EP04 | The Trial of the Century

then with the 9 Cuba-Wan Capsule Machine from Chibu,

Gini's Dufeinsten Spitzen Café, from besonderen Anbaogebieten, full-mondic Arômen, Dank Innovative Press Blue Technologie, and über-sipz in-sorten café for jeden Geschmack. Elépe Premium Café is already in the 19th century. And that is now the Cuba-Capsule Machine in Deiner Chibufiale and of Chibu D.E.

Before we get started, just to let you know.

“If you want to binge this whole series today and without ads,”

you should become a paid subscriber to the free press. Our paid subscribers can listen to all six episodes right now with no ads, and will gain all the other benefits of a paid free press subscription. That's access to our journalism, podcasts, community features, and event perks. Subscribe today and save yourself waiting for the next episode.

My name is Kurt Perhatch, I am an attorney, and I'm here to talk to you today about the Lindbergh Kinnaphn case. Kurt is a lawyer based in New Jersey. As we heard last episode, he's now fighting his own legal battle over this case, and like so many people we met making this podcast.

It began with an obsession that took hold when he was barely a teenager.

“When I was 13 or 14, I read a book called Kinnap.”

I became extremely fascinated by a lot of twists and turns, and especially on the legal front,

it's the first case in U.S. jurisprudence history to involve a wood expert.

Kurt comes at this where I come at it. Fundamentally, whether or not you think Bruno did it, his trial was deeply unfair, and all the Lindbergh conspiracies start right here, because this is where the thought first arises, did Hottman really do it? As I read the trial transcript and the appellate transcript, the defense attorney just

did an awful job on so many levels, and it just made me think, "I can do this. I can do better than this," and this seems to me like it's a travesty of justice. How Kurt hopes to undo that travesty is a subject we'll return to later. Right now, my producer Poppy Damon and I, with the help of some actors and our team of experts, are going to take you back to January 1935, and recreate the trial of Bruno Hottman as best we can.

If the kidnapping was the crime of the century, then the trial was certainly the trial of the century.

“The only thing comparable in my lifetime was the O.J. Simpson trial.”

And at the center of it was a German immigrant carpenter who would insist on the stand, just as he would insist as he sat in the electric chair. "And I wanted to tell the people of America that I'm so interested in, that I'm older." With he telling the truth, "I'm Jon O'Shirrah, and for the free press, this is the Lindbergh conspiracies." Episode 4, the trial of the century.

Bruno Hottman's trial lasted five weeks. It began right after New Year's, January 2nd, 1935, in Flemington, New Jersey, the county seat. The temperature was often below freezing. Yet every night, there was a line of shivering people, hoping to get in the courthouse for the next day's session.

Needless to say, Poppy and I visited Flemington.

Standing outside that courthouse, the first thing that hits you, is how small it is.

You know, for a period of time, this was the centre of it all. We can see all the power cables up. I mean, they've installed phone lines in this town, just to make it possible that reporters could run out and file as they did back in the day. Jim Davidson grew up in Flemington, and he wrote a book about what the town was like during the trial. He called it, when the circus comes to town.

We had to keep him mind Flemington, and probably 2,500 to 3,000 people in the town, and the first week there were 50,000 people that I talked to a woman from Jersey City that drove all the way out to the sea where the baby was found. And the line, she had to wait four miles to get to the spot. On that road, we were just done. In Flemington, the traffic was backed up 20 miles to Summerville

to come through town. The Big Hotel in town, the Union Hotel, was a block from the courthouse. The jury was sequestered on the 3rd floor. The press took over the rest of it. A dinner, jurors sat in the dining room, shielded it only by a white sheet.

It really wasn't much of a sequester. One local diner served dishes called Bruno Gravy,

Lindbergh steak, and Gau Goulash for Betty Gau, the nurse made. People were hawking little bundles of blonde hair as Carly's hair. Mariah Fredericks is the author of the Lindbergh Nanny. Lindbergh wouldn't ladders as serving years.

“I think I read complete newspaper coverage of 40 different newspapers.”

And just found out crazy tidbits here and there. A friend of mine told me his father was a news boy there and would get 25 cents every time he could hook up a hooker with a John. And there were tons of prostitutes around Flemington. That is in no books. HL Manket, the most influential American critic of his day,

called it the biggest story since the resurrection. And right in the middle of all this frenzy, a man's life was going to be decided. Here's Poppy, my producer. So on one side, you have the Prosecutor David Willentz. He's 39 years old. He's the New Jersey Attorney General. He's very ambitious. He's organised. He's brilliant in front of a jury. He had, however,

Joe never tried a criminal case.

“Here's Patrick Bamberack. You'll remember he's the great-grand nephew of New Jersey”

Governor, Harold Hoffman. David Willentz is side of the equation as the Attorney General the Prosecutor of this criminal, this evil, Ronald Helpin, ultimately, or whoever this would be that they'd catch. That was the ultimate upside, you know, because you have the opportunity then to be the person who is the one who catches the bad guy and sends him to justice. On the other side, Edward J. Riley, large, boisterous, always in a pinstriped suit with a white

carnation. He boasted that he had represented over 2,000 defendants and obtained a quiddles for most of them. Even if that were true, which it probably wasn't, he was well past his pride. If 52 years old, he was a serious alcoholic. The night before the trial, Riley was passed out from all his carousing and a New Year's Eve party. He had been hired, it later emerged, by the Hurst newspapers, which it purchased the rights to end a hotman's story, and therefore

had a direct financial interest in a dramatic sensational trial. As Anthony Scududo put it, it was spectacle, more than trial, low camp theater, masquerading his justice. The jury's been chosen, the trial opens. Anne Lindberg takes the stand on the trials for a day. She's

“quiet, dignified, and heartbreaking. What else did the child wear that evening as bedclothes?”

He had diapers, fastened to the small shirt, to the second shirt, and on top of that he had a sleeping suit, a wool sleeping suit. Did you buy that sleeping suit yourself? I did. I show you what purports to be a sleeping suit. Number two, Dr. Denton, and ask you whether or not you'd recognize that sleeping suit. I do. What sleeping suit is that, Mrs. Lindberg? It is the sleeping suit that was put on my child the night of March 1st. She identifies her son's sleeping garment.

Which he gets off the stand, she leaves the courtroom, and never returns.

Lindberg during the trial is seen as a tragic and sympathetic figure. Comus Dardi is the author of Little Indie's kidnapped. And even more so, and does not break down and sob on the stand, which is actually in some ways makes it more heartbreaking because the people in the gallery cry for her. And so she's very stoic and very dignified as a slimberg. The next day Charles Lindberg is on the stand, and what he says matters enormously.

Not because of what he saw, but because of what he heard, and also of course, because of who he was. He's asked about the voice he heard in the cemetery. He's asked, "Since that time, have you heard the same voice?" Yes, I have. He replies, "Who's voice was it, Colonel, that you heard saying, hey, doctor?" And he says, "That was Hauptman's voice." Think about what that identification actually rests on.

What he heard was a two-second show. Hey, doctor, he heard it once. More than two years before the

“trial. Yet in that courtroom, with all eyes on the most famous man in America, he has no doubt”

and it's devastating. Defense counsel Riley Cross-Examens Lindberg, crossing out the names of possible alternate suspects, Betty Gow, Violet Sharp, even Condon. Then, inexplicably, he asks a question that practically seals his client's doom. Do you believe

that the defendant is guilty? I do. A first-year law student would know never to ask that question.

Hauptman audibly groans. January 8th, a man named Amanda's Hockmouth takes the stand. He's 87 years old, small, frail. He lives on the road, leading to the Lindbergh estate. He testifies that on the morning of March 1st, 1932, the day of the kidnapping. He saw a man in a green car drive towards the Lindbergh home with a ladder in the back. The man he says, "Glaired at him." The man you saw looking out of that automobile,

glaring at you. Is he in this room? Yes! He points to Hauptman, but from Walenz, pointy isn't enough. He asks the old man to walk across the courtroom and physically touch the defendant. Hockmouth puts his hand on Hauptman's knee. At that precise moment, a power failure sends the courtroom into semi-darkness, and defense attorney Riley quips. It's the Lord's wrath over at lying witness. It's a great line, and it may have been closer

to the truth than anyone realized. Jim Davison drove Poppy past Hockmouth's house. Amanda's Hockmouth lived right in this house right here. And he was the one who was blind. He was 87 and he saw Bruno Hoffman come from Hopewell, turn around and get stuck in his ditch. And initially he said, "Now, this is March 1st when it's raining outside. He said he was sitting on the front

“porch of his house here and saw this." Now, who would sit on a cold winter day on the front porch?”

But that didn't drive with what the state police said. So they said that, by the time he got to the trial, he said, "Well, I was feeding my chickens at five o'clock at night when this courtroom

but." And here's what the trial record actually shows. Hockmouth had originally told police

he'd seen nothing suspicious the day of the kidnapping. Nothing. He changed his account entirely before testifying. This was not an anomaly. This was a pattern. January 9th, Dr. John Condon, the one in only Jaffsey, takes the stand. He is, of course, one of the central characters in the Lindberg kidnapping saga, the man who negotiated with the kidnapper directly, who sat with cemetery John in the dark

and who handed over $50,000 in ransom. He identifies Hopeman. So, the thing is, in September 1934, when he was brought to a police line-up, he had spent half an hour examining the man and couldn't make a positive identification at all. He didn't pick Hopeman. It's kind, believeable. He was 13 people in the lineup. He was allowed to go up to each one of them to talk to them, to touch their hands, to see if they

have certain marks that he supposedly said, "Hopman had," but then he asked Hopeman to speak, and it turned out Hopeman had a high pitch voice, and Condon had always said that cemetery John had a husky voice, and the cops would ask him over and over and over. Isn't it him? Isn't him? Isn't it him? And he said, he would just basically say, "I can't make an identification," which is

kind of incredible. And so, you know, the rumor has always been that basically they told him

if he didn't identify Hopeman, he would be indicted himself.

“And maybe that's why he picked him on the stand. I would suspect that might be the case.”

It wasn't just Condon and Hawkmooth. Ludific Kennedy and Anthony Scududo, who both dissected the trial for their books. Each went through the FBI files, the New York police files, the Bronx, the A files, and each came to the same conclusion. Witnesses who had initially given descriptions that did not match Hopeman, or who had initially reported seeing nothing, by the time of the trial, they changed their stories completely. The guy never had a chance.

and the main, you know, follow the money and it leads to ruin a Helpman, and it's pretty hard

to get away from. January 11th, a federal agent takes the stand to present what on the surface is the most straightforward piece of evidence in the whole case. In Hopeman's garage, investigators

“found $14,600 in ransom money. Gold certificates. Remember how the Treasury Department insisted”

that the serial numbers be recorded before the handover? They were hidden behind a board and wrapped in a carefully constructed wooden structure. This, the prosecution, argued. This was the smoking gun. You can debate handwriting and wood grain and everything else, but you can't debate

where there are $14,600 in marked bills. We're hidden in a man's garage, because they were,

or can you? So, the thing is, Joe, Hopeman's explanation was consistent from the moment of his arrest, the moment of his execution. He says the money had been left with him by his business partner, the German named Isidol Fisch, and Fisch had handed him a shoebox when he departed for Germany in December 1933, and Hopeman had put it on a shelf on his kitchen closet. He hadn't looked inside it. He didn't know what was in it, but when Fisch died of tuberculosis

in Germany in March 1984, Hopeman discovered what the box contained, and considering Fisch had owed him $7,500, he kept some of it, and he spent the rest. And by the time the police discovered it, he had hidden it in different locations, so that's in the garage and in the, the canister, the oil canister. Jim Davidson gave us his assessment of this explanation. One of the theories is that Isidol Fisch was involved in this. He got the money, and then he found

the money had the serial numbers recorded, and it was hot money. So, what did he do? Is he unloaded the

“money, and Hopeman ended up with it? Although, I don't think Hopeman bought the money. I think”

his story that one is going away part of that they had for Fisch Fisch came in with the suitcase and a box and said, "Hold these from when I come back," and he put them up on the top shelf of a closet in the kitchen, which was up high, and it sat there for two years until Fisch died in Germany, and he had owed hopeman $7,000 that hopeman had led them. So, when his roof leaks, and he gets this box down, the opposite, he sees this money. He did what any red blood in America

would do. He hit it and didn't tell his wife. The prosecution attacked the Fisch story relentlessly. Relatives of Fisch actually came all the way from Germany to testify that he'd been nearly destitute, not a man who could have had ransom money to distribute. I cashier, testified that

“Hopeman had spent ransom bills before Fisch even left for Germany. And, most damaging of all,”

when Anna Hopman took the stand, she admitted she had never seen a shoe box on the kitchen shelf.

But, there was something the jury never heard. Something the prosecution knew, it did not put before them, or tell the defense. Well, Lance built Hopman's motive around his supposed financial desperation, which then led him to hatch the plan for the kidnapping. So, Joe, he puts a Treasury Department accountant on the stand, and he tries to build this image of Hauntman as broke, a man who'd gambled and lost everything in the crash of 1929. He would,

you know, was desperate for this ransom money, and even when he had it, had continued stock speculation. And, by March 1932, prior to the kidnapping, was effectively penniless. But, the FBI conducted its own financial investigation. Vericum had found something entirely different. According to Kennedy, signing FBI records, Hopman's total stock market losses from 1929 to the data of the kidnapping in March 1932,

were $363.65. Not thousands, not ruin, $363.65. So, this is where it's a bit dodgy because the FBI agents who'd found that out had been prepared to testify. And, in Kennedy's book, he says, you know, that they had told the prosecution we're going to tell the truth, and because that's not what the prosecution wanted, they didn't bring them forward to testify in front of the jury. And, of course, Riley for the defense didn't

go on the media, because, you know, who knows why. But, anyway, think about this, the entire motive,

Rest it on a financial picture that the prosecution's own government colleagues had found to be false.

“I mean, a man who loses $363 in the crash is not a desperate man. He's not a man at the end of”

his rope, and he's not a man who needs to kidnap a baby. Yeah, and irrespective of whether you think he did it, it's just such a dirty trick and shows the lengths they're willing to go to in order to convict him and execute him. Here's something else, Bobby. The jury also didn't know that the initial FBI reports had concluded that the kidnapping required at least two people. Evidence, the quietly contradicted the prosecution's lone wolf theory. Yes, and all the investigators were working

on that theory until they got outman. And, after that, it just became a goal to convict him and execute him, and all of that stuff went out the window. There's one more thing about the goal certificates that rarely gets discussed. Before Hopman's arrest, large amounts of ransom money had been appearing in circulation. Spent on the Lexington Avenue subway line, at stores in the Bronx, in the German neighborhood of Yorkville, it could have been Hopman for sure, or not. Before Hopman

ever spent a single bill, someone deposited nearly $3,000 of the ransom money, and a Manhattan bank under the name of J. J. Falkner, a name that matched no one connected to Hopman. That money

was never traced back to anyone. The person was never identified. Before Hopman's execution,

Governor Hoffman received a letter from someone claiming to be Falkner and saying, "The wrong

“man had been convicted. That lead was never seriously pursued." And remember, Joe, roughly $35,000”

at the original ransom, was never found at all. Junior 11th, to January 16th, five full days devoted to handwriting testimony. Eight experts for the prosecution, one for the defense, and from the moment the first expert took the stand. The jury was looking at blow up photographs of letters and words, comparing loops and curves and backward ends, and being told that only one person in the world

could have written those 14 ransom notes. Bruno Richard Hopman. The handwriting evidence was presented as science. In 1935, it was treated as something close to settled fact. But the story behind these samples, how they were collected, what the prosecution did with them, and what was suppressed, is one of the most troubling aspects of the entire trial. Okay, so this is how Hopman's handwriting samples were actually obtained. On the night of his arrest,

he was taken to the Greenwich Street police station in Manhattan, and there, over a number of hours, he was made to write out the contents of the ransom notes, and he was made to do this repeatedly. And by many accounts of officers and so forth of different historical record, he was instructed not just to copy the words, but to reproduce the specific misspellings that appeared in the notes. So for hour, he had it as OUER, money is spelled M-O-N-Y,

note was spelled not, bored for boats, I mean, clearly not as first language English speaker.

And according to the FBI agent Leon Truro, how when was told to make his writing look as much like the writing the ransom notes as possible? So any testimony that came from what he produced at that time is obviously very dodgy, very dubious, and was done presumably under threat from violent

“officers. Hopman, that was an excellent explanation, but I think there's another way of saying this,”

which is to say the handwriting analysis was total BS. Those coached dictated samples produced under the rest, in the middle of the night, with police instructing him to mimic the very quirks that were supposed to prove his guilt, with a sample submitted to the jury as state's evidence 18 months later. It gets worse. The prosecution's own top handwriting analyst, according to Kennedy and Skodudo, had, once again, initially concluded,

that Hopman did not write the ransom notes. Just like the other witnesses, they changed their conclusions before the trial. And the defense, Riley had retained multiple handwriting experts of his own. Several, after examining the notes against Hopman's known writings, declined to testify.

Two others were retained and prepared to appear. Inexplicably, they were never called.

the spelling similarities, he did not believe Hopman had written the notes. He was largely ignored. The other experts who could have supported this view sat silently in the gallery, unused. Instead, Riley seemed to try and make the time he had with this expert. All a moment to point out the large budget the prosecution had at its disposal. I submit his experience of 387 cases covered a period of 49 years. In the court, we'll recall we didn't have the opportunity to send

all over the world and examine into the records of the $150,000 case prepared by the state of New Jersey and the experts brought in here. They brought men in here that we did not know five minutes before they took the stand. They were going to be called. I asked that the courts strike from the

“record the remarks of council. I think they are highly prejudicial about the state's $150,000”

case and its experts. I will strike out the $150,000 case. The jury will of course disregard that. As a result of your study, are you in a position to render an opinion as to whether or not Hoffman wrote the ransom notes? In my opinion, he did not. What no one in the courtroom told the jury was how these samples had been produced. What no one said was that the handwriting itself had been dictated to Hoffman by the cops. There's something else worth understanding about handwriting

analysis as a science. Unlike DNA, unlike fingerprints, it has never been subjected to rigorous

statistical validation. There is no established error rate. There is no peer-reviewed standard for what constitutes a match. In 2016, eight decades after the trial, the president's council

“of advisors on science and technology issued a report finding that many forensic disciplines”

including handwriting analysis lacks sufficient scientific foundation to be considered reliable evidence. A court today would scrutinise this testimony far more carefully than Judge Trencher did in 1935. A court today, in fact, might not admit it as evidence at all. So talking of pseudo science, the next kind of scientific evidence that is presented is all about the wood expert and, you know, how much we love ladder and wood experts in this poor costume.

Generally, 23rd, this is the moment the prosecution has been building doors.

Arthur Kohler, a wood expert, takes to stand. Kohler was the first forensic wood scientist

ever to testify at a murder trial. He spent years examining the kidnapped ladder.

“He traced the wood grain through mills, through shipments, through lumbiards. He had concluded”

that the wood from the ladder was purchased from a yard in the Bronx, near Hoffman's house. But the kicker was the now famous rail 16. He told the jury that one rail of the ladder rail 16 had not been purchased from any lumberyard. It had come from somewhere much closer to home. It had been cut, Kohler said, from a board in the attic floor of Hoffman's building. So Kohler gets on the stand and he claims that the growth rings in rail 16 showed an exact match

of curvature numbered with the attic floor board. And he calculated the chances of this exact set of circular circumstances occurring twice as in the chances of just being random was one in ten quadrilion. Poppy and I went to Hoffman's house in the Bronx with X-Cop Greg Algrin and Ronaldo Delmont. This is where his garage. He built the garage with the permission of the owner. He didn't own this house. He rented the top floor. There were two of the families

living in the house. The landlord, the rouse family, Mrs. Rouse and her son lived beneath him.

Those windows are his bedroom. The prosecution called that the single most powerful piece of

evidence in the entire case. Several jurors, after the verdict, said rail 16 was what convinced them. And also, Joe, it gets even more dodgy because this floor board that's, you know, used as a one in a quadrilion chance match had been discovered by a lieutenant Louis Bonman of the New Jersey State Police. But at the time he found it, the attic had already been searched 19 times by 37 police officers from New York and New Jersey and the FBI and none of them had noticed a missing

full board. Believe it or not, Bonman had moved into Hoffman's apartment after the arrest

When the physical evidence was scrutinized, I mean really scrutinized,

“the problems multiplied fast. The floor board in the attic had seven knots,”

rail 16 had three. rail 16 was actually 16th of an inch thicker than the attic board, making a precise match between the two essentially impossible. New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman looked at it and he openly stated that this evidence was false. And Joe, now we get to talk about the four nail holes. Here's the story of the nail holes. The four nail holes in rail 16 according to Colour were what made the match irrefutable. They lined up perfectly with holes in the

attic beams. I made the investigation on October 9, 1933 the first time. Having taken off this section,

what did you find? I found that the nail holes in it corresponded exactly with the four nail holes in the joists in that attic and the grain of the wood in that rail corresponded exactly

“with the grain of the wood of the board next to it. But a fingerprint expert testified that when”

he examined rail 16 for fingerprints on March 13, 1932, two weeks after the kidnapping, there was only one nail hole. Governor Hoffman later produced a photograph of rail 16 from March 2nd before the investigation had even properly begun in which there were no holes at all. Ludovic Kennedy made one more argument, a logical one, a carpenter's argument. Hoffman was a professional. He kept lumber and his garage and there was plenty there.

If he needed wood for a ladder, why on earth would he climb into his attic? Remove the linen from a closet. Glamour up the stairs, push open a trapped door while carrying a saw, a hammer and a chisel. And then start chopping up his landlord's floor. I guess the idea, the jo, if you were trying to

“prosecute, helpman, was that he didn't have a lot of money and wood was expensive and that's why”

he broke into his landlord's attic to steal a floorboard. Oh, come on, Poppy. January 24, the prosecution rests. The state has buried Hoffman under a mountain of eyewitness identification, handwriting analysis, wood science and ransom money. The defense's opening statement contains one remarkable line. Defense Attorney Lloyd Fisher, who's working with Riley, tells the jury, "No case in all of history was his badly handled or as badly managed."

He was talking about the prosecution's investigation, of course. He may, without knowing it, have also been describing Hoffman's defense. January 28, Bruno Hoffman takes the stand. His calm, correct, occasionally defiant.

Hoffman, were you ever in Hopewell in your life? I never was. On the night of March 1, 1932,

were you on the grounds of Colonel Lindberg at Hopewell, New Jersey? I was not. On the night of March 1, 1932, did you enter the nursery of Colonel Lindberg? I did not. And take from that nursery, Charles Lindberg, Jr. I did not. Did you leave on the window seat of Colonel Lindberg's nursery a note? Well, I wasn't there at all. You never saw Baby Lindberg in your life, did you? Never saw it. He denies everything. He explains the ransom money. It was left with him

by his business partner, is it our fish in his shoebox on a kitchen shelf? Then, it's time for what lends to cross examine him. He is relentless. There's some archive footage illegally recorded at the time and played on Newsreel. "When you were arrested, Lindberg finds the money that I had for the dollar bill. Lindberg ran for money today, and asked you where you are. In case you couldn't hear that, he acknowledges that he lied about where the $20 came from, that he used to pay the gas attendant.

It was devastating in front of the jury. It's one of those handful of moments that sealed Hopman's doom." Joe, I want to talk about Anna Hopman's testimony, because I'm a bit obsessed

with her. I always picture when I'm thinking of the trial, her hold up with this press person,

going to trial every day. Her husband's the most hated man in America. She's got a young kid, and yet, she tries to do her best on the stand, but she doesn't do many favors.

shoebox on the kitchen shelf. Now, this broom closet we talked about that you just showed the jury was a closet in which you kept, it was in the kitchen, wasn't it? Yes. And it was a closet to what you

went every day, wasn't it? Yes. Every day you went to that closet, and you never saw any shoebox

on the top shelf, did you? I don't know what was on the top shelf. You never saw shoebox there, madam, did you? I didn't. From November 1933 or December 1933, the months and the day that Mr. Fish was last at your home until September 1934. You never saw a strange shoebox on the top shelf of that closet, did you? I never had anything to do with the top shelf. I didn't use it for my, for myself. It was a serious bloat or her husband's alibi that the money, the $14,000,

“had been sitting in the kitchen for two years. As a homemaker, she was his key witness to this”

version of events. And then there was this, reported Janette Smiths had lived with Anna for five months covering the cryo. The following November, she published an article and proved detective mysteries. That noon over the lunch table, Mrs. Hopman's seed. She cried out, he was only supposed to get the money. When I started to question her, she closed her lips and refused

to talk anymore. She never repeated that strange remark. Could he have told her he'd been promised

to cut her the ransom without being involved in the kidnapping itself? Was this just the garbled frustration of a terrified wife? Or was it something more? Anna Hopman maintained his innocence until the day she died in 1994, at the age of 95. January 31st, Riley, having promised to name the

“real kidnappers and produced compelling alibi witnesses. Instead, produces a parade of crooks,”

con men, and what the trial record describes charitably as unreliable characters. Hopman himself, watching from the defense table, was heard to murder, where are they getting these

witnesses? They're killing me. So, here's what the jury and Flemington never knew. The jury didn't

know that a witness named Hans Klopenberg had wanted to testify that he'd been in the Hopman's apartment on the night Isadora Fisher-Rive carrying a shoebox. The prosecution threatened Klopenberg with a rest if he took the stand. He did testify, but as he later put it, he was so frightened that he never mentioned the shoebox. The jury didn't know about the footprints found outside the nursery window on the night of the kidnapping. Police never measured them, never made cast. They would

“later establish that a plaster cast of cemetery John Shuprint made during the ransom negotiations”

was too small to have been made by Hopman's foot. And here's a number that perhaps more than any other captures what happened in the courtroom. 90,000. That is the number of pages of evidence that the state was held from the defense. We know this because a retired California judge named Lisa Pearlman were to book about the case in 2020 and she went through the archive all 90,000 pages. It included the testimony of three witnesses who's accounts directly contradicted the state's

theory of the case. February 11th Edward J. Raleigh gives a five-hour defense summation. They would have you in one breath, believe that this man Hopman was a mastermind that he planned this himself. And the next minute they would have you believe that he was the worst fool in the world, that he was dumb, that he didn't know anything. He would wear gloves, making a ladder, so his fingerprints wouldn't be left behind. And he would sit an hour and a half

talking to Condon with his face exposed. In one, the careful mastermind, and the other, the perfect fool. He starts strongly casting suspicion on everyone except Hopman himself. They had a chauffeur and a second chauffeur who was afterwards replaced and now he is a watchman. They had five or six maids. They must have had gardeners. What do you know about the antecedents of those people? Nothing. How do we know who Betty Gow talked to when she got the message

Tuesday afternoon from Mrs. Lindberg come over. The baby is not well. But she never communicated with Hopman. So that I say nobody in God's world knew that baby was going to be there Tuesday

knew they were going to stay Tuesday night. And then he will come back the same as I did and say Betty Gow. And I don't know how many others she may have told over at the moral service quarters. Now if ladies and gentlemen, nobody knew where the Colonel was or when he would be home.

And with regularity the family always returned to Inglewood on Sunday night or Monday morning.

How can we place that knowledge in Hopman's possession? You can't. Then he breaks for lunch. When he returns for drinks later to give the rest of his summation, he wanders aimlessly until he finally sits down to the relief of everyone in the room including his own co-counsel.

“I believe this man is absolutely innocent of murder. In closing, I wish to say to you”

that I appreciate the care and consideration that you have given us in the patience that you have given to this case. And may I just extend to the distinguished jurist on the bench at this time, my thanks for his courtesy and to all the lawyers connected with the case. And I feel sure, in closing, even Colonel Lindberg wouldn't expect you and doesn't expect you to do anything but your duty under the law and under the evidence.

May I say to him in passing that he has my profound respect and I feel sorry for him and his deep grief. And I'm quite sure that all of you agree with me. His lovely son is now within the gates of heaven. February 12, David Willands gives his five hour reply. It is crisp, organized, and devastating. He finishes with a call for the death penalty. What does life imprisonment mean? Nothing. Maybe in 15 years, he will walk the streets again. We have proven it overwhelmingly

conclusively, positively. Now, jurors, there is no excuse. You would never forgive yourself if

you didn't do it. You wouldn't be happy. You wouldn't feel right, honestly. You wouldn't. You convict this man of murder in the first degree. The grand jury of the county of Hunterton had the courage to do it. The state of New Jersey has the courage. They stand here unafraid and ask for the death penalty. Why? Because they know they are right. But he also does something enclosing that the judge should never have permitted and that Riley said of objective to

“public enemy number one of the world. That's what we are dealing with. You are not dealing with a”

fellow who doesn't know what he is doing. Take a look at him as he sits there. Look at him as he walks out into this room. Panther like, gloating, feeling good. Certainly, he still this little child's breath right into insensibility right in that room. Whether he drew another breath or not doesn't

make any difference, that child never could make an outcry. The smudges on the bedsheet,

cry out evidence of the fact that Betty Gow testified to. The fact that the child didn't cry out when it was disturbed. Yankt? How? Not just taking up. The pins are still left in the bedsheets. Yankt and its head hit up against that board. Must have been hit. He couldn't do it any other way. Certainly, it must have hit up against that board. Still, no outcry. Why? There was no cry

“left in the child. Did he use the chisel to crush the skull at the time or to knock it into insensibility?”

Is that a fair inference? What else was the chisel there for? To knock that child into insensibility right there in that room. Council wants to know why it didn't cry out. There is the answer for you. He introduces a brand-new theory never argued during the trial that how can killed the baby with the chisel. No mode of given. No evidence supplied. Just an image planted in the jury's mind at the moment when the defense no longer has an opportunity to respond. It made my blood boil

when I read about this. This is not what's supposed to happen in a court of law. The final summation. The final speech. You're only supposed to use the evidence that's been brought up in the trial. You're never supposed to bring up new evidence, new theory, new anything, and get away with it. But he did. Yeah, I think this is a really big deal because up until that point there was the theory that the baby had fallen accidentally from the latter. But by making it seem like

it was possible that he intentionally killed the child. It made him a total monster that would probably have left the jury thinking he deserved to be found guilty and deserve the death penalty.

against how men actually do think they got one of the right people. But they did want to get this

“trial over and done with. They did want a particular verdict. We can see that, you know, right there”

the trial transcripts. Candace Fleming. It's the fact that Lindberg sat there every single day in the front row so that everyone remembered that the great Colonel Lindbergs, this was his child, certainly didn't help. The jury was also undoubtedly affected by the media coverage. Throughout the trial, the newspapers wrote about Hopman as if he was already convicted. Headlines like evidence, dooms, Hopman. Case closed, proof piles up against suspect and slayers,

stony, stare, chills, courtroom. It only takes them 12 hours of deliberation to find him guilty

of murder in the first degree. Hopman is sentenced to die. I have a friend of mine who's grandfather

was on the jury. He is adamant that Bruno Houghtman was guilty. Totally adamant and no matter

“what other book I give him to read, it doesn't matter. But I think the view has changed depending”

on what decade you're looking at. Like in 1935, back to the trial, everybody in a country with the exception of Germans living in the Bronx thought Bruno Houghtman was guilty. There was absolutely no dissension on that. Almost 90 years later, the physical evidence from that trial, the ransom envelopes, the latter, the notes, everything. Since locked in a state police archived

in New Jersey, never tested with modern DNA technology, never subjected to the forensic tools that

in case after case of overturned convictions that once seemed airtight. There's that lawsuit right now trying to change that. And the man behind it is the same lawyer Kurt Perhatch. We heard at the start of this episode, the kid from New Jersey who read a book when he was 13 years old and never

“quite good over it. I think when we reflect back and if we think of the old”

adage that history is written by the winners, it's largely true. And I think that when we reflect back on history and take a look deeper at different topics, our history is super ugly, it's super nasty. This happened during the Great Depression and the case happened at the height of the rise of anti-german feeling with the rise of Hitler in Germany going on. And it happened to the greatest hero in America, somebody who was on top of the world. And it's weird how the

public likes to take down national heroes or people who are on top of the world at different times in history. What we've learned later in life of that Charles Lindbergh is really ugly, messy stuff, and yet the generation that grew up with him idolizing and worshiping the guy,

they'd never got to know that. So to be solving this mystery would help shine a light on

other things in American history to look back on ourselves. Did we get it right? Why should we jump to conclusions and instantly point and blame the second they caught outman? This case was done. But if Hauptmann did not kidnap the Lindbergh baby, who did? Next episode we dig into the alternate theories. It's a complete plot. A few photos of the Lone Stoyer's story will be made and finished.

It's very good. Hold your money with this story.