Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (28 page)

Earlier, at 8:35, while Charles and Anne were dining, Betty had been summoned to the kitchen telephone by Whateley to talk to her boyfriend, Red Johnson. They spoke for a few minutes about her trip to Hopewell and the baby’s health, and then, with sadness, said their
good-byes. Red was leaving early the next morning for his brother’s home in West Hartford, Connecticut. He asked Betty whether he should await her return, but Betty encouraged him to go as planned. Then Betty chatted with Oliver and Elsie while they cleaned up the kitchen and, after that, accompanied Elsie to the Whateleys’ apartment over the garage while Oliver remained in the sitting room to read.
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At ten o’clock, as usual, Betty went up the west-wing stairs and crossed the landing to check on the baby before she went to sleep. With only the light from the hall to guide her, she walked into the baby’s bathroom and opened the door to the nursery. The air seemed uncommonly cold. She closed the window, stopping for a moment to turn on the electric heater, and then made her way in the half-light of the bathroom toward the baby’s crib. As she approached, the silence alarmed her. She could not hear the baby breathing. Nervously, she ran her hands over the bed linens and then rushed to Anne, who was coming out of the bathroom.
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“Do you have the baby, Mrs. Lindbergh?” asked Betty.

“No,” said Anne. “Maybe the Colonel has him.”

Disturbed by Anne’s answer, Betty hurried down to Charles.

“Do you have the baby, Colonel?” she asked. “Don’t fool me.”
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Charles was a practical joker and had occasionally hidden the baby to tease Betty. But this was beyond laughter. Frightening Betty with his leap, Charles catapulted up the stairs to the nursery. Finding the crib empty and the sheets in disarray, as though his child had been yanked up by his head, he crossed through the bathroom to the bedroom to find Anne. Pale and dazed, Anne asked, “Do you have the baby, Charles?” Then he turned away. The silence confirmed Anne’s worst fears.
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In the twenty months since the baby’s birth, Anne believed they had been fighting a “war,” against their enemy, the public.
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While Anne searched the baby’s room, Charles took his rifle from the bedroom closet and instructed Whateley to inform the local police. On hearing the news, Elsie ran up the west stairway to comfort Anne, who was leaning out the window, wildly scanning the field for Charlie. Anne thought she heard a baby cry, but before she could speak, Elsie
told her it was the shrill of a cat. Later, Anne was certain it was the howl of the wind.
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Elsie helped Anne dress, and the three women scoured each closet and drawer, looking everywhere the baby might be hiding. Charles and Whateley searched the grounds. After finding nothing, Charles called his lawyer, Henry Breckinridge, in New York, and the New Jersey State Police. By 10:40 state troopers joined the local police on the scene, and by 10:46 the news had been teletyped on the open wires: Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., had been abducted from his crib in the Lindbergh home between 7:30 and 10:00
P.M.
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Soon, the world was shocked by an event nearly as traumatic as a presidential assassination or an outbreak of war. But for the moment it was the Lindberghs’ private nightmare, a terrifying betrayal by the American public who adored them. Anne had sometimes wondered what their arrogance had wrought as they flew the skies into unseen lands, disturbing the flow of native life with their big silver flying machine. Was this the punishment for their “intruding gaze,” mirrored back through the half-closed shutters of a darkened nursery? Was this the fire of an angry sun that had scorched the wings of Icarus? Forever, Anne would ask herself those questions.

C
harles Augustus Jr. celebrates his first birthday, June 22, 1931. (Popperfoto)

S
waddled in warmth and darkness only an hour before, the Lindbergh home was now ablaze with light. When the Hopewell police arrived, Charles stood, gun in hand, waiting for them at the door. He led the officers up to the nursery and then outside, to the grounds beneath the southeast window, to search for signs of the intruders. They found two deep impressions in the mud and two sets of footprints,
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one of which led southeast to a ladder. Assuming it had been used by the kidnappers to climb up to the window, they left it untouched, and returned to the house to wait for the state troopers.

In his initial search of the child’s room, Charles had found a small white envelope on the windowsill beneath the warped shutters. Assuming it contained a note from the kidnappers, he had left it unopened. Now, Corporal Frank Kelly, an expert in fingerprints and crime-scene photography, dusted the envelope for prints. Finding only a single smudge, he handed the envelope to Major Schoeffel, the state official in charge, who, in turn, gave it to Lindbergh. Inside, Charles found a note written in a large scrawling hand in blue ink.

The signature was a symbol on the bottom right-hand corner of the note: two blue interlocking circles joined by a solid red mark pierced by three square holes.

Fifty thousand dollars. It wasn’t a huge sum. Small, in fact, for a “professional gang,” but to anyone else, it must have seemed a fortune. Nineteen thirty-two was the darkest year of the Depression. The stock-market crash of 1929 had initiated a steady and broad decline in the country’s economy. With the failure of banks worldwide and a quagmire of unpaid war debts, the American economy was shrinking fast. During the three years following the crash, the GNP shrank by nearly a half, and unemployment tripled. In New York City alone, a million people were unemployed.
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Violence had become a tool for economic survival. Organized gangs multiplied to protect bootleggers, and a new professional class of criminals emerged. Gunmen and racketeers, hired to ward off competing gangs, made the easy slide into gambling, extortion, and kidnapping. In 1931 there were 279 kidnapping cases in the United States, and it was estimated that six hundred cases had gone unreported. Kidnapping had become a highly organized business, requiring a division of labor among as many as twenty people. They preyed upon the powerful and the well-to-do, choosing and studying their targets with mathematical precision.
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The Lindberghs’ wealth, publicly estimated at half a million dollars, made them prime targets for those harboring greed or dissatisfaction.
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While millions walked the land homeless and hungry, the Lindberghs, silent and seemingly immune, shuttled from the Morrows’ lavish Englewood estate to their $50,000 mountain retreat in the comfort of chauffeur-driven limousines.

By eleven o’clock on the night of March 1, only twenty minutes after Lindbergh called the police but two hours after he had heard the inexplicable “crack,” every major bridge, tunnel, ferry, and highway leading to New York was blocked, and every incoming vehicle and its driver was searched and recorded. In New Jersey, roads were barricaded and hospitals were alerted. Within hours, criminals and suspects across the state were summoned for investigation.
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The crime had turned the mirror back on the public. This time the public was being hunted, and Charles Lindbergh was at the head of the pack.

By midnight, Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf,
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superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, was on the scene. He was an experienced military man and administrator, but he was not a criminal investigator. He had served on the front in France during World War I, and his command of the German language and his administrative skills had made him a prime choice as a law official in the occupation force in Germany after the war. In 1921, back in the States, and having resigned from the military, he was appointed superintendent of the newly formed state police. During the force’s fledgling years, he found it difficult to maintain discipline. Harmless incidents of neglect and poor judgment had mushroomed into a public issue in 1926, when fourteen troopers were found guilty of various offenses, including murder, while serving a warrant to a family suspected of abusing its cattle. Thereafter, Schwarzkopf tightened his control, modeling the organization on the army’s structure of command and discipline. Although some resented his style of leadership, Schwarzkopf, an imposing figure at six feet, had the respect of his troopers and officers. He was a friendly and gregarious man, as congenial as he was authoritative and demanding; a man bound by friendship as much as by duty.
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Schwarzkopf admired Lindbergh for his pioneering flights, and from the moment he walked onto the crime scene he was bent on cultivating Lindbergh’s friendship. To prove his sincerity and his admiration, Schwarzkopf gave Lindbergh free run within the bounds of his command.

Henry C. Breckinridge, a tall and dashing Wall Street attorney, arrived in Hopewell soon after Lindbergh’s call. A former assistant secretary
of war, he had been Lindbergh’s adviser after his transatlantic flight, earning his complete trust and confidence. But he, too, was intimidated by Lindbergh and was willing enough to let him rule. While both men made it clear to Lindbergh that he was in charge, the truth was Lindbergh didn’t know what to do. A meticulous strategist who left nothing to chance, he prided himself on his logic and methodology, but his reason was fading with his mounting desperation. Lindbergh wanted his baby back, and he made it clear to Schwarzkopf and Breckinridge that he would do anything to ensure his safety.

At one A.M., while the experts combed the house and grounds for clues, Lindbergh and several state officers formed an old-fashioned posse. For three and a half hours they penetrated the darkness of the roads and nearby homes with their flashlights, questioning all who walked, drove, and lived in the area.

Although Schwarzkopf and his troopers attempted to protect the southeast corner of the residence, by morning the crime scene was out of control. Once Wednesday dawned, no one could keep the swarms of reporters, photographers, and sightseers from overrunning the grounds and stamping out clues. No one knew how much evidence was lost.
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A fruitless night had left Lindbergh, Breckinridge, and Schwarzkopf exhausted and depressed, sitting in the living room, attempting to formulate a plan.

Charles was ubiquitous, but Anne seemed to disappear. Since the evening before, she felt that nothing and no one was real. Sequestered with her mother and Elisabeth in the upstairs bedroom, Anne knew that to maintain hope, she had to stay in control—and hope was the essence of survival. Betty Morrow, as usual, was disciplined and stoic, trying to nourish Anne with courage and optimism, but her efforts could only buffer the chaos.
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