“This man is dead.” So spoke the a doctor at 8:47 p.m. on April 3 and thus concluded the case against Bruno Richard Hauptman.
“He died as most people thought he would—unspeaking, unshaken, cold, unsmiling. There was no hysteria, no breakdown, no tears inside the dirty white four walls where Hauptmann sat down to death,” reported the Fitchburg Sentinel on Aug. 4.
The Lindbergh Kidnapping
On March 1, 1932, a man supposedly climbed up a ladder and into the bedroom of Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the son of the famous pilot who was the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean solo. The kidnapper took the child and left a ransom not for $50,000.
The ransom was paid, but the baby was not returned. Instead, the baby’s corpse was found on May 12, 1932 about four miles from his home. The baby was killed by a blow to the head.
Finding Hauptmann
Two years later, someone noticed a $10 gold certificate with a license number written on it. The money came from the Lindbergh ransom and the license plate number belonged to Hauptmann’s car. He was arrested on September 19, 1934.
The Trial of the Century
The trial was held in Flemington, NJ from January 2, 1935 to February 13, 1935. Col. Henry Breckinridge, who had acted as the ransom intermediary, represented Lindbergh in the trial.
Evidence against Hauptmann included more than $14,000 of the ransom money was found in his garage, handwriting matches, and the ladder used to enter the baby’s window.
Hauptmann proclaimed he was innocent and that a friend named Isidor Fisch had left the money in his garage. Fisch had returned to Germany and died there in March 1934.
Hauptmann’s lawyer argued that the evidence against his client was circumstantial and that he hadn’t been placed at the scene of the crime. However, the jury convicted him.
Doubts About Hauptmann's Guilt
New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman wasn’t sure that Hauptmann was guilty. However, he wasn’t able to convince anyone on the Court of Errors to take on the case. Hoffman gave Hauptmann a 30-day reprieve in January, 1936.
“The governor had on his desk a reprieve, properly filled out. He had wanted to sign it, not because he believed Hauptmann innocent of the century's most infamous crime, but because he believed there were many hidden mysteries of the case still unexplored,” the Sentinel reported.
The questions over whether an innocent man was executed or not continue to be debated even today, though nothing has emerged to prove conclusively that Hauptmann was innocent.
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