12
Despite official denials, reporters knew a ransom note had been found the night of the kidnapping. Many of them correctly reasoned that Lindy might follow the established practice used by kidnappers and relatives of a stolen victim and negotiate for the return of the baby via personal ads in the daily newspapers. They were unaware of who Condon was, let alone that he had come to Sorrel Hill in the dead of night and left the next day with Henry Breckinridge, but reading the March 11 edition of the New York American, sharp-eyed newsmen came across an ad that said, “I accept. Money is ready. Jafsie.” From then on, Jafsie watching became a prime pastime for the press.
If reporters covering the crime hadn’t noticed that the Jafsie ads were also running in the Bronx Home News, the paper’s readership did. Calls and letters had been received inquiring as to the notices. Fearing that Condon’s secret role in the negotiations might be compromised, the editor of the Home News publicly denied that the Jafsie messages had anything to do with the Lindbergh case. This didn’t prevent a New York City daily from sending a young writer to Condon’s door on the evening of March 17, as the old professor and Breckinridge were waiting for Lindbergh to arrive and examine the sleepwear. Condon’s wife fibbed in telling the reporter that her husband wasn’t home. The newsman, ostensibly doing a follow-up story, asked what kind of response, if any, had occurred as the result of Condon’s public offer to add a thousand dollars to the reward and act as intermediary. Mrs. Condon replied that other than a few crank letters, nothing much had come of it. The young reporter left.
Whereas Lindbergh and Breckinridge had reached Condon’s home undetected and no one yet linked the chatty old man to the Jafsie notices, the press was closing in. Either on a hunch or as the result of a tip, the banner story on the front page of the New York Mirror for that same Thursday, March 17, was that the J. P. Morgan and Company bank had made available to the Lindberghs $250,000 with which to buy back their child. The report was partially correct. In the afternoon the Morgan bank sent one fifth of that amount, fifty thousand dollars, in currency to the Fordham branch of the Corn Exchange Bank, where it was placed in a special vault to which Condon had twenty-four-hour-a-day access.
The next morning, Friday, March 18, Condon awoke to find the young journalist among a horde of reporters waiting outside on the sidewalk. Donning a disguise, and with the assistance of Al Reich, Jafsie sneaked out of the house and gave a scheduled lecture. When he returned home, the inquiring newsmen were gone.
On Monday, March 21, Condon received a letter in the same distorted handwriting as that of the previous ransom messages and bearing the identical signature of perforations and interlocking circles:
Dear Sir: You and Mr. Lindbergh know ouer Program. If you don’t accept den we will wait until you agree with ouer deal. we know you have to come to us anyway But why should Mrs. and Mr. Lindbergh suffer longer as necessary we will note communicate with your or Mr. Lindbergh until you write so in the paper.
we will tell you again; this kidnapping cace whas prepared for a year already so the Police won’t have any luck to find us or the child. You only puch everything farther out did you that little package
to Mr. Lindbergh? It contains
the sleepingsuit for the baby.
the baby is well.
On the backside of the paper was this:
Mr. Lindbergh only wasting time with his search.1
It appeared that John had not seen the last ads. Breckinridge agreed that a new notice should be placed but differed with Condon, who continued to insist they must see the baby before paying the ransom. Lindbergh had ordained that they comply with every term laid down by the kidnappers, including not seeing the stolen infant prior to delivery. Even though this was how Breckinridge meant the matter to rest, this is the item Condon put in the March 22 editions of the Home News and the New York American:
Thanks. That little package you sent me was immediately delivered and accepted as real article. See my position. Over fifty years in business and can I pay without seeing the goods? Common sense makes me trust you. Please understand my position. Jafsie
That same day at Sorrel Hill, Lindbergh greeted John Hughes Curtis, the Reverend Mr. H. Dobson-Peacock, and Admiral Guy Burrage. He had extended the invitation after receiving a letter from Burrage imparting that the kidnappers had instructed “Sam” to have Curtis organize a group of Norfolk, Virginia, citizens into a negotiating committee for the return of the stolen child.
Burrage had been in command of the U.S. warship that brought Lindbergh back to America after his historic flight to France, and the two men had remained friendly. Burrage had been recruited by the highly respected H. Dobson-Peacock, rector of the largest church in Norfolk. Dobson-Peacock was convinced that the tale told him by the owner of one of the largest shipbuilding yards in the South, John Hughes Curtis, was true: that the kidnapping gang had designated a man named Sam as their go-between, and Sam had asked the forty-three-year-old Curtis, whom he had met several years back, to help him get in touch with Lindbergh. Dobson-Peacock and Burrage had not met Sam—and never would. Even so, Curtis convinced them that Sam, a former rumrunner with many aliases, was the true go-between.
Once in their presence, Lindbergh apologized for not having responded sooner and pointed out that so much mail was being received that even a letter from the White House had been mislaid and not answered for ten days.2 Curtis, a six-foot-two, two-hundred-pound Knute Rockne look alike, attempted to recount his conversations with Sam, only to be interrupted by numerous summonses that repeatedly took Lindbergh from the room.
According to Curtis, Sam told him that though the kidnappers were growing impatient, they had hired a special nurse, who was following the diet in the newspapers, and the baby was in good health. The nurse had also bought new clothes for the Eaglet. The baby was being held on a boat that might possibly be concealed along the shoreline of Chesapeake Bay, or it might be waiting beyond the territorial waters of the United States. Four days earlier Sam had made a concrete proposal by which Colonel Lindbergh could display his good faith to the kidnappers: Deposit twenty-five thousand dollars in a Norfolk bank under the names of Curtis, Dobson-Peacock, and Burrage.3
Lindbergh appeared unimpressed by the Curtis story and avoided stating how much ransom money he intended to pay. Burrage guessed the amount was fifty thousand, as the papers were speculating.
“I cannot agree on any sum until I have positive proof I am dealing with the right people,” Lindbergh said. “They must show me they are not impostors. If they really have my child, they can easily prove it by describing certain characteristics which have not been made public.” The Lone Eagle expressed his appreciation of the three Norfolk men’s desire to help recover the infant, warning, “But I have to tell you, I think this Sam is deceiving you. I don’t know what his game is, but I think he’s a phony. I can’t tell you how I know this, but I’m certain it’s true.”4 Ostensibly, Lindbergh is here alluding to his inside information concerning Jafsie. But if he really believed Jafsie was in touch with the true kidnappers—which he gave every indication of believing—why would he keep the door open to this lead? But that’s what he did. Adding to the legacy of contradictions that had marked his handling of the case to date, Lindbergh let it be known that if Sam could provide proof he was speaking for the kidnappers, he would negotiate with him.
On Thursday, March 24, word circulated that three Norfolk men, John Hughes Curtis, Admiral Burrage, and Rev. Dobson-Peacock, were not only in touch with the kidnappers but were preparing to pay the ransom. The news corps arrived, and Dobson-Peacock submitted to an afternoon interview, in which he confirmed that they had met with Lindbergh at Hopewell. He also substantiated their claim that they were in touch with the kidnappers, who had promised to return the baby prior to demanding the ransom payment. The next day, March 25, headline stories across the nation proclaimed that John Hughes Curtis was about to give the kidnappers fifty thousand dollars for the return of the baby, who was on a boat.
At Lindbergh’s bidding, Schwarzkopf—several tabloids were printing that the trooper boss was on the outs with the Lone Eagle—informed the press, “The three citizens of Norfolk who visited Colonel Lindbergh gave him information which, on being investigated, was found to have no special significance.”5 John Hughes Curtis’s reply, carried on the country’s front pages, regretted the publicity he was causing and let Schwarzkopf know that no sooner had he returned from seeing Colonel Lindbergh at Sorrel Hill than Sam called him from Philadelphia with assurances that he represented the crooks who had the child. The Reverend Dobson-Peacock’s statements to the press not only contended that he, Curtis, and Admiral Burrage had Lindbergh’s authority to negotiate for the child’s return but twitted Schwarzkopf by saying, “That man Shootskoff, or what ever his name is, has tried to hinder us from the outset.”6
The trooper superintendent faced a problem more serious than criticism. He had run out of money with which to investigate the crime. The New Jersey State Police Emergency Fund consisted of only five thousand dollars. The investigation so far had cost ten times that amount. Several days earlier, as the public spat between himself, Curtis, and Dobson-Peacock filled the papers, he petitioned the State Finance Committee for more funds, promising to cut back on all nonessential expenditures regarding the case.7
As Morris Rosner had been irate about Dr. Condon’s coming to the Lindbergh estate without his knowledge, Condon himself, still undiscovered by reporters, demanded to know what all the stories about John Hughes Curtis were. Breckinridge admitted that Curtis and associates had visited Sorrel Hill but assured Condon that he and Lindbergh had discounted the trio’s story, that they remained committed to the old teacher’s John as the man who would get the baby back, not Curtis’s widely reported Sam.
Keeping Curtis in check was another matter. He informed Dobson-Peacock and Admiral Burrage that he would be meeting Sam on Sunday, March 27, in a New York City cafeteria.
That same Sunday, Condon, who had waited vainly for word from the kidnappers, ran another ad in the Bronx Home News:
Money is ready. Furnish simple code for us to use in paper. Jafsie.
A single-page letter written in a familiar hand and bearing the three-circle, three-perforation signature arrived at Condon’s home on Tuesday, March 29:
dear sir: It is note necessary to furnish any code. You and Mr. Lindbergh know ouer Program very well. We will keep the child in ouer same plase until we have the money in hand, but if the deal is note closed until the 8 of April we will ask for 30000 more. Also note 70000–100000.
How can Mr. Lindbergh follow so many false clues he knows we are the right party ouer signature is still the same as in the ransom note. But if Mr. Lindbergh likes to fool around for another month, we can help it.
Once he has come to us anyway but if he keeps on waiting we will double ouer amount. There is absolute no fear aboud the child it is well.8
Breckinridge was at Condon’s house when the letter arrived. Lindbergh, costumed in a hunting cap and dark glasses, joined them past midnight.9 After reading the text, he instructed Breckinridge to place a newspaper ad in which John’s terms were accepted. Condon continued to press for their seeing the baby before turning over the money and volunteered to be a hostage. Again he was overruled. The ad appeared in both the New York American and the Bronx Home News that Tuesday afternoon of March 31:
I hereby accept. Money is ready. Jafsie.
On April Fools’ Day, Condon received a letter that had been mailed from the nearby Fordham Station branch of the post office. Inside was another envelope and the following instructions:
Dear Sir, please handel inclosed letter to Col. Lindbergh. It is in Mr. Lindbergh interest not to notify police.10
It was not until now that Lindbergh chose to inform H. Norman Schwarzkopf of the plan to have Condon pay John the ransom. H. Norman, whose organization had no mandate to operate outside the state of New Jersey, wanted his men to go to New York and tail Jafsie to the meeting, then follow John, and pick him up after the baby was returned. Lindbergh would have none of it. He forbade Schwarzkopf to follow anyone and ordered him to stay out of the picture.
The author could find no record of Schwarzkopf’s reaction to the curt and often humiliating commands of Charles Lindbergh. Whatever frustrations he and his men felt were often vented on others but never on the Lone Eagle.
Lindbergh arrived at Condon’s home around noon. The letter in the envelope addressed to him had the familiar handwriting and the circle-perforation signature.
Dear Sir: have the money ready by Saturday evening, we will inform you where and how to deliver it, have the money in one bundle we want you to put it in a sertain place. Ther is no fear that somebody els will take it, we watch everything closely. Blease tell us know if you are agree and ready for action Saturday evening—if yes put in paper
“Yes everything O.K.”
It is a very simple delivery but we find out very sun if there is any trapp. After 8 houers you gett the Adr: from the boy. on the place you find two ladies, the are innocence.
On the other side of the page was this:
If it is too late we put in the New York American for Saturday morning. Put it in New York Journal.11
An ad prepared for the next day’s editions of the New York Journal and the Bronx Home News stated the following:
Yes. Everything O.K. Jafsie
Charles Lindbergh had refused all offers of financial assistance, including that from his millionaire mother-in-law, and had insisted on putting up the money himself. Lindy was a well-to-do man on paper, but converting this into seventy thousand dollars in hard cash during the worst year of the Great Depression required him to sell off a good portion of his stock market holdings at one fifth their value.12
A potent indication that Lindbergh might have known there was no real kidnapping was his staunch refusal to have the ransom bills marked. Once the money was paid, the extortionists would be free to go their own way and couldn’t mistakenly be charged with a kidnapping they hadn’t committed. It was hoped the whole matter of the child’s disappearance would be forgotten all the quicker. The ransom letters had demanded unmarked bills, and Lindy let it be known firmly that he intended to comply; he would do nothing else to upset the criminals. The first fifty thousand dollars the Morgan bank had already sent to the Fordham branch of the Corn Exchange Bank was in bills that were not marked.
Detective Jimmy Finn of the NYPD disapproved. So did Elmer Irey, the U.S. Treasury Department’s chief law-enforcement agent. Irey had come to Sorrel Hill with IRS intelligence agents Frank J. Wilson, Pat O’Rourke, and Arthur B. Madden to advise Lindbergh on methodologies for making a ransom payment.13 Lindbergh contended he did not want to scare off the kidnappers. The lawmen argued that should a ransom be delivered and the child not returned per the agreement, the currency was one of the few ways of tracking down the criminals. Physically marking the bills was not necessary, but a record of the serial numbers must be kept. Irey was insistent that U.S. gold certificates, which were easier to spot, be included among the currency. The intractable Lindbergh finally acceded. The fifty thousand dollars in the special vault of the Fordham branch of the Corn Exchange Bank was returned to the Morgan Company.
On Friday, April 1, IRS agents and fourteen Morgan bank clerks took eight hours to assemble and record the serial numbers of seventy thousand dollars in used currency according to the denominations specified by John.14 No two bills had sequential numbers, and a majority of the ten- and twenty-dollar notes were U.S. gold certificates. The money was divided into two bundles, the larger of which contained fifty thousand dollars and the smaller, twenty thousand dollars. The bundles were tied together with string. Within each bundle, packets of bills were held together by paper-currency bands from the Morgan bank and arranged in neat stacks. Samples of the string as well as the paper-currency bands were set aside for later identification.
On that same April Fools’ afternoon, while the ransom money was being prepared in New York City, Elsie Whateley, the Lindbergh family cook, and Betty Gow, the nursemaid, discovered a shiny object while walking up to the house atop Sorrel Hill: one of the two metal thumb guards the baby was wearing the night it disappeared. The string that had tied the guard to the infant’s wrist was still attached. The women had been chatting with one of the state policemen on duty at the main gate and on their return to the house spotted the metal restrainer along a section of gravel driveway that they had traveled almost every day since the infant’s disappearance. Since most law-enforcement agents stationed at the house had also passed this same tract every day for a full month, questions arose as to why they, too, had not noticed the thumb guard. One answer was that until recently it hadn’t been there.
While the “Yes. Everything O.K. Jafsie” ads ran in the April 2 editions of the Journal, the New York Daily News reported that the wife of John Hughes Curtis was off on secret kidnapping business and Curtis himself was waiting to hear from Sam. Curtis phoned Sorrel Hill, wanting to speak with Lindbergh, and ended up on the line with Rosner, whom he told that he was with an emissary from the kidnappers. The emissary had a letter for Lindbergh and only Lindbergh. Mickey rose to the occasion and finally got through to Lindy, who with Breckinridge, John Condon, and Al Reich were at Jafsie’s home in the Bronx, awaiting the imminent and prearranged word from the kidnappers. Lindbergh’s message for Curtis was that the emissary and the message he bore would have to wait.15
Early in the day of April 2, Lindbergh had used Al Reich’s Ford to pick up the two packages of ransom money and drive the money to Condon’s house, where he remained, intent on chauffeuring Jafsie to the rendezvous, hopefully that very night. Lindy would later explain that having reasoned that the old man was the only one who could identify John, and therefore might be at risk once the money was transferred, he was armed with a small handgun. Nobody had anticipated the volume required for seventy thousand dollars in five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills. Only with great difficulty was one of the two bundles of currency, the larger package, containing fifty thousand dollars, wedged into the wooden container that had been requested by the kidnappers.
It seems probable that Charles Lindbergh invoked one final safeguard to ensure that the extortionists not be captured: He insisted that no policemen be in the area of Dr. Condon’s home and that he and Jafsie not be followed should they have to leave the house. With that large an expanse off limits to the police and a no-follow rule in effect, the culprit had a virtual passport to freedom. Lindbergh’s order was easily complied with by H. Norman Schwarzkopf, who hadn’t been invited to New York and was being told next to nothing about what was happening. The commissioner of the New York Police Department, Edward P. Mulrooney, whose men had the jurisdiction and obligation to apprehend a kidnapper or extortionist, acceded to Lindbergh’s wishes. Mulrooney’s order for the night of April 2 dictated that the area above 125th Street and the Harlem River was off limits to New York’s finest. Adherence to the Lindbergh proscription meant that the kidnappers could not be followed once the ransom was paid them. It would also result in the police, most of whom were unaware of what was about to take place, not making arrangements to examine the scene of the money transfer immediately after the fact. The Lindbergh-Breckinridge cloak of secrecy was now complete—but it had already been penetrated. A third law-enforcement agency, J. Edgar Hoover’s Bureau of Investigation, which had received no official notification of the ban, was in the forbidden territory and keeping Condon’s house on Decatur Avenue under surveillance from a room across the street.
Not only had the BI been shut out of the kidnapping investigation by H. Norman Schwarzkopf since the inception of the crime, but an offer conveyed by two of its special agents to assist in finding the missing child had been personally rebuffed by Lindbergh himself, whom the operatives listed in one of their reports as being uncooperative. So total was the bureau’s isolation from the case that its personnel still weren’t certain if a ransom message had been found in the nursery the night the child disappeared. But the organization did have a potential informant.
The BI’s most promising contact with anyone close to the inner machinations of Sorrel Hill had been an aviator friend of Lindbergh’s by the name of Thomas Lanphier. The BI man in the process of gaining Lanphier’s confidence and aid was E. J. Connelley. On March 23, Lanphier had arranged for Connelley to visit Sorrel Hill. Lindbergh volunteered no more information than before, but while giving Lanphier and Connelley a ride back to New York, Cal (the acronym the BI would later use in reference to the Lone Eagle) let it be known that he was meeting with Breckinridge and two officers from the Special Intelligence Unit of the Internal Revenue Service, Frank Wilson and Arthur Madden. Lanphier subsequently informed Connelley that Lindbergh distrusted Wilson and Madden—who were advising him on procedures by which the ransom money could be made easier to trace—and that he had avoided giving them information about the kidnapping.16
Five days later, March 28, acting on what Connelley alleged was a significant lead, Lanphier contacted Henry Breckinridge, who was spending most of his time at Condon’s home, awaiting word from the kidnappers. A meeting was arranged away from the Decatur Avenue house. The special agent’s information proved to be of small relevance, but in the course of their two-hour conversation the “very cagey” Breckinridge opened up enough for Connelley to learn that Lindbergh had definitely heard from the kidnappers, that a go-between had already rendezvoused with the gang in a graveyard, that the kidnappers had agreed to return the baby two hours after the ransom was paid.17 Another thing he said was that the kidnapper appeared to be German or Germanic.
At the close of March, Connelley found out from Lanphier that the original ransom demand of fifty thousand dollars had been increased to seventy thousand dollars. Far more important was Lanphier’s disclosure that the Lindbergh representative who had met the kidnappers in the cemetery was a Dr. John Condon of 2974 Decatur Avenue in the Bronx. Condon was attached to Fordham University and had used his initials, J.F.C., to place the Jafsie ads in the New York American and the New York Journal.
Connelley initiated an immediate background investigation of Condon at Fordham and discovered that a lawyer from Breckinridge’s office had beaten the BI to the information. Connelley also placed mail coverage on 2974 Decatur Avenue—and spotted the April 1 letter to Condon that contained a sealed message for Lindbergh. One special agent would later contend that the crude writing on the outer envelope left him with the impression that the author might have been German. Lanphier, fearing that danger was imminent, pressed Connelley to initiate protective action. A special agent by the name of Lackey took up surveillance in a room opposite Condon’s house. Two backup special agents, who were ready to move on a telephone command, went into a room a block away.
At 7:45 P.M. Saturday evening, April 2, the night the ransom message had told Lindbergh to be ready for action—and with BI agents waiting across the street and up the block—a taxicab pulled up in front of Jafsie Condon’s house. The driver got out and brought a letter up to the front door.