Disorder in the Court : THE HISTORY : Lindbergh: Real Trial of the Century

Sixty years ago this month, on Jan. 2, 1935, the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann opened in the Hunterdon County courthouse in the small town of Flemington, N.J. (population 2,700). It was universally called “the trial of the century,” transfixing a worldwide audience eager to bring to a conclusion the story that had gripped the world for two years--the abduction of Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. on March 1, 1932.

The kidnaping of the 20-month-old toddler, the discovery of his body six weeks later and the search for the kidnaper-murderer, who had extorted $50,000 in ransom, was a heart-wrenching tale of loss and desecration that captured the imagination of the media like no previous event in the 20th Century.

The child’s disappearance and murder was a loss not only to the young couple, Charles A. Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, whose first child he was, but an extraordinary assault on a genuine hero--perhaps the last American to play the part before the world began to devour its heroes. Lindbergh’s personal courage and self-effacing charm had won the admiration of hundreds of millions of people around the world when he was the first to fly the Atlantic solo, in 1927.

By the time Hauptmann was arrested, in September, 1934, the newspapers and all other media--radio, newsreels and even nascent TV--had taken part in the unfolding story and developed every excruciating detail. Hauptmann’s capture and his subsequent trial were riveting to millions of Americans, and the press played out every angle. Even the reserved New York Times devoted half its front page and all of Pages 2, 3 and 4 to the capture, with a similar amount of space the next day. But this was merely prologue for what was to follow.

When the trial began four months later, Flemington became the media capital of America--700 reporters and photographers (an astonishing number for that time) took over the courthouse, and practically all breathing space in the small town. Forty telegraph wires were laid in the stately courthouse, dating from 1828, and some newspapers bought full access to phone lines of private homes. Because the lone hotel could house only about 50 people, there was a frantic hunt for accommodations. One enterprising paper leased a country club nearby and housed and fed its staff there.

Newspapers lured such well-known writers as Edna Ferber, Kathleen Norris, Alexander Woolcott and Damon Runyan to report from Flemington, while famous reporters, including Walter Winchell, Arthur Brisbane, Fannie Hurst, and Adela Rogers St. Johns, were recruited to add their impressions to the gush of words--estimated to be about 1 million each day--emanating from what seemed to have become the center of the world. Most wire services also transmitted the entire daily transcript, about 55,000 words.

The New York Journal bought exclusive access to Hauptmann’s wife, Anna, literally, by paying for Hauptmann’s defense, and guarded her day and night so she could not talk to other reporters. Even though Justice Thomas W. Trenchard had forbidden any pictures in his courtroom when he was on the bench, a motion-picture camera and microphone had been planted and several witnesses were recorded--until the films, which were quickly released to the public, came to Trenchard’s attention and the apparatus was thrown out.

Indeed, Flemington became a society venue. Richly dressed and sophisticated women and well-tailored men vied for seats in court. The small town became an inexhaustible source of entertainment, and the man accused of the heinous crime of child kidnaping and murder became the center of a media circus, with endless possibilities for news stories. James S. Kilgallen, head of the International News Service, said he had never seen a trial with so many women reporters, a mark of the trial’s potential for generating “human-interest stories”--since women were usually relegated to soft news. Reporters became specialists on every conceivable angle of the proceedings--even “Flemington Fashions.”

The press was not alone in its enterprising spirit; many sold food, rooms and souvenirs (including miniature ladders for 10 cents) to reporters, celebrities and the thousands of ordinary onlookers who gathered around the case. It was reported that after Lindbergh testified, between 75,000 and 100,000 people gathered in Flemington--making it look like Times Square on New Year’s Eve.

After a short and simple jury-selection process--the names of jurors were published in the papers--the trial unfolded with a series of celebrity witnesses, including Lindbergh, Anne Lindbergh and John F. Condon (known as “Jafsie”), who had handed over the ransom money, and an assortment of lesser figures--including varied kooks and charlatans.

These witnesses testified to the facts of the abduction, Hauptmann’s whereabouts on that blustery March night and details of the ransom. They became, for a time, media stars as they figured briefly in the endless coverage of the trial.

Just as significant was the testimony of handwriting specialists and especially the scientific evidence centering on the wood analysis of a crude, homemade ladder left on the grounds of the Lindbergh estate and presumed to have been the means of entry to the second-floor nursery. The case presented by New Jersey Atty. Gen. David T. Wilentz, the chief prosecutor, revolved around this kind of circumstantial evidence, because there were no witnesses to the crime.

The circumstantial nature of the evidence, as well as the extraordinary circus created by the media attention, returned to haunt this most famous trial of the century. Shortly after the verdict was announced (initially misreported by the Associated Press because of a glitch in the elaborate signaling system AP developed to get news out of the sealed courtroom): guilty with no recommendation of mercy, observers began to ask whether true justice could have been served.

Prominent figures such as Eleanor Roosevelt asked, “What might happen to any innocent person in a similar situation?” Clarence Darrow, the famous defense attorney, and William Allen White, much-revered journalist, were indignant about a “Movietone” trial that lowered “the tone of American justice.” Perhaps American justice and the whole legal system had paid the price of a “vacuous morbidity.” Murder, many agreed, had been too easily turned into entertainment.

Hauptmann died in the electric chair on Jan. 13, 1936, a sad, unbent figure who maintained his innocence until the end. His widow, Anna, continued to try to prove him innocent until her own death last year. But the case did not die. Born in the glare of celebrity publicity, exploited by the media, the case of Bruno Hauptmann has continued to attract popular attention and produce endless retellings in a culture infatuated by crimes featuring the rich and the famous.*