James Castagnera: Ramsey Case Reminiscent of Longstanding Local Murder Mystery
Who dunnit? With many murders, the killer is identified from the get-go. In those cases, justice is swift and certain. For instance, a guy named Sullivan was convicted recently of stabbing his wife to death in a mattress store last year not more than ten minutes walk from my front door. He was sentenced to life in prison. Case closed.
Sometimes the murder mystery drags on for years. The beating and strangulation of six-year old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey is such a case. Tell the truth now… didn’t you believe one or both of her parents did the dirty deed? Don’t be ashamed to admit it. We all thought so. Now a schoolteacher arrested in Thailand has owned up to the crime.
The decade-old Ramsey case reminds me of a local murder mystery that many experts contend is still unsolved. On March 1, 1932, Aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was kidnapped from his Hopewell, New Jersey home. Two months later his badly decayed body was discovered in a shallow grave not far from the Lindbergh estate.
Not until 1934 was Bruno Richard Hauptmann arrested for the kidnap/murder of little Charles, Jr. Hauptmann, a German immigrant, used a ten dollar bill, subsequently identified by a bank as part of the $50,000 ransom Lindbergh paid, to buy some gasoline. Some $14,000 of additional ransom booty was found hidden in Hauptmann’s garage. He claimed a business acquaintance had left the cash in his keeping while on a return visit to their Native Germany. He added that he felt free to spend some of the money, because his colleague owed him. Attempts to corroborate Hauptmann’s alibi hit a brick wall when investigators learned that Isidor Fisch died of tuberculosis after returning to the Fatherland.
The case against Hauptmann was a slice of Swiss cheese. He was a skilled carpenter, yet the ladder used to enter the little boy’s second-floor bedroom was a shaky piece of homemade junk that broke during the alleged breaking-and-entering. When Anne Lindbergh first entered the nursery, she noticed no ransom note; later Lindbergh claimed to find one on the windowsill. The suicide, following initial police questioning, of the Lindbergh’s maid, Violet Sharp, shortly before her scheduled second interrogation, remains without a satisfactory motive. Police occupied the Hauptmann house for days, following Bruno’s arrest, and could easily have planted the additional evidence that helped convict him. The trial, like the Ramsey soap opera, was a theatrical extravaganza.
Hauptmann went to the electric chair proclaiming his innocence, when he could have saved his life by implicating any co-conspirators. His widow spent the remainder of a long life working to vindicate her husband, but to no avail.
Nonetheless, numerous forensic experts and legal historians have pointed the finger of guilt at Charles, Sr. Today, as with JonBenet’s daddy, the parents are among the first to be investigated, when a child is murdered. In 1932, such was not standard operating procedure. Furthermore, young, handsome Charles was an international hero, first to fly solo across the Atlantic. He took personal control of many aspects of the investigation, such as seeking out organized-crime contacts in an era when kidnapping was still big business in the U.S. He worked with a private negotiator in bargaining and delivering the ransom to the ostensible perps.
Why do experts such as Princeton-area Psychologist David Brown, who guest-lectures in my “Famous Trials” course at Rider University, point their fingers at Charles Lindbergh? A few of their main points include:
• Lindbergh was a practical joker, who earlier had hidden the child in a closet, setting the entire household off on a frenzied search.
• He turned up at home that night, although he was supposed to make a speech and stay over in New York City.
• When the kidnapper climbed the ladder and nabbed the baby, the Lindbergh’s dog never barked.
• Lindbergh’s commandeering of the early investigation insured that forensic evidence at the site, such as footprints, was quickly obliterated.
Add to these items the many holes in the case against Hauptmann and, concludes Dr. Brown and other adherents to the “Daddy dunnit” theory, the case against Lindbergh is at least as solid as the one that sent Hauptmann to the electric chair in Trenton.
While the Ramsey case seems finally solved, the Lindbergh mystery only deepens with the passage of decades. Recently, Archivist Mark Falzini of the New Jersey State Police Museum in West Trenton examined a table leg found years earlier in a barn. The note scribbled on one end claims American Nazis committed the “crime of the century.” Falzini was intrigued that the screw holes in the lumber match the holes punched in every ransom note to reassure Lindbergh’s go-between of their authenticity.
If you want to try your hand at solving the Lindbergh mystery, go to http://www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com.