Gaston Means, in a prison hospital in 1938 after a heart attack, found FBI agents at his bedside, sent by J. Edgar Hoover to inquire once again about Evalyn’s money. Means smiled his puckish smile at them, winked and passed away.
John H. Curtis tried for years to have his conviction overturned, but was turned down by the New Jersey Supreme Court. He remained in the boat-building and marine business and was quietly successful. In 1957 he supervised the construction of three replicas of colonial-period British warships that sailed at a major Norfolk festival. He died in 1962, a respected citizen of his community.
Another prominent Norfolk citizen, Admiral Burrage, never again spoke publicly of the Lindbergh case; he died in 1954. Reverend Dobson-Peacock died in England in 1959.
The Bull of Brooklyn, a.k.a. “Death House” Reilly, alias Edward J. Reilly, only occasionally appeared in court after the Hauptmann trial. He alternated between living at home with his mother and being institutionalized at the King’s Park state mental hospital, his drinking and three failed marriages taking their toll. He died of a blood clot on the brain, at King’s Park, on Christmas Day, 1946.
David T. Wilentz fared much better. While the run for the governorship that was rumored during the Hauptmann case never materialized-he was a Jew, after all-Wilentz became a major political boss among the New Jersey Demos. He continued with his law practice, but his real job was that of power broker. By 1950 he was influencing national politics, including the selection of Democratic vice-presidential and presidential candidates. There were those who said Wilentz had mob ties, and in his later days he was representing Atlantic City casinos. He died July 7, 1988, at ninety-three.
Wilentz’s star witness, John F. Condon, who like Wendel enjoyed notoriety by writing magazine articles and a self-promoting book, died of pneumonia at age eighty-four with his wife Myra and daughter Myra both at his bedside-exactly ten years from the day that Hauptmann went to trial.
Some of the others, I lost track of. I don’t know what happened to Gerta Henkel and her husband. Nor do I know what became of Martin Marinelli and his wife Sister Sarah Sivella. Edgar Cayce went on to great fame, of course; in Virginia Beach, in January 1946, on his deathbed, he predicted he was about to be healed.
Colonel Henry Breckinridge remained friendly with Lindbergh, and continued on as his lawyer. Having run for the U.S. Senate in 1934, and lost, Breckinridge took a shot at the presidency in 1936; he was an anti-New Deal Democrat. I guess you know how he fared. After that, he devoted himself primarily to his law practice. He died in 1960 at age seventy-three.
Slim Lindbergh went on to have something in common with Dick Hauptmann: both of them suffered due to anti-German sentiment. Lindbergh, while living in England, was invited by Major Truman Smith, military attache at the American Embassy in Berlin, to inspect the German air forces, with the blessing of General Goering, head of the Luftwaffe. Here began Lindbergh’s ill-fated association with Germany-he at one point accepted a Service Cross from Goering-which resulted in his isolationist stance concerning the war in Europe. He was branded pro-Nazi by the press and public who had so recently idolized him; after America’s entry into the war, he flew as a test pilot and on combat missions-but the Nazi-sympathizer image stuck. Perhaps this wasn’t all bad-he finally could have the anonymity and privacy he’d craved. He continued his research on matters aeronautic and otherwise, including inventing an early artificial heart. He and Anne raised four more children. In 1974, he died on the island of Maui, where he had lived, and where he is buried.
Some of the others are, as I write this, still alive. Several of the cops and reporters. Betty Gow, still in England. Anne Lindbergh, whose literary skill has won her fame of her own. Anna Hauptmann, who after quietly raising her son in obscurity, reentered the public eye in the 1970s, fighting in the press and in the courts to clear her husband’s name.
Over the years a number of men came forward claiming to be, or expressing the suspicion that they might be, Charles Lindbergh, Jr. One of these was an advertising executive from Michigan who, starting four or five years ago, contacted me several times for information about the case.
His name was Harlan C. Jensen-the “C” stood for Carl-and he was always quiet and respectful in our several phone conversations; he seemed not at all a crank, but I wasn’t terribly cooperative. I did hear him out on a couple occasions.
He had been raised in Escabana, Michigan, by Bill and Sara Jensen. When he was a young boy, he was told (by an uncle) that his mother and father were not his natural parents; naturally, he wondered about this, and as a young teenager confronted his father, who said only that “you’re legitimate.” Before he went to Korea, for combat in 1952, his mother’s cousin had confided in him that “family rumor” had it that he was Charles Lindbergh, Jr.
Several years later, on his honeymoon, Harlan and his wife had been in a boatyard in Wickford, Rhode Island, where they were enjoying the nautical scenery while they waited to catch the ferry to Cape Cod. An elderly woman approached, with a redheaded woman in her twenties, and introduced herself as Mrs. Kurtzel. She said to Jensen, “You were with us as a baby-I helped care for you. This is my daughter-she was like your sister.” Jensen had been understandably taken aback, but then the woman said, “May I feel the dent in your head?” Shocked that a stranger knew about this defect, which he’d been told was from a slip of the forceps during delivery, he allowed her to touch the back of his head.
“You are the Lindbergh baby,” she said. “I helped care for you.”
At this point, the ferry arrived, and Jensen and his bride left, covering their confusion and fear with nervous laughter.
He began to read about the Lindbergh case, but rejected the notion that Bill and Sara Jensen were not his real parents. He never talked to them about the “family rumor,” but on their respective deathbeds, each parent had tried to tell him something. His mother had become ill while he was in Korea and had lapsed into a coma before he could get home to be at her side; his father, suffering a stroke in 1967, struggled to give his son some message, but could not make himself understood.
Years later, in a medical exam for recurring headaches, Jensen was shown X-rays and told by a doctor that his skull had been severely fractured in his early childhood. Also, the doctor asked why he’d had so much plastic surgery as a child-Jensen said that he wasn’t aware that he had. But the doctor demonstrated on the X-rays that reconstructive surgery had taken place beneath his eyes and on his chin, possibly removing a cleft.
He had begun, then, in earnest, making a search for his identity his spare-time obsession. Unlike the others who claimed to be Charles Lindbergh, Jr., Jensen had disclaimed any rights to the Lindbergh estate, putting that in writing in a letter to the probate judge on Maui.
There was more, but I wouldn’t let him tell me. I told him I was retired from the detective business, that the Lindbergh case was something I didn’t think about anymore, and had no interest in discussing with anybody. He called, I think, three times, telling me a little more of his story each time.
About a year ago, I was sitting in my little condo in Coral Springs; my wife-my second wife, but who’s counting-was out, playing bridge with some of the other old girls who live in this same complex we do. Occasionally I fish, but most days I either read or write or watch TV. That afternoon I was watching a videocassette of an old Hitchcock movie. Well, hell-I guess all Hitchcock movies are old, at this point. Like me.
Anyway, I answered the door and found a slender man in his mid-fifties standing there, looking shy and a little embarrassed. He wore a yellow sweater over a light blue Ban-Ion shirt; his slacks were white and so were his rubber-soled shoes-he looked like somebody on vacation.