NO SIGN YET

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 364, 4 March 1932, Page 1

NO SIGN YET

LINDBERGH’S CHILD STILL CAPTIVE. A Mysterious Message. POSITIVELY NO CONTACT WITH KIDNAPPERS. United Press Assn.—By Electric Telegraph—Copyright. (Received March 4. 8.30 a.m) NEW YORK, March 3. A message from Hopewell, New Jersey, states that Governor 1 Moore, of New Jersey, called on the Lindberghs and afterwards stated that positively no contact with the kidnappers had been made by the Lindberghs or the police.

In the meantime, in Boston, a woman, aged about 60, who sent an airmail letter to-day to the Colonel is sought by the police. A notation outside the letter said: “ Please spare no effort to have this message concerning Colonel Lindbergh's son rushed with all possible speed. There is no hope, but it is a vitally important communication.”

The woman dashed away in a car aftc-r mailing the letter. An Ashbury Park, New Jersey, message states that it is reported that a rum-runner’s story of passing a thirtyfoot cruiser, on which a man was seen and a baby's cry was heard, sent Coastguard craft racing along the Jersey seaboard. A Boston message rays that the kidnapped baby, according to the letter mailed by a woman here to-day and addressed to Lindbergh, is held in a small Massachusetts town. Nation-wide Feeling. Not since the war has any event aroused such a nation-wide feeling. “Please God, guard his safety and bring him home,” begins a leader in one newspaper. “Gentlemen,” declared a member of the House of Representatives, addressing Congress, “what we need is to put red blood in our veins and determine before God Almighty that we are to make this country safe. We have been permitting to grow up a super-govern-ment that levies tribute on the people and threatens to burn out the eves of their childr®*>-if they do not pay.” Nearly all business was suspended by Congress to-day, many addresses being made by members burning with indignation at the outrage. Prayers for the child’s safe return were broadcast by the nation’s wireless stations.

Simultaneously it has been revealed that a* twelve-year-old Youngstown, Ohio, boy, James de Jute, was also kidnapped. Kidnapping Industry.

The Chicago Chamber of Commerce has disclosed that an investigation it made over a -number of years shows that kidnapping has become a regular industry, and that since 1929 approximately two thousand persons have been taken and millions of dollars extorted as ransom.

“Organised gangs prey, not only on the children of world heroes, but largely on bootleggers, gamblers, and other individuals whose personal affairs prevent the’m calling on the law for aid.” The Lindbergh estate is situated :n New Jersey, on a mountain top, difficult of access, because they desired privacy, after too much popular attention, following the airman’s leap to fame. To-night it was like an army intelligence headquarters. Communications companies have been compelled to string hundreds of new telephone and telegraph wires to cater for the police and newspapermen. At Mrs Lindbergh’s request radio stations broadcast the menu being given to the child, which had a cold, in the hope that he would receive proper care from those detaining him. 100,000 Police.

One hundred thousand officers of the law in the eastern section of the United States and southern Canada are engaged in the search, but the clues are few. They consist of the ladder up which the kidnappers climbed to reach the nursery window in the second storey; a chisel, which is believed to have been used to pry open the window; footprints, believed to be of two men and a woman, wearing moccasins or stockinged feet, which were traced from below the window for two miles into the woods and there lost. Colonel Lindbergh was reported as

confident that the child would be returned, and is willing to pay a ransom, but the kidnappers have not yet opened negotiations. Upon word from the father, late in the day. Bills being debated in various States and in the National Legislature, making kidnapping punishable by death, were temporarily shelved in order not to frighten the kidnappers into disposing of the child.