Stolen Away

Hoffman, it seemed, had been embezzling for years, starting with a bank he’d been president of in South Amboy long before he became governor. He’d lost his reelection bid in ’37, tried again in ’40 and ’46, losing both times, the Wendel case coming back to haunt him. During World War II, he managed to join the ranks of the many Lindbergh-case colonels, serving in the Army Transport Command.

Harold Hoffinan was a dedicated public servant in many respects, and he threw his career away on Bruno Richard Hauptmann, either because he was gambling on the fame he’d win if he managed to clear the guy; or because he sincerely felt Hauptmann was innocent. He liked wine, women and song, too well apparently, and died in a hotel room in 1954 while under investigation by the man who brought him down—Colonel Norman Schwarzkopf.

Schwarzkopf died in 1958 of a stomach ailment.

The Wendel case also brought Ellis Parker down, of course. He and his “deputies” all went to jail. The new “Lindbergh kidnapping law” got ’em. Both father and son went to the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Parker never changed his tune about Wendel’s guilt, and the Cornfield Sherlock’s supporters were lobbying for a presidential pardon when he died in the prison hospital of a brain tumor in 1940. I hear his son died a few years ago.

Wendel himself had a burst of fame: for one national magazine, he went into a photo studio with actors and posed melodramatic reenactments of the tortures he claimed to have endured. He published a book about his captivity and became something of a celebrity, even a hero. Then he faded into obscurity and I don’t know what the hell became of him.

Gaston Means, in a prison hospital in 1938 after a heart attack, found FBI agents at his bedside, sent by J. Edgar Hoover to inquire once again about Evalyn’s money. Means smiled his puckish smile at them, winked and passed away.

John H. Curtis tried for years to have his conviction overturned, but was turned down by the New Jersey Supreme Court. He remained in the boat-building and marine business and was quietly successful. In 1957 he supervised the construction of three replicas of colonial-period British warships that sailed at a major Norfolk festival. He died in 1962, a respected citizen of his community.

Another prominent Norfolk citizen, Admiral Burrage, never again spoke publicly of the Lindbergh case; he died in 1954. Reverend Dobson-Peacock died in England in 1959.

The Bull of Brooklyn, a.k.a. “Death House” Reilly, alias Edward J. Reilly, only occasionally appeared in court after the Hauptmann trial. He alternated between living at home with his mother and being institutionalized at the King’s Park state mental hospital, his drinking and three failed marriages taking their toll. He died of a blood clot on the brain, at King’s Park, on Christmas Day, 1946.

David T. Wilentz fared much better. While the run for the governorship that was rumored during the Hauptmann case never materialized—he was a Jew, after all—Wilentz became a major political boss among the New Jersey Demos. He continued with his law practice, but his real job was that of power broker. By 1950 he was influencing national politics, including the selection of Democratic vice-presidential and presidential candidates. There were those who said Wilentz had mob ties, and in his later days he was representing Atlantic City casinos. He died July 7, 1988, at ninety-three.

Wilentz’s star witness, John F. Condon, who like Wendel enjoyed notoriety by writing magazine articles and a self-promoting book, died of pneumonia at age eighty-four with his wife Myra and daughter Myra both at his bedside—exactly ten years from the day that Hauptmann went to trial.

Some of the others, I lost track of. I don’t know what happened to Gerta Henkel and her husband. Nor do I know what became of Martin Marinelli and his wife Sister Sarah Sivella. Edgar Cayce went on to great fame, of course; in Virginia Beach, in January 1946, on his deathbed, he predicted he was about to be healed.

Colonel Henry Breckinridge remained friendly with Lindbergh, and continued on as his lawyer. Having run for the U.S. Senate in 1934, and lost, Breckinridge took a shot at the presidency in 1936; he was an anti-New Deal Democrat. I guess you know how he fared. After that, he devoted himself primarily to his law practice. He died in 1960 at age seventy-three.