Lindbergh Page 8
He transferred his family and his law practice to New York City, where Donovan’s expertise with antitrust cases helped make his already-prestigious law firm into one of the most successful and influential in the country. So did his political connections. By the night of March 1, 1932, as he was preparing to run for the governorship of New York, it was his criminal-law experience that counted. Even though he could not participate that actively or openly, he could entrust a bulk of the details regarding the child’s disappearance to a young lawyer in his office who was friendly with the Lindberghs, Robert A. Thayer. Thayer, married to a society debutante and a regular on the café-society scene, was friendly with a good many underworld characters. He would remain a regular on the case. But if there was any one person with the ability to concoct a strategy that fit Lindbergh and Breckinridge’s needs, it was Donovan.
Either at their own insistence or that of President Hoover, two old adversaries of Bill Donovan would soon be contacting the Lindbergh estate and offering their services: the attorney general of the United States, William D. Mitchell, and the head of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, J. Edgar Hoover. Their being kept out of the investigation would be attributed to the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police: Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf arrived at the Lindbergh estate toward midnight on March 1. The grounds around the main house had not been sealed off, and reporters and sightseers roamed the area at will, destroying essential evidence. Though this was identical to what had occurred ten years before in the Hall-Mills murders and was a failing for which the state police had shared severe criticism, Schwarzkopf initially did nothing to preserve the scene outside the Lindbergh house. He also rejected suggestions that bloodhounds be set on the trial of the kidnappers, by saying the animals were not available. Contradicted by a neighbor who claimed that several hundred of the dogs could have been rounded up and put into action, Schwarzie shifted explanations and said he had been told that bloodhounds were not effective when the ground was wet. This would come back to plague him, as would his adamancy at conducting a thorough inspection of the estate and surrounding terrain. He turned down the offer made by a Lindbergh family friend, Dr. John Grier Hibben, who was the president of Princeton University, to have his students mount a massive foot-by-foot search of the entire countryside. When Schwarzkopf did take direct action in those early hours, such as clearing the estate of media people and unauthorized visitors, it seemed to come at the behest of Lindbergh and his advisers.
Herbert Norman Schwarzkopf marched in the shadow of great men, and he was comfortable there. The first great man, in his estimation, was his father. Herbert was born in Newark, New Jersey, on August 28, 1895, the only child of second-generation German Americans. Disliking the nickname Bertie, he took an early lead from the disciplinarian father he both admired and adored, J. George Schwarzkopf, a jewelry designer, and dropped Herbert in favor of its initial. H. Norman graduated from Newark’s Barringer High School and in June of 1913 entered the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Schwarzie, or “the genial German gink,” as he was known by his brother cadets, offset average grades with ferocious athletic overachievement and music.3 Built somewhat like a beer keg, he played football, basketball, handball, and polo; he swam, boxed, was a sharpshooter, managed the handball team, and sang in the choir for three years. Schwarzie’s ravenous appetite at the football-training table became legendary among his peers. Fourteen days after the United States officially went to war with Germany, he graduated from West Point with the ranking of 88 in a class of 136.
Lieutenant Schwarzkopf’s cavalry regiment was converted into an artillery unit and sent to France as part of the American Expeditionary Force’s recently created Third Division. He was put in command of D Battery, which joined the division at the Marne River in June of 1918. On July 15, the Boche attacked. Their shelling smashed the Allied artillery, and the French retreated. The Americans held and fought back the German onslaught. Lieutenant Schwarzkopf had survived his first ordeal by fire. He spent fifty more days of sporadic fighting at the front before being felled by mustard gas. His combat days over, he convalesced and entered the land of his ancestors, Germany, with the Army of Occupation. He spoke German and was made provost marshal of an agricultural area, where he also functioned as mayor and civil judge. Following a two-year absence, he returned to America a career officer.
Lieutenant Schwarzkopf’s idol was General John J. (“Black Jack”) Pershing, commander of the AEF, who had demanded the near superhuman from his men, remained aloof, and didn’t care a hoot what anyone said about him as long as the job got done, qualities Schwarzie would attempt to emulate most of his life. Once stateside, he reported to the Seventh Cavalry at Fort Bliss, Texas, and was appointed assistant provost marshal for the El Paso district. His promotion to captain was followed by orders to lead a border-patrol unit that was on the lookout for Pancho Villa. Before he could assume command, his father fell ill.
On July 15, 1920, Captain H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the professional soldier (whose son one day would lead the coalition forces in Operation Desert Storm), resigned his commission and went home to New Jersey to care for his disabled parent. Among the civilian jobs he took was floorwalker at a local department store. One of the old friends he came in contact with had been a fellow officer in France, Captain Irving Edwards, whose father, Edward I. Edwards, was governor of New Jersey. The governor was searching for someone to organize and run the newly legislated state-police force. Irving Edwards urged Schwarzie to send in his application. H. Norman complied.
Most towns and rural villages in New Jersey, whether they had a constable or not, relied on the county detective in matters of serious crime. The state’s larger municipalities and emerging industrial centers had their own police departments, which usually didn’t need assistance from the county. As the automobile began to erode their protective cloak of distance, communities in the hinterlands demanded more extensive services. Some legislators thought the best way to achieve this was by creating a statewide police agency. The county detectives, who felt they were providing adequate protection, opposed the idea. They had powerful allies on both the right and the left. Conservative legislators perceived such a police force as an intrusion on home rule. Pro-labor politicians viewed it as another antiworker weapon in a state already noted for its union-busting tactics.
In 1921, after seven years of bitter and often divisive haggling, the New Jersey legislature voted on the bill introduced by Clarence E. Case, the senator from Somerset County, to create a state police. Party politics prevailed with the pro-police antilabor Republicans outpolling the antipolice pro-labor Democrats. Governor Edwards, a Democrat, vetoed the bill, only to be overridden by the state senate and assembly. On March 29, the creation of a state-sponsored police force was recorded as law.
Jersey City’s power broker Democrat mayor, Frank Hague, who had initially opposed a state police—among other objections, he viewed it as a threat to his control over the existing urban police departments—now actively sought to place one of his underlings in charge of the newly enacted organization. Governor Edwards, a maverick who was beholden to Hague, surprised the Jersey City boss and most everyone else by picking an unknown former army officer to be superintendent, H. Norman Schwarzkopf, whose main qualifications for the job seemed to have been that he was nonpolitical and a friend of the governor’s son.
Mediawise the new superintendent was an utter novice. Those papers that had endorsed the state-police bill tended to support his appointment and early progress. Many of those who fought the bill, predictably, were critical. It was with the individual reporters that Schwarzie had a hard time. He was described as a “cold fish,”4 and a perception persisted of the superintendent’s being a minor martinet without a sense of humor. Discrepancies regarding his past, the mother’s milk of muckraking journalism, were found. According to military records, he was born in 1885 and was therefore thirty-six years old when he assumed the position. Cer
tain papers were printing he was twenty-nine or even twenty-five. That the state’s new anticrime czar had been a floorwalker became a standard gibe. His most ardent antagonist was Jersey City’s Jersey City Journal, which had supported Frank Hague’s choice for the post of state-police superintendent. A favorite rumor by detractors held that Schwarzie tended to fib not only about his age but about his height as well.
H. Norman Schwarzkopf organized and trained his initial group of state-police recruits in a thoroughly military fashion, thereby giving rise to criticism that he was creating a militia rather than a law-enforcement agency. He had little knowledge of civilian police procedures and crime and displayed small interest in the subject. Most everything about the newly created organization was military. Schwarzkopf’s four aides-de-camp were former army officers, and the first state-police academy was comprised of army tents set up at the National Guard summer training ground at Sea Girt. Though they came from all walks of life, most of the trainees had seen military service. A portion of the men were drilled in the riding and care of horses. Others were prepared for operating motorcycles and automobiles.
Of the 116 recruits who started the first training camp, 66 graduated as troopers, and 15 were assigned other duties. Schwarzkopf designed a tailored, military-type uniform for his organization: tan boots, olive riding breeches, leather belt, and a dark blue fitted blouse with a roll collar. Officers sported a version of the Sam Browne belt that forced them to “brace” like a West Point cadet. The mounted troopers were issued U.S. Cavalry-style campaign hats. The motorcycle police and all other personnel wore stiff crown caps, which were designed to make them tuck in their chins and hold their heads erect. The three points of the triangular badge and shoulder patch on the uniform emphasized the motto of the new police force, “Honor—Duty—Fidelity,” a paraphrase of the motto of West Point.
Superintendent Schwarzkopf was an absolute commander whose word was gospel. His General Order 1 set forth the mission of the trooper in the field: to prevent crime, to pursue and apprehend violators, to execute any lawful warrant or order of arrest, to give first aid to the injured, to act as warden in the protection of fish and game, to have the powers of motor vehicle inspectors, to be subject to the call of the governor, and to preserve law and order throughout the state.
On December 5, 1921, the first New Jersey State Police motorcycle unit mounted Harley-Davidsons and roared out on duty, generally in the central and northern parts of the state, where the roads were paved. The horseback troopers were assigned to the remote farms and villages in the southern portion of New Jersey, where dirt thoroughfares abounded. After six months of patrolling, the troopers had tallied 767 arrests for motor vehicle violations, including speeding, driving without a license, and drunken driving. The majority of their 431 criminal-violation arrests were for drunk and disorderly conduct and petty larceny and burglary. By the end of the year, Prohibition had reached New Jersey, and on Christmas Eve 1921 the state police raided their first still and seized two hundred gallons of hooch.5
As 1922 progressed, Schwarzkopf’s police proved no match for New Jersey’s rampaging bootleggers. Neither did anyone else, with the possible exception of Ellis Parker, Sr., a county detective with a national reputation for crime fighting and whose exploits had an uncanny knack of finding their way into newsprint. Schwarzie himself coveted publicity but was extremely sensitive to criticism. Troopers were instructed by Schwarzkopf to cut out and send in only those articles that depicted the superintendent and the state police in a positive light.6 There weren’t all that many, not in the larger city newspapers, anyway. When H. Norman did make contact with reporters, he was still awkward and often inept. Thanks in part to Ellis Parker, who had opposed the formation of the state police and who was a past master at chatting up news folk, the general impression prevailed that troopers were glorified traffic cops with no ability to conduct a criminal investigation. This image wasn’t helped when in October of 1922, Governor Edwards ordered the state police to solve New Jersey’s, and the nation’s, most sensational and most publicized crime, the Hall-Mills murders. The troopers had only a minimal hand in the Hall-Mills investigations and trial, but they were to be stigmatized by the same accusations of inefficiency, stupidity, and incompetence that were leveled against those in charge of the monumentally bungled case.
Schwarzkopf had created no Scotland Yard, bragged of no first-rank detectives, and had no need of them until the evening of March 1, when the Lindbergh baby was reported missing.7 If he and his men were beyond their element in having the jurisdictional responsibility to investigate what instantly became the most notorious crime of modern times, Schwarzkopf never let it be seen by reporters, from whom he tried to distance himself. From what the press could observe, he was perfectly content to let someone else deal with them, and he appeared peacock proud to be in the company of Lindbergh and his prestigious advisers, Henry Breckinridge and Congressional Medal of Honor-winner William J. Donovan.
7
Sleight of Hand
Sorrel Hill had become a bustling command post ruled entirely by Charles Lindbergh. The garage now included twenty police operators manning the phones and Teletypes installed in an improvised communications center to which special cables from nearby Princeton were being laid. Stringent secrecy was the order of the day. Lindbergh’s rationale for extreme security measures, echoed by Breckinridge, was his firmly stated resolve to have a free, unfettered hand in dealing with the kidnappers, with no interference by police or investigatory agencies of any ilk. In one respect this proved effective. Even though they were being told there was no ransom note, most everyone beyond Lindy’s inner circle, including law-enforcement organizations and the media, believed a message had been left and anticipated the kidnappers’ next move. They kept their attention on the future meeting with the kidnappers and ignored the past, particularly the specious past, which reporters and policemen routinely examine when it comes to crimes such as a kidnapping. There would be one or two minor items in the New York papers about Lindbergh’s missing the Waldorf-Astoria banquet the night before, March 1, and local scribblings that Anne’s sister Elisabeth had not been seen for several days, but this was lost under a tidal wave of breaking stories on the child’s abduction and the efforts to find him. The specious past, had anyone bothered to search in depth, might have provided answers to crucial questions to come.
By the afternoon of March 2, Lindbergh, who had gone without sleep, appeared not the least bit weary and seemed to oversee and direct every detail in the effort to recover the missing child. All personnel, police or civilian, answered to Lindy. Nothing could be done without his approval. He expected no one to disobey an order he had issued. But his dictates, like his determination to deal directly with the kidnappers, were subject to contradictions and inconsistencies.
Lindbergh and Breckinridge included Schwarzkopf in some but not all of their strategy meetings. This had more to do with the superintendent’s keeping the police in check and out of the way than it did with policy decisions. One of Lindbergh’s announced procedural objectives for making contact with the kidnappers was to do nothing to scare them off, and if the police had to sit on their hands, so be it. Schwarzkopf obliged by limiting the activities of his own troopers and the sprinkling of experienced men he had brought in from the Newark and Jersey City police departments. He performed an even greater service to the secrecy so cherished by Lindbergh in excluding almost every other investigatory organization—including New Jersey’s county detectives, the New York City Police Department, and J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation—from anything other than support roles, if that. This was as much a result of Schwarzkopf’s xenophobia and thirst for control as it was to please Lindbergh. Schwarzkopf perceived his troopers to be more forceful and in control than they were. His animosity toward Hoover was particularly strong, and he was on the record, unofficially, for saying that he wouldn’t mind taking over the bureau. When Governor Moore attempted to channel all volun
teering outside law-enforcement agencies into a massive support system for the troopers, Schwarzie readily cooperated and rarely used any of the waiting manpower.
Lindbergh and his fellow planners were afforded even more privacy when Schwarzkopf moved the state-police manhunt headquarters from Sorrel Hill to Trenton while leaving troopers to man the communication nerve center in Lindy’s garage. The change of headquarters also split news personnel between Trenton and the town of Hopewell.
One of the most debilitating restrictions Lindy imposed on Schwarzkopf’s investigators was his refusal to let them interview Anne Lindbergh and the family staff. The two Hopewell policemen and the troopers’ Corporal Wolf had managed to ask a few cursory questions the night before, but there was far more that the police wanted to know.
While investigators accepted Lindbergh’s explanation that the baby’s cold was the reason the family was still at the estate on a Tuesday night—which, as we have seen, is partially contradicted by Anne Lindbergh’s private correspondence—the predominant suspicion of those officers privy to the information had to do with what other person or persons also knew the infant was there. Since Lindy, Anne, and the Eaglet had never before remained at Sorrel Hill beyond Monday morning, how could the kidnappers have anticipated they would be there a day and a half later? The answer for many a state trooper and the handful of local police officers allowed to assist them was that it had been an inside job—that a member of the household staff had tipped off the abductors. Lindbergh dismissed such suggestions out of hand. He vouched for the integrity of his employees. The ban on talking to them remained—a prohibition that included the twenty-four-member household staff at his mother-in-law’s estate in Englewood.