The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax 

 IRVING  BITZ  

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   The State of NJ v. Hauptmann:  FAIRNESS ON TRIAL (PDF) 

 by  Judge W Dennis Duggan, JFC 

Bitz Admits Guilt in Rackateering  Aug 4, 1959

  Forensic Evidence Removed By American Lindbergh Family 

 Irving Bitz and Salvy Spitale were bootleggers  brought into the Lindbergh case - by another  mobster named Morris "Mickey" Rosner - in the earliest days before the child's body was found.

Lindbergh claimed his child had been abducted by mobsters though there was no evidence of such a fact one way or the other. Al Capone offered to help but Lindbergh declined the offer and  preferred the help of New York - connected mobsters who knew more about Brooklyn than they did about New Jersey. But, then again, it is the firm belief of this website that Lindbergh wasn't really looking for his son anyway.

Irving Bitz disappeared on September 2, 1981 and his shark-eaten body was found off Oakwood Beach in Staten Island after a mysterious $150,000.00 ransom demand. According to NY Post reporter, Carl Pelleck, Bitz was known to police for many phony kidnapping/ransom "stunts" and this demand on his own life was considered by the NYC cops to be just one more hoax. 

Bitz was connected to Louis Lepke and Lucky Luciano and was supposed to have been the guy who rubbed out Legs Diamond. At the time of his murder, at age 78, Bitz was the president of Imperial News Inc. and was a wealthy resident of Melville L.I. though his 1930s living quarters were much more humble. (see photo below)

 The New Jersey cops never suspected Lindbergh as the "abductor" of his child but that doesn't necessarily mean that the mobsters were just as blind sighted. After all, hoaxes and scams have always been a great source of income for organized criminal syndicates and they would have been the one group that Lindbergh may not have been able to fool. 

It is entirely possible that certain mobsters have always known about this hoax, as NY Post columnist Cindy Adams has claimed. 

She claims that a niece of Salvatore Spitale told her they always "knew" Lindbergh had killed his retarded son.

The following excerpt is from a

Village Voice article by Tom Robbins

"Formed in the early 1900s, the Newspaper and Mail Deliverers Union was equal parts Irish, Italian, and Jewish, a reflection of the city's then dominant ethnic groups. Well into the 1970s, Jewish racketeers played a major role in the union. One of them, Red Levine, was reputed to have been one of the assassins of Salvatore Maranzano, the old-school mobster who helped to found America's Cosa Nostra. Law enforcement officials, as well as longtime union members and mob associates (often the same thing in the NMDU) say that Levine cleverly allowed each of the city's five Mafia families to have a piece of the newspaper delivery action, which included bootleg sales of stolen papers as well as loan-sharking and gambling among drivers.

In more recent times, a hustling gangster named Irving Bitz — nicknamed "The Little Guy" for his diminutive stature—also helped keep peace among mob factions in the industry. Bitz, an NMDU member who also ran Imperial News Service, carried his own fearful legend: The feisty businessman was credited with the 1931 slaying of famed gambler Legs Diamond. In his later years, he reputedly breakfasted each morning with former Genovese crime family boss Frank "Funzi" Tieri. In 1959, he was convicted of conspiring with NMDU officials to control Long Island's newspaper and magazine deliveries. Bitz remained a powerful force in the industry up until the day in 1981 when his trussed-up body was found in a Staten Island swamp. His murder was never solved.

When Robert Morgenthau first dispatched investigators to look into the NMDU in 1990, following allegations of shakedowns and assaults, they found the descendants of Levine and Bitz conducting business as usual."