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Bruno Richard Hauptmann (November 26, 1899 – April 3, 1936) was a German carpenter and former criminal, sentenced to death and executed for the abduction and murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., the 20-month old son of famous pilot Charles Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidnapping gained international infamy, and has become known as "The Crime of the Century."
Early years
Hauptmann was a teenage soldier in the German army in WWI, serving as a machine gunner in 1918. He was wounded in action and gassed. After the war, he was unable to find work as a carpenter and instead turned to crime. With another veteran, he burglarized three homes and robbed two women at gunpoint. He was caught and sentenced to five years, of which he served four in the prison in Bautzen. Not long after he was released, he was charged with another crime, but escaped from prison simply by walking out an unguarded door.
He illegally tried to enter the U.S. by stowing away on a ship, but was discovered and returned to Germany twice. On his third attempt in November 1923, he used a disguise and a stolen identification card and managed to enter the country. In 1925 he married Anna Schoeffler, a German immigrant he had met in the U.S. The couple lived in a house in the Bronx and had one son. Hauptmann worked as a carpenter and apparently had left his criminal ways behind him.
Lindbergh kidnapping
The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. occurred on the evening of 1 March 1932. A $50,000 ransom was paid, but the infant was not returned. The boy was found dead on 12 May 1932 in the woods two miles from the Lindbergh home. The cause of death was listed as a severe blow to the head.
More than two years later, on 18 September 1934, a gold certificate from the ransom money was discovered; it had a license plate number written on it. The New York license plate belonged to a dark blue Dodge Sedan owned by Hauptmann. Hauptmann was arrested the next day and charged with the murder. The trial attracted wide media attention and was dubbed “trial of the century”. The trial was held in Flemington, New Jersey and ran from 2 January to 13 February, 1935. Evidence produced against Hauptmann included over $14,000 in ransom money that was found in his garage, a hand-made ladder supposedly used in the kidnapping (which matched wood and carpentry equipment found in his home), and testimony alleging handwriting and spelling similarities to that found on the ransom notes. Hauptmann was positively identified as the man to whom the ransom money was delivered. Other witnesses testified that it was Hauptmann who had spent some of the Lindbergh gold certificates, that he had been seen in the area of the Hopewell estate on the day of the kidnapping, and that he had been absent from work on the day of the ransom payment. Based on this strong but circumstantial evidence, Hauptmann was convicted, sentenced to death, and executed on 3 April 1936. He denied his guilt to the very end, insisting the box found to contain gold certificates had been left in his garage by a friend, named Isidor Fisch, who had returned to Germany and died there in March 1934.
New Jersey Governor Harold G. Hoffman (who later became infamous for embezzlement) secretly visited Hauptmann in his death row cell on the evening of 16 October 1935 with Anna Bading, a stenographer and fluent speaker of German. Hoffman urged the other members of the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals (pre-1947 State Supreme Court) to visit Hauptmann.
Despite Governor Hoffman's evident doubt as to Hauptmann's guilt, Hoffman was unable to convince the other members of the Court of Errors to re-examine the case, and on 3 April 1936 Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair known as Old Smokey. Hauptmann had requested a last meal consisting of celery, olives, chicken, french fries, buttered peas, cherries and cake. Reporters present at the execution reported that he went to the electric chair without saying any last words, but other reports later said that he was vehemently protesting his innocence.
Hauptmann's guilt questioned
In recent years, the case against Hauptmann has come under serious scrutiny. Skeptics point to several alleged inconsistencies. For instance, one item of evidence at his trial was a scrawled phone number on a board in his closet, which turned out to be the number of the man who delivered the ransom. A juror at the trial said this was the one item of evidence that convinced her the most, but a reporter later admitted he had written the number himself. It is also alleged that the eyewitnesses who placed Hauptmann at the Lindbergh estate near the time of the crime were all untrustworthy, and that neither Lindbergh nor the go-between who delivered the ransom initially identified Hauptmann as the recipient. It has been alleged that the police beat Hauptmann and intimidated other witnesses, and some claim that the police planted or doctored evidence such as the ladder. Hauptmann's widow campaigned to have her husband's conviction reversed until the end of her life.
Fictional portrayals
Anthony Hopkins played Hauptmann in a 1976 made for TV movie about the trial called The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case. Stephen Rea also played Hauptmann in a 1996 HBO movie entitled Crime of the Century. The Armstrong Kidnapping Case in Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express was inspired by the tragedy as well.
External links
- More about Bruno Hauptmann
- The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax -- dissenting views on the notorious trial, very anti-Lindbergh
- Famous American Trials
1899 births | 1936 deaths | Murderers of children | People executed by electric chair | People executed for murder | German murderers | German World War I people | Disputed convictions
"Bruno Hauptmann"