Stolen Away

tale they were spinning, this fantasy of Hauptmann being a lone-wolf kidnapper.”

Curtis’s yarn, I remembered, involved a large cast of characters, Sam and Hilda and Nils and Eric and Larsen and assorted rumrunners.

“Would you have testified against Hauptmann?” I asked.

“Yes,” Curtis said.

“Even if you didn’t really recognize him?” Evalyn asked, dumbfounded.

“Probably,” he said. “I’m not proud to admit it, Mrs. McLean. But at the time, it looked as though they had so much evidence against Hauptmann, it looked so convincing reading the papers, he seemed so undoubtedly guilty, I didn’t see the harm.”

Evalyn fell into a dark silence.

“I was at wit’s end in those months,” he said. “Several years ago, before my involvement with the Lindbergh case, I suffered a nervous breakdown, having to do with anxiety related to business difficulties. I was very near that point again.”

“That’s another reason they kept you off the stand,” I said bluntly.

“Perhaps. And perhaps they knew there was at least some chance that, face-to-face with Hauptmann in a courtroom, under oath, I might not point the accusing finger at him. I might simply tell the truth. And my truth is something the State of New Jersey has never been interested in.”

“You’re saying that had you ID’ed Hauptmann,” I said, “you most likely would’ve withdrawn that identification, in time.”

“Perhaps,” he said, nodding. Then he shrugged. “But perhaps not—had my good name been restored, and my thousand dollars, the better part of valor might have been to fade into respectable obscurity. I can only tell you, truthfully, that today, with my full mental faculties at my command, I would not wrongly testify against that man. Or any man. And having studied the case in some detail—and having had a firsthand view of Jersey justice—I’ve become convinced that poor bastard was railroaded. Pardon my French, Mrs. McLean.”

“Let me back up, just a second,” I said. “Do I understand you to say that now, today, with your ‘full mental faculties’ at your command, you claim the story I heard you tell Lindbergh was true? That you were in contact with the kidnappers, or at least with an extortion group that had inside information about the kidnapping?”

“I lied about one thing,” he said, raising a cautionary finger. “I said I’d seen ransom bills—that I was able to check serial numbers. I never did. I embellished the truth, because I was afraid that otherwise Colonel Lindbergh wouldn’t believe me when I said I was in contact with the kidnappers.”

That had been the part of Curtis’s story that had been the most compelling to Lindbergh.

“He seemed reluctant to get involved,” Curtis went on.

“You were there, Mr. Heller, you should remember this. I did it for his own good. To get him off the dime.”

“Otherwise, your story was true.”

“One hundred percent,” Curtis said. His eyes were hard and clear; his voice was the same. “I’m not a liar. I’m an honest man.”

“You were ready to lie about Hauptmann,” Evalyn said. Her eyes were hard, too, in a different way.

“And I lied about the ransom bills,” he admitted, and shrugged again, and sighed. Then he smiled, sadly. “But I’ve been honest with you about both of those things. And I’ve been honest with you about the mental strain I was under.”

“Is that why you confessed?” she asked. “Why you ‘admitted’ everything you’d said was a hoax, when in fact everything you’d said was true?”

“But not everything I’d said was true. I was kept awake for days, dragged here and there by the police, not allowed to get a change of clothes, rarely fed, and yes, under great mental strain. After a while, I admitted that one thing: that I hadn’t really seen any ransom money. And that, Mrs. McLean, was when the fun began.”

“I’d like to hear about that,” I said. “But from the beginning.”

Curtis told us how, while on Cape May for a meeting with “Hilda,” his contact with the kidnappers, he’d been informed by phone of the discovery of the body of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., in a shallow grave in the Sourland Mountains. How he had driven at breakneck speed through a rainstorm and arrived at Hopewell at 2:00 P.M. Here he was questioned, politely, but in a manner that already indicated he was something of a suspect, by Schwarzkopf, Inspector Welch and Frank J. Wilson.

Curtis had suggested they wait for Colonel Lindbergh to arrive, but the interrogators pressed on; he also suggested that if they were going to question him, he ought to have his “memoranda” brought to him—some were in a lockbox in a New York hotel, others were in his bag on the ketch, the Cachalot, still more with his secretary in Norfolk. This request was ignored.

He answered the questions to the best of his ability, though he was tired and emotionally wrung-out; and they pressed for auto license numbers, house numbers, phone numbers, none of which he could guarantee the accuracy of without his notes being brought to him.

“When Colonel Lindbergh finally arrived,” Curtis said, “he seemed pleased to see me. You can imagine my relief at seeing a familiar, friendly face. He asked me what I made of this…meaning the discovery of the child in the midst of negotiations for its return from Hilda and Sam and the rest. I said I couldn’t fathom it, and pledged I’d do anything in my power to help. And I suggested if we moved fast, because Hilda and Sam were on land, we could nab them.”

“How did Slim respond?” I asked.

“Very positively,” Curtis said. “But he went into his library with Schwarzkopf and Wilson and did not come back.”

Inspector Welch and various troopers and plainclothes officers, including at times Wilson, questioned him all