Who killed the Lindbergh baby?

Press, 14 June 1984, Page 19

Who killed the Lindbergh baby?

On March 1, 1932, the baby son of the aviator, Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped from his home near Hopewell, New Jersey. Four years later a German immigrant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, died in the electric chair convicted of the child’s murder. Since that time doubts have existed about the guilt of Hauptmann and 50 years later, in 1982, his widow, Anna, sued the state of New Jersey, its former AttorneyGeneral and the Hearst Corporation for the wrongful execution of her husband.

In a 8.8. C. documentary, “Who Killed the Lindbergh Baby?,” screening on One tomorrow night, Ludovic Kennedy, Britain’s foremost writer on miscarriages of justice, looks at evidence recently made public and at the circumstances surrounding the case. The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby provoked a world-wide reaction. Since his lone flight across the Atlantic in 1927, Lindbergh was everyone’s hero, so that when, after 2Vz years of fruitless investigation, the New Jersey police produced

a murder suspect, the case received considerable press coverage.

The Hearst Corporation, one of the country’s major newspaper chains, undertook to pay the legal costs for the defendant in return for sole rights to Anna Hauptmann’s story for the duration of the trial.

The result was a biased, emotive reportage featuring headlines such as “Clues build ironclad case against Bruno” and “Suspect cringes at hint of meeting with Lindy.” Press treatment succeeded in whipping up public hysteria against the defendant by using antiGerman feeling. Reporters referred to Hauptmann as a “German machine-gunner” and crowds gathered outside, the court screaming, “Kill Hauptmann.”

His widow maintains that her husband was always known as Richard, never Bruno. The use of Bruno by the prosecution seems to have been deliberate, part of the hysteria and prejudice surrounding the trial. The standard American reference book on the trial says that “The evidence

against him was far from conclusive, but anti-German sentiment helped to seal his fate."

Hauptmann’s defence was weakened further by an apparently incompetent lawyer (destined later for a mental home) and a damning piece of evidence never successfully explained away — money from the Lindbergh family ransom was found in the defendant’s garage.

Throughout his 18 months in prison, Hauptmann protested his innocence. Many believed him, including Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of the President. Clarence Darrow, one of America’s foremost lawyers, commented after the trial: “No man should be executed on such flimsy evidence.”

Files kept by the Federal Bureau of Investigation indicated grave doubts about the New Jersey police’s handling of the evidence and suggested that some of it might be faked. The documentary was filmed on location at the former Lindbergh home near Hopewell, New Jesey.