty to find a verdict of murder in the first degree.

Oh, yes; there have been cases and there are cases in which a jury properly makes a recommendation of mercy. When a man is charged with murder, because he kills somebody that seduced his daughter, a jury probably can say, “Well, there is an aggravation there. While he had no right to take the law in his own hands, there was some aggravation there, there was provocation there, he was a father.”

 “True, he had no right to violate the law. We will find him guilty, but we recommend mercy.” That is a proper case, maybe, for mercy, but this is not. Either this man is guilty or he is innocent. And if he is guilty you have got to convict him. Don't let anybody intimidate you; don't get weak if you think he is guilty. Now, Mr. Reilly says for the defense that we have got to prove, in order to sustain this indictment, he says we have got to prove that Hauptmann did this job and did it alone. Well, that is a matter of law, that is not anything else. You don't have to worry about that. And I say to you jurors that that is not the law. So far as Hauptmann is concerned he could have had fifty help him; if he partici- [4363] pated in this murder that's all you have got to deal with. He can bring in Violet Sharpe's corpse and body and lay it right alongside of him if he wants; he can bring Isidor Fisch's grave from Germany and put it alongside of him. That doesn't help this defendant in this case a bit. If he participated in this crime, he is guilty, and it doesn't matter whether six, ten, or fifty helped him. Now all this talk about others is clearly the effort of an experienced criminal lawyer to confuse and befuddle a jury. If the jury will only be confused by some question they can't answer in their mind, he is hopeful that that will implant the germ of reasonable doubt to such an extent, at least, that they will recommend mercy.

There is nobody at that [defense] table that doesn't feel he is guilty; I don't care what they say. The effort is plain, the effort is evident, to try to implant in the heart of one juror, just one–if only one will say, “Well, I can't understand how this happened, I can't understand how that happened”–just because they can't answer a question to themselves. There may be some questions you can't answer, but there sits the man that can answer them. He will be thawed out, he is cold; yes, he will be thawed out when he hears that switch; that's the time he will talk.

Now, counsel also says that we have got to prove that the child died on March the 1st, and that it had to be in East Amwell Township, and he says, “Now, men and women, you have got to be governed merely by common sense. Let's just take common sense, no technicalities.”

Why, counsel would have you think that if this child died just as he stepped over East Amwell Township, you have got to acquit him. Counsel thinks that if the child's last breath came just as he got over the county line, you have got to acquit him. What foolishness. Any place in the county of Hunterdon, if this child received this blow, whether it died then or whether it died the next day, if it received the fatal blow in the county of Hunterdon anywhere, this man is guilty of murder in the first degree. That is the law as I understand it, first degree, and the Court will charge you about it.

You can imagine what a great joke, what a great joke it would be in this civilized Nation-just imagine that if it so happened that the man stepped over the boundary of East Amwell Township–how ridiculous this country and this Nation would be in the eyes of the whole world that we couldn't prosecute a man who had committed a murder. He could admit it, they claim, but if he stepped over the boundary line, or if the last breath happened after March 1st–you are not interested in that. What this jury and what this world wants to know is this: Who is the fellow that took this child? When you have decided that he is the man, that is all you have got to worry about. Never mind the lawyers' arguments, that is all you have got to be concerned with. Is he the fellow that went into that room and took that child? That is all you have got to be concerned about.

Now, let's see. What are some of the admitted facts? There isn't any question that at the time of this crime Colonel Lindbergh was an international figure. There is no question that he and Anne Morrow had a twenty months' old baby. There is [4365] no question, and it is admitted and conceded that on the afternoon of March 1st that baby was home and it was a normal baby.

There is no doubt that on that night the baby was stolen. It is admitted, it must be admitted, that it was stolen by the person who was in the room and left the note. There is no doubt that the person who was in the room and left the note stole the baby and took from that child a sleeping garment. That sleeping garment was returned following the series of other notes. As a result of those notes and the sleeping garment, $50,000 was paid, and there is no doubt that the child was dead–murdered.

Now, that is admitted. Now, men and women, you ask yourselves many questions; the world has asked many questions–such a crime, who would do such a thing? Well, I can't comprehend, you can't imagine, because you are not so constituted, you haven't that sort of a system. Could you ever believe that in this land anybody, anybody would even get the thought of going down to East Amwell Township to Lindbergh's home to take this child? It just can't be believed.

You can ask yourselves that question as easily as many others, but we know that it happened. What type of man would murder the child of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh and Anne Morrow, Colonel Lindbergh who, once a poor boy, for the sake of achievement, for the sake of science, one evening stepped into an aeroplane and spanned the ocean, risked his life, subjected himself to the waves, and, of course, he flew with a few letters of introduction, and the next day found himself the most popular and the most glorious man in this [4366] world; a man who has been an inspiration to every child in this world. Why, a tot, as soon as he gets to talk, wants a little aeroplane for a toy. What does it mean? –It is ambition; it is an ambition to invention, an ambition to everything; the inspiration of the children of the Nation.

Anne Morrow, the cultured daughter of a former Ambassador to Mexico and a late United States Senator, a man who surely, if he had lived, would be President of the United States. Who would be the type of person that would take a child like that and murder it? Who could there be? Why, men and women, if that little baby, if that little, curly-haired youngster were out in the grass in the jungle, breathing, just so long as it was breathing, any tiger, any lion, the most venomous snake would have passed that child without hurting a hair of its head.

Now, what type of man, what type of man would kill the child of Colonel Lindbergh and Anne Morrow? He wouldn't be an American. No American gangster and no American racketeer ever sank to the level of killing babies. Ah, no! An American gangster that did want to participate in a kidnaping wouldn't pick out Colonel Lindbergh. There are many wealthy people right in the City of New York, much more wealthy than Colonel Lindbergh. I don't know that the Colonel is wealthy at all. As a matter of fact, I think he had a tough job scraping up the few dollars here, there and everywhere to make up the ransom money. There are many wealthy people in New York. [4367] Oh, no, it had to be a fellow that had ice water in his veins, not blood.

That is the first thing. It had to be a fellow who had a peculiar mental make-up-who thought he was bigger than Lindy, that when the news of this crime came out he could look at the headlines screaming across the page, just as the headlines screamed across the pages when Lindy made that famous flight. It had to be a fellow that was an egomaniac, who thought he was omnipotent. It had to be a secretive fellow. It had to be a fellow that wouldn't tell anybody anything. It had to be a fellow that wouldn't tell his wife about his money, who would conceal the truth from her. It had to be a fellow that wouldn't trust a bookkeeper, that would take books and enter every little item, groceries, boats, everything, himself. It had to be a fellow that could undergo hardship, not ordinary hardship; it had to be a man that you could kill in cold blood here and he wouldn't tell if he didn't want to-the kind of a fellow that would stow away on a boat and travel three thousand miles to sneak into the country in a coal bin, without food, without water, a man that could undergo that hardship, and when he was apprehended in court he would go back again and try it over again. That's the type of a man. Try it over the second time and then the third time, a man that could undergo that sort of a hardship. It had to be the sort of a man that, when he did break and enter a home, he would break the burgomeister's home, he would go through the window of the mayor's home in Germany, not the ordinary citizen, not because the mayor was a rich man, but because the mayor was a respected man [4368] over there, he was the most respected man in his community, the burgomeister. It wasn't that he had the money, but there is something in the mental make-up of the type of man that would kill the Lindbergh child that would prompt him, when he did burglarize, when he did open that window and go in to get money, it would have to be somebody of position; it would have to be the type of man that wouldn't think anything of forsaking his own country and disgracing his own nation; it would have to be the sort of a fellow that would leave everything behind and flee and go to another country and another land, a strange land; it would have to be the type of man that would forsake his own mother, sixty-five years of age, and run away. Yes, it would have to be the type of man that would hold up women at the point of a gun, women wheeling baby carriages.

And let me tell you, men and women, the State of New Jersey and the State of New York and the Federal authorities have found that animal, an animal lower than the lowest form in the animal kingdom, public enemy Number 1 of this world, Bruno Richard Hauptmann; we have found him and he is here for your judgment. Now, yesterday afternoon we spent some time with counsel for the defense, and we have contended, as the Prosecutor told you, that the Prosecutor has proved this case by overwhelming and conclusive evidence. That's witnessed by the fact that Chief Counsel for the defense says, “This case is too perfect.” He says we have a perfect case. And how do they attempt to meet this perfect case? That's a fair question, isn't it? How do they attempt to meet it?

Why, they attempt to meet this testimony in this way: they start out by trying to assassinate, to [4369] assassinate the character and reputation of everybody that dared to come here and be useful, men who have lived honorable and decent lives, public and privately, men sixty, seventy, eighty, it didn't matter at all, scathing denunciations, right from the first to the last. Why, “Judge not lest ye be judged,” what a text! What a text for a defense that starts right out to rip the heart and soul out of Americans that are sworn to do their duty and are here only for that purpose.

If the State were on the level! Did you ever hear in a courtroom a statement like that before? If the State were on the level! Who in the State is not on the level? Oh, they are very kind to the Attorney General. Of course, the Attorney General wouldn't do it. I want the gentlemen of the defense to know that I am not concerned about their sparing my feelings. If the rest of these men with whom I am associated are tarnished with this stick, I am tarnished with it too. And so is Tony Hauck. And so is Judge Large. And so are these other men who spend their lives in the service of the State.

The State is not on the level! Schwarzkopf, please stand up. Jury, look at Colonel Schwarzkopf. Take a look at his eye. Does he look like a crook, a graduate of the United States Military Academy; a man who served his Nation against his Fatherland, on the fronts in Europe. Does he look like a crook? Don't you suppose he is sorry for a German? He has German blood running through his veins. Do you imagine Colonel Schwarzkopf is going to frame this fellow up? For [4370] three years he left the fields roam with this man, with all men, suspects here, suspects there, nobody was brought before this jury. Why? Because they didn't have the right man. Schwarzkopf has been pilloried around this State and around this Nation by ambitious newspaper men and others who would like to write stories about anything, by people who wanted to make a goat out of men, and here this calm, delightful father of children sat by year after year, just trying to do his duty, and he has got to come finally to this courtroom to have somebody from New York call him a crook.

 “Judge not lest he be judged.” Yes, Colonel Schwarzkopf is good enough for the Governor of the State of New Jersey, he is good enough for the Senate of the State of New Jersey, he is good enough for Colonel Lindbergh who suffered this terrific loss, he is good enough for Anne Morrow and the Morrow family, but for the gentlemen of the defense and Mr. Hauptmann he suddenly becomes crooked. What do you think of that?

Inspector Bruckman, will you do me the honor to stand up, please. Jurors, look at Inspector Bruckman, one of the highest commanding officials in the New York Police Department, who became an Inspector after twenty-seven years, risking his life many days and many nights, with an invalid wife at home. He has to listen over the radio that he is a crook today, a German. And they say that because he is a German he marked on that board in German script what this man admitted he himself marked. Now, let's see. Why, men and women, this case is a perfect case. Why, I sleep it, I eat it, I dream it, I live [4371] it, and every moment it is Hauptmann, Hauptmann, Hauptmann, all the time! And he say that Bruckman, Bruckman, who has never been convicted of anything, Bruckman, who has lived an honorable life, Bruckman, in charge of a Police Department that has eighteen thousand men-the greatest Police Department in the world,-an honorable man, a fine man, did these things. Just look at Bruckman and tell me: does he deserve that sort of treatment for this burglar, this murderer and convict? They say Bruckman must have walked in there and, because he was a German, marked these boards which you will be able to see with a magnifying glass.

What was the testimony about that board when the man was under oath? “So that when you looked at Exhibit A”— this is under sworn testimony in the Supreme Court in New York, just a few months ago, with the protection of the Supreme Court of New York, nobody forcing him, weeks after he was arrested–“So that when you looked at Exhibit A, which was presented to you by the District Attorney of the Bronx County and you looked at the handwriting thereon, you said that was your handwriting, isn't that so?”

“I said that is my lumber. I could not make out the handwriting.”

Next question: “You said the number on there is your handwriting?”

 Answer: “Yes.”

 “What about Decatur?” That is spelled out here.

[4372] “I could not make out whether that is my handwriting and numbers.”

 “The numbers are in your handwriting, are they not?”

 “They are.”

 “But the other writing you are not sure of?”

 “I could not make it out.”

 “You would not say it was not your handwriting, would you?”

 “I would not say exactly, no.”

Then when he was examined by District Attorney Foley, who treated him as he told you, forced him to do nothing, treated him as a gentleman, helped him, gave him every consideration, what did he say there? “Hauptmann, yesterday I showed you a piece of wood from your house with Condon's address and phone number on it; is that correct?”

“Yes.”

“You admitted that you wrote that on the board, is that so?”

 “Yes.”

 “You have been well treated?”

 “Yes.”

 “Your lawyer has visited you here in private?”

 “Yes.”

 “You have visits from your wife?”

 “Yes.”

 “You have been allowed to conduct your defense without hindrance?”

 “Yes.”

 “I have given you cigarettes?”

 “Yes.”

 “I have helped you in every way?”

 “Yes.”

 “Is that all true?”

 “Yes.”

[4373] And so it is charged, with that as a basis, that is the basis that unfortunately under our system of government, men are permitted, with the protection of the courts, are permitted to assassinate men of good character and reputation. What do you think of that? Why, you know we have gotten to the stage in this country, we have gotten to the stage in this country where criminals think they can do anything, if they get the right lawyer, that's all there is to it. All they need is the right mouthpiece. Why, police crookedness--I am not talking about anybody in this case but just generally talking about police crookedness, men and women. I am a member of a profession, as I said before, which is a noble profession and always will be, but in this profession there are more crooks amongst the lawyers than there ever will be amongst policemen, and the sooner we all take notice of that the better off we will all be.

Inspector Bruckman is no crook. Mr. William Frank, stand up, please.

(Mr. Frank stands up.)

-Special agent of the Treasury Department of the United States of America, they say that he falsified the compilations in the record, and those records we got from Hauptmann's books, those records we got from the brokerage accounts, those records we got from his bank account, those records we took from his own handwriting and from his own statements, and Special Agent William Frank has got to be assassinated in order to save this man Hauptmann. What do you think of that? Corporal Wilton. Why, men and women, when you talk about the State Police, what a fertile field it is for ambitious, young lawyers, how they love to talk about them. Who would you call upon if you needed a [4374] policeman tomorrow? Why, the Government of the State has assigned the police-if you had some trouble home you would have to call the State Police, and who are they? Are they a gang of brigands? Why, they are your boys and my boys, ambitious to make an honest living. They don't take ex-convicts; they don't take lunatics there, they take men who are physically fit, they take men with the average intelligence. Now, they don't take lawyers, and they don't take college professors, they take boys that are willing to earn a hundred dollars a month or a hundred and twenty-five dollars a month, but clean boys, Yankees, Americans, citizens, men who they believe will be honest, and honorable, as they were before they came.

Corporal Wilton, they said, “Who took these photographs?”-Where are they?-“Of these nail holes?” Why, they said he must have taken–it looks so fresh you can see it must have been taken within forty-eight hours. Why, that ladder has been reposing in the safe of the County Clerk for weeks. What do you think of that? For weeks it has been in that safe over there, where nobody could get it unless both sides were available, and they say Corporal Wilton manufactured these photographs! They forget to tell you about the record that they asked him to produce. They asked him to produce the record when he took it, and he took out his report and handed it to counsel–March the 8th, 1932.

They forget about Mr. Betts, who came here from Washington and made a report about these nail holes. He saw this ladder in May, 1932, he filed a report in June, 1932, and he came here post-haste from Washington when he [4375] read the testimony of this very ambitious writer of a book, Dr. Hudson. So Dr. Hudson wouldn't think of coming here for any advertisement! Oh, no, he is beyond that, because he testified for the defense. The people that answer the radio calls for Mr. Reilly, they are just prompted, they are just prompted by a desire to seek justice and do justice. We didn't go over the radio, men and women. The State of New Jersey can't reduce itself to that sort of a level. I am not finding fault with the defense, but I say, so far as we are concerned, no radio talks for us, not before the trial, not during the trial, and not after the trial.

But Dr. Hudson must have been listening on the other end of the radio. So Corporal Wilton, he has got to be assassinated. Arthur Koehler, who has devoted his entire life in the service of the United States Government, at nothing else but this very work, he must be looking for advancement, a man who went up and down the length and breadth of this country before he ever knew such a person as Hauptmann lived or existed; who went from one mill to another, from one plant to another, following lumber, pieces of lumber, and who finally found in the Bronx lumber yard the lumber he was talking about, the type of lumber. He knew, we knew, the world knew, that the man that built that ladder got part of the lumber from the Bronx lumber yard. When? After he was arrested? After Hauptmann was arrested? Oh, no. One and a half years-one and a half years before Hauptmann was ever arrested, we came to that Bronx lumber yard and there we were stuck; we knew it came from there; we [4376] knew someone purchased lumber there, we couldn't find that fellow.

And what happens when he is arrested? It develops he worked there. What else happens? It develops in December, 1931, he bought nine dollars and some cents' worth of lumber there. So Arthur Koehler, Arthur Koehler, has got to be assassinated, assassinated by a lumber man from Connecticut and Massachusetts, or Massachusetts and one from Long Island. Why, Hunterdon County, Middlesex, Mercer, they are full of carpenters and contractors. They couldn't get one of them to come in. They had to go up to Long Island or Massachusetts; the radio was working again; and that in an effort to assassinate Arthur Koehler, that has worked his entire life. Koehler-does that mean anything to you? Doesn't it sound like a German name? Do you think he would have any prejudice against Hauptmann? What is there in life of Koehler? He is at the top of the heap in Government service. He cannot get any advancement. There is no advancement that he seeks. He cannot get to be a big lawyer and plead cases and get big fees-nothing. That's his job. He has dedicated his life,–but he has got to be assassinated in this scheme in order to free Hauptmann.

Major General John F. O'Ryan is just a bluff. Now why was Major General O'Ryan brought here? Not only that, but my delightful adversary says he ceased to be Commissioner for very good reasons, Major General O'Ryan, who saw service in command of a division of the United States Army, Major General John F. O'Ryan, who was Police Commissioner of the City of New York at the time of [4377] Hauptmann's arrest. We didn't bring Major General O'Ryan here, in the first place, but when this defendant got on the stand and said,–Why, before they found the second batch of money I told the Commissioner,–we had to bring the Commissioner here to show you that he didn't. We had to bring him here, and we took him away from a conference with the President to bring him here. And then he has to be assassinated, too, the inference thrown out that there was something wrong with Major General O'Ryan-he is just a bluff.

Oh, not only that. They don't stop with that. The entire line has to be crushed, right down into the gutter and into the muck they try to drag everybody, alongside of Hauptmann: Osborn, eighty years of age; his son; Tyrrell; Cassidy, Stein, Walter Sellers and Souder. Why, they dismissed those men with a wave of the hand by saying, “You can get them for so much a day.” Why, Dr. Souder of the Federal Government isn't getting a cent a day. That is his duty in connection with his job. Osborn has lived to be eighty. He has lived to be eighty years of age. He doesn't know when he will have to answer the call of God and I don't think he would take with him at this stage of life, I don't think he would want to take with him the feeling that he sent a man to death unless he was positive-unless he was positive. Men have traveled from one end of this country and from the other to Flemington to testify. Why? At great expense to the State of New Jersey? I don't know. They haven't charged us a cent yet. But whatever the expense is, men and women, the Attorney General [4378] stands responsible for it. It was his plan. It was his notion. It was his idea. Why? Why, I didn't want to take any chances either. I sent to every part of this country, to the best men in the country, and said, “Tell me what you think about it.”

Separately-did you hear what one of the witnesses said? “The Attorney General says he won't stand for any conferences between handwriting experts. He wants their opinions separately.” And out from Los Angeles came an opinion from a man respected and honored by the courts, the courts' representative in the most famous cases in the world. What was it? Hauptmann. Up here from Montclair, New Jersey, from Mr. Osborn, Senior-what was it? Hauptmann. From Virginia, from the southern gentleman, what was it? Hauptmann. From Washington, from the Federal Government, what was it? Hauptmann. Every place every one-Hauptmann. But they are just so much a day. What do you think of that? They have to be assassinated for Hauptmann-Hauptmann the convict, Hauptmann the burglar, Hauptmann the murderer. They have to kill everybody in his path-just clear the way for Hauptmann.

They spent twenty minutes talking about the defense witnesses. All day on this floor yesterday, talked about everything in the world except the defense's case. For twenty minutes from 4:10 to 4:30, counsel talked about the defense witnesses, all of them, and that is all they were worth. Did they tell you anything about their hand- [4379] writing experts? Do you remember the day in here, there stood counsel for the defense and said to the Court, “Give us this adjournment, we want our handwriting experts, we want our handwriting experts, not one,-to look over these ransom notes and these exhibits, and we will show them down at the Hotel in Trenton where the General has his headquarters.” And we adjourned court and we did show them to them. I don't remember the names, they are in the record, Malone, Meyers and others, four or five or more, and only one man, all the way from East St. Louis, only one man would dare walk into this courtroom to say that it wasn't Hauptmann.

Before these men ever got into the case representing this defendant, the record shows that we submitted, we let the handwriting experts come down and look at the original notes way back in October, September and October, 1934, to look over all the exhibits right at State Police Headquarters. And where is he? Why isn't he here? Why aren't those other experts here? You know the reason. They wouldn't dare say it is not Hauptmann's, because, of course, they are Hauptmann's. Hauptmann says they look like Hauptmann's. But that doesn't make any difference. They have got to murder and assassinate each and every one of these men, there is no giving way.

They talk about the defense not having any money, handicapped for money. There is not a scintilla of evidence, there is not one word of evidence, there is not the slightest bit of proof that they haven't money. I think they have got lots of money. That is [4380] my notion against their notion that they haven't got money; money coming from cranks and idiots and fools, un-Americans all ovcr the country, pouring in enough money to hire what they consider the four best lawyers available, to get the best criminal lawyer in the East. There wasn't a lawyer in the State of New Jersey that they thought could do the job as well, a man with a reputation of thousands of cases, a man who has represented more criminals in the big Metropolis than any other man, according to reputation. So there must be something about this case, there must be some money somewhere; certainly they wouldn't represent a murderer just to represent him.

What is there that would attract high-priced lawyers and famous lawyers to a man charged with the murder of the Lindbergh child? Certainly they don't want to glory in the blood of the Lindbergh baby. It must be because of their oath to their professional duty. It must be because of that and because they are paid to do the work. No money? Who said no money? Enough money to bring the handwriting expert from East St. Louis and a lumber man from Massachusetts or Connecticut, and another man from the other place, and the witness who testified to nothing from Warsaw, New York; enough money for radios and everything else. No money? Just an effort to prejudice this jury; just an effort to appeal to the jury. Why, I think they have probably spent more money than the State has.

Now there is some talk about some more gentlemen in this case. Red Johnson. Red Johnson had the unfortunate experience of being fond of Betty Gow, who had the unfortunate experience of finding it necessary to earn a livelihood, and it so happens she worked in the Lindbergh home. And so Red Johnson, because he knew her, and because he talked to her on the telephone the day of the crime, or the day before the crime, was apprehended. Now Red Johnson was permitted to go back to Norway, not by me. I had nothing to do with the case at the time. He was permitted to go back to Norway because the New Jersey authorities, the New York authorities, the Federal Government, they checked him and they rechecked him and they looked up his relatives and they looked up his activities and checked where he was that night and where he had been the night before, they checked his bank accounts, the bank accounts of his relatives, they had Scotland Yard checking up, or the Norwegian Government, whoever it was, checking up his relatives and they found, “Well, what is the use of holding this fellow?” Don't you think that the police would have been delighted long before they ever heard of Hauptmann; if they thought for one minute that Red Johnson had anything to do with it, would they let him go back? Why, in one breath my adversary says the State of New Jersey is wasting money, they brought the Fisches here, but they didn't bring Red Johnson. Why bring Red Johnson here? Because they want us to bring him? Just to satisfy counsel for the defense? If we would have brought him here they would have said we have wasted all this money bringing Red Johnson here. I thought about bringing Red Johnson here, after counsel made some [4382] of his statements. When I found out the record of Red Johnson, that he had been cleared, that he had been checked, there was no necessity to spend that money. And what is there in the record? Nobody accuses Red Johnson of anything in this case, outside of the defense counsel; and that is hardly sufficient. I can't meet all the insinuations of counsel; I am supposed to meet, the State is supposed to meet the testimony. That's all. Now, that's Red Johnson.

While we are talking about Red Johnson, and in the same breath it is said that we spent a lot of money in bringing the Fisches over here, and we only called one. I want to tell you why I brought the Fisches over, men and women, and if there is any criticism for it, it doesn't have to be shared by anybody, I take the blame. I will answer to the Governor and the Legislature. I will answer to Senator Prall of Hunterdon County. Let me tell you why I brought the Fisches here. I know what it means to deal with criminals who are charged with murder. I have represented them for years. I know something about their means and their methods. I know some of the defenses that they try to put up. I have had some experience. I have never prosecuted a murder case in my life, I have never prosecuted anybody, I don't want to do it again; but I am not altogether unacquainted with court practice. I have tried some cases myself before, and I could see, I could see what I was up against. And I could see, I could see–I knew that if I didn't bring the nurse over to this country that attended Isidor Fisch on his death bed, I knew somebody would pop up on that stand, [4383] one of those ex-convicts, one of those idiots, he would get upon that stand and tell this jury that Isidor Fisch confessed to this crime. And let me tell you, nobody would get away with that on me. So I brought the nurse, a German nurse, from Germany-it wasn't expensive at all-and we brought her here, she came over with her nurse's gown, she wears it every day-an elderly woman, I don't know, I think she must be about sixty-five, can't speak English, can't speak anything else, and she sits in that hotel, she sits there at my request, at my invitation, at the State's expense, because I thought in dealing with so desperate a character as I knew we were dealing with, I wasn't going to take the chance of them planting any doubt in this jury's mind with anything like that. I didn't need Hanna Fisch here at all. But counsel kept talking about Hanna Fisch. From the testimony it wasn't necessary to produce a bit of evidence about Fisch; but from the way that counsel caroused around here about the Fisches, and every second day he was telling you what he was going to prove about him-they never proved a thing-as long as she was over here, I thought I would bring her in and show this jury at least who a sister of this dead man was. Now, that is the story of the Fisches. That is why we brought them over, and if any further explanation is made, men and women, I am perfectly willing to make it to the constituted authorities.

But so far as this jury is concerned, I hope that that is sufficient and disposes of it. Now, Betty Gow has been, from the very first day, the subject of quite some attack. [4384] Mr. Hauptmann wasn't satisfied with murdering this child. Why, he wants to leave in the train and in the wreck the lives and the reputations of all these people. It wasn't enough to hasten the death of Violet Sharpe; everybody else has to be absolutely crushed. If they are not dead, they have to, be crushed; and Betty Gow is one of them. We hold no brief for Betty Gow. But, after all, suppose you worked in this house. We couldn't do anything to you except arrest you; and then if we investigated you and found out there was no basis for it, why, we would have to let you go. That was done about everybody. But Betty Gow came here from Scotland; true, at the expense of the State. If Betty Gow had one scintilla of guilty knowledge, there was the slightest germ in her system that indicated any knowledge, she didn't have to come here. If there was anybody in the world that might have gotten on that stand while she was in this country, she was in danger, wasn't she? She came from Scotland by invitation. Of course we paid her way. A twelve dollar a week maid couldn't be expected to pay her passage up and back. We have got to keep her here. Every day we have had to keep her here, to be ready in case they said something about her that wasn't true. And once they found out that Betty Gow was in this country, that stopped all talk about Betty Gow.

Contrast that and compare that with the Defendant Hauptmann over in the Bronx. Boy! When he heard the State of New Jersey wanted him, did he say, “I'll come over?” Oh, no! He wouldn't come to the State of [4385] New Jersey until after we had a trial before the Supreme Court. We had to get a Governor's warrant of the State of New Jersey. We had to go over to the Governor of the State of New York. We had to then go before the Supreme Court. We had to go to the Appellate Division. We had to go up and down the line to induce the gentleman who said he was innocent to come over here and prove it. How about that as compared with Betty Gow? Now counsel talks about Dr. Condon. I am not going to spend any time on him now, because I am coming to him later. And then even Mrs. Morrow and Colonel Lindbergh are not altogether spared. They are paid the very gracious compliment, instead of calling them liars, they say they are mistaken.

Now, counsel for the defense brings in this lady from Yonkers, Mrs. Bonesteel, and he says Mrs. Bonesteel knows-a woman that had never seen Violet Sharpe in her life except that one occasion-she knows where Violet Sharpe was on March the1st, a woman who, when shown a picture of Violet Sharpe, another picture, wouldn't know whether it was or it wasn't. But be that as it may, Mrs. Bonesteel knows but Mrs. Morrow is mistaken, the grandmother of the child that was killed is mistaken as to who was in that house on that night and when they were there, the grandmother who got the call at eleven o'clock and who the next day or that night rushed down to Hopewell, she is mistaken. Now, members of the jury, I don't know you, of course I don't. If you were in my [4386] county where I know most of the people and they know me I could tell by looking at your eyes whether you swallow that sort of hocum. But after all, we are right close together, you must be the same kind of people. It can't be possible that just because a man comes in here and wears a mask of sincerity, has a reputation as a big lawyer, it cannot be possible that that could fool you. It cannot be possible that that could confuse you. I cannot believe it. Mrs. Morrow was mistaken, but Mrs. Bonesteel wasn't.

Four people have come in here, not one of them with a blemish-youngsters, yes. Who would you pick to be out with Violet Sharpe that night? She wouldn't be out with famous lawyers, no, she would be out with some young fellow, yes, that wanted to go to a cabaret or wanted to go to some other place, but hardworking boys, boys that earn an honest livelihood–no ex-convicts, no idiots, no lunatics. They are wrong, too; Mrs. Morrow is mistaken. Every woman that came into this court room was charged with seeking a moving picture contract. Cecilia Barr, who has worked for twenty-five years and whose very appearance would indicate to you that it isn't likely, no matter what she did, that she would get a moving picture contract. Cecilia Barr, she had to get a moving picture contract, too.

Now, there have been some questions that might arouse, that you might want an answer to that counsel asked. Counsel wanted to know, “Where is that footprint that was found in the cemetery?” Well, you will remember that several days after the money was paid it seems that [4387] in the interim Dr. Condon went with Colonel Lindbergh on this flight to find the baby. Several days thereafter, Colonel Breckinridge and Dr. Condon and Earl Hacker, an architect, not an amateur, but an architect, went up there to look over the cemetery and they found a footprint, and the testimony is that they took an impression of it, and when counsel came to that in the case, counsel for the defense says, “We would like to know whether you will bring it up.” Now, we didn't introduce that footprint, and I will tell you why. That footprint was found two or three or four days afterwards. We couldn't introduce it. It wasn't admissible. Why, there might have been any number of people-we think it was the footprint of the man that got the money, we thought so, but it wasn't admissible, we thought, but we had it, and when counsel asked for it, we brought it, and it was back in that room with evidence waiting for his call, just like he called Sisk to the stand, two or three times; just like he recalled Kelly to the stand-they were always ready and willing and did testify again and again-that footprint was ready for production any time they wanted it.

Then, counsel wants to know where is the phonograph record? Did you hear him ask Mr. Sisk, of the Department of Justice, if there was such a record, and did he have it, and would he produce it? Why, sure, that phonographic record has been alive and awake waiting for him to call for it, to put his voice on for you. I would have loved if you had heard the story all over again, Condon telling about this [4388] conversation, “Will I burn if the baby is dead? Are you German, John? No, I am Scandinavian. Have you got the money? No, I haven't got the money. Doesn't Colonel Lindbergh think we are the right party?”

Mr. Reilly: We must make an objection to this, if your Honor, please. I hate to interrupt the Attorney General, but he is now talking about something which he assumes would be in the record, if it was called for, and I say it is highly improper. He should be confined to the evidence in the case.

Mr. Wilentz: I am talking about Dr. Condon's testimony, and I want to remind counsel that I didn't interrupt him.

Mr. Reilly: Well, I can't help it, General, if you are going to talk about things that are not in the evidence.

Mr. Wilentz: All right.

Mr. Reilly: He is talking about a record he says “I would love to have it in, I would love to have it over again.”

Mr. Wilentz: Yes, if your Honor, please, and-

Mr. Reilly: Now, that is not in the record, and only five minutes ago he talked about pictures, the first, second and the last picture of Violet Sharpe, which are not in the record, not offered in evidence by him and we cannot sit here, sir, and permit him to testify and not sum [4389] up on the evidence in the case, I respectfully say.

The Court: Well, didn't you make some inquiry of some one of the witnesses about this record?

Mr. Reilly: I asked him if he had it, yes, sir.

The Court: Yes, and didn't you ask him to bring it here?

Mr. Reilly: I asked him would he bring it.

The Court: Yes. Now, I haven't observed anything as yet that is irregular in the summation of the Attorney General. Of course, he understands, and he will be required to argue concerning the evidence in the case, and the legitimate inferences that flow in his judgment from that evidence, and I do not think that he has failed in that respect yet, so you may proceed, Mr. Attorney General.

Mr. Reilly: And I respectfully except.

Exception allowed. (s. s.) THOMAS W. TRENCHARD, Judge.

Mr. Wilentz: Yes. If that record were produced, he had the chance to produce it, he asked for it like I asked for these other people, and he should have called for it. It was there, that object was there, ready for him. And I wouldn't have commented on [4390] it at all; I wouldn't have said a word about it if he hadn't asked the question about the record. Now, why didn't they call for the record? Were they afraid of it? The phonograph record. Were they afraid that that record that was given years ago, before Hauptmann was ever arrested, were they afraid that that would even be more damaging than the lip testimony of Dr. Condon? Not given to the State Police, but given to the Federal Government. What was the reason that prompted them and caused them to refrain from asking for the record? We couldn't produce it as our evidence. We had to produce Dr. Condon, so that counsel could cross-examine him. We couldn't produce the record. It wasn't admissible from us. Sure; it must have been because they would have heard it all over again, the same thing, the voice, the imitation of the voice, “Doc-tor.”

“John.”

“The baby is well.”

“Tell Mrs. Lindbergh not to worry.” God I men and women don't you understand? You are talking about the voice of Hauptmann–Condon talked to him Hauptmann talking about “the baby is well.”

“Give me the fifty thousand dollars.” Why, if this wasn't a case concerning Colonel Lindbergh's child-you talk about the prestige of Colonel Lindbergh and the position of the Morrows-if it were the child of an ordinary citizen this case would have been over in one week, and that man would have paid the penalty by this time. But the fame and the glory and the name of Lindbergh has attracted lawyers. It has attracted newspaper men. It has attracted photographers. It has attracted [4391] curiosity seekers. It has attracted convicts. It has attracted idiots, lunatics. The whole world wants to get in under the glory of the Lindbergh and crush him more and more, just to get a little notoriety. It would have been over in a few days if it was anybody but Colonel Lindbergh. No Edward J. Reilly would have come to New Jersey for the son of an ordinary citizen if he was killed. And, of course, that is true of the rest of us. We wouldn't have been here with such elaborate preparations, either, I don't suppose.

But I don't want you to get the notion that the prestige or the position of Colonel Lindbergh or the Morrows was ever used in the slightest degree. Why, just let me give you a little illustration. Here is his first born child murdered. In after years a man is arrested. The man that he believes killed his child. Now just look at this picture and the Attorney General of the State is a young man who never prosecuted a criminal case in his life. Why the State is full of experienced lawyers, famous lawyers, lawyers whose names will go down in the history of the law. Why one word, I think, from Colonel Lindbergh or Mrs. Morrow to the Governor of this State and that's all that would have been needed, I think, and the Governor would have said, “Pick out any lawyer you want to have in the State, it is your child that was killed, and if you want some lawyer to prosecute this case representing the State you can have it.” I don't think there is any doubt that just the mere suggestion by Colonel Lindbergh or Mrs. Morrow, such is their position and rightly so-but, [4392] no, not Colonel Lindbergh, not Mrs. Morrow, they didn't care who it was. If Dave Wilentz was good enough for the Governor of the State of New Jersey and for Senator Prall to confirm as Attorney General, if he was the appointee, if he was the man that belonged there, it didn't make any difference whether he had ever had any experience or not. He was satisfied to let law and order take its course. That is the prestige-that is why Colonel Lindbergh is the type of man he is. It is an honor to sit in the same room with him, men and women, let me tell you. I don't have occasion to talk to the Colonel very much because it is such a terrible thing. What would I talk to him about except this case? How could I talk to him day in and day out about it? It is his child, you know, but that is the type of man he is. Modest, shy, asking nothing from anybody, except to be left to have a few peaceful moments. The prestige of the Morrows and the prestige of Colonel Lindbergh are well deserved and well earned. No, he wants law and order to take its course.

I don't know whether I could sit in that chair day after day a few feet away from the man that I thought murdered my child. I don't think he would ever live to face a jury. Mr. Reilly says he would have torn him limb from limb. God! I don't know, nobody can tell how you would feel under those circumstances. But for me it seems to me I could not contribute that to law and order day in and day out. The man who has the audacity to come in and admit that he perjured himself in the Bronx, that he lied to Foley; the man that could sit there charged with murder and then call an honest citizen sitting on the stand [4393] a liar, to stand up in open court-you have to take the type of animal we are dealing with-a man that will sit there on the stand and look at the Attorney General of the State and say to him, “You are lying” in open court! No, Colonel Lindbergh has contributed a whole lot to law and order in this case. Talk about the mob clamoring. Maybe they are lucky those mobs are not here. Everybody has contributed to law and order in this case, in the orderly process, in the orderly prosecution of this case. So that I hope disposes of the phonograph record.

They say that every suspect should have been checked. Every suspect should have been watched. Now, I assume they mean by that, that that should have been done before Hauptmann was arrested, right after the crime. And that's fair; that's reasonable, that's right. What do you think the Government did? What do you think the police did? What do you suppose New York did? Why, don't you know that Betty Gow and Violet Sharpe–every detective agency in the world that was available must have searched into the lives and the records of every member of the family, right to this date, every dollar they spent. Why, they don't know, when they go into a store in Scotland and buy two dollars' worth of meat or groceries, they don't know that there aren't Scotland Yard detectives checking it. The family of Violet Sharpe and the family of Betty Gow–I don't know whether they know it–but from the date of this crime they haven't moved one inch, not only themselves, [4394] but the immediate members of their families and people that they frequent and people that they associate with, they are not free from surveillance for one minute of the day or night. Talk about checking! They don't spend a quarter, if it is possible to check them, that it isn't checked–right from that day. And Dr. Condon, his sons, lawyers, his daughter, the wife of an architect, himself and his elderly wife–why, from the very day that money was paid, they looked at every bank account and every dollar that was spent by them, to see if they had more money. It didn't have to be Lindbergh money–to see if there was more money, did they live differently. Their wires must have been tapped; people moved next to them to watch them and observe them. It must have been done. The Government of the United States has spent a fortune–talking about New Jersey–the Federal Government, why, President Hoover said right at the start: “We will move heaven and earth to find out who is this criminal that had the audacity to commit a crime like this.” And that same spirit has been continued under President Roosevelt.

Talk about checking? Certainly! They say we should have watched every suspect and checked him. Why, there are hundreds of people who have been watched and checked whose names never entered here and every check-up and all the watching and all the investigation revealed that they had absolutely nothing to do with it. Counsel says, “Where is the box, the box in which the money was delivered to Hauptmann?” [4395] He says the testimony is that Hauptmann put his hand down for the man who got the money, put his hand down and put the money in his pocket. That is not the fact. He doesn't mean to intentionally misstate it, but the fact is, the testimony is, that when Condon gave him this box with the money in it, he put the box down and he said, “Wait a minute, Doctor,” put his hand in, took a few bundles of the money, looked at it, and he said, “It is all right,” and stuck that in his pocket. Then he took the box. And if there is anything else that counsel would like to know about where that box it, I will refer him to the gentleman who sits right in back of him, Mr. Hauptmann. He will tell him.

Now, Mrs. Achenbach testified that on the 2nd or 3rd day of March, 1932, Hauptmann and his wife were at her home and they talked about a limp. Counsel then said, “Why, they testified this man jumped off from a nine-foot wall.” But men and women, that was twelve days or ten or eleven days afterwards. Anyway, you couldn't jump off a wall like that. It would take an athletic gentleman like Mr. Hauptmann, not a consumptive little fellow like Fisch. He wouldn't be climbing up a nine-foot wall. You can bet your life on that. But aside from that, he had a limp. It wasn't the sort of limp that stopped him from walking. That was on the 2nd of March or the 3rd of March. He had until the 12th. That is why he waited until the 12th to deal, while he was getting over this limp.

The contention is made by the defense that if the defense had its way, if the defense were the police authorities of the Nation and of the [4396] State of New York and the State of New Jersey, they would have watched every mail box. It had been suggested. It is not an original thought with the gentlemen of the defense. Every newspaper man in the world had a theory and had a suggestion about this case at the time it broke. I had one, myself, and I wasn't the Attorney General then. You lived in the county and you had your theories and you asked yourselves questions. But, unfortunately, we can't operate a government that way. Somebody has to be in charge. Somebody has to be responsible. It was suggested by the police that every mail box in New York be watched. They knew early from the letters that that was where he lived, somewhere in New York. But they didn't want the man that was sending the letters. Counsel says if he was in St. Raymond's Cemetery he would have torn this man limb from limb. Colonel Lindbergh didn't want anybody torn limb from limb. He didn't want the fellow that was mailing the letters. What he wanted first was his baby, see? Now, is it hard for you to understand that? Can't you hear a father saying, “Yes, I want the man punished. But, please, first let me get my baby back, will you? I don't care what it takes, don't watch any mail boxes, if there is a gang, if there is more than one, and you catch the fellow at a mail box, that is the end of the rest of them. They will kill the baby and get away. Don't touch anybody. Let's get the baby back and then I want every policeman in the world and every citizen to try to get him.” Right or wrong, that is the way a human being acts. [4397] So I am sorry, I am sorry we couldn't follow the suggestion of the defense about what we should have done at that time.

It is stated that Colonel Lindbergh was stabbed in the back by someone in his household, someone who was disloyal to him. You know, I should love, if it were true, to be able to say to you that two or three people did this. It would be so much easier for me. I know just about, at least I hope I do, how the human mind operates in a situation like this. I know how difficult it is to believe that one person committed this crime. It makes it more difficult for the prosecution–not that it is important, because if fifty people did it, if Hauptmann was one of them, that would be all there was to it. But I would like to be able to show that, if it were so, if that were the fact. You see the trouble about it is that you are limited just like I am. We have to be bound by what we know, what the proof is, not what we might imagine, as reasonable people. Every bit of evidence, every scintilla of evidence, every living person that knows anything about it, every living policeman, every government agent, every one of the constituted authorities finds himself in the same position that all evidence leads only to Hauptmann, only to Hauptmann.

Don't you suppose, don't you suppose the police, if it were so, “would love to say that Violet Sharpe helped Hauptmann, and that would settle that argument about somebody inside? They don't have to protect poor Violet Sharpe–Violet Sharpe, whose death was hastened by this man. [4398] There is no point to it. Don't you see how ridiculous it is? Her family is over in Europe somewhere. What difference would it make to them if they could close the book that way, if it were the truth? Don't you see how much easier it would be for all of us? But it is not the fact. Why should we blame this dead girl? Why, if Violet Sharpe had any part or plan at all, participated in any plan, she wouldn't wait for that child to get down to Hopewell, a place she never visited. She worked in Englewood. If she were going to help anybody to kidnap this child, she would help them while that child was at Englewood. That is where she could help. She couldn't help them down there. Betty Gow! Why, Betty Gow had that child in her sole custody and possession, while the Colonel and Mrs. Lindbergh were flying through the heavens on many occasions. She had that child in her sole custody and possession up in Maine. She had that child in her sole custody and possession pretty nearly every hour of the day, except for the evening times or the hours that Mrs. Lindbergh was available. If she were going to participate in this thing, she didn't have to wait for that sort of arrangement. Not only that, but don't you remember that Betty Gow didn't even know, Betty Gow didn't know till that afternoon that the Lindberghs were going to stay there. She had expected them to come back. It was about twelve or one o'clock that she got a telephone call from Mrs. Lindbergh to come down, they think they will stay. Now, if she participated, if she had any guilty knowledge, aside from everything else, and aside from the fact that there is no proof [4399] of it, why, she wouldn't, this scheme wouldn't have been concocted between twelve noon and seven or eight o'clock at night. Now you can't indict people, you can't convict them, dead or alive, just because some lawyer says so, just because he doesn't know what happened. I sympathize with him because he doesn't know what happened. The police for years have been investigating this case, and counsel wants to solve this entire case by insinuation and reference borne only in his mind. But you are governed by the evidence, men and women. You are not governed by speeches that are made by lawyers, whether it is me or anybody else. You have got to recollect, if I make a mistake about the testimony or if counsel makes it, you have got to recollect as best you can the testimony and be governed by that. Now, there isn't a word of testimony, there isn't a word of testimony that smears Betty Gow or Violet Sharpe. But if there were, even if you should get to the feeling, and I don't want you to, because I don't want you to carry it on your conscience in later life–don't get the feeling that either one of these girls had anything to do with it, because you would only have the right to do that if you heard some testimony about it, and you have heard none at all. Don't do yourselves that injustice, because you would never forgive yourselves later in life.

Now, Whateley, he was the butler, he lived there; and Whateley had a dog and the dog didn't bark. Well, he didn't bark because he was–oh, he was such a distance away; all the way over on the other extreme end of this house, in the kitchen. How would the dog hear what was happening upstairs, way in the [4400] extreme end. But no, they have got to say something about Whateley; Whateley, who was checked, whose parents, that were dead in their graves were checked, Whateley and his wife who were checked, Mrs. Whateley, who still works there. They had to say something about Whateley, and what was it? “Don't you know, Colonel, that Whateley and Violet Sharpe used to go out together?” Did you hear any word of testimony about Whateley and Violet Sharpe going out together? Don't you think that is an outrage? Why did they have to impose upon us this situation about Whateley while his wife is living? Why did they have to impose this shame upon Mrs. Whateley? If they have no respect for the dead, what is the occasion for crushing this woman? Not a bit of evidence. Anything. Nothing too mean; nothing too disgraceful to plant some little germ of doubt in the mind of one juror, their only hope.

And so Mrs. Whateley has got to be crushed as well as her husband. Not one single dollar, not one ransom dollar was ever traced to anybody connected with any member of the household. And, if Colonel Lindbergh, as big as he is, and Mrs. Lindbergh, as big and glorious as she is, and Mrs. Morrow, too, who have the right to engage whatever maids or servants they want, still have faith in Mrs. Whateley, in Betty Gow and everybody else, I can only say this for them: that it just indicates the type of people that they are, unwilling to charge against any living soul or any dead soul any improper act that is not properly proven. And if it is all right with Colonel Lindbergh and Mrs. Morrow that these people have no implication–and they are the bereaved ones, men and women of the jury–don't you hold it against them; don't you substitute yourself because of some query in your mind. If it is good enough for the Lindberghs and the Morrows, and they are satisfied, after living with these people and after the Government has checked them, please don't take the word of counsel, who has an interest, that there must have been something. There isn't one bit of evidence. No chisel of Betty Gow's was found on the premises. No chisel that looked like anything that Betty Gow ever had or Violet Sharpe or Whateley. No note in the room written by them or anybody that ever could write like them, no imitation of their signature. The note in the baby's nursery didn't look like their handwriting; it looked like Hauptmann's.

Certainly, why wouldn't Colonel Lindbergh and the rest of them clear them? No moneys found in their garages; no ransom money found in Betty Gow's garage or Violet Sharpe or Whateley. If Whateley left any money when he died it would have been discovered somewhere. Scotland Yard, United States Federal Detectives, New Jersey and New York, nobody has ever found one scintilla of evidence that implicates any one of those people. And we protest and object, because we had the right under the law, we protest and object to this jury meditating one second about any of those people, because you are bound by the [4402] proof, and there isn't one bit of proof that implicates any of them. Now, if you don't want to comply with the law and your oath of office in that respect, but you still think it is possible it is some of them and you want to feel that way about it, that doesn't excuse Hauptmann. If your Honor please, may be have an adjournment at this hour?

The Court: Yes. We will take a recess for five minutes.

[Five minute recess].

Mr. Wilentz: (Continuing summation): May it please your Honor and men and women of the jury: You know, I really hate to take all this time with this jury. This is one of the necessary evils in the practice of law–the jury, after listening to all the testimony, then has to sit down and listen to the lawyers after they have heard it all. Probably there is some good that comes out of it. I take it, at least, it must do this much good: that when the defense counsel, who properly asks certain questions as to why the State didn't do this or didn't do that, maybe it does some good, because it may arouse in the minds of the jury something important that he overlooked, which the State ought to answer; [4403] and so the State has the opportunity and, if they fail in their answer, then they ought to fail, if it is something material.

Now, let me just suggest to you jurors one thing, which may not be altogether connected, but which is important. Please don't get the idea that the State has got to prove everything that it starts out to prove, everything beyond a reasonable doubt. That's a joke. Just because we allege one fact, that doesn't mean we have got to prove that fact and every other fact that we allege in order to show that this man is guilty. That's not the fact at all, and we will come back to that. You and I know, of course, that there can't be any more serious crime than the crime of murder. There can't be, because it involves the taking of a life. And with all our civilization and with all our mad desire and rush for money and for everything else, with all the jealousies and everything that there is in the world, with all the ambition, the taking of a life has always been considered the most serious crime. Let me tell you, men and women, that even that, the crime of murder, which shrink into absolute insignificance, this murder even of the Lindbergh child would shrink into absolute insignificance in comparison to the crime that would be committed if this man were freed. That would be the crime of the century. To let him roam the streets of this country and make every woman in her home shudder again; that would be a real tragedy, an American tragedy! That is why I told you men and women, that is why I told you I am so consumed, every inch [4404] of me, every ounce of me cries out to you, “Please do your duty!” I am not worried about myself. I get crank letters and threats and all that sort of thing. They don't bother me. I don't need any guards. My family doesn't need any guards. We are insignificant, all of us. Nobody is really important in this world. You know, the world goes on. Why, I could be stricken here this moment and it wouldn't matter at all. The county of Hunterdon, the county of Middlesex, everything else would go on, just as it always had. Presidents, great men, die. McKinley was assassinated. The world still went on. We are so insignificant as individuals; everybody is insignificant. But the Nation isn't. Civilization isn't. Society isn't. And if you ever freed this man-it couldn't be, it wouldn't be possible-but if any such thing were to happen, the murder of the Lindbergh child, as I say, that murder even would shrink into insignificance compared with the crime of which you would be guilty in letting this man roam the streets.

Counsel says we have got to place Hauptmann in the room. Sure we have got to place Hauptmann in the room, and when I get to reenacting this crime again, as I hope to before I am through, you will be convinced, if you aren't already convinced, that he was in that room. But we don't have to prove it by anybody that was sitting there and watching him. We don't need a moving picture of it. We don't need any eye witness. “Why,” he said, “how would a man do it that had never been in the room before?” Well, what does counsel [4405] want us to do, show that he walked in there and had a dress rehearsal of this crime? An experienced burglar doesn't need any rehearsal; he doesn't go in the room first to see how it looks and then go out and come back another time. He had an elaborate education. He had a generous education before he came here. Why, let me tell you, men and women, that fellow would have been arrested within six months of the crime, if one thing had happened. You know it and I know it, and when this crime took place they knew right away that it was probably a German, somebody of German descent.

And, oh, his Nation will never forgive him for the disgrace he has brought to them. Of course, they are no more responsible for him the German people and the government are no more responsible for this act than was the Italian government for the murder of Mayor Cermac, of Chicago, when they tried to assassinate President Roosevelt, if he was an Italian, I don't remember. No Nation is responsible for any criminal of its own country. But here is where the American people are up against something with this gentleman. They knew from the notes, “The child is in gut care.” “Our, o-u-e-r, house, h-a-u-s-e.” And all those words that indicate clearly that it was somebody of German descent. And then that drawing in that note of the box with the dimensions, they knew or thought it was probably a carpenter.

Now they knew that the fellow who committed this crime was no amateur, they knew he was a criminal. A man might commit a crime, even though he never committed one before, but not one like this. [4406] It would take a man with, as I said before, with ice water in his veins instead of blood. It would take a hardened criminal, and so they look for the criminal records, that is the experience of police, they looked in the records. Where would they look? They looked in the records in New York and in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania and in California. Oh, if he had been, if his record, if he hadn't sneaked into the country, if he hadn't fooled the United States Government when he came in, if he hadn't fooled America when he came in, and they knew, if his record was a matter of record, if his record in Germany was a matter of record in the United States, they would have struck that record. But he had it. He fooled them. He sneaked into the country. And no living person in the United States of America knew who he was, outside of a sister out on the coast. He would have been apprehended long ago. He had a liberal education, as I said before, in crime.

Counsel says, “Why, if it was anybody that walked into that room except somebody that knew the child, that child would have sensed it.” Well, I don't think that's exactly a fair statement of fact. I think that a stranger could walk into a child's room, a nursery, if the child were asleep, without the child awakening. But let me tell you this: this fellow took no chance on the child awakening. He crushed that child right in that room into insensibility. He smothered and choked that child right in that room. That child never cried, never gave any outcry. Certainly not. The little voice was stilled right in that room. That's a fair [4407] inference that comes from its failure to cry; either there in the room or outside. He wasn't interested in the child. Life meant nothing to him. That's the type of man I told you about before that we are dealing with. Public Enemy Number One of the World 1 That's what we are dealing with. You are not dealing with a fellow who doesn't know what he is doing. Take a look at him as he sits there. Look at him as he walks out into this room, panther-like, gloating, feeling good. Certainly he stilled this little child's breath right into insensibility right in that room whether it drew another breath or not doesn't make any difference, but that child never could make an outcry. The smudges on the bedsheet cry out evidence of that fact that Betty Gow testified to, the fact that the child didn't cry out when it was disturbed. Yanked–how? Not just taken up, the pins are still left in the bedsheets. Yanked, and its head hit up against that board–must have been hit. He couldn't do it any other way. Certainly it must have hit up against that board. Still no outcry. Why? There was no cry left in the child. Did he use the chisel to crush the skull at the time or to knock it into insensibility? Is that a fair inference? What else was the chisel there for? To knock that child into insensibility right there in that room. Counsel wants to know why it didn't cry out. There is the answer for you. Counsel says that there was a beer stein on the window sill. Well, you know and I know the Lindbergh's didn't have a beer stein in the baby's room. What it was and from a picture [4408] of it, if it is in, was something that had the shape of a beer stein, but was a baby's toy. As you lifted it, it would play music very likely. But it wasn't on the window sill. This window sill and this window were so constructed that there was a little recess over on the side. Oh, I don't know, if there is a picture, it will be revealed. It was probably about the size of this “W” and there was enough room for that little toy to be placed there without being disturbed. It wasn't in anybody's way. It wasn't in the way of this gentleman. And what is the difference? Somebody went into that room-Hauptmann got into that room, beer stein, toy, or no beer stein or toy. Would they like to have this gentleman acquitted because there was a toy on the window sill?

Don't tell me they are going to deny that the child is dead, or that it committed suicide. Is the beer stein or the toy of any avail to them? Certainly not! Counsel talks about there being no mud on the ladder. Why, their own witness, Schwarzkopf, in answer to Mr. Fisher, told them there was mud, mud all over. Where is that suit case? There was mud on the suit case. Why, I suppose the gentleman just brushed over it. Here it is. I suppose the inference is that you couldn't brush over it, that it would crush, or something. I don't know about it, but I will stand on the suit case and let's see what happens to it,-160 pounds. He didn't stand on it, he just moved over it. Now I didn't plant the suit case. Colonel Lindbergh didn't plant it.

Mud on the suit case, mud on the carpet. They want to have pictures of the mud. Well, [4409] if we knew that at the time of the crime counsel was going to defend this man and that this man was going to be here now we'd have brought the mud here for him. When we don't bring in the mud, they say we should have brought it in. When we bring in the ladder, they say it is too much. Now, there has been a lot of talk about bungling, of the State Police. Of course, the State Police are human; they are just ordinary beings, as I indicated before. You know some of them; very likely you have had an opportunity to observe fellows like Jack Wallace and ether men who come up into your county. They are the ordinary type of fellows. I guess some of them are better natured than others; some of them are taller than others, some of them shorter, but they are ordinary human beings. But supposing there was bungling; supposing Kelly should have gotten fingerprints and didn't. He announced that fact before Hauptmann was ever arrested. If his failure to get fingerprints was at all due to his lack of ability, it was so before Hauptmann was ever arrested. If his failure to get prints from the ladder was due to any lack of ability, that was so before Hauptmann was ever arrested. This failure and lack didn't occur because of Hauptmann's arrest. The whole world hasn't turned crooked against Hauptmann. There is still some honesty left. That side of the table hasn't got the monopoly on honesty and truth,-not by a long shot.

Supposing that Corporal Kelly didn't get these prints, and supposing that there were prints to be gotten: it wasn't designed against Hauptmann. The point I want to make is that if anybody bungled anything, if they did, that doesn't re- [4410] lieve this defendant who is guilty of murder. The murderer cannot excuse himself by the bungling of any fingerprint man, if there was one. Not by a long shot. He cannot walk out of this courtroom just because somebody didn't do the job as well as somebody from New York, the expert thinks it ought to have been done. It has absolutely nothing to do with the guilt of this defendant and he cannot attempt to excuse himself in that way. Now, while we are talking about bungling this case, who was closest to the case? Hauptmann and the defense or Lindbergh and the prosecution? Counsel asked Colonel Lindbergh what he thought about the police. He says, “I think the State of New Jersey has a very good State Police.” The man most affected, the man most closely concerned, the man who would have a grievance if there was bungling, the man who would have a right to complain. He says, “I think New Jersey has a good State Police.”

Now one of the alleged weak spots picked out for attack by the defense is the fact that Dr. Condon was always alone. You see, jurors, I am taking these things as they were given to you yesterday, not because I attach any significance, but I can't risk the chance in this case, after all these weeks, after these millions of words, after all this effort, because it is so important, it is such an important case, I can't risk missing one of them for fear that that may be just the question that one of you jurors wants answered. And so you will have to put up with me, please, and be patient with me. While I am at that patience, I want to tell you, too, that throughout all these days that we have been here, you are not at all accustomed to my peculiarities and my eccentricities and man- [4411] nerisms, and maybe some of them have been offensive to you; while I have been examining jurors, or, rather, examining witnesses, cross-examining them, arguing with counsel, presenting arguments to the Court, I want you to know that at no time did I mean to be offensive to anybody. It may be because of the absolute enthusiasm that consumes me as a result of the positive conviction I have in the case, that some of the things that were said by me may have sounded offensive to you; but I want you to know it was never intended that way, not even to the insane man on the stand, or the man that was convicted. I had to bring that out as a matter of protection to this jury, so they would know; but it was never intended to be offensive.

Now counsel says that he would like to suspect Dr. Condon because Dr. Condon was always alone in his negotiations. Well, that's not the fact. Now let's look at the record. Dr. Condon was never alone. Dr. Condon never moved without Colonel Breckinridge or Colonel Lindbergh, except when he was to meet the kidnaper. Now when kidnapers and murderers want to negotiate for money, they don't come down to the Flemington Courthouse before a jury and a judge, they don't go into a theater and get up on the stage and say, “I am the kidnaper, I am the murderer, where is Dr. Condon? I want to deal with him.” They pick out some place where they won't be seen, some quiet place, a cemetery-very appropriate by Hauptmann anyway; everything else about him has been dealing with the dead, either morally or physically dead. The people he blames are physically dead; the people that he brought here into this courtroom, most of them, are morally dead, [4412] never had a sense of responsibility, most of them, didn't have a moral brain in their system, brought here from the jails-and I didn't send them to jail, and I didn't make them convicts; they were convicts before they came here.

That is the type that he deals with-physically dead and morally dead. He picked out the cemeteries as his meeting place-half way, one on one side of his home, one on the other side of his home, and of course he didn't have a crowd there. He met Dr. Condon alone on those occasions, and so, isn't that sufficient answer to the defense when they keep harping about the fact that Dr. Condon was always alone. He says what a fool this man would be. First the State pictures him as a master mind and then they say, why, on the other hand, the State says, what a fool he was. We picture him as a fool. The history of crime, the history of every crime, shows that no matter how brilliant the criminal is, somewhere he slips. It was only his egomaniac traits, his egotism, the fact that he thought that he was bigger than everybody else, the Big Shot, that he thought that he could walk into that cemetery and talk to Condon without a mask or anything. He wouldn't go around the streets with a mask; of course not. He thought “What could they do to me? They would never find the baby with me.” He knew the baby was dead. He killed it. He knew that. What would they do to him? Why, he would then say, “I just tried to play a trick on Condon and tried to get some money.” And he would get a jail sentence, if they couldn't pin anything else on him. That [4413] wouldn't mean anything to him. Why, he broke out of jails. That wouldn't be anything. He was willing to take that chance. But whether it was foolish for him to do it or not, he did it. And that is one of the reasons-it isn't the reason-he is here. Why, if that was the only thing the State had, if we didn't have another thing, men and women, except this man Condon coming in and sitting on this stand and saying, “There is the fellow I gave the money to,” that would be all we would need to convict him of murder in the first degree.

Do you know that men have been convicted of murder in the first degree on a note, one note, without anybody seeing him do anything? Why the Molineaux case that they have been talking about in all these things that these handwriting experts testified to was a case which only involved handwriting. But if Condon came here and did nothing else and there was nothing else in the case except that Condon pointed him out as being the man he talked to for an hour and twenty minutes, the man that said, “Doesn't Colonel Lindbergh know we are the right party”–“party,” not “parties;” the letters say that, too–“Doesn't Colonel Lindbergh know we are the right party? If he doesn't, we will send him the sleeping suit.” “All right, I won't take seventy, I'll take fifty”–who is he dealing for? Some boss? Oh, no! He couldn't settle for fifty, if the price was seventy, unless he was the boss, unless he was alone. He would have to ask his associates. No, he settled right away for fifty thousand, [4414 ] as you remember. Condon dealt with him alone on those occasions.

Well, we have only recovered one thumbguard and the question is directed against us as to where is the other one. I would like to answer that question and, like Mr. Reilly, I don't want to fool you. The gentleman over there between the guards can tell you where the other one is. Unfortunately, I cannot. I don't know where the other thumbguard is. Now, supposing Condon were dead-I don't like to interrupt by taking this drink. I suppose I really ought to pass a drink to the jury, but I have never seen it done. So maybe I had better refrain. But if any member of the jury really wants a drink I think they are entitled to it. Now, counsel disposes of Mr. Perrone by the statement, “Are you going to believe any trash like that?” Well, you know, I think that is why Mr. Reilly is such a good lawyer. I really do. I couldn't with five thousand years of experience do the job he did here yesterday, to stand up here for the greater part of the day and present the arguments that he did, with five thousand years of experience I could not equal that performance. I want to tell you that is a masterpiece, to stand up with that massive sincerity, making believe he means it, with all the dignity that is his, and he is a good-looking fellow, too, you know, and outside of the courtroom a splendid fellow, and say to you, “Do you believe that trash about Perrone?” Why, Perrone is a delightful fellow–never convicted of crime, never was in the insane [4415] asylum, and all Perrone did, Perrone was another victim of this defendant; he picked Perrone to deliver the note, and if Condon had died and he wasn't here to testify, if Perrone came in and said, “That is the man that gave me the note to deliver to Condon,” that would be enough to send this man to the chair, because when you have got the fellow that wrote the notes, you have got the fellow that had the sleeping garment, and the fellow that had the sleeping garment had the baby. And so Perrone. Now you know when Perrone delivered this note he was soon interrogated by police. Who do you suppose Perrone got the note from, before Hauptmann was arrested–five foot nine, muddy blond, of German extraction, muscular, athletic. Who did Condon talk to on the bench? Who did Condon give the money to? A man of either German or Scandinavian descent. What did he say before Hauptmann was arrested? Five feet nine, of muddy blond complexion, had a German accent, muscular, athletic, about 35 years of age–Perrone, too, somewhere around 35, 30 to 35 I think he said–before he was arrested. What descriptions did the others give, whoever it was that was here in the case? The same thing. Does it look as if they are in this grave conspiracy? Has everybody suddenly conspired, the State of New Jersey, the agents of the State of New York, Colonel Lindbergh and Colonel Schwarzkopf and Colonel Breckinridge went over to New York to Inspector Bruckman and they got General O'Ryan and Sam Foley, the Bronx District Attorney in; then they got hold of Condon, then they took Perrone, and they took Miss Alexander and they came over and got Hauptmann and then [4416] they got Whited, and then they called on the Attorney General and they went to Washington and they got the President of the United States to get his Attorney General, Homer Cummings, and Secretary Morganthau to get his agents–and I am going to come to the Treasury Department in a minute–and we all sat around a room and we conspired against Hauptmann. That is the defense. What a story! If they can feed this jury that sort of a story, then something has been invented to take the place of food.

Now let me just tell you something about the Treasury Department, just to give you an idea how off the track the defense is on this case. Why, they haven't yet found out what it is all about I Do you know that yesterday the defense said to you that this agent, Mr. Frank, special agent of the Department, he is with the Treasury Department, he came here and he compiled the figures; all he did and all we asked him was “Mr. Frank, have you taken the brokerage accounts and the bank accounts of this defendant?”

“Yes.”

 “Did you total the figures?”

 “Yes.”

 “How much money went into the brokerage accounts, how much money went into the bank accounts?”

 “Sixteen thousand in the brokerage after April the 2nd, nine thousand into the bank accounts.”

What about the other moneys?

Sixteen and nine are twenty-five and fourteen-eight or fifteen thousand are forty-four, or something like that. [4417] They totalled up to 44,000. Do you know what counsel said about the Federal Treasury agent yesterday? He said that these men are interested in this case, and were interested at that time, that they checked every bill and would have checked every bill, because they solicited the favor of United States Senator Morrow, who might have and probably would have become President. Why, Senator Morrow was dead before this crime took place. Senator Morrow died in October, 1931. He was spared the shame that his fellow-Americans had to endure, that in this country the son of so illustrious a citizen, the most famous man in the world, a man who sought nothing but peace and quiet in the hills of Hunterdon County, he was spared that shame and degradation, aside from the crush that it would have been to his heart. But he was dead at the time. And yesterday counsel would have had you believe, not improperly-he probably didn't know-that these men came here and gave you figures or did whatever they did because in 1932, at the time of this crime, and after the crime, while they were checking these bills, all these Treasury agents were on the job because they wanted to seek preferment, advancement, promotion, through the efforts of Senator Morrow. And he says, “Do you believe any trash like Perrone?”

Now, I am not as familiar with the places in The Bronx as defense counsel, and probably you are not. But his statement about the loneliness of that place where Perrone got this note, I think I have the right to give my impression about as long as he has given his. My belief, as the testimony shows, is that [4418] Gun Hill Road, right at the section, right at the corner, is an apartment house. It isn't a lonely spot at all. Of course, it isn't 42nd Street and Broadway, where some woman saw a woman on a car with a baby. It isn't that sort of a busy spot. But it is busier than the main street of Flemington, right there. In New York they call it a desolate place, yes. But it is not the Bronx Parkway. It is right there at Gun Hill alongside some road-Knox Road, or something like that and there are houses there and there are street lights there. And, of course, that was as good a spot as he could find. But it is not out in the wilderness. That is where Perrone got the note, in the Bronx.

Now, one of the other things that counsel talked about was that it would be impossible for Colonel Lindbergh to remember the voice of the defendant. I want to say for counsel that at least with all the things that were done in this case and which I have criticized and which I hope isn't too offensive to the other side-but after all I am not concerned with their feelings in this thing, I have got a greater duty. My job is to do this job just the way it ought to be done as I see it, to the best of my ability, and I will say for him that the best thing that happened in this court yesterday was when he concluded his summation and he talked to Colonel Lindbergh, and I think it was an apology, and I think it was a gracious gesture, and yes, it was an apology to Colonel Lindbergh. Well, getting back to Colonel Lindbergh, and trying to be nice about it, he said, “It would be impossible for Colonel Lindbergh to remember the voice of the defendant.” Lindy, whose [4419] ears were trained to the hum and the whir of every litle wheel in that motor that went across that ocean. Lindy, whose very life has been built up by that keen intellect and keen training and keen mind and keen hearing, so that he has traveled more miles, very likely, than every other aviator, who has such a feeling and certainty about his own keen senses that he was the first in the world to risk his life and travel alone across the ocean-he who had no concern about his ability to hear and to see, when one hundred and twenty million people that night were on their knees praying for the safe arrival of Lindbergh in France-Lindbergh with that keen hearing, when he was out in that plot, out there near St. Raymonds-the greatest moment in his life. Why, the trip across the ocean meant nothing to him, that was insignificant. There he was to get his baby back. My, God, men and women, did you ever come into a house and find your child missing and you didn't know what happened to him, and you were only away for twenty minutes and it was meal time? Why, you get so distracted, your wife runs out, she is frantic, she can't eat, nobody can eat, nobody can rest, you are on the telephone calling up, “Did you see so and so, did you see Johnnie? Do you know where Johnnie is? Did anybody see him?” Two hours and you are panic stricken. And here was Lindy out there at St. Raymond's Cemetery, mind you, just about able to reach for the fellow that had his baby. He almost could touch him. He could have gone out and talked to him, but he didn't dare,–the greatest moment in his life I He was going to find out where Anne's baby was. He was [4420] going to bring it back and he is sitting there in the stillness of the night. Then that voice comes out, “Hey, Doktor, hey Doktor.” God I Could you ever forget it? Would anybody ever forget it? How many nights do you think he hears that in his sleep? How many nights do you think his entire soul is wracked and wrecked with it. God, it seems to me I have heard it so often, “Hey Doktor.” His hope. But not the ordinary voice, oh, no. Why, if that man said one word in this room above a whisper I wouldn't have to look around. I could tell you it was Hauptmann. There is a different quality. There is a different tone. There is something weird about it, something weird about it. And Lindy remembered that voice. And who is to say that he didn't? Are you going to substitute your judgment for his? He was in that automobile in that cemetery, not you or I. Lindy, whose ears were trained; Lindy, whose child was involved; Lindy, whose happiness was involved, whose heart was crushed; Lindy there with his money waiting for his child and Mr. Reilly says, “Why, he couldn't–how could Lindy remember?” Why, that voice! God! I can't sleep after I hear it nights myself. And he says that Lindy wouldn't remember it!

Well, nobody is to be spared in this case, so we come to a gentleman by the name of Dr. Mitchell. I hope that Justice Trenchard were on this jury when they are talking about Dr. Mitchell, because I take it everybody in Trenton knows Dr. Mitchell. I hope that some people from Trenton were on this jury, when counsel says, “I wouldn't have him testify in an accident case.” [4421] Dr. Mitchell, who has received the honor and distinction for years of being the County Physician. Sure, he is not connected with any staff of any hospital. The rules of the hospitals there prohibit the County Physician from being on the staffs. That's something the gentleman didn't know when he made the observation. He didn't mean to make an improper one. But Dr. Mitchell–maybe he isn't citified, maybe he should have filed some sort of a different statement; but he made a statement at the time, long before Hauptmann was arrested. He didn't know anything about Hauptmann. Of course, he is an American and if he is against Hauptmann it is because he thinks that Hauptmann murdered this child. But he didn't testify to anything that he didn't have in his written report; and counsel asked him for the report, and it is in evidence. And what does it say? The child died as the result of a fractured skull; a fractured skull that was so extensive that, he testified here, death must have been instantaneous. And so Dr. Mitchell–“Doctor, what would you have done if you died?” Well, supposing the Doctor can't answer the question; what has that got to do with Hauptmann? What has that got to do with whether he murdered the child or not? No, Doctor Mitchell can't be spared either.

I want to tell you men and women, it may be possible. I have seen many lawyers with weak cases. I have been in courtrooms where there have been insinuations, insinuations that weren't warranted. I have seen some good lawyers in cases that tried to get away from the facts and started off on that line of insinuations. They didn't go as far as we have gone in this case, I [4422] will say that. I have never seen that before, never before in my life, and if I live to be a million years old, never again will I hear the number of insinuations, and unfair ones, that I have heard in this case. And you know what the purpose is. The purpose is that maybe one of them, maybe, you will think something about Betty Gow or maybe you will think something about Violet Sharpe or maybe you will think something about Corporal Kelly or maybe you will think something about somebody else, and, maybe, that will plant a germ.

Now supposing Dr. Mitchell did die. We had a Coroner. The Coroner filed a report. It is down in Trenton. It is in evidence, the death certificate. The death certificate says the child died as the result of a fractured skull. That was before Hauptmann was in this case. And what difference does it make whether the skull was fractured more extensively or whether it wasn't, whether there was a little hole there or a little hole there. The condition of the body–you get a look at that body. You get a look at that baby the night it was taken, the picture of it, and take a look at that body where he left it in that grave, subject to the elements and to be torn and eaten limb by limb by the animals that came along there, a dead baby. Get a look at it. We have the records here.

And what difference does it make, the extent? You know and I know that the child died, it was killed. You know it was murdered. So let's get back to the common sense that we have been admonished about and forget the nonsense about these technicalities. [4423] Counsel wants to know where the missing money is and he points out in the case as one of the alibis that the money which he got originally was from Fisch. That is the money in the garage. I am going to come to that later. He says further as an excuse for the other moneys, that he got most of that from Fisch, too. Now, if Fisch got the ransom money and Fisch gave him the $15,000 to pay into the brokerage accounts–Mr. Reilly says, Well, that wasn't ransom money that we paid to the brokerage accounts, because a dollar never came back.

Well, if it isn't ransom money from Hauptmann, it wasn't ransom money from Fisch. I don't know whether I make myself clear at all. The money that was paid to the broker, a good part of it, he says, came from Fisch. The inference is that Fisch gave him the money in the shoe box. Fisch gave him this money. Of course, not a living soul has testified that he ever saw Fisch give him two cents, outside of Hauptmann. Hauptmann's wife never saw him give him a dollar. Hauptmann's friend Kloppenberg never saw him give him a dollar. The broker never saw him give him a dollar, not a quarter, not a check–and Fisch had a check account and Hauptmann had a check account–not one person living, not one book. Fisch left his books with Hauptmann. Do you remember Mrs. Hauptmann's story. He left these satchels. There were some papers and books of Fisch's when he went to Europe. Of course he destroyed those, very likely. They weren't there when we got there, but not a living soul ever saw this man get a dollar from Fisch. But supposing he did. Fisch never had [4424] any ransom money, because whatever he gave him to give to the broker, whether it was a dollar or ten dollars, that money, counsel says, never came back, never came back from the Government check. Now, supposing these bills weren't marked. Do we have to find every bill? Why Hauptmann says himself he passed twelve or fifteen and we have only got three or four of those here. We don't know where they are. But not a bill, so far as the evidence is concerned, not a ransom bill has been passed in the United States or the world, so far as the evidence in this case is concerned, since his arrest or since his indictment. Now, what about this money? He says, “Where is the $35,000?” “It must be in some vault.” It must be nothing. It must be, because counsel says so. We haven't substituted counsel's opinion for sworn testimony yet, and he won't get away with it. Neither Hauptmann nor anybody else, not if I have any notion about the common sense of anybody. There are not twelve people in the United States of America, there are not twelve people in this world that you could put in to this jury box and pick them that could believe this defendant. No, sir; not alone twelve people picked from one County.

He deposited sixteen–this is after April 2nd, now, mind you–never mind about what he had, he had two hundred dollars between him and starvation on April 2nd, 1932. He had planned this thing for a year, he wrote, and he did. Let me show you. Do you know this fellow took a trip to California in October, 1931, [4425] and he had no money. He was running down to his last few dollars. He was set for it, he was strengthening himself; he had this planned out; he stopped keeping books a month after the child was born, a month after the child was born. You may think it is fantastic, you may think that is funny. God! you have got to know what goes through the mind of a man that would crush a child. It is a different mind, it is a different soul, it is a different being. Men and women, you have got to stretch yourselves to understand. You haven't dealt with that sort of animal, the lowest form of animal,–that is what you are dealing with: no heart, no soul. The only thing is he has the appearance of a man, he wears the clothes of a man, that is all there is to identify him. Yes, he writes in the notes “This kidnaping was planned for a year already,” and he did. He has only got a few hundred dollars, a few hundred dollars, and he goes on a trip to the Coast, and he comes back October, 1931, October, 1931; and in December, 1931, the broker sends for $74 that he wants, and he hasn't got it, he doesn't want to put it up. So anyway, we are down to April the 2nd, 1931.

Now, maybe you don't catch the significance of the questions as to when he met Fisch. I want to tell you why, why they struggled so hard against showing that he didn't meet him until July or August. We contend that this defendant never met Fisch, never knew Fisch, until July or August at the earliest, 1932; and so we tried to prove by their witnesses, not by ours, by Gerta Henkel, the lady that operated a coffee kitchen, by Mr. Henkel, and by Haupt- [4426] mann and Hauptmann's wife,–when did he meet Fisch. We didn't know. So when he was arrested and we asked him, he said, “I think July or August, 1932.” Yes, July or August, 1932, several months after the crime. “Where did you meet him?”

 “Mrs. Henkel introduced me to him.”

So we asked Mrs. Henkel: “Do you know anything about Fisch and Hauptmann?”

 “Yes.”

 “When did Fisch meet Hauptmann?”

 “I introduced him at my home, July or August, 1932.”

We asked Mr. Henkel. Yes. Everybody told the same story. Now, when he gets on the stand, Hauptmann, only Hauptmann though, he slips back away from his statements. He slips back away from everything else. He says at the end of March or early April. Now, why? I will tell you why. He made certain deposits. The brokerage accounts will show it. He had deposited certain moneys in April. He deposited moneys in the brokerage accounts in May, he deposited moneys in June; he deposited them in July. How was he going to explain where that money came from? He couldn't say Fisch gave it to him. He was going to blame the money on Fisch, but he couldn't say Fisch because he never had met Fisch until the end of July or August. Don't you see? So he says, “Well, I must have met him at the end of March or April.” But he never did, according to his own witnesses. So he starts right in in May. He has got this money, he is around passing bills and getting silver in change for it, a bill here and a bill there, and he deposits hundreds of dollars worth of silver during these years. [4427] Oh, he said, the bank clerks, they were also in conspiracy against him. Not only that, but he starts depositing these moneys. He puts $16,942.75 in brokerage accounts. He puts $9,073.25 in banks. Fisch never gave him any money or anybody else ever gave him any money to put in his wife's maiden name in a savings bank. $3,750 in cash, which he gave to a lawyer for a mortgage; $120 in gold coins at home; $14,600 ransom money in the garage; $5,500 which he wrote to the Fisch family and which he testified on the stand he gave to Fisch from his private bank account, for furs; $49,986 unaccounted for; $49,986 unaccounted for, after April the 2nd, 1932, and between that time the date of his arrest. Now he wants to know where the money went. That's where the money went.

We can't trace all these bills. Billions of dollars went into the Federal Treasury. The banks were closed. Everybody in the business world was dealing in cash. Why, I remember one instance where I had thousands and thousands of dollars in one consignment from men to hold for them, because they wouldn't trust the banks. I didn't look at the bills to see if they had a gold certificate on the front. If they had been gold backs I might have, but just that gold seal I never would have thought of it. Those moneys have been pouring in. There are a lot of people in this world who after a week or so forget these things. But whether there is another dollar, whether there is $35,000 found or not, to me that $15,000 in that garage–if I were on this jury I would say; that is enough for me.

The Court: Mr. Attorney General, we will [4428] take a recess now until I :45. The people will remain seated until the jury has retired.

[After recess].

Mr. Wilentz: May it please your Honor, men and women of the jury: I know that it isn't a pleasant task for anybody to pass judgment upon another, particularly where life is at stake, and one of the efforts to intimidate this jury against the full performance of its duty has been reference here and there to circumstantial evidence. Of course, as I have indicated to you before, men who plan and commit crimes do not take any moving picture cameras with them, and they do the best they can to avoid detection, so far as the actual commission of the crime is concerned. [4429] Sometimes they are successful and sometimes they are not. And in many cases there is only circumstantial evidence. And you have no right to disregard circumstantial evidence. You are to be bound by the law, as I am. Take a man who has been shot. They find a man shot and the doctor takes him. He is dead. They operate on him and they take a bullet out of him. Then along comes Jones and Jones says that Smith shot him. They find Smith's gun. They find a bullet gone from Smith's gun, and it is a .32 calibre gun. Another fellow says Smith did it and another fellow says Smith did it–and it has happened. Then the doctor operates on the man and performs an autopsy and no .32 calibre bullet is found at all. They find a .45 calibre bullet. That .45 calibre bullet is circumstantial evidence. Is it better than the testimony of the men who testified that he was shot by that gun with a .32 calibre bullet? Why, of course it is. Of course, it is.

Some circumstantial evidence, when it starts to testify and when it starts to scream, all the lip evidence in the world can't overcome it. Now I don't mean by that that we have only circumstantial evidence. May I, if your Honor please, ask the assistance of the police, so that the gentleman outside won't do the summing up?

The Court: Yes, yes.

Mr. Lanigan: We have just sent a note down to Captain Nicol.

[4430] The Court: Won't one of the State Troopers go down there and ask that that man be quiet? Tell him he must be quiet so that we may properly conduct the proceedings in court.

Mr. Wilentz: You know, I don't know whether you have ever been to Yellow Stone Park, but out in Yellow Stone Park I think they have a lot of wild bears, at least they used to be wild, but after contact with the people out there, and after contact with humanity they have tamed down to where you can trust them, and they permit them to roam around. But every once in a while one of those animals returns to his real animal state and he hurts somebody or he kills somebody. What do you think they do with that bear? They shoot him, they kill him. Now, the attendant doesn't like to do it, but that bear is a menace, and they put him out of the way. That's what you have got to do with this fellow.

Now, I was talking, before the interruption, about circumstantial evidence. While I do believe that in many instances circumstantial evidence is of the strongest character and is the best evidence many times, we do not rely upon circumstantial evidence alone. The circumstantial evidence in this case is sufficient but, in addition to that, we have the positive identification of this man by Dr. Condon. That is not circumstantial. We have got it by Perrone. That is not circumstantial. We have got the board in the closet. That is not circumstantial. That is his board. He admits it is his, his writing. Hochmuth is not circumstantial. Whited is not circumstantial. Lupica is not circumstantial. [4431] Colonel Lindbergh's identification is not circumstantial. The brokerage accounts, the sleeping garments, and the fifteen thousand dollars in gold in the garage is not circumstantial. And any one of these things is sufficient.

Now, I think pretty nearly 40 days–I have covered the insinuations of counsel in his address yesterday, and I take it there is more required of me than that–nearly 40 days ago I talked with you about what the State hoped to prove as to what happened on the night of March1st, 1932. You will remember that Colonel Lindbergh and his wife were living at their home. He came home to Hunterdon County, as you will recollect, because the Colonel and his wife cannot walk into a restaurant, you know, they cannot walk the streets of a small town like Flemington, they cannot go to a theatre–they are cursed because of their glory and their fame not into a public institution can either of them walk without being mobbed by the curious, by the interested, and by everybody else. And, of course, they are entitled to their share of happiness, and so they thought they would come out into the quiet hills of Hunterdon County, and that is why they built their home here, thinking it was just the type of place that they would want.

And it was on that night that the Colonel, coming back after a hard day, came to his family and he found his family, but instead of his baby, he found a cold chisel, a make-shift ladder and a blood-curdling note. Well, you remember the testimony. There is no use in my going over it very much, but I shall just refer to it briefly. [4432] There he is in that house. Fear grips him. He says to his wife, “Anne, they have stolen our baby.” He grabs a rifle; out, up and down the highways, with Whateley, trying to find some trace of either the child or the person who has the child. Anne sits there in silent prayer, as you have heard, with the rest of the women of the household, praying for the return of that child.

And one hundred and twenty million people that prayed for the safe arrival of Colonel Lindbergh in France, hundreds of millions of people all over this world, the next day were praying, consciously or unconsciously, for the return of that child to Anne Lindbergh. The police came. Newspapermen came. Photographers came. Cranks came. People that wanted to help. Everybody came and rushed to the Lindbergh place. You can imagine the job that Colonel Schwarzkopf and his police were up against people trampling over one another. Just take a look at this room. That will give you just a small idea of what happened, the way people have been coming here. Why, it is a miracle that you could keep any order in this room. You can imagine–and here we have officers waiting for the people, to take care of them, to see that they are properly regulated–You can imagine what happened at that Lindbergh home.

And pretty soon everybody had solutions, everybody had ideas, and every crank wrote letters–thousands and thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of letters, and ideas and suggestions. Everybody could solve the crime. [4433] But what did the police have? The police had a note. The police had a ladder. They had a chisel. Now when they found that ladder everybody in the world knew they had found it. When they found that note everybody in God's creation knew it. When they found that chisel everybody knew it. They didn't know Hauptmann yet. Nobody planted that chisel on Hauptmann. Don't forget that. Everybody in the world–it was recorded in the records that that chisel was there. It was recorded in the records that that ladder was there. Nobody planted it on Hauptmann; and so there it is, a ladder, a chisel and a note. Well, from there where did they go? What is the next thing? Why, the next thing is in accordance with the promise of the kidnaping-murderer in two days Colonel Lindbergh got another. Now there was one thing about this fellow, the fellow that committed this crime. He had planned it. He wasn't going to let any faker come in and take that money. He had something on that note so that Colonel Lindbergh could tell, if another one came, that it was from the right party.

Now, every time there is a kidnapping there are a certain number of insane people who are not committed to asylums, you know, and they immediately try to write letters, and cranks, and they say, “We did it.” Why, some people walk into a station and say, “I committed a crime,” when they never did. They have just an insane notion. But this fellow, this fellow was no fool; he wasn't going to let anybody get that fifty thousand. So he put down at the bottom of each note: “Our singnature.” Let me have one of those.

[4434] (Ransom note produced by Captain Snook.)

And he put his signature on there. Here was no mistake about that. There it is. You couldn't reproduce it. There it is; the blue circle, the red center and the holes; “B” in blue, for Bruno; “R” in red for Richard; holes, “H” for Hauptmann. “Our singnature.” Nobody could reproduce that except Bruno Richard Hauptmann; and to make sure they were right he made all those papers of the same kind.

And the only notes that had that handwriting were the notes with his “singnature” on, and I am going to come to “singnature” pretty soon, and I am going to show to you what a shocking perjurer he is in this court room, right out of his own lips. Don't let me forget that word, “singnature.” He has got it in here, “singnature.” So he has this symbol. Now, the police get another one, he says, “Have 50,000 $ redy 25,000 $ in 20 $ bills, 15,000 $ in 10 $ bills and 10,000 $ in 5 $ bills. After 2-4 days we will inform you where to deliver the mony–m-o-n-y.” I want to show you something while you are here. This is a note Mr. Hauptmann got from somebody to whom he loaned $200. It is in evidence, admittedly his. Do you see the way he writes the 200 with the dollar mark after the 200, and the dollar mark after the 200, and then the dollar mark–200 and then the dollar mark? Well, that, I won't say that is only peculiar to one man, there may be some other people that do that, I think some of the foreigners do, very likely, I won't say, but the fellow that [4435] wrote these notes, he had this same peculiarity. He never put a dollar mark down but what he didn't put it after the numbers. Just take a look at the first figures, 50,000, then the dollar mark, 25,000, then the dollar mark, 15,000, then the dollar mark, 20 dollar bills, how does he make the 20? A twenty dollar like you do? No, the 20 and then the dollar mark. The 15,000, and then the dollar mark, and so on and so forth in every note, he never puts a dollar mark in any of these notes, and in any of his writings where it should be. That nobody planted on him, and that nobody dictated to him. That he made out in 1932. Wait until you get this in the room and look at his handwritings on the notes and everything else. You don't need any expert for it. But that right now I am just calling your attention to that dollar mark, you will see it all over.

And so they get another note. Did the same fellow write the two of them? Why, Number 2 note,–Number 2 note was taken from the same piece of paper as Number 1. That's the testimony, just torn off, one sheet of paper at one time and torn off, and he used this for one and this for two: that's the sworn testimony and it is uncontradicted. Yes, the first one was disguised a little bit more than the second. But at any rate, they had the chisel, they had the ladder, they had the note, then they had the second note. Now, then they come along and they get another note. Now they are having difficulty. The kidnaper is not getting any answer. He thinks the police are taking Colonel Lindbergh's mail. He writes to Breckinridge and [4436] Breckinridge–it takes time for the letter to come down from New York, somebody to deliver it–they are getting all kinds of mail, but the only mail they are paying any attention to is mail with the symbol, the signature. When they get one of those they know they are dealing with the right one. He was able, he was shrewd, he was keen, he couldn't spell well, but he had something up in that mind, a brilliance there that many men have and, instead of turning those talents to honest endeavor, they turn them to crooked, criminal pursuits. And there he was. And then Breckinridge came and nothing was happening. It seemed that no matter how the notes went, they couldn't get together. They had to get a go-between somehow or other. At that stage, March the 9th, after seven or eight days, everybody in this country wanted to help solve this crime. Why, I wanted to help solve it, as an ordinary citizen. People all over the country were putting articles in papers how to do it, offering this suggestion, offering this advice, offering themselves. Every citizen in the country from the President of the United States down offered himself to act. Was it any wonder then that a man of 75 years of age, Dr. Condon, a man who had been a teacher and educator, a professor, a man who was interested in boy scouts and girl scouts and civic endeavors, a man who never had a blemish on his character, a kindly soul, an ambitious soul, should interest himself in this. They say he is eccentric. Hah, I remember the day even in my age when they used to think that a man when he got on to sixty-five or seventy should be respected. [4437] I remember the time when they thought it was a matter of reverence and proper dignity to be respectful to people of years. Instead of that, why, a man cannot walk into this court room if he is over 45 years of age without being branded eccentric, because he is old. I don't expect to make 75, let me tell you that. My life is entirely too violent for that. But if I ever do, if the Lord ever spares me and I am one-half the man at seventy-five that old John F. Condon, the Doctor from The Bronx, is, I want to tell you, if it is possible, I will be more grateful to the Lord than I can imagine any person; because I am always grateful to the Lord. Dr. John F. Condon at seventy-five I Now, what did Condon do? Condon wrote a letter to his paper, Condon wrote a letter to his paper and he said something about offering himself as a go-between and offering a thousand dollars. Condon, who had brought up children and reared them through the schools and the institutions, not who was arrested for running a cheap cabaret and a dive in New York, not a fellow that testifies he was out with a girl because he suddenly becomes heroic and wants to shield the name of a girl, and the record doesn't show that any such girl ever existed, or her family, that they ever existed–a man who, instead of being where he said he was, was having an automobile accident, a perjurer that stunk to heavens! And they accuse this fellow, Condon, a man who has lived an honest life. Yes, I don't have to defend Condon. What difference does it make to me? I will never see Condon, I suppose, as long as I live. He is no [4438] sister in law of mine. But they have got to tear down Condon.

Now, what did Condon do? Condon risked his life, risked his life for Colonel Lindbergh, just as millions of people would. Colonel Lindbergh thinks Condon is all right. Colonel Breckinridge, a member of President Wilson's Cabinet, thinks he is all right and thought he was all right. He must have been all right. So Condon goes out and he puts this ad in the paper and he gets the next letter. Now we have the next clue. “Mr. Condon, we will trust you.” Why, Condon was such a substantial citizen in The Bronx, he was just as well known in The Bronx as the Mayor of your community is to you, probably better,–because Mayors came and went, Mayors would come and go. But Condon for years was a character. Whenever there was any patriotic service, whenever there was any demand for anything like that, no worry about money or material benefits; Condon was there. Did you see him on the stand? What was his symbol? No fraternity, no nationality, no religion, no ex-service button,–the American Flag. That's Condon, and that's what he wore when he came here, and that's what he wears every day of his life. That's his emblem. And so Condon got this letter, and even Mr. Hauptmann would trust Condon, and he wrote him so. “If you are willing to act as a go-between, please follow the instructions. Handle the enclosed letter to Mr. Lindbergh.” All right. Dr. Condon get this letter and when he calls up–they were getting thousands [4439] of calls–somebody at the other end of the wire said, “Open it up and see what it is.” You couldn't get Colonel Lindbergh's home in those days because there were too many people, but if a fellow said he got that, that signature, it admitted him. It didn't make any difference, it didn't have to be Condon. It could have been Bitz, it could have been Spitale, it could have been anybody. They dealt with the lowest form on earth, not the highest,–just to get that child back. So they said to him, “What's on there? Open it.” Condon became a little confused, but no more confused maybe than his examiner at the time, and he did say at first that he didn't open it, or he opened it. I don't remember. But the fact is the testimony was, from Colonel Breckinridge, as I remember, or Colonel Lindbergh, that they told him to open it. And they did. And when they got this with the symbol on it they said, “Come down.” All right. Now we have more clues, you see. We are getting somewhere now. The police were still up against a stone wall because Colonel Lindbergh wants his child back, remember that. Condon isn't dealing with any police. Condon isn't interested in apprehending anybody. He wants to do something. He comes down with that letter. Now they can have all the inferences and insinuations they want; but remember what Condon said, remember what Lindbergh said. Where did he sleep that night? In the baby's nursery?

Can you imagine a man seventy-five that has lived a clean life, that was in that nursery praying to God that he could help, could you imagine him if he had anything to do with the killing of a baby, can you imagine him sleeping in that baby's nursery–Dr. John F. Condon? [4440] Did you see his daughter here–one of the most delightful, wholesome souls that I have ever seen in my life, as sweet as sugar and as pure and wholesome as anything could be. That is a sort of a sample. So Dr. Condon comes down there to this home and sleeps in the nursery, Colonel Lindbergh fixed him up. There were policemen downstairs, policemen all over, reporters all around–the world must go on, you know–the public must have the news. Hundreds of reporters and photographers and movie cameras and everything–Condon gets this little room in the nursery, he wants to see it, and he says to Mrs. Lindbergh, “I am going to bring that baby back for you and put his arms around your neck.” All right, he is told to negotiate. He puts an ad in the paper because of instructions from Colonel Lindbergh. Colonel Breckinridge goes right with him. They go to the house, Colonel Breckinridge stayed at that house every minute, he slept there, he ate with Condon. While everything was being–and what happens? A taxi driver comes in and says, “Dr. Condon, I want to see Dr. Condon.”

“I am Dr. Condon.”

“Well, here is a note.” He delivers the note. How did Perrone know it was Hauptmann? Why, as he gave him the note, this fellow Hauptmann, as Perrone was backing away, he looks back and he sees the fellow writing his license number down. So when they asked him about the fellow, he had his description, of course. But, anyway, let's get back to Condon. Now, we have in addition to Condon another [4441] clue. We have Perrone, the man who delivered it. Perrone didn't know a thing about Hauptmann's arrest until 1934. Did he give the description? Did he give the description of Hauptmann in 1932, so as to be a plant? A plant–I think that possibly must be the way some criminals get away with their crimes in New York, and I think the word “plant” is a favorite one of lawyers, criminal lawyers, who try to have their clients escape justice, blame it on the police and call it a plant. Can you imagine Perrone planting something in 1932?

You know, Hauptmann never denied that he gave that note to Perrone on the stand. That is my recollection of the testimony. I don't think he ever mentioned it. But be that as it may, Perrone gives the description of the man. I told you about it before: about five foot nine; about thirty to thirtyfive, or something like that; of German extraction; at least he spoke with some German accent, he thought; muddy blond hair–fitting Hauptmann to a T. All right. So we have another clue now. We have Perrone. And that note to Perrone: why was it delivered? It was delivered because this was planned and plotted.

When the note was delivered–he couldn't mail that note because he wanted to meet him and he didn't want to give him time to get in touch with anybody except the people of the house as soon as he delivered it. “You be at this and this place in three-quarters of an hour.” [4442] Have you got that note? “After three-quarters of an hour, be on the place. Bring the money with you.” Naturally, he couldn't mail the letter. He couldn't send a Western Union, by telegraph. He had to have that delivered, to give Condon three-quarters of an hour so he wouldn't have any chance to fix up anything on him. He tells him what to do: “Follow the instructions. Take a car and drive to the last subway station from Jerome Avenue line, one hundred feet from the last station on the left side is an empty frankfurter stand with a big open porch around, and you will find a notice.” Give me the photograph of that frankfurter stand. “You will find a notice in the center of the porch underneath the stone. This notice will tell you where to find me.”

All right, he goes there. In three-quarters of an hour he gets there. He gets to the frankfurter stand. He follows the directions and, under the frankfurter stand, he finds a note, just as he is directed, alone some place. There (referring to picture) is the frankfurter stand. “You walk in there with a big open porch around. You will find a notice in the center of the porch underneath a stone.” He goes there and he walks to the center. Underneath the stone is a note: “Act accordingly.”

“After three-quarters of an hour be on the place. Bring the money with you.” All right. He gets to the stand, to the frankfurter stand,–and here is what he gets: “Cross the street,”–now he is at the frankfurter stand [4443] –“Cross the street and follow the fence from the cemetery.” That is Woodlawn Cemetery. “Direction to 233rd Street. I will meet you.” So he goes there and there is a man with a handkerchief, in the back of this cemetery wall. There (referring to photograph) is the Woodlawn Cemetery, the entrance to Woodlawn Cemetery. We have it written on the back so you will be able to see it. And there behind those iron gates is a man finally waving a handkerchief. Condon goes up to him and he says, “I see you.” They get to talking. It is way back, and it is a tremendous cemetery–you have no idea how big it is. It extends for blocks and blocks. they have caretakers, of course, and way back in the bushes this man Hauptmann hears the rustle of the leaves, some bushes or branches, and he becomes alarmed and he climbs up over that fence and gets on one of those things and jumps off. Now, he knows that there is nobody there, but Hauptmann and he crosses the lawn here. Oh, he isn't running, as counsel would have you believe. He runs across the street and he sees nobody is chasing him except Condon, so he stops, and Condon walks up to him. They get to across the street and there is a park. No crowds around there. Don't get any mistaken idea about that. They get across to a park. These pictures will tell the story. And there is the little house, and there is the little bench just enough away from the sidewalk so that they can sit there. And they sit there and talk [4444] for an hour and twenty minutes–an hour and twenty minutes.

You needn't be surprised about that, because you heard Dr. Condon on the stand–yes, he is a talkative old gentleman, sure, he is retired; he has nothing to do except to enjoy life and enjoy life's experiences and observations, and when people have nothing else to do, the most harmless and the most useful thing to do is to sit around with your fellow man and talk to him, get his observations about life and his point of view and everything, and that is Condon's habit, it is his life now. So Condon sits there with him with an important mission. Now we have got these other notes, and now we have got another thing, we have got a description of the man from Condon. What was the description? Five foot nine, muddy blond, German or Scandinavian; all those things, the age and everything. “Well,” he says, to Condon, “have you got the money?”

 “No, I haven't got the money.” And he goes through the whole thing, and he tells me, “Yes, we are the right party. Yes, we got the baby.”

“Yes, we got the baby.” That is what his statement was. “Doesn't Colonel Lindbergh believe we are the right party? If he doesn't want to give up the money that way, we will send him the baby's sleeping suit.” So what is next? He sends him the baby's sleeping suit with a note, and when the baby's sleeping suit–and it took a couple of days before he sent it, he had to wash it very likely, he had to do something to it, several days intervened, the testimony in the record will reveal it [4445] that it took several days before he sent it, and then along comes this sleeping suit in a package, and it comes into that house of Condon's. And who is there? Breckinridge, Lindbergh, and Condon and the daughter and other people. And when they see this sleeping suit, when Colonel Lindbergh sees it, why, of course, you know after all it is his child, he has some notion about its size; he has some notion about what it wears and everything–there weren't many people who knew anything about the type of sleeping suit or what it wore; every crank in the country was trying to find out what it was that they had on the child–that was being guarded. But when he saw that, and he showed that to Anne, showed it to Betty Gow, they knew, in addition to the man with the symbol, in addition to everything else, there wasn't any question then that it was the right man. Lindy thought then he was dealing with the right man. The State says he was dealing with the right man. Now, jurors, you have got to decide it was the right man. The fellow that was in that room took that baby, and the fellow that took the baby had the sleeping garment. What more do you want? Is it possible that you would want anything else? And so here is the sleeping garment that he returned. Well, Condon was still advising, “Don't pay that money,” he says to Colonel Lindbergh, “unless they produce the baby.” That was his advice, his opinion, that was his observation. What did Mr. Kidnaper and Murderer say? He knew very well he would never produce that baby, but he knew something else, he knew if he waited long enough they would put up the money, because the hope, the hope and the desire to have [4446] that child was greater than anything else in the world. And so he writes him, “Colonel Lindbergh will have to come to us.”

“We won't compromise, Colonel Lindbergh will have to come to us.” Nothing that Condon could have told him there or could have told him any other place. He writes in the letters, in the notes, “We can wait,” he says, “the Colonel will have to come, he will have to meet our terms.” And he tells him to put these ads in the paper. Now, we have got another piece of evidence–we are still looking for the man–we have got another piece of evidence, with the sleeping suit–all right, what is next? The money is prepared and they go down to St. Raymond's Cemetery and a man hollers, “Hey, Doktor.” Colonel Lindbergh is there and hears his voice. Ah, we are hoping that someday we will get the nan whose voice Colonel Lindbergh heard. Another piece of evidence, another clue. Then, down into the cemetery, the money is given to somebody. Who is it given to? The man that we meet at Woodlawn Cemetery. Along this fence, and when he gets all through he says, right along here (indicating on photograph), this is St. Raymond's Cemetery, this is the street along which they met, this is the fence that the fellow says was smooth he had never seen that fence before, that is St. Raymond's Cemetery, that is the concrete wall he had never seen in his life, that is this fellow Heier, this fellow Heier that Mr. Reilly tried to protect yesterday in his summation. He couldn't recognize that fence. He said it went smoothly around and I said to him, “Didn't [4447] it get step-like?” He said, “No,” he said, “there was a dent in there, there was a driveway through the concrete wall.” There is none at all. It ends there. There is a wall there and then there are bushes. That is the way it was at that time, and across that hedge, that is where the money went. That is the way they stood. One man on one side of the hedge and the other man on another side.

Now, when he gets all through and he gets this money, he makes the bargain, “All right, I will take 50,000 instead of 70,000, that is all right,” and he turns over and he says to Condon, “Your work is perfect,” and he shakes hands with him. Sure it was perfect, he got the 50,000. Lindbergh, sitting right up there. All right. Who was it–that got the money? This was asked all before this trial, all before Hauptmann was arrested. What does Condon say? “The same man, the same man that I met at the other place, I met at St. Raymond's Cemetery, the same man, five foot nine, a muddy blond, of German extraction.”

“The baby is well, the baby is well,” he kept saying, “Tell Mrs. Lindbergh not to worry,” when he dipped his hands into that box to take out some money, when he was writing that letter, he was not only willing, he not only murdered this child, he not only crushed Colonel Lindbergh's heart and the heart of Anne Morrow, but even with that misery, he wasn't satisfied, he wanted to steal their money, too. That is the sort of an animal, that is the sort of a murderer we are dealing with. And so, he takes that money, and so we have got that additional clue. [4448] Now, in addition to that we then have fifty thousand dollars in money which we circulated, another clue. Now, so we have all these things and we sit by and we wait, and what happens? Some fellow in a shoe store gets a twenty dollar bill. Who gave it to him? A man about five foot nine, of German extraction, muddy blond, athletic–the same description. We find on the arrest that is the man. A vegetable stand, miles away from the Bronx–the shoe store, miles away, “Who gave it to you?” “Five foot nine, muddy blond,” the same story. Do you remember the testimony about the Faulkner money and nobody could tell who deposited twenty-nine hundred, or something like that in gold? Take a look at his accounts and you will see twenty some hundred dollars, twenty some hundred dollars, that Faulkner money, somebody walked in and exchanged twenty-eight or twenty-six hundred–I forget which it was–exchanged some place gold and got other money. That was an exchange, not a deposit, with the name of J. J. Faulkner, the name of a man who never could be found. Nobody knows who exchanged that money, but around that time in May or whatever the testimony shows, 1933, you will find over $3,000 in one deposit in Mr. Hauptmann's account. Where did he get the money? And so we have got this $50,000 now, we have got fifty thousand more clues.

We are waiting now, waiting to see what happens. Now we know already, Colonel Lindbergh has already flown up there, up in the skies and in the heavens, up around Massachusetts, New York and Connecticut, looking for his child–sent [4449] him off on this wild goose chase–cruelty. Why he would cut your heart honestly with a razor and think nothing of it and go upstairs and eat. That's how cold-blooded this murderer is–sent up there on this wild goose chase. And he is sitting back now and the world, everybody, is searching. As time goes on, some people forget, but the Government doesn't forget, and the Federal agents are checking. Every time a bill comes in, they try to find him, and they are getting the same reports: in New York, New York, New York, New York–all the money is in New York. They draw a circle; right around here it is being circulated. When he goes for vegetables, he is away from his home. When he goes for shoes he is away from it. He suddenly started to become a shopper, this carpenter. Well, at any rate, they are getting these clues, until finally one day he stops down and buys a few cents worth of gasoline; not ten gallons, he didn't want much gasoline, he wanted enough to get the bill changed. When he wanted vegetables he bought ten cents or fifty cents, some cents anyway, less than a dollar; he couldn't remember how much. He would get nine dollars and some cents change. He would take that change and deposit it in his savings account. That is where he got the four hundred and some dollars worth of silver. You see? That's where he got these moneys for deposit.

All right, he goes to this gasoline man and he is stuck. He knows. The fellow says to him, “Well, you don't see many of these any more,” and he says–mind you, he is so afraid of this gold that he is hiding it in the garage, [4450] so afraid of it that he is hiding it in the garage, but he would take the chance of taking a ten dollar bill and giving it to a gas station attendant. So he goes to this attendant and the attendant sees it, and Hauptmann doesn't know that he has written down his number. He doesn't know that. And the gas station attendant doesn't think anything about Lindbergh. He sees it is a gold bill, and so he marks down the number, thinking they may have some trouble about it, and they trace his car. Then there is an arrest. You see, I am trying to go as fast as I can. Then they have got another clue. Who is the fellow that passed the bill? We have got another clue. We have got another witness, Lyle. Who is the man? The same man, five foot nine, muddy blond, of German extraction, athletic; and we have got the number, the registration number.

All right, we arrest him. Do we get a clue with his arrest? Sure. Talk about shrewd, and canny! Did they find him with a lot of those bills? Not much. He was taking out one at a time. They found in his pocket a twenty dollar bill, only one though. The garage was loaded with it, thousands and thousands of dollars' worth, but he only took out one; they weren't going to catch him with more than one. So they arrested him. He had his story ready. Oh, it didn't hold up, but he had it ready. “Where did you get this bill?” Did he have a guilty knowledge of the murder of the Lindbergh child or didn't he? If he didn't, would he tell the truth? Sure he would. What did he say? He admits it here on the stand; there is no dispute about this, men and women. He said, “This twenty dollar bill is part of $300 which I have saved and collected because of inflation and because of gold. The rest of the three hundred I spent already, and this is the last one.” Well, that was fine, wasn't it? What could you do to a man that had a twenty dollar bill? You couldn't do anything to him, he hadn't committed any crime, except possibly he violated or offended the gold laws of the country. So they took him back to his home, because his description, the five foot nine, the muddy blond, all those things lent an indication that he was the man that had passed the other moneys. They took him back to his home and they found nothing. They tried to get him to do something else and they became suspicious of him. Now he gets down to the station. He gets down to the station and they ask him to write.

Now, you will remember what he said. He made those misstatements–this is where I come to the “singnature”–he made those misstatements because they were dictated to him. Now, you weren't there and I wasn't there. I don't believe this hokum about police and all these things that they try to hand us. But just the same, that's his testimony. Now, he wants to explain why he made these mistakes, the same mistakes that he made in the ransom letters. Now, naturally, if he wrote “not” n-o-t-e in the ransom notes, and then when they told him to write, in the police station, request writings, and they spelled it for him, you couldn't hold that against him. If they told him to write it n-o-t-e and he put the “e” on at police dictation, you cannot very well [4452] charge him with misspelling; it has been dictated. Now, he wanted to show that he didn't write “singnature” with an “n” in it. He wanted to show that the word “singnature”–well, I have got it anyway–in the ransom note, was spelled with an “n” and that when they dictated to him they told him to spell it that way. Now, did they tell him to spell it that way?

I am going to prove to you conclusively that when he swore on the stand here that they told him to spell “signature” with an “n” that he committed downright and absolute perjury, just like he did in most of his testimony. In order to do what? Why does a man commit perjury? What is perjury? Perjury is the willful misstatement of a material fact under oath. Why, do you know if we should get perjury rampant in this country, I mean if people would take those things lightly and come on the stand and swear to false things, do you know what would happen? If I had a piece of property or a chattel or something, they would swear it away from me. There wouldn't be anything worth a dollar. Your life wouldn't be worth anything if perjury became rampant–if you can't take the sacred oath on the witness stand. If you can't believe that, then there isn't an American institution that means a thing. Why would a man commit perjury, such a serious offense, second only to murder, I think? Why would he do it? He would do it only because he would want to escape from the electric chair. That is the [4453] only reason that he should want to do it, if at all.

Now, did the police teach him to write “signature” as he testified under oath? Here is his testimony: “Well, now, in writing, did you spell the word of your own free will or did they tell you how to spell the word?”

 “Some of them words,” some of them, “they spell it to me.”

 “How do you spell 'not'?”

 “N-o-t.”

The gentleman had a dictionary in his cell. Of course, he just happened to have it. It happened that he had it. He wasn't practicing up on his misspelling of these words. “Did they ask you to spell it n-o-t-e?”

“I remember very well they put an 'e' on it.” He didn't have the nerve to say, “They told me to spell it n-o-t-e,” but he said he remembered something about an “e” at the end of it.

 “How do you spell 'signature'?”

 “S-i-g-n-a-t-u-r-e.”

That was in this court. You remember it. “Did they tell you to spell it s-i-n-g-”

 “They did.”

 “So when they were dictating the spelling that was not your own free will in spelling?”

 “It was not.”

Now, he swears we told him to spell “signature” that way. You can take the request writings. Here is one of them. You go through every one of those misspelled writings and there isn't the word “signature” on one of them to show that we ever asked him to spell it, right or wrong. What do you think of that? [4454] And here he is in this court room. He knew the importance of that “signature.” There isn't the word “signature” in any one of these exhibits, the request writings, that we asked him to write. Yes, we asked him to write this: “We were not in Sound Hall,” because “Sound” is somewhere in there, “where the robbery–” the “the”–we wanted the the's because he has a lot of the's in the other place. “House” we wanted to see how he would spell it, would he spell it h-a-u-s like he did in the ransom note. We wanted to see how he would spell “New York,” “ladder,”–to see if he would spell it l-a-t-t-e-r. Why, there isn't, as I said before, in fourteen pages of request writings the word “signature.” It doesn't appear any place. We never asked him to write it, and you have it here before you; his request writings. Look through them and see. And still he swears on the stand in this court room that we told him to spell “signature” in the request writings with an “n.” What a fake! What a fraud! What a joke! Defense! Wasting the taxpayers' money here. Sure, if there is any wasting, that is where it is, with that kind of a phoney defense. Perjury is a joke in this case. They seem to take it so lightly. They would swear to anything–anything to save Hauptmann.

Well, now, I think before I got into the “singnature” we had him at his arrest with the twenty dollar bill. He is arrested and they ask him to write these papers, and they take these request writings. They take the note that we find in his [4455] home, and they come to the authorities, and what to do about it? Is this the man's handwriting? And so it is distributed among handwriting experts all over the country to make sure. This is murder–this is important–nobody is going to take a chance on this. No lawyer, no prosecutor, is going to walk into this blindly. He is not going to be made a fool of and let his State become the subject of ridicule. He is going to be sure before he walks into this thing. Did the State of New Jersey walk over there September 19th and ask them to send this man here for murder? Not much. Colonel Schwarzkopf and the Attorney General say, “No, not yet.” Not at the time of his arrest, because at that time they found this twenty dollar bill on him and that's all, and we haven't gotten reports from handwriting experts. We haven't searched his garage, haven't done any of the things. So he is up there in New York and they start the search and they find a piece of paper in his home, writing paper and you take a look at it. It is a cheap paper and you will put it up as you get into the room and you will see the bond mark on it, the type of paper it is. And you take the notes, the ransom notes, you will see it is the same type of paper, exactly the same. That is from his home. Now they say to him–here is a man in custody. He knew it was important. The police, the world–the world is asking to find out what has happened. The Commissioner of the City of New York, the Commissioner of Police, thought it was important enough to be in on this case, and he is there talking to him, and what does he do? Nothing. [4456] That is his story, and that's all there is to it.

So they send carpenters up. They go through his house, cannot find anything in his house. They go to his garage. Lo and behold! They find concealed in that garage–there is a picture of it, right on the side where the window is, they find concealed somewhere along the window in a fake compartment two thousand dollars, and they bring it to him and they say to him, “How about this money,” or words to that effect. “Well”–substantially “that's all there is.” And they keep working and the next thing you know they find an oil can concealed underneath in another secret compartment, about ten thousand dollars, and they bring that to him, and he still says that's all. Then, the next day, Mr. Foley says to him, “Are you sure that is all the money there is?”

“Yes, that is all.” And he says, “How about this?”

“Is this Lindbergh money, too?”

And he says, “Yes.”

Guilty knowledge? Did he know? And when they have got it altogether, they know all about it, then he says, it was Fisch that gave him that money. And then he says, when he says Fisch, he says he had it up in the closet, and he did this and he did that–now, did he have it? Why, did you hear the elaborate statements of my delightful adversary about Fisch, two or three days ago? “I am going to prove this and I am going to prove that about Fisch, and I am going to prove this.” Why, he didn't prove anything except that Fisch was a poor man. He didn't prove anything except that Fisch died in poverty. He didn't prove anything except that Fisch never [4457] owned an automobile, never drove an automobile, had the cheapest room. He didn't prove anything except that Fisch was a fine fellow, an American citizen, and that while he was in this country he suffered tuberculosis during one of his visits to some resort and died as a result of it. He proved that Fisch expected to come back. He proved that Fisch gave him everything that he had in the world before he left, and that he supplied him with the money for the trip. That is what he proved. He didn't prove anything else, not another thing about Fisch. But if it is contended that his best friend, Fisch, if it is contended that his best friend, Fisch, was a party to it with him, as I said this morning, let them bring the grave of Isidor Fisch alongside of all the other graves they have brought into this courtroom, if it is any consolation and comfort to this party, if it is any consolation and comfort to him, let them bring the dead in here; if he helped Mr. Hauptmann, and there isn't a scintilla of evidence that he did, that doesn't excuse Hauptmann, not a bit.

We found no gold notes in Isidor Fisch's possession, not one. We didn't find a thing in his possession, either in this country or elsewhere. And during all this time there hasn't been one ransom bill that turned up in Germany, not one, not a single solitary one–all in the Bronx. Now the search goes on. We have got the man and we have got his handwriting, and he has got the money; and the next thing they do, they are searching through his house and they find this board, and they bring it down to you. Now, after all, we are looking for the man [4458] that got the dough from Condon; that's what we are looking for, that's the fellow. Once we get the fellow that got the dough, we know who committed this crime, especially if the fellow that got the dough wrote the notes. And so they bring in this thing from his closet, and they ask him about it and he says, “Yes, it is my lumber. Yes, I wrote the numbers. I don't remember about the handwriting.” That's the second day; the first day he says, “Yes, I wrote it, all.” And they ask him why. What excuse do you think he gave? “Well,” he says, “I must have been interested in the case and I must have been sitting in that room where the closet is and, you know,” he says, “I have a habit; I have a habit.” And he wrote this number down. Now he didn't write any other numbers in the kitchen or any other place. He had a habit.

“Did you have Dr. Condon's number on your closet door, his telephone number?” The number had been gone since June, 1932; they had a new number. So many people started calling up when they found out it was Jafsie. “Did you have it?”

“No.”

 “Did you have it written on the inside of a closet?”

“No.”

What did he conceal it for? Because he had the guilty knowledge of the crime, because he participated in the crime, because he is the murderer. But he thought he rubbed it out. It was on the inside of a closet. It was a little difficult to get in; that's why he put it there in the first place. And what he did was, one day he took some dirty cloth or something and he [4459] leaned into the closet and he started to scrub it, and he left a smudge there; the smudge is still there; part of it is erased, but the tracing is still there. And, men and women of the jury, when you get this board in your room, you look at the notes and take a look at the handwriting. You don't need an expert. Take the numbers, 2974, compare it with the numbers on the letters to Condon. Take a look at the number at the bottom, Sedgwick 3-7154, and as much of it as you can see. You will be convinced, and he admits that that is all there is to it. Of course, today, somebody has sold him a new story; somebody has told him, since he got to New Jersey, “Now, you can't admit that when you get to Jersey, because in Jersey you are on trial for your life. In New York you were only on trial to see if you were coming to Jersey. And if you admit that you put that on that board, you are gone.” Somebody sold him that story. He never would have changed it for any other reason. Oh, and how he squirmed when he started on that. He knew that was wrong. He is the all powerful. He thought he could sit on that stand and withstand anything. And he didn't, he squirmed when somebody told him what to do. He is accustomed to telling others what to do. He will order his counsel around, he would order the Court around if he thought he could get away with it. Strong! He is stronger than the gang of us put together, all the lawyers at the two tables. That fellow has got a will power and a won't power. Steel that comes right from the heart. But let me tell you he had to gulp on that one. Yes, he told the District Attorney and he told the people in The Bronx, and he told the police, and [4460] he testified under solemn oath in The Bronx that he wrote it, but he wouldn't dare admit it here. You have got to believe that he did it. There are no two choices about that. Well, there he is again. Why is he denying it? Guilty knowledge, guilty conscience, if he could have such a thing as a conscience. In order to do what? Why, commit perjury, again and again, and again and again; save himself from the electric chair. That's all. And so we have got another clue.

All right, we are still working, we are still working, and we get up into his attic. Oh, they say we wouldn't let them get up into the attic. The poor boys, we wouldn't let them–terrible thing, we wouldn't let the defense do this and we wouldn't let them do that. They have had six or seven weeks of a trial here–whatever it was–and anything they are entitled to they can get from this Court. The only trouble I find is that we have treated this fellow entirely too well. I never even walked in to ask him a word. I never went in to annoy him for a second. I wouldn't get close enough to him. If I had my choice I wouldn't get in the same room, I wouldn't become contaminated, I wouldn't want to breathe the same air. I think too much of my friends and my wife and my kids to be around him at all–I feel itchy, I feel oozy, I just couldn't stand being anywhere near him. I never walked into that jail even to get a confession from him. I had to come down from The Bronx with him when the State of New York decided he had to come here, and all I did with him, as the testimony shows, as he walked into that jail, I said to him, “Mister, do you want a cigar, [4461] or a cigarette before you go up to your cell?” And I forget what he answered, and I said to him, “Do you want to go up into your cell for a while or do you want to stay here for a while?” And I forget what it was, but everything was all right. And from that minute to this, as far as I am concerned, I have never talked to him and I never would as long as I live. We have treated him too well, and they say we won't let them get up into the attic. Why do they have to get up into the attic? What is there about the attic that he doesn't know? He has lived there. What is there about the attic that Mrs. Hauptmann doesn't know? Why can't they get all the information? Did their plumber say this was the attic, the picture we show? What is mysterious about it? Did their plumber witness say that this wasn't the condition? He didn't even see the wires, the plumber that was looking for this. But be that as it may, did he say that was wrong? We had the owner of the house, you had this witness, the plumber. No, that is the condition.

What would they see up there? No, but counsel wanted to go up there on a Sunday morning while the Attorney General was home sick in bed and couldn't make arrangements that Sunday morning, and I told him any other morning, but no, it had to be Sunday morning. Any morning during the week they could have gone up with their wood expert. So the charge is made here in open court that has absolutely no basis for it, that they would not be permitted up in the attic. What have we got to hide up in the attic, or anywhere? What do I care about hiding [4462] anything? What difference does it make to the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey what the outcome of this thing is? Are we going to make any profit on it? Is the State of New Jersey going to get rich on this thing? No. But there is the attic and there is no dispute about it, and there is the board from the attic. There is the rail taken right out of that attic. You can see the knotholes even in it now. Here they are, just as plain as anything in the world. Plant! Plant! It is infectious; once you get using the word “plant” you have got to use it every time. Now, an ordinary carpenter, not an expert, could tell right away that one of these rails had once been used as a floor board. It is that type of wood apparently, and they got to worrying when they saw these nail holes in 1932, if they ever found a fellow that was guilty they might find some place where that might come from. And so they took it up and they laid it down there. And sure enough, the nail holes fit exactly. And from there on they continued their investigation. But it doesn't make an difference. We don't have to prove that to you. We don't have to prove that that rail comes from that attic. Supposing we had no ladder; supposing he did take it back with him; supposing he destroyed it–my God! we don't have to give you a moving picture of this crime. We don't have to give you one iota of proof about this ladder to convict this man. But it is there and we are giving it to you for what it is worth.

Now, how do they try to get away from that? They bring in Dr. Hudson, Dr. Hudson, who [4463] wrote down exactly what he found. Not a word about any nail holes. Now, he comes here and testifies to one. I want to tell you what I think about Dr. Hudson. I think the gentleman may feel that he has a fair recollection; but he entered this case in order to attract the attention of the world to what he considers a good solution, a good chemical solution for fingerprinting; and if Hudson gets away or got away with his testimony in this case, he would make millions of dollars. That's what would happen. Everybody in the world, in the country, if he could only say that his testimony–his testimony freed Hauptmann. Now, it wouldn't be about the fingerprinting or anything; that has nothing to do with it. If you believe there was only one nail hole on there, he might get away with it. And so, men and women, he comes in and he testifies about one nail hole. Well, I don't know how many nail holes were in this board in 1932. I wasn't there. You weren't there, were you? So the Attorney General of the State of New Jersey, knowing that this ladder had gone to Washington in 1932 sent to Washington and said, “Send that man down here tomorrow”–tonight, right away! “I want to find out about these nail holes. This is serious.” So he comes down, Mr. Betts. They didn't even examine him. He came down here and he spent the night. And the next morning he is on the stand, peruses the report, gives it to counsel–four nail holes, the picture of the ladder, Rail 16. He put the numbers on–You remember it–in 1932. [4464] Now, you have got to believe, if you believe the defense at all, that what we did was to take the rail and punch those holes in it to fit those nails. What a joke! What a joke! The whole world hasn't turned crooked over night and surrendered honesty and decency to the defense. Not only that, but Koehler's records show the same thing, the drawing of the distance between the holes and everything. Now they want to show you that Mr. Koehler, who made this experiment, who talked about the plane marks and everything, that maybe he was mistaken.

So they bring in these two boards and Koehler says that they are part of one and the same board. And they say, “Isn't it a fact that one is thinner than the other?” He says, “Yes, it is thinner, here and there.” And the wood expert at counsel's table starts to give him the measurements. Now, where these two boards join or should join they are of the same thickness. As it proceeds–it was separated, you will remember Koehler said–it gets thinner. But you smell these boards and you will find one has been tampered with and one hasn't. You get the odor from it. Why, overnight they said–They had to put our ladder in a safe. They wouldn't let anybody near that unless they were there–plants. But the boards, after the first night, out walked the defense with the boards and this very minute the odor of these board is different than it ever was. They know it is going to the jury, maybe today. These board, I think, have been tampered [4465] with. Why, they suddenly got all sorts of breaks and everything. The fact of the matter is, if you put them together, you will find one of them will run right into the other, one of them will run right into the other, which is the best proof that at one time or another they were the same board. And that is the thing on which they want to crush Koehler. They could have gotten carpenters from all over if they wanted just carpenters. They could have gotten carpenters from the State of New Jersey. But, no, they had to get a fellow that has a nursery up in Connecticut. And I have no quarrel with him, if he can profit at the expense of Colonel Lindbergh and the State of New Jersey. Lord knows, there are enough people who have tried it. If he can get away with it, more power to him, unless he is caught I Now, you aren't to let a little poppy-cock like that destroy the testimony of a man like Koehler, who has devoted his services to this all his life.

But forget that, and forget the ladder rail, if you want to. How about the testimony of Koehler and the testimony of The Bronx lumber yard, that a year and a half before Hauptmann was ever arrested they traced parts of this ladder, they traced parts of that lumber to The Bronx lumber yard. They didn't know who worked there. They didn't know who brought it there. But they traced it there. And they knew that before Hauptmann was arrested. Now that is not a plant. Now, we have the ladder and we have the lumber, and we have the attic board and we have the board in his room. We have all these things. And we have the money and we have [4466] the notes–and he wrote them. Everything Hauptmann. And we ask ourselves the same question that Mr. Reilly asked yesterday: where is the rest of the money, because we are still trying to find out.

So we make an investigation of bank accounts and brokerage accounts. And, lo and behold, Hauptmann again. We find the money. We find $50,000 of unaccounted for wealth–$50,000–within fourteen dollars. Now I didn't put the money in his brokerage accounts. I didn't put the money in his bank accounts. He put it in there. And he hasn't accounted for it. His foolish story about Fisch he has no explanation for. Not a single soul ever saw, as I told you this morning, Fisch give him a dollar. But we will go beyond that. Where are those books of his? We don't rely on our witnesses about his money. We rely upon him. I want the books of account. You will find in this book every item in which he dealt, every item–the fur item, the stock transactions–you will find the number of stocks, the shares, the price, everything in meticulous accounting and you will find separated from that, one little transaction that he had with Fisch, and he wrote the letter about it, he says, early in 1933 he entered into a little transaction for Isidor, a little transaction for Isidor–I knew it would come out right, and it did come out, and he made $103 for Isidor, his best friend Isidor, and he has got that in the book here, and he has got every other transaction in the book. And if you take these books, as we took them, the money transac- [4467] tions, and you take the brokerage accounts and the bank accounts, they fit exactly. He was a wonderful bookkeeper. Oh, he was a carpenter, he was a burglar, he was everything else, he was a murderer, but he was a good bookkeeper, too. Every item is in here and it fits exactly with the accounting that we have got–$50,000 accounted for from his own books, not from our testimony.

So, we continue the search. Now, we have accounted for all the money, but we didn't have to. We don't have to account for all the money. If we found $20 on him and nothing else, and he was the writer of the notes, and he is the fellow that surrendered the sleeping garment, why, that is all we need. But no, we have gone beyond that. Let me show you something about the handwriting. I am going to try to conclude as soon as I can. I know that you must be convinced beyond any doubt, but I cannot afford the risk, I cannot afford to take a chance. I want to talk to you about the handwriting for a minute. I have talked to you already about it. Now, I want you to take a look at these lines, this is what he wrote at the police station, one, two, three, four. When I am through, will you please give the jurors these books.

Now, you will notice when he starts down here, the next line, he changes it altogether. Take a look at it now. He disguises it again. This is one disguise and this is another. It is a different form of handwriting altogether. It starts with a different slant. He knows what he is up against. See (indicating). He knows [4468] what the handwriting is for, he is going to write it, but he is going to fool them. So he starts that in one form, then he starts this in another form. The little books will even show it to you more pointedly. They are in evidence and I am going to give them to you. Then I want to point out some things about it.

Now, will you give each juror one of those charts, please, one for each of you jurors, and this will just take a minute.

(Mr. Peacock hands books of photographs to the jurors.)

Now, I am just going to point out some of these things, if you don't mind, please. Now, you have got page 1, right there, where the request writing is; that's a picture of the same thing on there. “We were in the Sound,” and so forth; right on top. Now, I want you to go along on that first line, and you will see the word “the,” the word “the” right next to the last word, “the roppery.” Now, you jurors have seen that “t-h-e.” Now, will you look over here and I will show it to you on this big board. There is the “the.” It is the same “the” in his writing here. Here it is. Hauptmann writing, Hauptmann writing, Hauptmann writing, conceded writing; here the ransom notes. Just take a look at that. You couldn't duplicate that. The uncrossed “t,” the same “e,” the same form of “h.” Here it is again, each side. Now, I am going to come to some similarities and dissimilarities after a while, but I just [4469] want to show you that. Now, that's number 1. I am not going to take too much time. Now, the second line you will see a “6,” “between 6”–oh, there are a lot of things in here, but I am just going to take that–“between 6 and 12.” Now, take a look at that 6 and then come over here and take a look at the ransom note 6. Here is that same 6. Here is the ransom note 6. It looks just like an O, if you forgot it was a 6 for a minute, the way he writes it, except that he has a hook in, whereas his ordinary o is open. Then get to the word “our” in the same letter. “O-u-e-r”–“ouer” in the Hauptmann writing–here it is. Here is the same ouer in the note with the open “o” spelled wrong, both of them, “ouer,” open “o,” misspelled the same way instead of “our.” Now then you come to another “d” on the next line. Well, I have already pointed out to you the “v,” the similarity. Then no more on that line. Then I want to show you a word in the next line “did,” it is supposed to be right here. Now, as a matter of fact, there it is not spelled “did” at all, it is really “tit” instead of “did”–“tit.” Now, look at it here, right here (indicating). There is a beaut for you. Look at that, the anonymous letter, the ransom letter, the same identical thing as in the requested writing. What do you think of that for a “d?” The same thing as there “dit,” “dit”-uncrossed “t.” The “d” or “t,” whatever it is, the same thing. You couldn't tell it if you didn't read the rest of the letter, you wouldn't know what it meant. All right, the next one on the same line, the word “note.” All right, he says maybe we spelled it for him. What about the open “o?” [4470] What about the uncrossed “t?” The same identical thing.

All right. Now, men and women, will you please turn over that page, because I am only going to do it just for a short illustration, right on that page–and these things are going to the jury room with you–you will have plenty of time. You don't need an expert. I want to tell you, when you are through with it, take it home, show it to your children. They will tell you who wrote it, if you show them the ransom note and the conceded writing, the children at school will tell you, one guess. Now, the second page–have I the chart here of the second page–all right. Now, you have heard Mr. Trendley, the gentleman from St. Louis, talk about the first note. Now, on the first page we have “we” and other things from the first note. In the next classification we have things from the second note. Then we have them from the other notes. Now, look across at the “we's,” first note, second note and from other notes and see whether or not the same hand wrote it, aside from the fact that it is the same symbol and all about the same subject. I want to show you the writing of the “jou,” all the same, the “v's,” all the same; the “a-l-” in all right and already, the two t's, the “s,” the uncrossed t's and the “Dears,” four of them right across. Just to connect all the ransom notes as being written by the same person. And, while you are about it, when you get into the jury room, I want you to take a look at the letter, Exhibit 260, in which he writes to his broker in 1931. You will find the “Dear Sir” he wrote to Colonel Lindbergh on there identical with the first note, identical with some of the other notes, “Dear Sir,” the same thing. [4471] And the reason I call your attention to it, it is a peculiar kind of “s,” a peculiar kind of “d,” and the “please,” “Please will you carry in my debit.” And that “d” in that debit. Wait till you see the “d” in that “debit.” If that isn't a picture and ringer for the “Dear Sir” in another of these notes. Peculiar, very peculiar–you couldn't do it if you tried it, in the word “debit.” Maybe this jury can see it from here. There it is, “debit.” I mean it is a piece of art, if that is what you like to follow. You will be able to see it in your room, but it is right there. I just want you to get a little glance at it, “debit.” The d's in there; and that letter wasn't introduced because of its handwriting, that is the letter in which in December, 1931, he writes, “I cannot pay the $74.” That is only a couple of months before this kidnapping and murder. He wants them to wait for a few days. “By this time I will settle mein debit balance $74.” All right, now, please, if you will turn to the next one. The next one is also to show that the same hand that wrote the first note wrote the other notes–the “were,” the “ready,” the misspelling, r-e-d-y, the misspelling in all the other notes is the same as r-e-d-y, “money” m-o-n-y, “anything” a-n-y-d-i-n-g, “signature” as “singnature,” in one note and “singnature” in another note, “singnature” in this third note, this $50,000 with the dollar mark after the 50, $70,000 with the dollar mark after the 70,000–“We warn you,” “We have warned you,” “We warn you again,” and so forth, to show it is from the same person. Now, then, the next page; and I am only going to take one of these books, and we have got scores of them that we have got for you, [4472] but there are certain things that this book shows that I want to call your attention to. Now, the next one the “pay,” the “day” and the “July,” showing the y's, exactly the same curve, the same everything. The “baby,” “money,” “robbery,” all the y's in there, “nursery,” “by” b-i, “city,” “city,” and then at the end you have got the “expected,” the “x” in it. .Now, let me have the motor vehicle license, please. Now, this “x” that is in this “expected,” he wrote a real “x.” Sometimes in this request writing, when he came to write an “x' there, he wrote the “x” that you would write.

Sure, he did sometimes, but sometimes he wrote the phoney “x,” and I will show it to you in his motor vehicle card. “Bronx, New York.” This is his writing; no question about that, the “x” right in that. I just want you to take it and pass it along. You will have them in the jury room. It will just take you a second. And while you are looking at it, look at the word “expected” in the ransom note, and the word “expenses” in the ransom note, the “x” in explain, three of them there, just the same as he has got it in his motor vehicle license for expenses. Can you imagine anybody else duplicating that? Just the “x,” the x's in “expected” and “expenses” and the “x” at the end of “Bronx,” right on top. Now, the next page shows similar similarities and I am not going to spend much time on that. I want you to go to the next one. Because I feel maybe I am taking up too much time. The next one is the most important one. [4473] in my opinion, and that's–I am going to show you what I mean by it. I don't know whether we have a big chart, and we don't need it as long as we have these. That's this page. See if we have all got it. That's it, right here. Yes, that's it; that's right, only open that clasp, please. That's right. Now, have you all got it open? Now, I want to show you something. I want you to look first at the middle two columns; that's Hauptmann's own handwriting and that's Hauptmann's handwriting again. You will see they are entirely different. Now, you see the “j.” This is not a part of the ransom notes, this is his own handwriting. He wrote a “j” once that way and then he wrote it again that way. They are different, altogether. Now, “police” and “papers” he wrote. They are different. You couldn't tell from those things that the same hand wrote them, but he did. Then you will take the “we” and the “wit.” You couldn't tell from that that the same hand wrote it. And they are not ransom notes, they are admittedly his. Then “later” and “ladder,” there is a little similarity but not much, and the bottom one you wouldn't tell at all. Now, on one side of those two columns, to your left is a copy of the figures in the ransom note. On the right, the extreme right, is a copy also of his handwriting. Now, when you take this you will see that the ransom notes look nearer his writing over here, the j's, than his own admitted writing over there. There are dissimilarities; but in the very dissimilarities you can find his handwriting. In other words, the “j” on the ransom note is like this “j.” Now, if we only had this “j” to compare it with, which is also his, we couldn't tell; but these, the first and third, are identical. [4474] The “p” in “police”–now, that “p” in “police” there, which is his handwriting, doesn't look like the ransom note “p” in “police,” but the “p” over here in “papers” and the “p” over here in “police,” they look identical with the ransom notes. So that you can compare his own writing, his own two admitted writings and you will find some dissimilarities. But when you have 13 or 14 notes and a lot of his own writing, you can find him screaming all out of it. There is the “p” in “police.” There it is over here, not this one which is also his, but this one again–making that little circle. It looks like a “b,” if you didn't know it was “police.” It would look like a “b,” “b-o-l-i-c-e.” Then in the “we”–here you are: “with” and “we,” both of them. Now, they are identical. But the two admitted Hauptmann handwritings don't look at all alike there, and so it is right down the line. So you have the dissimilarities, too. We have not only picked on the similarities. Now, if you will turn over to the next page you will find all the misspelled words, the ransom notes and the defense writings–“be” spelled b-e-e, “money” spelled m-o-n-y, “anything” spelled a-n-y-d-i-n-g, “not” spelled n-o-t-e, “later” l-a-t-t-e-r, “House” h-a-u-s, “our” o-u-e-r, and so forth. Now we come to the sleeping garment, and there I want to show you something that the handwriting experts didn't testify to, but I am going to show it to you from a book that is in evidence.

I want you to look at that sleeping garment. You will find “Ave.” A-v-e. Now, look at the [4475] “A.” Look at the whole thing, but look particularly at the “A.” It isn't crossed at all, there is no line there connecting the two ridges. The “A” is absolutely open–A-v-e. It is a peculiar one. It is unlike anything probably that you ever saw. It is possible some one else may do it, that is true. Now, I want to show you his address book. This hasn't been pointed out by anybody yet. I want to show you the name of one of his friends, Fred Gleiffer, 8618 91 Avenue. Why, you could take a picture of this sleeping garment address “Ave.” and it wouldn't look any better than this A-v-e right in here. And throughout this entire book you will find the same “Ave.” that is on the sleeping garment “Ave.”–the “A” just two hooks, not crossed at all, the “v” separated, the same kind of a “v” and the same kind of an “e.” And you have it in this book. It is right in here. You can find it any number of times, particularly where this hook is. The name is Gleiffer, 8618 91 Avenue. And again down here, “Grant Avenue.”–still open. Right throughout here you find it. I wish that we had the time to go over all of this. I would love to pass this out to you. Not only that, this is the book which I showed him, and I wanted to show about the n's and the m's for “mister,” when he wrote the ransom note, the “Mister” on “Mr. Colonel Lindbergh”–identical in here with “Mr. Isidor Fisch.” Identical. The w's that he has all over here–identical with his book. It may be easy to copy a “w,” but they are identical, just as you see them on the Hauptmann writing and the anonymous letters. [4476] But there is one thing in here–that “New York” that I made him underline when he was on the stand, because I didn't want you to miss that–S-257. Now, he has this “New York” in this fashion. You have the book right there and you will find that while it is smudged a little bit, the “N” starts with a little hook. Here is the best picture of it, right here. You see that hook up on top and that hook up there. You try and find somebody that writes an “N” that way. He has it four times on one page in his address book–four times. And he underlined it for me–“Deutschland” something “New York,” “New York.” The same thing. Identical. I had him underline it–“New York” again, “New York” again. Now, he has a hyphen between there. I don't place much stock in the hyphen; I don't care about that at all. True, it is a similarity, but I don't put much stock in it. But there that “N,” that “Y”–why, they are identical with all of these things, identical with this sleeping wrapper, the “New York,” the same “N” as there. Now, this is his book and there are so many things in this book, if you will only have the time, if it is necessary at all–the word “Dodge,” the D's and everything about his handwriting. Why, it is just a picture of his ransom notes, that is all–the numbers. And when he comes to this automobile accident that he talked about, and Alexander Berg, the “x,” you will find the “x” again right as you have got it in the ransom notes–there it is, Alexander Berg, there is a check there, you [4477] will find it, you will find Third Avenue on the same page, the open “a” again, the same thing as the sleeping garment. Why, the books reek with evidence, and he says it looks like it. Now, not only that, but then we have got the “boad.” When we get to his handwriting, that is a peculiar thing, isn't it? I mean, after all, you don't spell “boat” that way. And when did he write “boad?” He wrote “Boad” when he got the $50,000. It is an important note, it is not only a ransom note, this is the fellow that got the $50,000 on the spot. Have I got that “boad?” No, I mean the ransom note.

As soon as I get through with this handwriting, we will take a little recess, if you don't mind, if your Honor please, as soon as I get through with the handwriting and then I will conclude shortly. Now, when he got the $50,000–you know, after all, jurors, we spent so much time in this case, thirty days or more than forty days altogether, more than thirty days of trial time, you have got to be generous with me and you have got to be patient with me, please.

Now, when he got that $50,000, he told them where the boy was, “On the boad Nellie,” b-o-a-d. Now, here is his book. We didn't write it for him, it is a book of his accounts from California, of his trip in California. And there he has got all these items. Oh, it goes through everything, his book of accounts, his expenses. He was keeping this little account because Kloppenburg was with him and Kloppenburg was supposed to pay one-third, you see, so he put down every item, 80 cents for this and 50 cents for film and a bridge, he evidently paid 75 cents [4478] car fare, fare 50 cents, films $1, camp 50 cents, airplane ride $12, and he has got from day to day what he spent. And we found this book. Frankly, I didn't notice the word “boad” until I walked into the room here that morning. No secret about it at all. But just in turning the pages, the word “boad” struck somebody, who pointed it out to me, and there it was, b-o-a-d, just exactly as he has got it in here–not only the misspelling, but everything; “boad.” Now that was a little peculiar. And he comes from Saxony, he says, and it was natural that he should write “boad,” b-o-a-d, if he wrote it at all. And so we find it here, and we find it there.

And what explanation does he give? “Well,” he says, “now after all that may have been eight years ago I wrote it in this book;” he says, “You know a man learns something in eight years, he changes.” Or whatever he said. But the next day I showed him that this was about the California trip which he wrote in 1931, three months before the murder. So it wasn't eight years at all. Do you see? He got caught there, and, of course, he tried to squirm out, so he says, “Well, that was about eight years ago; men change,” he said. Well, here is the answer: he is the fifty thousand, b-o-a-d, right there. I have had it stamped there so that you can see it when you get in the jury room. Now, what else? This little book also shows his meticulous records. I want to get through with the handwriting. Every time he he has “anything,” he writes “anyding;” every time he says “everything,” he writes “everyding”–just that “d” in there, just like in the “boad.” He writes “w-e-r-e” for “where,” in- [4479] stead of w-h-e-r-e; “gut”–every time he wants to say the child is in good care he says “the child is in gut care,” g-u-t, or g-u-t-e; “singnature” for “signature;” senventy for seventy, Lindenbergh for Lindbergh, the extra “n” in there all the time; m-o-n-y for “money,” instead of m-o-n-e-y; the dollar sign after the amount; note for not; the for they; hte, he has got it reversed. Now, in his book of accounts he has got an account for Curtiss-Wright. He spells Curtiss-Wright the way he spells the “ght,” and the “hgt,” and you will see them as you look at them. He has got them transposed. When he wants to say “be there,” he says sometimes “by” instead of b-e–sometimes he spells it b-e-e. Now people make these mistakes, of course, but they would make all the mistakes together. You see what I mean? In other words, all these characteristics are his. You may make a mistake, you may spell note n-o-t-e, but if you spell note, n-o-t-e, you wouldn't spell signature. s-i-n-g–somebody else would make that mistake. But he makes all these mistakes. Two hundred and ninety-seven undotted i's; 391 uncrossed t's. That's in his request writing. In the notes there are 507. Just about balance. He never crosses the t's, except in a very rare instance; he never dots his i's, except in a very rare instance; he never closes the o's, except in a very rare instance. When you get the broker's letter, as I have pointed out already to you, you will get the X. And I think that substantially covers the handwriting.

Now, the reason I have spent so much time on handwriting, men and women, is this: that if you come to the conclusion, as you must, that he wrote those notes, that's all you need; that's [4480] all anybody needs. The fellow that wrote the notes is the fellow who got the $50,000. The fellow that wrote the note with the sleeping garment is the fellow that had the sleeping garment. The fellow that had the sleeping garment had the baby. He was in the room and he left the note, but he had to have the baby to have the sleeping garment. It is the same chain. But more important than that, after he is out of that room for three days he writes a letter, and he says, the fellow that writes the letter says, “Why don't you follow the instructions of the note that we left in the baby's room?” The writer says, that we left in the baby's room; that is his confession, that is his admission, “We left it in the baby's room.”

“We are the right party.” He tells Condon “We are the right party.” He tells Lindbergh, “We are the right party.” The notes alone are sufficient to convict him of murder in the first degree. Now I will come to the other parts right after this recess and possibly in ten or fifteen minutes will conclude. May we have a recess, if your Honor please?

[After recess].

MR. WILENTZ (continuing summation): I know some of the members of this jury have been ill, and I wasn't told until a minute [4481] ago that one of them has been quite ill, and I wouldn't have taken as much time. Now I will try to conclude.

One of the very important things in this case is the question of when this gentleman stopped his work. We said he quit on the 2nd of April, or the 4th of April, said he worked two days in April. And the record book here shows that he did not work on April 2nd, but did come back and resigned on the 4th. I think they give him credit for two days or something like that but, whatever it is, it is agreed, it is admitted, that on April 2nd, whether he worked or whether he didn't work, that was the last day, if not that day, Monday–that he hasn't done an honest day's work since, that is the day the ransom money was paid. He says that he quit his job because they only paid him $80 a month. We say he quit his job because he got $50,000. Did he get $80 a month? His proof, not ours–he brought it in–his proof shows that he was getting $100 a month. Here is the exact and the original page brought in by the defense, not planted by the police, and this is the copy of everybody's payroll, not only Hauptmann's, and the significant thing is that it doesn't say that he worked April the 2nd. It says there that he only worked two days in April, and our man testified yes, he worked Friday and he worked Monday. He quit Saturday. That was the day he made arrangements to collect the ransom. But his story about quitting on account of $80 a month, that is just another one of these alibis and excuses. He had to tell you why he quit. Supposing he did quit on account of getting $80 a month instead of $100. He [4482] didn't try to get a job any other place. Of course not. He had too much money. He had more money than this jury and myself, all of us put together. Now, I am going to dismiss that, and it is important.

I didn't want to get away from the handwriting without giving you the opinion of J. Clark Sellers, one of the most famous men and one of the most delightful citizens of this world, from Los Angeles, a man that was appointed by the Court in the Rudolph Valentino case, in the case of Jean Harlow's husband, the man who was called upon to determine the handwriting in the Hickman murder case–that was another kidnaping and murder case–and the man whose record on this stand never indicated one reversal. And that sums up the opinion of every one of these men: Osborn, Stein, Tyrrell, Walter Cassidy, Souder. “I am convinced absolutely that Mr. Hauptmann wrote the ransom notes and addressed the envelopes in which they were sent, and addressed the wrapper in which the sleeping suit was returned. I am not only saying that Hauptmann wrote the ransom documents, but I am saying no one else did. So convincing to my mind is the proof that Mr. Hauptmann wrote each and every one of these ransom notes that he might just as well have signed each and every one of them.”

Now what did Hauptmann do? He left his home in the Bronx, he came down with his automobile; he had been around planning it. He was seen in the vicinity one or two or three times. Oh, it doesn't matter; he may have been seen there before or he may have never been [4483] seen there. Criminals, as I said before, never rehearse these things. He came down there with that ladder. He built it as a carpenter would. He just knew exactly what it would do. It is a light ladder; when it is put together it fits in exactly. The sections aren't just put right here so that they will fit. If they would, I could twirl it around, a man who never did any physical or manual labor in his life, myself, I could carry that ladder in one arm and twirl it around. It was a cinch for this fellow, a cinch for this fellow. He had the three sections. When he saw that the third section would hit that shutter–he didn't think Lindbergh would be home that night; Lindbergh was supposed to be making a speech that night in New York–all the papers carried it, I think the testimony shows. He came there, and when he put those two sections together, it was easy. Why if this ladder was up, I would climb it for you. It is a cinch. And he walked in there, this fellow with the panther step, this fellow with the big hands, he walked in there, into that room, and in to that baby, and there he grabbed that child; out he came, out that window. Oh, it was a little difficult; it would have been easier if there were two or three of them. But whether anybody was with him or whether anybody was not, he was there. It is his ladder; it is his note. He was in that room. And down he comes. The child is dead. He had crushed that child already, mind you, into insensibility before he came out of that room. The ladder breaks and down he comes along this rail, this wooden rail there that is down there at the bottom, alongside the Lindbergh home, underneath the window, the testimony is. There, you will see the ladder marks right [4484] with this rail there, it is a sort of a boardwalk and whether the child hit the concrete wall of the house or hit anything, the child's skull was crushed.

Sure, Mr. Reilly says, the mud would have been thrown up, and the mud was thrown up, the holes show it. The ladder holes are a little larger than it would take for the ladder. And there, knowing the child was dead, as he walked out to get to his car, as he was sneaking out, hundreds of feet away, still on the Lindbergh estate, he took the sleeping garment and he ripped it off that child, and he had the sleeping garment. Now, men and women, don't be weak, don't be weak. If he got that sleeping garment from somebody else, he had a chance to tell it to you. If he wrote those notes for somebody else, he had the chance to tell it. He hasn't told his lawyer a thing; he hasn't told this jury a thing; he didn't tell the Judge in the Supreme Court a thing–he has got nothing to tell. No, he proceeded on his way. If he left the body right there on the Lindbergh premises, he would never collect the money. He had to hide it. He hid it in the first convenient place, the first convenient place where he thought they would never find it. He didn't need the body, all he needed was that sleeping garment to get the money. He was right, he got the money, nobody else. Now men and women, I told you before, I cannot be too emphatic about it, not because it is my notion of the law, it is the Court's: If we had to prove by an eye witness this man walking up this rail, if we had to prove that to you, why the Court would have told you in the [4485] first place. There was nobody in the bedroom when he came in. Nobody saw him walk in. As I told you before, civilization and society would sink to such low levels that nobody would be protected, there would be no society; there would be no civilization, if we cannot cope with murderers and criminals in the fashion that we are. The trouble about civilization, the trouble about the people, decent people, is that they have bent backwards trying to be fair. Criminals go forward, thinking of nothing. We are all trying–we are scared to death–somebody says we are not treating them nice enough. Now you have got hundreds of reason, every uncrossed “t,” every undotted “i,” the chisel, the ladder, the sleeping suit, the tracing of the wood to the Bronx lumber yard, the ransom notes, Hochmuth, their witness Lupica, Rossiter, Perrone, Miss Alexander, Cecilia Barr, the closet board, the plane marks, the board in the attic, the word “boad,” the bank accounts, the brokerage accounts, the radio, the $400 radio at a time when he wasn't working, this poor carpenter–his poor wife that had slaved–he lost her money in the stock market before this case, had paid $400 for a radio. I have earned ten or fifteen thousand dollars a day myself and never bought a $400 radio. And here is a poor carpenter, a poor carpenter, a poor carpenter that had slaved at $100 a month, frugal, thrifty, that kept an account of eighty cents for this and eighty cents for that and he spends $400 for a radio. When? During a time when the country was in the midst of the worst depression in its history, 1932. $125 for field glasses, field glasses! Talk about luxury! Trips to Florida. Every one of these things is important and not [4486] denied. That's not my story, that's his. Why, that radio, that radio should convict him. The field glasses should convict him. That shows the guilty knowledge. That shows easy come, easy go. That's the story. Why, I remember some of the jurors when they were being questioned, one of the jurors said no, he never owned a radio–this fellow with a $400 radio without a job, not working, not looking for work. He buys a canoe.

Colonel Lindbergh's identification of his voice, if it is good enough for Colonel Lindbergh under oath, if Colonel Lindbergh says to you, “That is the man who murdered my child,” men and women, that is good enough. Now, you hesitate before you reject that kind of testimony. He didn't volunteer that. Counsel asked him what his opinion was. Counsel asked him who he thought–I didn't ask him–counsel asked him who he thought was the murderer of his child.

He sends his wife to Germany when he isn't working. He dresses her. He gives her a trip to Germany. She bought a chest of silverware there. God! I don't care if she buys five thousand sets of silverware. There isn't anything I wish–people, if they want to go to Germany, it is all right with me. I am not a bit envious of anybody. But all I want them to do is not to take this money as the result of a murder. That is all. She bought her silverware in Germany with money and the fruits of this ransom money which he got because he had the baby's sleeping suit. The ten dollar bill he gave to Lyle is a rea- [4487] son for his conviction. The twenty dollar bill that he gave to the vegetable man and the twenty dollar bill to the shoe store man. The fact that he concealed the money from his wife, that he hid it in that garage, the fact that he hid it at all is the best indication of his guilt. His lies to the authorities, his lies to the Bronx, his perjury before the Supreme Court there, his perjury here about signature. He stopped work on April the 2nd, don't forget that. And don't forget that you are not dealing with a man who comes in here clean. Don't forget that you are not dealing with a man that is not experienced in crime. Don't forget that when you found that $15,000 you found it in the garage of a man who, Condon said, gave him the sleeping suit; who eight of the best experts in the world said wrote the notes that went with the sleeping suit, who wrote the note that was in that nursery. Don't forget it is the same man who bought lumber from the Bronx lumber yard. We knew that before he was arrested. The same man from whose attic that lumber came. Don't forget all these avenues fit right in.

Now, the State of New Jersey takes no pride in this prosecution, men and women. Do you suppose that the Governor and the Legislature feel that they would like to get into this thing? Why, we have only tried this case, we are only a party to this case for the same reason that you are. Hauptmann made us the victims; he picked Hunterdon County, he picked the State of New Jersey, as the scene of his crime and we, as victims, have got to suffer for it. We have got to come here to try the case, because the Constitution says that the trial shall [4488] be had in the district in which the crime was committed. Very likely, up in Newark or in New York, the court rooms are larger, it would be more convenient, but no, we had to come to Flemington and we had to come to the State of New Jersey, because of Hauptmann, because of Hauptmann's conduct, because he selected East Amwell Township as the scene of his crime. And so we are here, to do nothing except our duty. And all we ask is that you do your duty. We are not concerned about what the mob is clamoring for, as counsel refers to it, but you can bet your life if there is a clamor from the people of this country for this man's conviction, regarding which I don't know anything, except as referred to by counsel, I have sufficient faith in the American people to know that it is their honest belief and conviction that he is the murderer. Otherwise, there would be no clamor, if there is one.

Now, my adversary took the liberty of addressing Colonel Lindbergh in his closing, and I am going to do the same thing. I want you to know, Colonel, that we cannot return your baby. No king, no nation, or no country can. There is no question about that. We could try this case forever, we could go on for days and days–we couldn't do anything for Colonel Lindbergh. But we could do one thing in this case, let me tell you–this jury can, by its verdict, do one thing for the Colonel, for Anne, for the country–we can make the country a little bit more secure, we can make the children a little safer, we can make women a little happier. This fellow has been the inspiration for the greatest series of the meanest crimes in the history of the world. [4489] Why, the American gangster never knew what it was to murder a child or murder anybody kidnaped. He would take the person and he would return him for the money. There was some honor amongst thieves. There was some honor in those gangs. When they took a man and they said, “Pay the ransom,” they gave the man back. They wouldn't take a child and murder him.

He taught them a new system. He said, “Take the fellow you are going to kidnap, murder him, and they can't catch you. How can they catch you, because you haven't got him? How are they going to get you?” He taught them that and since that time this country has been cursed with the meanest and worst series of crimes it has ever experienced. He hastened the death of Violet Sharpe. He disgraced Betty Gow. He has brought shame down upon Condon, unfair shame, in this court room, vilification and abuse. Why, he has left in the train of his activities not only the meanest series of crimes and been the inspiration for them, but he has caused more sorrow in millions of homes in this country than anybody could calculate. Why, for months, for years, as soon as a mother came into a house and found a child was missing, the first thought was, “The child is kidnaped.” Panic in every home, sorrow in every home. And I want to tell you, men and women, yes, we can't restore this child. We can't do it. I have no doubt that people in this country would lay down their lives for him, but we can't do it and they can't do it in any other country.

But if this jury will do its duty, we can trans- [4490] late Colonel Lindbergh's loss and worry into some gain for civilization, to show that whether we catch a man walking into the room or not, we can crush them, we can crush these snakes, we can crush these criminals, that society isn't so weak that we can't deal with them. That's the job that you can do. You can serve society so society will gain, even at Colonel Lindbergh's loss; and I know that if civilization will have some little gain out of it, as difficult as it is, Colonel Lindbergh will feel that the effort in this case has been worth while, notwithstanding his great loss.

Now, men and women, I have been here all this time, and I want to say to you again I appreciate very keenly, I appreciate more than I can tell, not only through all this trial, but through all these hours that I have been with you this afternoon, when some of you are ill and not feeling well–can't I say to you again that as far as I am concerned I have no interest. There isn't a thing in this world that the Attorney General of New Jersey wants except to be left alone, to lead a normal and happy life. He doesn't want any promotions; he has no ambition, the Lord has been very good to him. If he should die tomorrow he would have no feeling of regret, and no feeling other than that the Lord has been marvellous to him. I am here just to do my duty, as you are. We want nothing but a square deal for the people. There is no gain in it for this table–Tony Hauck, who doesn't get an extra dollar for every one of these days–men who have spent their lives, day and night, working. Why? Men who never wronged anybody, never an evil thought has crossed the mind of a fellow [4491] like Tony Hauck. He couldn't sit at that table if he didn't think and wasn't convinced this fellow was guilty. The same thing with Judge Large, Bob Peacock, Joe Lanigan, Stockton and the rest of the boys. Let me tell you, all we want is a square deal. We want no disgrace on the State of New Jersey. Gosh! how we have worked for that, to present this case and this proof with fairness, with decency, so that the United States of America and the world would feel, “Yes, we will convict him, but we convict him fairly.” Mr. Reilly says the case is too perfect. No case can be too perfect. But it is perfect; and it is only perfect because of his conduct. Every piece of evidence that we have he has presented to us. Now, men and women, as I told you before, there are some cases, there are some cases in which a recommendation of mercy might do. But not this one, not this one.

Either this man is the filthiest and vilest snake that ever crept through the grass, or he is entitled to an acquittal. And if you believe, as we do, you have got to convict him. Now, I want to say something about this, about the members of the profession that have participated in this trial. Just forget us all. Please forget Mr. Reilly and Mr. Fisher and Mr. Pope, and Mr. Peacock and Tony Hauck and Judge Large–all of us. If you know any of us, of course, you don't know all of us, but if you are at all friendly with any of the men at the table, just remember that we are merely doing our share and our part in this case. We are only actors; our per- [4492] sonalities, our conduct, the friendships that you may have with any of the members, or relation, if there is any, no matter how distant, remember it has got nothing to do with this case. You determine it absolutely upon the evidence and forget Wilentz and Reilly and everybody else–determine it upon the evidence, the weight of the evidence.

Did you ever see that scale, the American scale of justice? Here is how it hangs now (indicating), way up there is the testimony of the State of New Jersey, way down in its lowest ebb is Hauptmann, Hauptmann, dangling on there, dangling on the hope and on the straw, right at the bottom of that scale, hoping that one juror, one juror may do it, may do it for Fisher, may do it for Reilly, may do it for somebody else, hoping that he will get life imprisonment instead of death. What does life imprisonment mean? Nothing. Maybe in fifteen years he will walk the streets again. The scales are up there with Hauptmann dangling down there, only because of the testimony. We have proven it overwhelmingly, conclusively, positively. Now, jurors, there is no excuse, you would never forgive yourself if you didn't do it, you wouldn't be happy, you wouldn't feel right, honestly you wouldn't. You convict this man of murder in the first degree. The Grand Jury of the County of Hunterdon had the courage to do it. The State of New Jersey has the courage. They stand here unafraid and ask for the penalty. Why? Because they know they are right. Now, jurors, it is up to you, we leave the burden with you. I assure you, when I sit down, that is the end of this case with me. [4493] It is your responsibility and grave as it is, important as it is, it is still your responsibility and don't shirk it. You have got a chance to do something for society that nobody else in the entire county of Hunterdon will ever have an equal chance and you have got to do that, you have got to do it. If you bring in a recommendation of mercy, a wishy-washy decision–yes, it is your province, I will not say a word about it, I will not say another word, once I sit down here in this case so far as the jury and its verdict is concerned. But it seems to me that you have and you will have the courage if you are convinced, as all of us are, the Federal authorities, the Bronx people who were there, the New Jersey State Police who were here, the lawyers who were here, Colonel Lindbergh who was here, everybody that has testified, if you believe with us, you have got to find him guilty of murder in the first degree. Of course, if you want to line up with Hauptmann, if you want to get over to that side of the rail, men and women, I can find no fault with you, provided it is based on the testimony.

A Voice: If your Honor please–

Mr. Wilentz: If your Honor please, I want that man taken out. Take him out.

Mr. Reilly: If your Honor please, may I address you?

Mr. Wilentz: May we have it at side Bar, if your Honor please?

The Court: Yes, certainly.

[4494] Mr. Reilly: May we have the jury polled as to whether they heard what he said?

Mr. Wilentz: Did he say anything?

Mr. Reilly: He shouted out something.

Mr. Wilentz: If he did, it would be in your favor.

Mr. Reilly: No, it wouldn't.

Mr. Wilentz: Did he say anything? I didn't hear anything.

The Court: I don't know whether he did or whether he didn't. I didn't hear anything myself except “Your Honor.”

Mr. Wilentz: I stopped him as soon as he started.

Mr. Reilly: I think he ought to be committed to an insane asylum. They tell me he is a rector of a small church up on the banks of the Hudson here, more of a mission. He came to see me once and I threw him out. He was here the very first day dressed that way and I had the troopers throw him out. He is the brother of that man that escaped in Georgia, Burns.

Mr. Wilentz: I think he ought to be put in jail anyway.

Mr. Reilly: So do I.

The Court: Where is he now?

[4495] Mr. Wilentz: I don't mean now, but after the jury is out, if your Honor please, I think this fellow ought to be jailed. He has enough intelligence to know better than that.

Mr. Large: After the jury retires.

The Court: After the jury retires? (Further conference of counsel was held at side Bar.)

Mr. Wilentz: If your Honor please, counsel have agreed that while we don't know what the intruder did say or didn't say, that if the jury heard it, whatever it was, of course, they will disregard it.

Mr. Reilly: Yes.

The Court: Yes.

Mr. Wilentz: And we ask, too, if your Honor please, that at the conclusion of this case, your Honor deal properly with the gentleman who interrupted the Court proceedings for contempt of Court.

The Court: Yes. Well now, let me say to you ladies and gentlemen–I wish someone would take that thing away. I like to look at people when I talk to them. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is very unfortunate that this scene had to occur here and that it did occur. I don't imagine that the jury heard anything that this man said, except [4496] his exclamation that he wanted to address the Court; but if, perchance, you did hear anything that he said, my instruction to you is, at the request of counsel on both sides, that you utterly and entirely disregard anything that you heard and forget the scene. Now, I had rather hoped to be able to charge you tonight, but the hour is now late and, if undertook to charge you and send you out tonight, it would be long after the recess hour when you would get out, and I would personally think that it is better for us to take an adjournment until tomorrow morning at ten o'clock, unless some member of the jury has some communication to make to the Court to the contrary. I think it is better for you to get a good night's sleep and take the case in the morning with a fresh mind. The jury appears to acquiesce in that, and so the jury may retire now and come in tomorrow morning at ten o'clock.