4U-13-41

At 10 o'clock one morning fortnight ago a man in a black Dodge sedan drove up to the Warner-Quinlan filling station on Manhattan's Lexington Avenue at 127th Street. Day Manager Walter Lyle filled his tank with five gallons of gasoline worth 98-c-. The man gave him a $10 gold certificate.

"You don't see many of these anymore," said Lyle.

"Ah, yes, you do." said his customer. "I've got a hundred of them left at home." He took his change and drove off.

Following his company's instructions to be on the lookout for counterfeit gold bills or bills of large denominations, Manager Lyle wrote on the margin of the note he had just received the license number of the Dodge sedan: 4U-13-41. Next day he gave the bill to an employe named John Lyons, told him to take it to a nearby branch of the Corn Exchange Bank, see if it was genuine. Lyons was told it was. Three days later the bank turned the bill over to the New York office of the Department of Justice as one of the 4,750 gold and silver certificates passed through an opening in the hedge of a Bronx cemetery on the night of April 2, 1932 by John F. ("Jafsie") Condon as ransom for Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. More than $5,000 of the ransom money had turned up in 716 transactions during the past two years. But no one who had received any of it had ever been alert enough to connect it with the case. License number 4U-13-41, penciled on the bill, was the one hard factual link for which the police of New York and New Jersey and the Department of Justice had been tirelessly searching for 29 months.

Image. Detectives working on the Lindbergh case had carefully constructed a working model of the appearance, habits and character of the criminal they sought. From the ransom letters to "Jafsie" Condon and the note left in the empty nursery on Sourland Mountain, psychiatrists had deduced that the man was German, or at least Teutonic. His English was largely phonetic and he used "gute" for "good." He also appeared to be some sort of mechanic; one ransom note had a careful working drawing of the sort of box in which he wanted the money delivered. The ladder by which he climbed to the Lindbergh nursery was of careful, home-made construction, and a New York City toxicologist, examining ransom money as it came in, found emery dust and glycerine esters. Hence the man was likely to be a carpenter or machinist who ground his own tools. Judging from the ladder's broken rung, the man's weight was put at somewhere near 160 lb. From vague descriptions given by a taxi-driver who had taken the third ransom note to "Jafsie" Condon and from Condon's own recollections of the intermediary "Johns," a Washington cartoonist was able to make for the Department of Justice sketches of the criminal's face: sharp nose, flat cheeks, small mouth, pointed chin.

Soon after the ransom money began to appear, New York newspapers agreed to lull the criminal's fears by withholding the news (see p. 46). With growing confidence, the criminal increased the rate of circulation. It was evident that he was active in the Bronx and Yorkville sections of New York. A police map showed each spot where ransom money turned up. The man was spending most of his money never in the same place twice, but always within a well-defined perimeter so that by taking cross-bearings, police had a reasonably good idea that he was living in or near The Bronx. The toxicologist also found that the bills had a musty smell, guessed that they were being kept underground.

Then, while detectives watched the shadow of their criminal flit about their pin-pricked map without ever leaving a satisfactory clue, a huge piece of luck came from Washington. On April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt recalled all gold bullion, coin and certificates. Since $40,000 of the $50,000 ransom money was in gold notes, police chances of catching the extortionist were increased a hundredfold. Not only the Lindbergh money but all gold bills automatically became "hot." The problem had been simplified, but by no means solved. In August $2,980 of the Lindbergh notes were converted into legitimate currency right under the nose of the New York Federal Reserve Bank without leaving a clue. But all the police needed to send them pouncing on their man was a telephone number, an address, an automobile license. . . .

Man. In a cheap, residential section of The Bronx one day last week 75 concealed Federal agents, city detectives and State troopers watched a man come out of a small stucco house, cross a lane to a frame garage. He backed his black sedan into the sunlight and 75 hearts skipped a beat when the license plate shone with the numerals 4U-13-41. Plainclothesmen followed the car a few blocks, forced it to the curb.

"Why am I being stopped?" asked the driver. He had a German accent.

A detective tapped him for weapons, found a "hot" $20 gold certificate. "Where did you get this?"

"I've been hoarding. . . ."

"How long have you had this?"

"A few years, gentlemen. . . ."

"What do you know about the Lindbergh kidnapping?"

"I? I know nothing at all about the Lindbergh kidnapping, gentlemen. I am a decent man. I live near here with my wife and child. I am a carpenter, gentlemen."

Bruno Richard Hauptmann fitted the image of the Lindbergh kidnapper almost to a T. He had the flat face, the pointed nose, the small mouth. He weighed 180 lb. He had worked in The Bronx lumber yard whence came the scantlings in the kidnapper's ladder. He was, indeed, a carpenter. Under the floor and in the walls of his garage was found $13,750 more of the ransom money. The taxi-driver remembered him in a minute. "Jafsie" Condon made a "partial" identification. Handwriting experts agreed that the lettering in the ransom notes unquestionably matched samples of Bruno Richard Hauptmann's penmanship.

For more than a day Hauptmann was sequestered in a downtown police station while an airtight case was built against him. When newshawks smelled a story, police officials let the most sensational development in the nation's greatest criminal case burst over every front page.

Because of the publicity police were loath to "rubber-hose" Prisoner Hauptmann's story out of him. But the gentler method of keeping him awake, nagging him with questions for 48 hours brought small results. The stolid, 35-year-old Teuton soon closed his mouth tight. His shocked wife Anna, who apparently knew nothing of her husband's finances, got him a lawyer, but Hauptmann refused to see him. Then she got him another.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann was born at Kamenz, Germany, served as a machine-gunner in a Saxon regiment during the War. In 1919 he was sentenced to five years imprisonment for theft. Released in 1923, he was again arrested for theft, escaped while waiting trial. That same year he arrived in the U. S. as a stowaway on a German liner. Deported, he stowed away again on another ship later in the year. He managed to get ashore, find work as a carpenter in New Jersey and New York. He married in 1925. His Bronx neighbors knew him only for thrift and taciturnity. After 1932, when his wife went abroad for the summer, he was never regularly employed, yet always seemed to have ample funds. He told neighbors he was trading in furs, making money on Wall Street.

Before he turned silent, Hauptmann told police an incredible tale about how the Lindbergh ransom came into his possession. He thought the money was "old letters left by a friend." After the friend, one Isadore Fisch, died in Leipzig last March Hauptmann discovered the money, and appropriated it.

The question which was still puzzling police last week was whether or not the most widely sought criminal in U. S. history had had an accomplice. The Department of Justice was inclined to think the Lindbergh kidnapping was a one-man job. But a "mystery woman" was said to be sought as well as a "mystery man" whom Col. Lindbergh had seen with a handkerchief over his face near The Bronx cemetery the night the ransom was passed. Also implicated was the brokerage house with which Hauptmann was said to have a $25,000 account.

Meantime, in California, Col. & Mrs. Lindbergh shrank from further contact with the crime which had taken their firstborn, said they were "not much interested" in the case. Reluctantly Col. Lindbergh agreed to return to New York this week to be present as the plaintiff when the extortion case of People v. Hauptmann goes to the Grand Jury.

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