Stolen Away

Flemington, sixty-some miles from New York, was a roost for chicken-and-egg farmers, a village of less than three thousand Lums and Abners in the rolling hills of Hunterdon County, home of the Lindbergh estate. The little county seat suddenly had a big trial in its lap, and by New Year’s Day had become host to sixty thousand “foreigners”—sightseers, reporters, telephone and telegraph technicians, swarming Main Street, clogging the roads all the way back to New York and Philadelphia.

The courthouse was a stately two-and-a-half-story whitewashed stucco affair with four big pillars out front and a small, modern jail building in back. In that smaller building resided the illegal alien Bruno Richard Hauptmann. Around Christmas some compassionate locals had sung him carols outside his barred window; lately, tourists had been repeating less cheery chants, among them “Burn the kraut!” and “Kill Hauptmann!”

Hauptmann, arrested in the Bronx, had been extradited to New Jersey because in New York the only crime he could be tried for was extortion: in Jersey, he could be tried for kidnapping and murder. Attorney General David Wilentz, by defining the kidnapping as a “burglary”—hadn’t the kidnapper broken and entered, and “stolen” the child away?—could in that convoluted fashion charge Hauptmann with murder. Burglary was a felony, and any killing during the commission of a felony, whether that death was accidental or intentional, was of course murder. Kidnapping could have brought a sentence of as little as five years. Wilentz and the world wanted a death sentence for Hauptmann.

From what I’d read in the papers, Hauptmann probably deserved it, though this “lone-wolf kidnapper” stuff never rang true to me. I said as much to Colonel Henry Breckinridge, who picked me up early that morning at Grand Central Station and with me made the incredibly slow journey (with snow-narrowed roads and impossible traffic, at times three miles an hour) to the Flemington courthouse.

“I can’t say I buy that theory, either,” Breckinridge said guardedly, studying the bumper of the buggy in front of him like a legal brief he was considering. “But my understanding is, Wilentz hasn’t the right sort of evidence to prove a conspiracy, so…”

“They’re targeting the guy they have,” I said, shrugging, “using what evidence they do have. Makes sense. Have you testified yet?”

“No. But I will. It’s early yet. This is only the fifth day.”

“I saw in the papers that Wilentz put the Lindberghs on the stand, first.”

“Yes.”

Breckinridge seemed vaguely troubled.

“Must’ve been hard on Anne,” I said.

He nodded gravely. “She stood up well. When the prosecutor handed her the little garments to identify…it was a tragic goddamn thing, Heller. Count yourself lucky you didn’t have to witness it.”

I nodded back noncommittally. “How did Slim do?”

“Fine.” He turned his eyes quickly away from the road. “Why do you ask?”

“Just wondering,” I said. “I understand he’s attending the trial, each day.”

“Yes, he is.”

“What, is he staying over at Englewood?”

“That’s correct. He and Anne both, though she hasn’t returned to court, and has sense enough not to.”

“Colonel, what’s bothering you?”

“Why, nothing.”

“What, you don’t think it’s unfair to the defendant, do you, for a martyred public figure like Lindy to be sitting in court? Where the jury can see him all the time?”

Breckinridge shook his head, no, but it wasn’t very convincing. He was Slim’s friend, but he was also a fair man, and a lawyer. And I knew, from what I’d read, that other aspects of Slim’s performance on the stand might bother Breckinridge, as well.

For one thing, Slim had denied using his political influence to have federal officers “lay off” certain aspects of the case; and for another, he had denied that he ever expressed the opinion that a “gang,” as opposed to a single-o like Hauptmann, had kidnapped his son.

These were minor lies, even mere shadings of the truth you might say; no big deal. However…

Lindbergh had also, on the stand, without hesitation, positively identified Hauptmann as the man in St. Raymond’s Cemetery. Strictly on the basis of recognizing his voice. He had, after all, heard “Cemetery John” shout, “Hey, Doctor!”

The notion that a man could positively identify another man by having heard him say two words, four years before, was thin enough. But I remembered what Slim had said, the very night of the ransom drop, when Elmer Irey asked him in the Morrow apartment in Manhattan, if he could identify Cemetery John by his voice.

“To say I could pick a man out by that voice,” he’d said, “I really couldn’t.”

Yet Breckinridge knew, and I knew, and Slim had to know, that the weight of Lucky Lindy providing “eyewitness identification” (make that ear-witness) would probably be all it would take to slam that German’s ass in the chair. This trial, I knew with little doubt, was already over.