CNJ+ March 2024

sides the money, was testimony from handwriting experts that the ransom note had been written by Hauptmann. The prosecution also tried to estab lish a connection between Hauptmann and the type of wood that was used to make the ladder, having found the same type of wood in his attic. Still, the evidence and intense public pressure were enough to convict Hauptmann. Hauptmann lived a normal life in Germany. He was conscripted into the German Army and assigned to an artillery battery. After the war, Haupt mann and a friend robbed two women wheeling baby carriages they were using to transport food on the road between two towns. Hauptman pulled a pistol on the women. His friend took it away from him. Hauptmann’s other charges include burgling a mayor’s house with the use of a ladder. Released after three years in prison, he was arrested three months later on suspicion of additional burglaries. He illegally entered the United States by stowing away on an ocean liner. Landing in New York City in November 1923, the 24-year-old Hauptmann was protected by a member of the established German community and worked as a carpenter. He married a German waitress, Anna Schoeffler in 1925 and became a father eight years later. During the trial, Hauptmann was identified as the man who received the ransom money, the man who had spent some of the ransom gold certifi cates, and as a man seen near the Lindbergh home on the day of the kidnap ping. He had been absent from work on the day of the ransom payment and had quit his job two days later. Hauptmann’s wife fought for more than fifty years to get the case reopened citing new evidence that was never presented. She claimed that the newly discovered documents proved misconduct by the prosecution and the man

ufacture of evidence by government agents, all of whom were biased against Hauptmann because he happened to be of German ethnicity. In 1983, the United States Supreme Court refused her request that the federal judge con sidering the case should be disqualified because of judicial bias, and in 1984, the judge dismissed her claims. In 1985, more than 23,000 pages of Hauptmann-case police documents were found in the garage of the late Governor Hoffman. These documents, along with 34,000 pages of FBI files, which, although discovered in 1981, had not been disclosed to the public, represented a windfall of previously undisclosed information. As a direct result of this new evidence, Anna Hauptmann again amended her civil complaint on July 14, 1986, to clear her late husband’s name by con tinuing to assert that he was “framed from beginning to end” by the police looking for a suspect. She suggested that the rail of the ladder taken from the attic, where they used to live in 1935, was planted by the police, and that the ransom money was left behind by Isidor Fisch, who was possibly the real kidnapper. Fisch applied for a passport on May 12, 1932, the same day that the Lindbergh baby was found dead. On December 9, 1933, he sailed for Germany, taking with him $600 worth of Reichsmarks. In 1990, New Jersey’s governor, James Florio, declined her appeal for a meeting to clear Hauptmann’s name. Anna Hauptmann died on October 10, 1994. What’s known for sure is that there was enough evidence to prove Haupt mann was somehow involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping. Perhaps he did have an accomplice. Perhaps he hid the truth from his unsuspecting, naive, wife very well. Whether the police were able to find Isidor Fisch and ques tion him is unknown. What is known is that Hauptmann would go down as being one of the most hated men in history!

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