Retrying the Hauptmann Kidnap-Murder Case

 

By all accounts, the 1935 trial in Flemington, N.J., of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for the murder of celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son merits its frequent citation by many as “the trial of the century”. Although Hauptmann was executed in 1936, controversy has surrounded the trial and conviction ever since. 

My friend and law school classmate, Noah Griffin, organized a re-enactment held on May 20 at the Marin County Superior Court in San Rafael, California, along with retired California Judge Lise Pearlman, who published a 554-page book on the case, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1, The Man Who Got Away. and the Criminal Law and Justice Center of University of California Berkeley School of Law.

  

While I played a small role in the trial's re-enactment, Noah, who is an historian, popular singer, and impresario, and and who was press secretary to former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan, made the event happen, and another friend and classmate, Peter Buchsbaum,  a retired judge of the New Jersey Superior Court, filled the role of prosecutor. 

 

Peter, who sat as a judge in the same court before which Hauptmann was tried, once litigated a civil case in the historic courtroom where the trial occurred. That courtroom, he recalls, had a chair labelled, “This chair was sat in by Bruno Richard Hauptmann.” 

 

“It was spooky sitting right in front of that seat,” Peter remembers, “and now here I am all these years later doing this mock trial. I didn’t come away from today convinced that Hauptmann was innocent, but I do think it is worth looking into.” 

Those present—observers, law students, and participants, who included many public defenders, prosecutors, and court staff, including bailiffs provided by the local Sheriff’s Office—voted, 38-5, in favor of a new trial for Hauptmann. A similar vote followed a re-enactment of the Hauptmann case in 1986 in San Francisco that Noah put together after meeting Hauptmann’s widow, Anna Hauptmann. She testified in that retrial, as she did at her husband’s original trial. 

Peter played the role of N.J. Attorney General David T. Wilentz, who founded a leading New Jersey firm but proudly asserted in his closing argument, “I have never prosecuted a murder case in my life.” I appeared as a “wood expert” witness from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service. He had testified as to the strength of the wooden ladder which Hauptmann allegedly used to carry out the kidnapping of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., from the second-floor nursery in the family home in Hopewell, N.J. 

It’s strange to deliver testimony that has now been deemed totally unreliable in our age of DNA evidence, and also that just about all of this witness’s testimony regarding the ladder was shown to be based on sloppy investigation and failure to establish chain of custody. 

In her  book, Judge Pearlman argues that Hauptmann was innocent.  Charles Lindbergh, like many prominent Americans in the 1920’s and 1930’s, was a passionate advocate of eugenics. There had been rumors that the baby had serious medical problems. Judge Pearlman suggests it may well have been that the infant was physically imperfect with an abnormally big head and other defects and that Lindbergh’s fervent eugenicism could have led to his seeking dangerous medical experiments on his son. She concludes that the kidnapping could have been a failed effort to cover up all of this. 

Retired Marin County Superior Court Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor filled the role of the trial judge, and others played parts including prosecutors, witnesses, defenders, Lindbergh, and Hauptmann: all were reading actual testimony. Major additions to the written trial transcript were provided in the analysis given by Marin Deputy Public Defender Patricia Castilla. Appearing as a current-day lawyer, she pointed out what now appear to be hordes of clear errors that undermine the state’s case against Hauptmann. 

She stressed in her interpolated comments during the trial reading how a witness who had been declared legally blind said he saw Hauptmann’s car driven away from the Lindbergh house with the suspect at the wheel. Further, pictures shot in 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s nursery right after he was taken captive did not show muddy footprints on a suitcase under the window Hauptmann allegedly  used to escape, yet those footprints somehow materialized on the suitcase at the trial. 

More ignored evidence concerned the ladder as to which Arthur Koehler, the Forest Service expert whom I played, testified. Police said Hauptmann reached the second-story window going up the ladder and then used it to escape with the baby; when it was tested, it was shown as unable to hold the weight of the 175-pound suspect and 30-pound baby. 

Other witnesses confirmed that Hauptmann was picking up his wife at the bakery where she worked in the Bronx, New York City, when the crime ostensibly occurred far away in central New Jersey. A medical examination of the body, found more than two months after the kidnapping, revealed that the baby didn’t die, as the police and prosecutor contended, the night he disappeared: it even suggested that the corpse might have been mutilated in a medical experiment. 

Two New Jersey governors first accepted the validity of the verdict. N.J. Governor Harold G. Hoffman (no relation), who refused to call off the execution, later wrote a series of articles in favor of reopening the case. Gov. Christine Todd Whitman also would not reopen the case but fifteen years after she left office, she also said that the obvious errors made it important to review the case far more deeply than had occurred originally.

 

 

Born With Teeth

 It's always enjoyable to see some drama at a playhouse in some charming place. So taking in Born With Teeth at the Mendocino Theatre Company on the California North Coast turned out to be a fine surprise of the positive kind. This play by Liz Duffy-Adams has already been in some prominent places--it premiered at the Alley Theater in Houston and then played the Guthrie in Minneapolis: two outstanding regional theaters. Next stop is likely to be New York, and exactly where there remains unclear. Perhaps one of the prime workshop theaters--N.Y. Theatre Workshop or the Public Theater--in preparation for one of the hardest nut to crack--a Broadway production of a drama.

But first things first. This is a two-character, three-segment drama. Characters: two 16th century playwrights named Will Shakespeare and Christopher (Kit) Marlowe. They were rivals, of course, in the amazing and challenging Elizabethan theatre world, but also colleagues, and here, were charged with working together on the three-play series that emerged as the three parts of Henry the Sixth.

Henry VI is not the best known of Shakespeare's plays. I saw a condensed verson at Vancouver's Shakespeare on the Beach some years ago and what made it exciting for me was the emergence in the final part of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, in preparation for his own play, Richard III.

But there's scant discussion of that project in this play. Shakespeare is still a newcomer but already showing signs of greatness. Marlowe is more established but more corrupt. He wants Shakespeare to do all the writing, which he could then reshape as he would see best. Shakespeare, demeaned by Marlowe as no more than an unsuccessful actor trying to recover his status as a playwright, is already far beyond the young man from the provinces he is seen to be in Marlowe's more experienced but no more perceptive eyes.

The first act takes time to develop. It will need some work. But in the second, these are segments that flow together without any intermission other than a short blackout and renewal after each segment, the plot thickens and is resolved mightily in the third. The theater's program has a piece explaining the conspiratorial atmosphere of London theater in the Elizabethan age. Playwrights needed protectors and sponsors from the nobility to avoid being arrested, tortured, or murdered.

The play shows how Shakespeare managed to operate in this sordid and wildly challenging world. Mention is made that a contemporary of both men--Thomas Kyd, whose Spanish Tragedy was a successful play of these times--apparently was destroyed by these vicious elements. You might recall that his play is recalled by a footnoted line in T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land. 

Conspiracies of all sorts abounded; Marlowe was involved up to his ears. He seems both oblivious to the possibility that Shakespeare may be more adept and informed than he appears, but also intent on maintaining some rapport because Marlowe sees a major figure arising. Brady Voss and Randall Jaynes carry the burden and opportunity of a two-character play forward. Beth Craven's direction was spot on, as was fight coordinator Noah Lucé.

 

Westward Bound by Train

 

Arrived in the grand old station in downtown Portland, Oregon, on Amtrak’s Empire Builder after a two train, almost three-day, transcontinental journey from Washington, DC. The last part of the trip was the best: cruising along the southern boundary of Glacier National Park in Montana. The sudden appearance of snow-capped peaks, rushing rivers, and tall trees coincided with arriving into the far western reaches of Mountain Time so that sunset occurred much later than usual.

 

It had been a good day on the train. We cadged a table in the observation car, not all that great for photos owing to grimy windows and the limits of admittedly much advanced cell-phone cameras. I recalled the domecar on the old Denver Zephyr and the high views to be had from the observation cars on the Canadian—especially the one we had to flee before it would be removed from the train at Edmonton.

 

The flatiron steak in the diner came out nicely medium-rare. The plates were not the china touted in Amtrak promos but plastic imitative of the real thing was better than riding on lesser trains had prepared us to encounter. The next morning was spent with the train speeding on the banks of the Columbia River, past the wonderfully-named Bridge of the Gods and the Bonneville Dam.

 

Travelling across the plains and empty expanses of eastern Montana recalled the similar and adjacent open space seen on The Canadian transcontinental trip through most of Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba. Right at sunset, we crossed from Wisconsin into Minnesota where there was a beautiful panoply of what seemed like endless lakes amid lush forests but actually was the meandering course of the upper origins of the Mississippi.

 

This all was a vast improvement from riding, or waiting, on the Capitol Limited, about 2½ hours out of Chicago, on  Monday morning. The power on this Amtrak train went down about 45 minutes ago and after they brought it back, they still couldn’t get the computer and thus the engine going again.

 

So now the Lake Shore Limited, running about 45 minutes behind us, arrived on the scene and passed, backed up, and then hauled us into Chicago, where we caught the Empire Builder to Portland. The promise that all the connections, including ours, would be made was met.

 

This train, on which we paid a good deal for a bedroom, slightly bigger than the Marx Brothers’s designated “stateroom”, closer to a closet, in A Night at the Opera, had been operating on what I call a post-pandemic regimen, a far cry from its glory days as the flagship of the proud Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The car designated as a diner/lounge provided microwaved, plastic-wrapped “flexible” meals; the lack of an observation car was mitigated by the fact that the train operated mostly at night.

 

As always, it was fun meeting people seated with us in the dining car whom we’d likely never have encountered elsewhere. People ride the train for a plenitude of reasons—irregular visits to family and a chance to just get away from it all. Wasn’t even discommoded when told I could’ve saved a bunch was taking the other leg of the train through Seattle to connect with a train that would also take us to Portland.

 

Aside from the breakdown in Indiana, where the Lake Shore Limited saved the day, there was hiccup about a half hour out of Chicago heading west when some unspecified “engine issue” delayed us for a few minutes—time, incidentally, that the generous stoppages at several points on the route—Winona, Minot, Shelby—allowed the train to make up easily.

 

I find I can gaze at the countryside for long periods of time that end up reducing the amount of reading I get done on long-haul trains. Physical exercise is limited to smoke breaks and clambering through the rocking of five cars to get to the diner. It’s oft been remarked upon that travelling across the U.S. by train is the way to gain some perception of the breadth of the country.

 

The accommodations on the Empire Builder were provided by what appeared to be a 3^rd generation Superliner—double-decker sleepers with roomettes and bedrooms. There was more space—until the beds were pulled out and you could barely get passed the bottom one. Roomettes are tight but serviceable—for one, despite their being beds for two.

 

The single Portland-bound sleeper was five cars behind the diner, while the Seattle three were positioned on the front side of the dining car. Not surprisingly, the diner went to Seattle and our breakfast from the café to be consumed upstairs in the observation lounge dropped down to breakfast sandwiches wrapped Starbucks-style with other cellophane-packaged goodies. The strong coffee saved the meal.

 

Would I do it again? Probably not, mainly because I’ve gone coast-to-coast now three times: on The Canadian and The Southwest Chief, Amtrak’s version of the Santa Fe’s great Super Chief, as well as this Empire Builder. I won’t count a run from Salt Lake City to Emeryville (the Bay Area terminus adjacent to Oakland) and a long-previous trip through the Rockies on that Denver, Rio Grande, and Western Zephyr, the route now incorporated into this California Zephyr.

 

It's always great to take a new route, even if the train runs late (or, as London Transport warns passengers, “not at all”). The cross-country routes I’ve taken are regarded as the standouts of the system; much as I’d love to take the trip made famous by Arlo Guthrie on The City of New Orleans, I keep reading about how it appears to be the Amtrak stepchild in terms of services and accommodations.

 

But there are bright spots on the rail horizon: the Adirondack from New York to Montreal—from which I remember the gorgeous country alongside Lakes George and Champlain as well as the beautiful old New York Central Hudson River ride—is being shut down somewhere north of Albany this summer for the track to be upgraded. As nice as the scenery was, travelling at incredibly slow speeds does take away from pleasure of the expedition.

Käthe Kollwitz Gets Her Due

There's a show at NY's Museum of Modern Art for which I've been waiting for a long time. And I'm not the only one. An extensive show of the art of Käthe Kollwitz has been open for several weeks; it's definitely the first presentation of her work in a long time--possibly the first in the U.S.

I'd seen examples of her sculpture and drawings in various museums--a sculpture of a woman that I saw in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts some years ago has stuck with me ever since. She was a socialist, who sought social change, with great feeling. One of her two sons died in combat, which brought out her long-held pacifist leanings.  

Much of her work consists of drawings of women in parlous situations and stark titles like Woman With Dead Baby. She clearly felt strongly for people whose lives had been upended or just ended by war, oppression, and "the system". Drawings were her metier, along with sculpture. She lived in Germany and lived a long life, somehow making it through the awful last stretch, the 30's and 40's until her death in 1945. The Nazis burned many of her works but she almost outlived them.

She was dedicated to political change through socialism and sacrificed much of her family life to her politics--it did help that her husband managed to keep things afloat from his medical practice.

Her work is affecting, however, and this depth of feeling overwhelms the anger that impelled her to political activism. Her sculptures of women show this combination of realism and feeling. At times, politics dominated--with her posters redolent of the Weimar republic of the 20's. But the personal tragedies of her family, her friends, and her artistic colleagues and peers during these troubled times influenced and dominated her drawings and sculpture.

She had mastered the fundamentals of both arts so that she could readily convey her feelings through them. Her work attracts and then holds your attention. It is not sentimental nor mawkish. Instead, it confronts the awful truths of her times without any mediation. There's a German Expressionist show now at the National Gallery, which I've not yet seen: Kollwitz doesn't easily fit into any school or group, neither the Expressionists nor Der Blaue Reiter. She was her own person doing her own inimitable art conveying sorrow and strength of ordinary people--workers and mothers.