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Post by rita on Mar 2, 2006 3:13:16 GMT -5
If Means was in on both ransom operations, but had the right inside information on CAL Jr.'s nite clothes, he may have had legitimate contact with kidnapers that deliberatly misslead him with their location in order to avoid discovery. If he was correct except for the genuine location, and the authorities acted hastily in arresting him on Maclean's complaint, resulting in child being killed or permanently lost. I would think the Means story is the most legitimate, because real kidnapper would lead a contact person away from themself, useing a decoy contact in another city far away from the actual location. Even the story of Hauptman dropping ransom letters in his own location is hard to believe, couldn't he decoy to Long Island, after all he was supposed to have masterminded a 100 mile kidnap journey?
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Post by rick for rita on Mar 2, 2006 22:25:07 GMT -5
It would be nice if we could construct some type of "timeline" comparing the goings on in the Bronx with the wild goose chase that Gaston Means lead Evalyn Walsh Mcclean on to Mexico and beyond. Was Means available to accompany CJ to St. Raymonds for the payoff? Or was Means like the wounded mother hen who leads the threat away from the nest? A second (3rd or 4th) oddity is the Curtis connection. Curtis did not interject himself into the kidnapping as did Condon and Means. Rather, he was dragged into it by some bootlegger and a priest. He realized no profit but also claimed to make contact with the gang in the Bronx. Curtis' attorney Hauck argued that Curtis had made contact with the gang but had "obstructed justice" by not aiding their capture? He got off w/ $1000 fine and probation. Did he meet the Bronx gang or not? or BRH?
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Post by rita on Mar 3, 2006 1:56:20 GMT -5
Like so many things in this case Means could have been planning and working both Ransoms when time was available for him or his partners. His trips in themself could have had mafia connections, as some of the gangsters went to Mexico for protection. If they realy wanted to loose Charlies trail they would have done that in Mexico.
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Post by rick3 on Feb 11, 2010 18:44:42 GMT -5
Michael e-mailed me about his new site and invited me to participate. Full disclosure: I'm author of "The Lindbergh Syndrome," so other posters should consider that I might be "trying to sell a book" here. My view is that the actual kidnapper was Duane Baker (real name Bacon), working in cahoots with Charles Henry Ellerson, Morrow chauffeur who drove Betty Gow to Hopewell and thus was one of the few people who knew the Lindberghs were not returning to Englewood, as was their weekday custom. Baker and Ellerson are linked by their common patronage of a speakeasy in Fort Lee, "Sha-Toe," and by the fact that Baker had succeeded Ellerson as a driver for Armour Meat Packing. Baker had a long criminal record. At the time of the kidnapping he was superintendent of Plymouth Apartments in Upper Manhattan. Tenants' names were listed on a dumbwaiter roster for the superintendent's benefit; among those names were "J./J. Faulkner," which stood for "Jane and Jane Faulkner," a mother and daughter who had previously lived at Plymouth (before Baker became superintendent). This is significant, of course, because "J. J. Faulkner" was the name on the deposit slip that accompanied $2,980 of Lindbergh ransom money, the first large chunk of the $50,000 paid by Condon at Raymond Cemetery. This was in 1933; Baker had left Plymouth in a rush on Apr. 15, 1932 (two weeks after the ransom exchange) with the latest rent receipts still in his pocket. I believe Baker laundered that money, using Faulkner as an alias. Unlike most students of the case, I do not believe there was any such person as "J. J. Faulkner." By remarkable coincidence, however, the actual Jane Faulkner (daughter) who had once lived at Plymouth Apartments did marry a man named Carl Geissler, who worked for the same company as Ralph Hacker, John F. Condon's son-in-law. I believe Baker was head of a gang (possibly including Hauptmann and Isidor Fisch) that had been hired by the mob with the goal of extricating Al Capone from prison. The $50,000 ransom was a red herring, designed to make it look like a routine kidnapping. Capone's offer to "find the baby" in exchange for his freedom was predicated on his belief that his hired gang was holding the Eaglet (he didn't know things had gone wrong, which is also why Baker skipped town...he'd have been a mob target for having "screwed up"). I further believe Baker's gang was the same one John Hughes Curtis claimed to have seen negotiating in Newark, headed by a man he knew as "Sam" (probably Baker), and which according to Curtis' belief was holding a living child. Lindbergh turned Capone down, after which the Eaglet's body was taken to Mt. Rose Heights and William Allen was bribed to "find it accidentally." I believe the body was transferred from its original site in Charles Henry Ellerson's car; on the day before the discovery, Ellerson's car burst into flames and tumbled off the Palisades, with Ellerson "escaping" at the last second. It burned beyond recognition in what I believe was an effort to destroy microscopic evidence. Baker's wife was German. I believe she wrote the Mersman table confession in an effort to save Hauptmann's life. She might or might not have authored the ransom notes. The symbol holes on the table surface that match the ransom-note symbol precisely show that the table was used as a template for the ransom notes. The possibility of the German poem being a hoax can be dismissed out of hand, because it made no reference to the holes on the top, which is the only way a hoax could have been made believeable (and even then, how would a hoaxer have gotten hold of the ransom notes?). The strongest evidence that organized crime was behind the Lindbergh kidnapping is the behavior of Condon himself. When first summoned to identify him, he wouldn't do so. At that time he told an F.B.I. agent named Turrou that "My life won't be worth five cents (if he identified Hauptmann). They would kill me." The key word is "they." Condon can only have been talking about the mob here. But once Condon realized that Hauptmann was being tried in court as a lone kidnapper and that all talk of a gang had evanesced, he felt secure about testifying at the trial that "John is Bruno Richard Hauptmann!" Common sense also dictates that Hauptmann wasn't a lone kidnapper. If he had been, how would Capone ever have been able to return the baby to the Lindberghs? Capone wouldn't have known Hauptmann, and if the kidnapping had been the work of anyone acting alone, there's no way Capone, from prison, would have known who it was. There are other problems with Hauptmann as a lone kidnapper. If the Eaglet had died during the abduction, why would Hauptmann have driven 4-1/2 miles in the opposite direction from the Bronx to dispose of the body along a main road where the risk of being seen was greater than anywhere else in the area? How would he have avoided the roadblock at the Hudson River, where cars were being stopped from 11 p.m. on and the drivers questioned? No witness came forward at his trial to say, "A man with a German accent crossed from New Jersey to New York at about midnight, and that's the guy I remember (pointing at Hauptmann)." Certainly if this had happened (and if it didn't where did Hauptmann spend the night?), such a witness would have testified. Instead the prosecution relied on Hochmuth and Whited, two of the worst witnesses to ever send a man to his death, ever. Four years ago, nearly to the day, Bob Mills posted this summary of the LKC. During the interim have we gotten any smarter...enough so to shoot down his post or prove some parts to be true? 1. I sure like the links to the Alfred W. Jones letter and Rev. Vincent Burns...via Charlie Henry Ellerson. 2. I dont see Duane Baker/Bacon as any mastermind? The last we heard, he was hiding out on Long Island with a little kid in tow? So kaiser soze is still in the dark? 3. But somewhere along the way, there was a hint that Baker's German wife ran off with JJ Nosovitsky? Thats going to be hard to confirm but it might give us a good leading? 4. Bob's post still gives us a coherant frame to build upon...
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 12, 2010 8:34:48 GMT -5
You don't have to shoot that down, it's destined to crash all by itself.
Personal beliefs or dis-beliefs won't get you anywhere if it requires the abandonment or subversion of facts and evidence. Stay with the money, stay with Hauptmann.
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Post by Michael on Feb 12, 2010 17:31:57 GMT -5
Do you think all roads lead: 1. To Hauptmann
2. Thru Hauptmann
3. From Hauptmann
4. Away from Hauptmann I think this is important. Is Hauptmann a: 1. Leader
2. Follower
3. Somewhere in the middle
4. Dupe or Scapegoat Let's think about this for a minute..... Looking through Hauptmann's life, what we know of it, from Germany through to his arrest... Was Hauptmann most likely a: 1. Partner
2. Worker Bee
3. Mastermind
4. Idiot Ok. Each and every face has represented Hauptmann in his lifetime. What is his record when each is employed by him? Where are his successes, failures, and/or patterns? Where is he consistent?
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 13, 2010 8:15:47 GMT -5
Do you think all roads lead:
1. To Hauptmann
2. Thru Hauptmann
3. From Hauptmann
4. Away from Hauptmann [font= All roads? Personally, I believe it would be safe to say they go thru him. On the other hand, if your a proponent of the large scale gang theories then I don't think all roads would be appropriate. However, in that case it really doesn't matter since you only need to find one road to make a connection.
I think this is important. Is Hauptmann a:
1. Leader
2. Follower
3. Somewhere in the middle
4. Dupe or Scapegoat
He certainly wasn't a dupe and I don't see him as a follower. That leaves a leader or somewhere in the middle.
Let's think about this for a minute..... Looking through Hauptmann's life, what we know of it, from Germany through to his arrest... Was Hauptmann most likely a:
1. Partner
2. Worker Bee
3. Mastermind
4. Idiot
I'm not sure these choices are all mutually exclusive. One could be all of the above at the same time. As I see Hauptmann, he is not a worker bee or at least he doesn't see himself as one. He's also not an idiot, though like all of us he has his moments of stupidity. Partner, like being a faithful husband?
Ok. Each and every face has represented Hauptmann in his lifetime. What is his record when each is employed by him? Where are his successes, failures, and/or patterns? Where is he consistent?
The only consistency I see is the desire to take a shortcut.
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Post by wolf2 on Feb 13, 2010 14:27:59 GMT -5
i dont know why people are stuck on duane baker. the fbi cleared him after investigating him. i have some fbi files on him and there were many others like him with a shady past that was also cleared
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jack7
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Post by jack7 on Feb 13, 2010 16:14:50 GMT -5
Good points Rick!
In the unedited version of Noel Behn's "Lindbergh The Crime," on p. 95 he writes:
" . . . a fellow inmate of Al Capone's telling federal authorities that Big Al had planned the kidnapping so he could cut a deal and get out of jail . . . "
Ever hear any more about that?
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Post by Michael on Feb 14, 2010 10:24:41 GMT -5
Great job attempting to address these!
Ok, let's just acknowledge there is a connection. I think what I am trying to do is not test the strength of that connection but find out exactly how it helps us find out where it runs within the spider-web of this Case. Does it always intersect with everyone else? Is the time-frame the beginning, middle, end or all of the above? How does knowing this connection help us to find out more?
So how do we reconcile Rab's theory that Hauptmann was being "duped" by Fisch? If you don't believe he's right - then what exactly is going on in your opinion?
Agreed. He's been an idiot (e.g. passing the ransom which got him caught, losing money in the market) he's been a partner (e.g. Diebeg, Kloppenberg, Fisch), he's been a worker bee (e.g. Grizzel, anytime after jumping ship), and he's been a mastermind (e.g. buying the food cart then turning a profit, Stock exchange trading, loaning money for interest, mortgage).
Loyalty must be measured in its proper context.
I couldn't agree more.
The FBI "cleared" him based upon what Lt. Finn told them. Remember, Schindler's car brought them where? And then the J.J. Faulkner deposit slip brought them where - again?
I could look this up for you if its in my Capone file. I've seen several letters and investigations which said this although none I ever thought were legit (but I could be wrong).
For me, its the strongest evidence that more were involved, and that Condon knew more about that....
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 14, 2010 11:33:58 GMT -5
Just finding it would be a revelation. I know a lot of people believe in the Big Gang Theory. I don't say it's not feasible, rather there simply isn't any tangible evidence of it's existence other than assumption and belief. To propose an organized criminal conspiracy at work here requires the acknowledgment of what that entails. Just the communication alone would leave some evidence. If one did exist, then a path of communication also existed to and from Hauptmann. So my suggestion is simply to look as hard as possible at him, his connections, his movements, and associations prior to the kidnapping.
One, Rab might be wrong. Two, and I think more likely, it was a case of two people thinking they were outsmarting the other. If Hauptmann thought he was using Fisch, he may not even have considered that he, in turn , was being used by Fisch.
Perhaps, but I don't think Hauptmann is a person I would want as a partner.
I'll never understand why the Capone theory still floats around. Take a close look at the Capone empire and his Chicago style. There's not even anything remotely Caponesque about the LKC.
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Post by rick3 on Feb 14, 2010 21:18:19 GMT -5
Good points Rick! In the unedited version of Noel Behn's "Lindbergh The Crime," on p. 95 he writes: " . . . a fellow inmate of Al Capone's telling federal authorities that Big Al had planned the kidnapping so he could cut a deal and get out of jail . . . " Ever hear any more about that? Well, Scarface Capone was convicted of tax evasion on 24 Oct 1931 so the timing is pretty much on target...he must have been desperate for some way to avoid the Fed. joint. He was buddies with Frankie Yale who owned a roadhouse near Highfields before he met his demise in a hail of bullets--so maybe Capone had visited the neighborhood? This line of reasoning makes alot more sense than some two-bit stock broker from Bronx pulling it off alone? [Capone masterminded the Valentines Day Massacre and the shooters remain unknown to this day] Maybe Malone/Madden were dealing with reps of Capone who could call in connections for any job, anytime? [CAL said NO and opted instead for the SSS* in the Bronx] Hauptmann never supervised anyone that we know of, and never pulled off the huge scams like Knickerbocker Pie and Solex Electric attributed to Fisch, Schleser & DeGrasi? So if they were working as a team then Moneybags Fisch was one-up and BRH was the gopher. *similar sleeping suite/secret symbol singnatur
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jack7
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Post by jack7 on Feb 15, 2010 8:34:55 GMT -5
Part of "Caponesque" is that those involved wouldn't rat Capone. The massacre is a good example of that. Lots of witnesses saw and heard - four men entered and subsequently left the warehouse where the seven victims already were. Two of the four had rented rooms across the street and acted as lookouts, so there was close face to face contact with potential witnesses. The fake cop-Cadillac was trashed and burned by someone. Over two hundred forty-five cal. machine gun shots were fired within the warehouse plus at least one shotgun blast (all this in a relatively quiet neighborhood), yet no one called the police until the crime was discovered. A lot of potential murderers and accomplices were put on the hot seat, yet no one squalked.
It's said, particularly of the Lindbergh Crime, that if too many were involved someone would surely tell all. If TLC is compared with St. Valentine's it's easy to see that's not necessarily correct.
Michael brought up the massacre not long ago in exactly that way.
I mentioned earlier that I believed Breckenridge was the key. If the timing of ransom negotiations is looked at closely it's so obvious, if we're assuming a one man job, that the kidnapper would want to get negotiations over with quickly, especially if a body is laying in the woods not far away which could be found easily with bloodhounds or Boy Scouts. Instead of the kidnapper/extorter going with Breckenridge who he did quickly contact, he waits and goes with Condon, and the go with Condon is bang bang bang - day day day and they are connected, almost like it was meant by someone (Condon and the kidnapper?) to be. In this vein, could the psychologocal aspect which Shoenfeld attributed to Richard (take on the leading world figure) possibly apply to Condon (get away with the greatest crime in history - possibly not wanting the child harmed)? I like SSS. How about CNWBH - Condon not wanting baby harmed? Maybe someday the entire site can be shortened to initials - there are already quite a few. Michael's grandson's entire post in 2063 may read "LKC BRH SSS NFIM FIRS TREAT WOOF OOPS"
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Post by Michael on Feb 15, 2010 8:41:39 GMT -5
This is interesting. In what way do you believe Hauptmann was attempting to use Fisch?
So, whoever helped Hauptmann didn't thank God he was one of their partners, or at least, the one who did get caught? Sure, in the end, he was as dumb as a box of rocks when he started spending the money that way - but at the same time - he took it under the chin.
I tend to agree with you. But I always come across things which contradict these thoughts. Take for example the fact that the Director of the "Chicago Secret Six," Alexander Jamie, told Agent Purvis he believed the Kidnappers were Members of the Capone Gang.
How about Wendel's interaction with Capone?
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Post by rick3 on Feb 15, 2010 8:57:49 GMT -5
Jack....good points/ if anyone at all is scart...eg Jafsie....its of getting rubbed out with bullets like a "choke cherry". Abe Samuelsohn got death threats...probably others like Betty/Red? As soon as bodies start turning up, chatter goes dead...
Michael..."How about Wendel's interaction with Capone?...yes and the intermediary was an Italian named:
Mr. Calabrese...see Scaduto...fits good with Condon's gang at Woodlawn.
What we are searching for is who or why would anyone even consider kidnapping the Lindbergh baby in the first place? Its quite a long shot!
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 15, 2010 10:36:49 GMT -5
Jack, you are using the St Valentines day massacre as an example of the Capone style. That's fine, but how does this compare with the LKC? In that case a highly effective hit against Moran and the North Side gang was carried out. Though the chief target was missed, the planning and execution was ruthlessly thorough and carried out by pros. Do you really see any hint of this in the LKC? Would Condon, Hauptmann, and Fisch be employed? Would they live more than a minute after their utility was over? Would a recently convicted Capone serving a 10 yr stint risk everything on such a crime? Would he even think of something like this? If he had, you can be sure that the child would have survived. As ruthless as Capone was, he did have his own sense of morality and perhaps more importantly, a sense for business. A dead child, especially the Lindbergh child, just wouldn't fit into that picture.
Michael, I think Hauptmann would only be involved with Fisch if he felt there was some advantage to it. I think they probably both felt they had the upper hand.
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jack7
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Post by jack7 on Feb 15, 2010 13:47:19 GMT -5
"What we are searching for is who or why would anyone even consider kidnapping the Lindbergh baby in the first place?" rick3
Exactly, Rick . . . which leads to who would want and very likely got a chokehold on Lindbergh?
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 15, 2010 17:52:20 GMT -5
Great point Rick! So which bodies turned up? PS I thought everyone knew not to shoot the messenger
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Post by Michael on Feb 16, 2010 7:16:28 GMT -5
This is an important observation one that I agree with. However, these levels of the underworld did attempt to "cash in" on this type of crime if it could help them in any way. Just look at Bitz and Spitale. I guess my question is this: If Capone did get wind of something to assist, and the T-Men blocked this effort for something in return - would he then assist anyway?
I say no, regardless of his personal feelings toward the actual crime.
Look at what Waxey Gordon told George Clarke. He believed he knew who had committed the crime but told no one, that I could find, but Clarke. The only way I even know this comes from Clarke's personal accounts which were, by the way, never published.
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Post by rick3 on Feb 16, 2010 7:51:32 GMT -5
" First of all, there was some confusion about the identity of the two victims. Although the NYT listed the dead as James Feldman (33) of Elizabeth NJ and Joeseph Greenberg (30) of Reading PA, it added: :"Feldman's true name is Mendel Gassel and that he had used the allias Max Hassel"...Greenberg's first name was also Max. [April 12, 1933] "When the reporters finally sorted out the aliases and the spellings, they decided that the two men shot dead in an elaborate suite occupying most of the 8th floor of the Elizabeth-Caretert Hotel were in fact Max Greenberg and Max Hassle. Both men had an interest in the Harrison Beverage Co. which brewed Olde Heidleberg Beer." " The suite contained 8 used highball glasses, some liquor bottles, a keg of beer, some golf clubs and nary a witness to the shootings. The manager of the Hotel didnt even know which room Waxey Gordon had occupied? Furthermore, he could not connect a 'Mr. Roger' who was registered at the Hotel at the time, to any long-term residents? Hotel employees knew even less about the residents of the 8th floor than the manager? Noone on the scene, bodyguards, employees or residents had noticed anything out of the ordinary." "Not slain in the affray was beer baron Irving Wexler, better known as Waxey Gordon, who had been in room 804, opposite the Greenberg-Hassel suite, at the time of the murders. Gordy left in a hurry at about 4:15pm(?) when he heard breaking glass or something? If he had been in the suite at the time, with his friends, "Id have gotten the works, same as them"> "Investigators discovered that all 3 had apparently had connections in Asbury Park where they had been issued pistol permits. The police chief there, when questioned, promised to be more careful with permits in the future. "What happened in the bloodstained eight-floor suite was obvious enough. Greenbergh sat slumped in a chair facing a roll top desk, one hand clutching an Asbury park approved pistol which he had been unable to draw from his jacket pocket? He had been shot 5 times in the head. Hassel laid sprawled out face down between the kitchen and the office shot 3 times in the head." Neither the bodyguards, the Hotel manager or any employees had noticed anything out of the ordinary that afternoon." "Nevertheless, nearly 3 years later the NYC police picked up Frankie Carbo and charged him with the murders...In his life of crime Carbo had been arrested 5 times for murder. But the case against him in the Greenberg-Hassel killings fell apart due to the customery lack of witnesses". page 46 Murdered in New Jersey AND Theone Wright pg 65: Lets Search for Lindbergh Baby...
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 16, 2010 9:18:56 GMT -5
And this is related to the LKC in what way?
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Post by Michael on Feb 17, 2010 20:33:13 GMT -5
I was going through my "Secret Six" file recently and wanted to quickly update what I posted earlier with something I found there.... After the child was discovered dead, Alexander Jamie changed his mind about Capone's involvement. He is quoted in the Washington Post as saying: "If the body found is that of the Lindbergh baby it would incline one to believe that the kidnapping and murder was the work of some fiend living in the vicinity of the estate. The Secret Six has investigated many reports that the child was in Chicago. All of these have proved to be without basis."(WP 5-13-32)
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Post by rick3 on Feb 20, 2010 14:53:16 GMT -5
this could well be the biggest IF of the whole case...why did whats-his-name say if?
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kevkon
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Post by kevkon on Feb 20, 2010 16:18:28 GMT -5
You are right. In fact, it couldn't have been the Lindbergh's child since it's common knowledge that the CAL Jr is alive and well and living in Florida. And guess who just happened to have a home there as well! It simply can't be a mere coincidence that Scarface and Cal Jr have ties to the sunshine state.
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Post by Michael on Mar 8, 2010 17:27:11 GMT -5
I called Mr. Leahy, following my conference with the Attorney General, and informed him that I had thought the matter over; that there was no suggestion that I cared to offer. I told him that I felt the Federal Government could not be put in the position of even indirectly having an emissary see Capone about the Lindbergh Case; that if Capone had any information , was sincere in his attitude to be of assistance and help in the return of the baby, he could submit this information to this Bureau in the regular manner and it would be received in the same manner as we were receiving information from many other sources about the Lindbergh baby, but that beyond that I could offer no suggestion. [Hoover Memo 3-15-32]
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Post by bob mills on Oct 6, 2010 7:00:10 GMT -5
Michael e-mailed me about his new site and invited me to participate. Full disclosure: I'm author of "The Lindbergh Syndrome," so other posters should consider that I might be "trying to sell a book" here. My view is that the actual kidnapper was Duane Baker (real name Bacon), working in cahoots with Charles Henry Ellerson, Morrow chauffeur who drove Betty Gow to Hopewell and thus was one of the few people who knew the Lindberghs were not returning to Englewood, as was their weekday custom. Baker and Ellerson are linked by their common patronage of a speakeasy in Fort Lee, "Sha-Toe," and by the fact that Baker had succeeded Ellerson as a driver for Armour Meat Packing. Baker had a long criminal record. At the time of the kidnapping he was superintendent of Plymouth Apartments in Upper Manhattan. Tenants' names were listed on a dumbwaiter roster for the superintendent's benefit; among those names were "J./J. Faulkner," which stood for "Jane and Jane Faulkner," a mother and daughter who had previously lived at Plymouth (before Baker became superintendent). This is significant, of course, because "J. J. Faulkner" was the name on the deposit slip that accompanied $2,980 of Lindbergh ransom money, the first large chunk of the $50,000 paid by Condon at Raymond Cemetery. This was in 1933; Baker had left Plymouth in a rush on Apr. 15, 1932 (two weeks after the ransom exchange) with the latest rent receipts still in his pocket. I believe Baker laundered that money, using Faulkner as an alias. Unlike most students of the case, I do not believe there was any such person as "J. J. Faulkner." By remarkable coincidence, however, the actual Jane Faulkner (daughter) who had once lived at Plymouth Apartments did marry a man named Carl Geissler, who worked for the same company as Ralph Hacker, John F. Condon's son-in-law. I believe Baker was head of a gang (possibly including Hauptmann and Isidor Fisch) that had been hired by the mob with the goal of extricating Al Capone from prison. The $50,000 ransom was a red herring, designed to make it look like a routine kidnapping. Capone's offer to "find the baby" in exchange for his freedom was predicated on his belief that his hired gang was holding the Eaglet (he didn't know things had gone wrong, which is also why Baker skipped town...he'd have been a mob target for having "screwed up"). I further believe Baker's gang was the same one John Hughes Curtis claimed to have seen negotiating in Newark, headed by a man he knew as "Sam" (probably Baker), and which according to Curtis' belief was holding a living child. Lindbergh turned Capone down, after which the Eaglet's body was taken to Mt. Rose Heights and William Allen was bribed to "find it accidentally." I believe the body was transferred from its original site in Charles Henry Ellerson's car; on the day before the discovery, Ellerson's car burst into flames and tumbled off the Palisades, with Ellerson "escaping" at the last second. It burned beyond recognition in what I believe was an effort to destroy microscopic evidence. Baker's wife was German. I believe she wrote the Mersman table confession in an effort to save Hauptmann's life. She might or might not have authored the ransom notes. The symbol holes on the table surface that match the ransom-note symbol precisely show that the table was used as a template for the ransom notes. The possibility of the German poem being a hoax can be dismissed out of hand, because it made no reference to the holes on the top, which is the only way a hoax could have been made believeable (and even then, how would a hoaxer have gotten hold of the ransom notes?). The strongest evidence that organized crime was behind the Lindbergh kidnapping is the behavior of Condon himself. When first summoned to identify him, he wouldn't do so. At that time he told an F.B.I. agent named Turrou that "My life won't be worth five cents (if he identified Hauptmann). They would kill me." The key word is "they." Condon can only have been talking about the mob here. But once Condon realized that Hauptmann was being tried in court as a lone kidnapper and that all talk of a gang had evanesced, he felt secure about testifying at the trial that "John is Bruno Richard Hauptmann!" Common sense also dictates that Hauptmann wasn't a lone kidnapper. If he had been, how would Capone ever have been able to return the baby to the Lindberghs? Capone wouldn't have known Hauptmann, and if the kidnapping had been the work of anyone acting alone, there's no way Capone, from prison, would have known who it was. There are other problems with Hauptmann as a lone kidnapper. If the Eaglet had died during the abduction, why would Hauptmann have driven 4-1/2 miles in the opposite direction from the Bronx to dispose of the body along a main road where the risk of being seen was greater than anywhere else in the area? How would he have avoided the roadblock at the Hudson River, where cars were being stopped from 11 p.m. on and the drivers questioned? No witness came forward at his trial to say, "A man with a German accent crossed from New Jersey to New York at about midnight, and that's the guy I remember (pointing at Hauptmann)." Certainly if this had happened (and if it didn't where did Hauptmann spend the night?), such a witness would have testified. Instead the prosecution relied on Hochmuth and Whited, two of the worst witnesses to ever send a man to his death, ever.
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Post by wolf2 on Oct 6, 2010 18:12:59 GMT -5
bob, steve romeo here how you been?
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