Kelly dusted the whole nursery. Good possibilities for expected fingerprint sources were the crib, rails and headboard, the radiator casing, the window, and perhaps the surfaces just inside the window such as the sill and sash. There was, of course, the risk that a careful kidnapper or gang of kidnappers would have worn gloves. If so, then the criminals would have removed the child from his crib and quickly left the room, leaving whatever residual fingerprints remained from Anne, Betty Gow, the Colonel and perhaps even the Whatelys. Yet the dusting by Frank Kelly revealed no fingerprints. None. Not even a stray print of an innocent household member was found anywhere: on the crib, the radiators, the windows, the walls or any other furniture. None. "I'm damned," said one trooper, "if I don't think somebody washed everything in that nursery before the printmen got there."2 Other cops nodded sagely, yet neither in that immediate investigation nor in the years since has anyone seemed to realize the import of that casual observation.
That evening, a massive investigation began that ultimately involved the total force of the New Jersey State Police, the New York State Police, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies on the State and Federal level. Every lead was tracked down. Thousands of witnesses and potential suspects were routinely picked up and questioned vigorously. In the face of such police interrogation two separate witness/suspects would eventually commit suicide rather than submit to additional police hounding. The reports and investigative notes of the New Jersey State Police alone would total over 100,000 pages.
Citizens got in the act. Reports of children vaguely resembling the Lindbergh child poured in from all over the country. In those years of heady police power before the Supreme Court put teeth into the constitutional protection to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures, countless parents in the company of their own young children were arrested, questioned and reluctantly released. One upstate New York couple was stopped so many times in their own town they began carrying a letter from their police chief stating that their child was theirs. They were still stopped. One motorist on a crosscountry trip to California with New Jersey license plates was stopped and arrested twelve times as part of the Lindbergh investigation.
Yet despite the massive investment of police power, no trace of a kidnapping gang was ever found. No similar modus operandi were matched. No organized crime or underworld connection was uncovered. No lucky tip led to the inadvertent discovery of the kidnappers' den.
It was as if the kidnappers had appeared on the planet in the morning, kidnapped the child that night, and then immediately disappeared off the face of the earth, never to be heard from again.
On May 12, 1932 the body of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. was found in the woods just off a country road in Mount Rose, New Jersey, less than three miles from the Lindbergh home. In the initial cursory examination of the body, the coroner noted from the state of decomposition that it appeared that the child had been dead over two months and the police theorized the child was killed the night he disappeared. More certain data could not be obtained because, after Betty Gow and Colonel Lindbergh identified the body, the Colonel ordered the remains cremated immediately, before an autopsy or any pathological or toxicological tests could be performed. In compliance with his orders, the remains were cremated within the hour.
Some two years and six months after the kidnapping, an uneducated German immigrant carpenter by the name of Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested. In January and February of 1935 he was tried for the kidnapping and murder in a Flemington, New Jersey courthouse. Speaking only broken English, he was not afforded the opportunity of a translator at his trial. It is unknown if it would have mattered, because in any event the defense was never given the investigative notes in this case or otherwise apprised before the trial of the evidence that they would have to defend against. Hauptmann was convicted on extremely circumstantial evidence, and on April 3, 1936, maintaining his innocence to the end, was executed in the electric chair in Trenton, New Jersey. With his death, the State officially closed their case.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann's conviction and execution troubled observers from the beginning. With the passage of time and the eventual release of police notes and other documents and exhibits, more and more doubt was cast on the sanctity of his conviction. His family has fought diligently to clear his name. What is now clear is that the Lindbergh baby was not kidnapped by either one person or a gang, but rather was killed negligently by his father who, facing the enormity of what he had done and its probable tarnishing of his public image, trumped up the kidnapping story as a cover.
For over sixty years it has worked.
CHAPTER II
Colonel Charles Lindbergh's grandfather, Ole Mansson, was born in Sweden in 1810. Despite his peasant origin, through hard work he became a land owner and, as such, was able to get elected to the Swedish Parliament at age 39. However, he developed so many political enemies that at age 50 he was forced, with his second wife and their newborn son Charles Augustus, to immigrate to the United States.
Ole changed the last name of his family to Lindbergh and settled in Minnesota where he resumed farming. When in 1862 he lost his right arm in a milling accident he reportedly never complained but merely, after a two year recovery, redesigned his tools for use with one arm.
The family homesteaded, and depended heavily on the hunting of wild game for their nutrition. Charles Augustus Lindbergh became proficient with a rifle and often solely shouldered the responsibility of securing game. During one winter hunting trip he brought down several ducks over a neighbor's pond. The water was so cold that the hunting spaniel retrieved only two mallards before refusing to re enter the frigid pond. Lindbergh stripped off his coat and clothes and waded into the pond in the midst of the Minnesota winter to retrieve all the ducks.
Lindbergh eventually became a successful lawyer in Minnesota. He married and had two daughters, Eva and Lillian, before his first wife died of an intestinal tumor at age 31.
Three years later he married Evangeline Land, a school teacher from Detroit who was teaching in Little Falls. Her father was Dr. Charles Land, a dentist and inventor who held several patents.
Evangeline was shy and withdrawn and also 17 years younger than Lindbergh. On February 4, 1902 they had their only child, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.
The family settled on their farm on the west bank of the Mississippi near the town of Little Falls. In 1905 the farmhouse caught fire. A nursemaid rescued three year old Charles from a room in which he had been playing and carried him outside. Although she told him not to watch, he did anyway, hypnotically mesmerized as the family home disintegrated in flames before his eyes.
Disintegrating also was the marriage between Evangeline and Charles Augustus Lindbergh. Although they never divorced or even legally separated, thereafter they lived apart. When they did reside in the same house for appearances sake, they stayed in separate areas.
Appearances were important because in 1906 Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. was elected to the United States Congress, a position he held for ten years. Thereafter he spent most of his time in Washington while Evangeline divided her time between D.C., the Minnesota farm, and her family's home in Detroit. The young Lindbergh also shuttled between three locales. While in Washington his father would indulge him by taking him onto the floor of the Congress. Although he later referred to Washington with a mixture of distaste and curiosity, he was also impressed by its historic nature.
In the spring he would move to Detroit, spending time with his mother and Dr. Land. He was fascinated by his grandfather's inventions and later would often refer to the hours spent in this laboratory.
After the short stay in Detroit, he and his mother would move west by train where they would open up the family farm in Minnesota for the season. During this period of constant migration, Charles attended eleven different schools and did well in none of them. He developed no close friendships. His halfsisters were significantly older
