Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

Manawatu Times, Volume 59, Issue 222, 22 September 1934, Page 5

Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

Receiver of Ransom Arrested in New York

SOLUTION OF CRIME BELIEVED AT HAND United Press Association —By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. NEW YORK, Sept. 20. Bernard Richard Hauptmann, of New York City, was arrested to-day as the receiver of the 50,000 dollar ransom, money paid by Colonel C. A. Lindbergh, in tko fruitless effort to recover his son, who was kidnapped on March Ist, 1932. The authorities have received 13,750 dollars of the ransom money. Police Commissioner John F. O’Ryan stated that the money was found in Hauptmann’s garage. It is believed the arrest will solve the kidnapping. Identified by Two Persons HANDWRITING TALLIES WITH RANSOM NOTES Received Friday, 7 p.m. NEW YORK, Sept. 20. Hauptmann, who is 35 years of age, is a carpenter by trade, and entered the United States in 1923 as a stowaway while on parole from a Genuan prison. His wife and nephew, Hans Mueller, are also held for questioning. There was an unconfirmed report, that an automobile driven by Hauptmann on the day of his arrest was identified as one stolen in New Jersey the day before the kidnapping. The police confirmed the fact of its theft, but would make no statement on the date it was stolen.

A total of 13,750 dollars of the ransom,bills were discovered cached in the floor and windowsill of the garage of Hauptmann’s home in the Bronx.

Dr. John F. Condon was among those at the police staton and Commissioner O’Ryan said Hauptmann was identified positively as the recipient of the ransom money in the cemetery. It was presumed that Dr. Condon made the identification. Hauptmann was also identified later by John Peronne, a taxi-driver, as the man who gave him a note to deliver to Dr. Cqndon at his home.

Hauptmann had been closely watched since ho j’aid f°r gasoline at a filling station several weeks ago with a gold certificate which was identified by its serial number as part of the ransom money. Hauptmann has a son 11 months old. Commissioner O’Ryan stated later that two persons had identified Hauptmann as the receiver of the money. Suspicion pointed to Hauptmann when he passed a ten-doliar.- gold certificate at a petrol station, as all such currency has been called in by the Treasury under the gold nationalisation proclamation. ' Justice Department officials disclosed to-night that Hauptmann’s handwriting tallied with that of the ransom notes in the Lindbergh kidnapping. Story Recalled The 19-months-old son of Colonel Lindbergh was stolen from his nursery on March 1, .1932, his disappearance being discovered two and a-half hours after he had been put to bed. There followed one of the most remarkable and fruitless searches in modern times. Over 100,000 officers of the law in the Eastern section of the United States and Southern Canada were once engaged on the hunt for the _ stolen child and its kidnappers. Messages were received by the police and the family, but most af them were discarded as false. One, however, which demanded 50,000 dollars as ransom was accepted as genuine and negotiations were begun with the kidnappers oh the evidence of portion of the baby’s clothing which had been enclosed with the letter. At last, on May 11, passing motorists discovered the body of the baby in the scrub at Mount Rose, New Jersey, not far from Colonei Lindbergh’s home at Hopewell in the same State. After this it was revealed that Dr. John F. Condon, a friend of th.c Lindbergh family, had . previously paid over the 50,000 dollars asked for in the ransom note. He had used the advertising title of "Jafsic” in estab-

lishing contact with the kidnappers.

and took the 50,000 dollars to the St. ' Raymond's cemetery in the Bronx, ■where the money was tossed over a hedge. On receipt of the money a note was given to Dr. Condon in which it was stated: "You will 1 find the baby on 2S-foot boat Sally, anchored. off Gay Head on the southern end of Massachusetts. ’ ’ This was discovered to be a hoax. 4 Several arrests have been made in the case previously. In July, 1932, John Hughes Curtis was convicted on a charge of aiding and abetting the kidnappers and preventing their capture and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment, and in May of last year Gaston B. Means, a former employee of the Justice Department, was found guilty of attempting to defraud Mrs Evelyn Walsh McLean (who had sought to aid the Lindberghs) of the sum of 33,000 dollars, and sent to prison for 15 years.. Curtis . did not know who had kidnapped the baby, but toi'd a story of having established contact with the kidnappers and then confessed it to be untrue. Means had sought to profit by the credulity of people at the time. Some months back stories were published that some of the bills had been traced to England, but there seems more reason' to believe that the present arrest is the outcome of renewed activity by the American police who, encouraged by their success against the kidnappers of Messrs Charles TJrchel and August Lear, decided last October 'to reopen the investigation.