Lindbergh Read online

  Lieutenant Arthur T. (“Buster”) Keaten of the New Jersey State Police disobeyed Lindbergh’s edict and engaged Betty Gow in casual conversation. She let it drop that her boyfriend, Finn Henrik (“Red”) Johnsen, not only knew she was at Hopewell on Tuesday helping with the sick baby but had called her there at approximately 8:45 P.M.1 When Betty explained the circumstances for having to cancel their date, Red told her he would drive to West Hartford, Connecticut, and spend the evening at his brother’s home.

  Lieutenant Keaten now had an answer for how the kidnappers learned the baby was still at the estate on Tuesday night—and the state police had their first prime suspect in the crime. An alert went out for Red Johnsen. Rumors spread among reporters that indeed it was an “inside job.”

  Confronted with this new information, Lindbergh let troopers talk further with Gow, which they did at length on March 3. That same day they were able to interview Ollie Whateley about Betty’s arrival and activities at Hopewell on March 1. It would be another week before the police would be allowed to obtain statements from Anne Lindbergh and Elsie Whateley.

  While continuing to insist that no ransom note had been left, Lindbergh agreed to a public action that was generally associated with the receipt of word from a kidnapper: He announced the appointment of “go-betweens” to deal with the felons holding his son. The use of go-betweens—intermediaries acceptable to both parties—was a common practice for families of snatch victims. The two men selected to fill this role for the Lindberghs were Douglas G. Thompson, a former mayor of Englewood, and the late Dwight Morrow’s secretary, Arthur Springer. The press gave this announcement maximum coverage, thereby ensuring the kidnappers would know.

  But if Lindbergh’s professed intention was to demonstrate to the kidnappers that he was cooperating fully, following their written instructions to the word, why risk offering them something they hadn’t requested: go-betweens? All the ransom note had demanded was fifty thousand dollars and that he not contact the police.

  Another violation of the ransom-message instructions, and one that received far less notoriety in the press than the naming of go-betweens, was Lindbergh’s employment of several other men. The night before, Lindy had hired a local mountaineer, who was a former sheriff, to track the footsteps found on the grounds.

  But then why had he refused to let H. Norman Schwarzkopf employ bloodhounds at approximately the same time? Lindbergh refused to accept any questions on the subject, just as he declined comment when he refused the offer of his friend the president of Princeton to provide a foot-by-foot search of the estate and nearby terrain by his student body.

  While Lindbergh recruited the mountaineer, Henry Breckinridge brought in his own investigators, a pair of private eyes, William E. Galvin and John Fogarty. Even before this, Robert Thayer, the young attorney in William J. Donovan’s New York law office, as well as a family friend of the Lindberghs’, had very definite ideas on who should be contacted.

  As Lindbergh’s highly publicized vigil for word from the kidnappers to make contact continued, Schwarzkopf, good on his word not to interfere, kept his men busy in other areas. Cars throughout the state were being stopped and examined in the hope that the baby might be inside. The same was being done in adjoining New York, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Troopers manning the garage communication center were exchanging information with law-enforcement agencies conducting a nine-state manhunt that included an estimated one hundred thousand law-enforcement officers. Call-in tips were being received by the hundreds. Beyond this, impromptu searches, which Lindbergh and Breckinridge very well may not have anticipated, had sprung up across the country. It was already the largest manhunt in American history, and it was accelerating.

  Henry Breckinridge held press conferences every evening at eleven. For newswoman Laura Vitray it seemed that his main concern was making sure the Lindbergh story stayed on the front page. His information seemed always to be accurate. Vitray recalls that whenever he gave a bulletin out at the front gate of Sorrel Hill, the reporters did a swift marathon to the farmhouse up the road with the five-party telephone. “To the thinner belongs the spoils,” she says, “and they usually held the line long enough for their paper to go to press.”2

  Thursday, March 3, began with widespread radio appeals to the kidnappers to start negotiations with the go-betweens and with pledges of secrecy by the Lindberghs. The lead newspaper stories dealt with a bogus ransom postcard received from Boston, a spreading land-sea-air search as “abduction stirs whole nation,” President Herbert Hoover’s putting all federal agents on the search, New York City’s entire nineteen-thousand-man police force being ordered out on “Lindbergh duty,” the parents of the baby waiting for a direct proposal from “daring abductors whose window sill note warned them not to call police,” speculation that the kidnappers might ask that the ransom be dropped by plane, the number of stolen cars being traced, Mrs. Lindbergh being quoted as having said she believed the kidnap gang had watched their home for weeks, looking for a chance to steal the baby (even though she would not be officially interviewed by the police for seven more days), false “clews” by the score being traced in the kidnapping hunt, cars across the country being watched for blond, blue-eyed boy babies, the number of cars being stopped and searched, pressure on the U.S. House of Representatives to enact a federal antikidnapping bill, various profiles on who the abductor might be, the number of phone-in tips being received, and London’s perception that the United States was ruled by gangsters. The lead photograph in one paper was of the three-section ladder; that in another was of the baby and his pet dog, Wahgoosh.

  The front-page news for March 4 told of the search in Detroit and Chicago for an old-time kidnapper and his girlfriend and of the search by the New Jersey State Police for the boyfriend of Betty Gow, the missing baby’s nurse. The headline in the New York Post let it be known that LINDBERGH GETS WORD FROM KIDNAPPERS. It was not true, but the Post had adopted a policy of identifying the source of such information, as the opening paragraph of the story attests: “Hopewell NJ, March 4—Lieutenant Walter J. Coughlin of the New Jersey State troopers informed newspaper men at Trenton this morning that Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh received a message ‘from the kidnappers’ of his infant son.”

  Three-hundred-pound Paul T. (“Pop”) Gebhart could hardly find time to be interviewed and wasn’t sure he should be, considering the tragedy that had happened up the hill at Colonel Lindbergh’s place. But dodging reporters wasn’t all that easy when everywhere you turned there were more reporters. An erstwhile plumber, forty-eight-year-old Pop was the proprietor of Hopewell’s leading hostelry and luncheonette, Gebhart’s Hotel. “Ain’t never seen anything like it,” he said, referring to the horde of media people who had descended on a town of less than a thousand inhabitants. Gebhart’s establishment was in the center of Hopewell and usually closed at 9:00 P.M., but since the night of the kidnapping it had been open around the clock. “Despite the fact that we got seventeen rooms and ain’t had a lot of trouble filling ’em before with railroad and Western Union men, I ain’t never seen a business like this before.”

  With a telephone that didn’t stop ringing and waitresses who hadn’t slept since the fateful night, Gebhart estimated the overflow crowd of reporters, photographers, sound men, and everyone else “professionally interested” in the crime had resulted in a thousand people clamoring for “hamburgers with” and “hotdogs without.” Gebhart went on to say, “All of us around here pity the Colonel, wish him success in his efforts to find his boy.”

  One reporter credited Pop with having made the famous sandwiches that Lindy ate during his flight to Paris in 1927, but Pop didn’t want to comment on this other than to say he wasn’t any hero. “I never had such business as now, but I’m sorry it had to come the way it did.” Then Pop went off and joined Ma in an overheated kitchen, where “hundreds of dishes were being prepared for men more than fed up with the weary journey up to the Lindbergh establishment.”3

  The mos
t interviewed person in Hopewell was Constable Charles W. Williamson, the first man to be called by the Lindbergh household and told of the kidnapping, among the first to reach the estate, and the only one to admit to reporters he was present when the ransom note was read. Since one of his chores for the Hopewell PD was directing traffic in front of Pop Gebhart’s hotel, Charlie was very accessible to newspeople. The more he was interviewed, the more he tended to expand his role in the investigation, at the expense of his chief and the state police. Williamson’s account of having seen footprints that led from outside the nursery to the ladder sections and on to the lane was a nagging reminder that the scene had not been properly protected, that every footprint except one had been obliterated, and that no mold was made of that solitary surviving bit of evidence.

  Laura Vitray interviewed Williamson and subsequently referred to him as Chief Williamson. Her paper had taken an office at Gebhart’s Hotel, and she had talked to most anyone else she could find around Hopewell. Vitray was harsh about the state troopers’ indifference to many tips she considered to be promising. Though she was partial to Henry Breckinridge and usually believed what he had to say, Vitray was confused by a press release he had distributed and was appearing on front pages in the form the reporters had received it: a letter from the Lindberghs to the kidnappers:

  Mrs. Lindbergh and I desire to make a personal contact with the kidnappers of our child.

  Our only interest is in his immediate and safe return and we feel certain that the kidnappers will realize that this interest is strong enough to justify promises that we may make in connection with his return.

  We urge those who have the child to select any representative that they desire to meet a representative of ours who will be suitable to them at any time and at any place that they may designate.

  If this is accepted, we promise that we will keep whatever arrangements that may be made by their representative and ours strictly confidential, and we further pledge ourselves that we will not try to injure in any way those connected with the return of the child.

  Charles A. Lindbergh’s signature appeared in the lower right-hand corner, directly above the signature of Anne Lindbergh.

  What gave Laura Vitray pause was that the Lindberghs again seemed to be treating the kidnappers as if they were people of intellect. What is their perception of a criminal? she asked. Who do they think they are in today’s age?4

  She may have been on to something.

  On March 2 of 1932, Colonel Schwarzkopf wasted no time in acceding to Lindbergh’s request that the state troopers step aside so that Lindy and his advisers could deal directly with the kidnappers of his infant son or do anything else required to ensure the safe return of his baby. This was not an unusual demand or concession with kidnappings for ransom that involved rich and prominent people in America. That the superintendent agreed so rapidly might have been due in part to his regard for the Lone Eagle.

  The reins of the investigation lay more firmly than ever in the hands of Lindbergh and Breckinridge, and controlling the press was still among their top priorities.

  H. Norman was not a man who comprehended or practiced grand deceit. In the steaming political climate of New Jersey, he might have been better off if he did. He had created the state police and managed to keep the organization free of politics. But he and his men had suffered at the hands of local power brokers—and at the hands of the press, whom he never quite understood. Stoic, rigid, and vain, Schwarzkopf was a military man who knew how to give orders and obey them. His association with Lindbergh and Breckinridge was to serve them far better than himself.

  8

  Noble Gangsters

  Whether they loved the Lindberghs, as millions did, or disliked them, as a surprisingly large number seemed to, Americans were fascinated by every aspect of the child’s disappearance, including the house on Sorrel Hill. At a time when only 65 percent of the nation was electrified—in rural areas like Hopewell, only 10 percent of the homes had electricity—the interior of the Lindbergh home was a peek into the scientific and industrial promise of the country, a preview of what most citizens would eventually possess.

  When it came to consumer goods, the Lindberghs were among the one out of every five citizens who owned a car. They and fifteen million other families, or approximately 30 percent of the country’s households, had telephones. Over a million refrigerators had been manufactured the previous year and half a million washing machines—and according to what articles you read, the Lindberghs had one or the other or both. Electric ranges were just becoming popular, and twelve million families already owned radios—and it was not unusual for a manufacturer and, particularly, salesmen to aver that their product was the one used by Charles and Anne, who steadfastly declined to make product endorsements.

  The Lindberghs, their calamity, and what they had and had not were the nation’s diversion, a fleeting respite from the all-oppressive Great Depression. America the first week of March 1932—and 1932 would prove to be the worst year of the depression—was a country with one foot firmly rooted in twentieth-century production-line technology and the other mired in the agrarian past. The population stood at 122.7 million, and the average life expectancy was sixty-one years. Unemployment had jumped from four million to eight million, which meant that one out of every fifteen Americans was out of work. Spending power was drastically reduced, and so was manufacturing. Some 28,300 businesses had failed in the last year, suicides and chow lines established new records, and bank closings reached a peak of 507 in one month.

  Business shutdowns and layoffs had popularized the five-day work week and created a new dilemma: what to do with the newly imposed leisure. Despite hard times and tight money, Americans chose to spend on entertainment. Half their amusement dollars went for vacation travel, where a two-month worldwide steamship voyage could be had for under one thousand dollars—20 percent down and a year to pay the balance. One of the period’s rages was miniature golf, on which $125 million was spent in 1931 alone. Marathon dancing, with its cash rewards to the winners, became a national addiction, as did flagpole and tree sitting and backgammon. The very rich were cautious, if not embarrassed by their resplendent life-style, and so continued to give up their large country estates and move to the city, where they replaced lavish balls with dining out at select restaurants and bistros, thereby creating what was being called café society.

  The Lindberghs, who had the means to fly where and when they liked, shared two major pastimes popular with their fellow Americans and the balance of the depression-racked Western world: taking a spin in a motorcar and going to the movies. Moviegoing in America was an attractive diversion, especially when it occurred in one of the more luxurious theaters, massive and ornate palaces that made it all the easier to escape for several hours from the realities of the depression-time world outside, particularly if the main attractions were a musical or a comedy. Europe, too, was constructing movie palaces. The recreation that remained uniquely American was frequenting a speakeasy—something the Lindberghs were not on record as having done.

  This is not to say Charles Lindbergh didn’t betray more than a passing interest in the mobsters who ran the speakeasies, as well as in criminals in general. By the onset of the kidnapping, not only did they hold a fascination for Lindy, but in many instances he came to trust and rely on them more than on law-enforcement agencies. Assuming my supposition is correct, this might have been expected. If his master plan were to work, criminals would have to participate.

  Prohibition had evolved a new economic and social curiosity: the rich, influential, and often-glamorized gangster. Americans, with their inveterate reverence for the frontiersman-type hero, had begun to confuse those hearty, self-reliant loners like Daniel Boone who ventured beyond the territorial bounds of their society with sociopathic loners who stood against their society—crooks. Lurid criminal reportage that the twenty-four-newspaper empire of William Randolph Hearst helped perfect was the inspiration for a subdivision of H
ollywood’s bustling motion picture industry know as the B movie.1

  While D.W. Griffith was making his first talkie and Greta Garbo was also speaking for the first time, on the set of Anna Christie, the studio back lots were cranking out B crime movies with titles like Up the River and Outside the Law. Often the gangster runs a speakeasy and rubs shoulders with glamorous society girls, a case of art copying life. Crime never paid on the silver screen, or at least the gangster was always punished for his illicit activities, usually by being shot to death or electrocuted. But audiences were developing a genuine affection for the mobsters and racketeers, particularly when the roles were cast with actors such as Jimmy Cagney, Edward G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, and Spencer Tracy, all of whom spent their early Hollywood days portraying quite a few bad guys. Before the kidnapping two of the four gained stardom playing gangsters in a pair of milestone productions: Edward G. Robinson was Little Ceasar; Jimmy Cagney, the Public Enemy. One of Broadway’s most respected dramatic actors, Paul Muni, had agreed to go before the cameras in the coming months as the lead in a motion picture entitled Scarface: The Shame of a Nation, a fictionalized version of the rise and fall of America’s most notorious, and often most admired, badman, Al Capone, who was currently in jail. Capone, directly and indirectly, would soon try to impose himself on the Lindbergh investigation. So would other criminals, several of whom were personal friends of people close to Lindy. By March 3, word was out that Al disapproved of the kidnapping—a condemnation not to be taken lightly in underworld circles.

  Two real-life gangsters who had recently fared better with the legal system than Big Al Capone, but worse with the competition, were well versed in ransom kidnapping and its consequences: Jack (“Legs”) Diamond and Vincent (“Mad Dog”) Coll, né Collins. Eight days before Christmas of 1931, the Rensselaer County Court in Troy, New York, found Legs innocent of kidnapping a rival bootlegger and his assistant. Three days after Christmas in New York City, twenty-three-year-old Mad Dog was acquitted of killing five-year-old Michael Vengali, who had been caught in a cross of machine gun fire.