Stolen Away

“And then of course,” he continued, flicking cigar ash into a silver ashtray, “there’s Jafsie. That wonderful American—who when I reopened this investigation, and announced that I wanted to question him, promptly left on an extended vacation to Panama.”

I had to laugh. “Is he still gone?”

“Actually, he’s supposed to have returned today. And he is one of the people I want you to go around and question.”

“All right, but only because you’re paying me. Last I heard, old Jafsie was hitting the vaudeville circuit, with a Lindbergh lecture.”

“Well,” Hoffman said, “I can tell you one thing he didn’t lecture about: the period when he was the chief suspect in the case. I have an affidavit declaring that after Condon initially failed to identify Hauptmann as John at the Greenwich Street Police Station in the Bronx…and he was adamant about not identifying Hauptmann, there…Jafsie was intimidated and threatened by the police.”

“I’d be surprised if he wasn’t.”

“That was New York. Two Jersey state troopers have indicated to me that Condon was threatened by Schwarzkopf and his bullyboy Welch with an indictment for obstructing justice…which is what they got Commodore Curtis on, you may recall…if the old boy didn’t recant and identify Hauptmann as ‘Cemetery John.’”

“No wonder Jafsie changed his tune.”

“He was quoted by a trooper as saying, ‘I would not like to be indicted in New Jersey, for they would choke you for a cherry in New Jersey.’”

I laughed at that. “One of Jafsie’s few intentionally humorous remarks,” I said. “Sure, I’ll talk to him. Who else do you want me to see?”

“Well, among others, check in with Gaston Means.”

“Means! Isn’t he in Leavenworth?”

“That’s his official federal residence. Right now he’s under observation at St. Elizabeth’s in Washington, D.C. For what he himself refers to as ‘high brain blood pressure.’ At the same time, he’s been bombarding my office with confessions; claims he’s the one who engineered the kidnapping.”

I sighed. “It’s a waste of time, but I’ll talk to him.”

“I know. But these hoaxers all seem to have some element of truth, or near-truth, in their stories.”

“That’s how a good con is mounted, Governor. So let me guess the next name on your list: Commodore John Hughes Curtis.”

“Not necessarily next, but yes, do check in with him. You do realize, Mr. Heller, that the State of New Jersey convicted Curtis on an obstructing-justice charge, on the assumption he’d had contact with the actual kidnap gang?”

“He got off with a fine and a suspended sentence, didn’t he?”

“Yes, but my point is, in the same courtroom as the Hauptmann trial, one of the same prosecutors, and the same judge, convicted Curtis—why? Because, they said, he’d dealt with six persons who had kidnapped the Lindbergh baby; that by not letting the state troopers in on his actions, Curtis had prevented the apprehension of the kidnappers.”

“So the Garden State is having it both ways: a kidnap gang, to convict Curtis; a lone-wolf kidnapper, to convict Hauptmann.”

“Exactly. And it doesn’t wash with me. There’s more, there’s so much more….” He went riffling through the papers: he began rattling off the injustices.

A copy of a physical examination by Dr. Thurston H. Dexter on September 25, 1934, a few days after Hauptmann’s arrest, showed that the prisoner had been “subjected recently to a severe beating, all or mostly with blunt instruments.”

Work records at the Majestic Apartments, where Hauptmann claimed he was working during the period of the kidnapping, had been tampered with and in some cases stolen or suppressed.

A statement from fingerprint expert Erasmus Hudson, who found five-hundred-some prints on the kidnap ladder, none of them Hauptmann’s, and said that Inspector Welch had asked him if it were possible to fake a fingerprint. (Hudson had said no, much to Welch’s obvious disappointment.)

Judge Trenchard denying Hauptmann’s request for a lie-detector test.

And there was new evidence, too: handwriting expert Samuel Small demonstrated that Hauptmann wrote in the Palmer-Zaner system and not the vertical roundhand system of the ransom notes. In his affidavit, Small wrote: “It isn’t a question of if Hauptmarm wrote those letters. It is a question whether he could have written them. I tell you that if you went to the prison and said to Hauptmann, ‘I will let you free if you can write a single sentence the way it is written in the ransom letters,’ Hauptmann would have to stay in prison the rest of his life.”

Of course, I knew—like just about any cop who’d been in and around the court system in major criminal cases—that handwriting experts, like alienists, were typical, “expert” testimony. Both sides had theirs. Bought and paid.

“You realize, don’t you,” Hoffman said, “that the state spent more money on its handwriting experts alone than was spent on the entire Hauptmann defense.”

“Even with Hearst footing part of the bill?”