Dear Sirs:
In the early 1990's I, along with Stephen
Monier, became
interested in the Lindbergh case. The interest ultimately resulted in our
1993 book.
By way of background I am a 47-year career criminal defense
attorney. Mr. Monier is a career law enforcement officer who has served
the public as a detective, a chief of police, the President of the National
Police Chiefs Association, and a U.S. Marshall. He’s also written
protocols for law enforcement organizations in cases of missing children.
You may remember him as the U.S. Marshall who handled the longest stand-off in
U.S. Marshall history and brought it to a peaceful conclusion.
Prior to our 1993 book there appeared to be two schools of
thought in the Lindbergh crime orbit. There were those who supported the
verdict, and those who thought that someone else had done the kidnapping and
that Hauptmann was wrongfully convicted.
We took a different tack. We approached this case as we
believed that modern investigators would who received a report of a missing
person, the presence of a ransom note, and a claim a child had been kidnapped.
That means that nothing was discounted as a possibility.
By starting our analysis from scratch we came to the
conclusion that the most likely explanation was that there had not been a
stranger abduction, but rather that some domestic issue had transpired in the
house, and that everything that happened subsequently was the result of the
assumption at the get-go in the integrity of the original kidnapping claim.
Law enforcement would not act that way today. No one, and no theory, would
be discounted out of hand.
In the years since I have appeared on many documentaries on
the case, ranging from ABC, Fox, The Travel Channel, the History Channel, the
BBC, etc. etc. I am always asked the same question: What happened in the
house that night? I always give the same answer, often to the
disappointment of the interviewer: “No one knows.”
“But,” I go on, “we are fairly confident that we know
what probably did not happen. We don’t find it likely that a kidnapper
drove to a house where his target was not living only to find his target just
happened to be there based on a parental decision made just hours earlier that
day, placed a ladder against the side of the house at 9:15 pm. when everyone was
up and about rather than waiting until everyone was asleep, just by luck
happened to put the ladder up to the room where the child was sleeping, just by
luck placed the ladder adjacent to the only window in the house with a
malfunctioning lock so that access to the house was gained, decided on his way
out to meticulously wipe down the room eliminating all fingerprints, and then
left behind a hand written note that no one found when they extensively searched
the room looking for the baby. (It was later “found” propped on the window
sill where earlier no note had been seen.)
Is it possible that there was a stranger abduction?
Absolutely. Is it likely? Not in our opinion.
Students of this crime know that ransoms by three different
groups were demanded, and that ransoms to two separate claimants were made.
Could Hauptmann have been one of these extortionists? Well, we know
someone was, so yes, it’s possible.
However, the real question is what happened in the nursery on
March 1, 1932 and who sealed the nursery ransom note? I hope that DNA
analysis will finally provide the answer.