While all were useful, none of the books contemporary to the Lindbergh case proved entirely reliable: Jafsie Tells All! (1936), by Dr. John F. Condon, is predictably pompous and often at odds with Condon’s courtroom testimony; The Hand of Hauptmann (1937), by J. Vreeland Haring, is a biased account by one of the prosecution’s many handwriting experts, although one who never testified; The Great Lindbergh Hullabaloo (1932), by Laura Vitray, is an odd exercise in unintentional whimsy by a former Hearst reporter who apparently felt the kidnapping was a hoax; and The Lindbergh Crime (1935), by Sidney Whipple, is a United Press reporter’s pro-prosecution account. Whipple, though occasionally wildly inaccurate, does present the most detailed contemporary book-length account; and his later The Trial of Bruno Hauptmann (1937) presents a valuable edited version of the court transcript.
The latter-day nonfiction accounts are also a mixed bag; each has its merits, but each also has its limitations.
The most coherent, straightforward and readable narrative is the admirably researched The Lindbergh Case (1987) by Jim Fisher; unfortunately, ex-FBI agent Fisher is almost laughably pro-law enforcement, and in interviews has referred to the New Jersey State Police as mounting an “inspired” investigation. Also, Fisher tends to either omit any pro-Hauptmann evidence or relegate it to a footnote.
The most literate Lindbergh account is The Airman and the Carpenter (1985), by celebrated British crime historian Ludovic Kennedy; but Kennedy’s logical, convincing defense of Hauptmann has a rather narrow focus-John H. Curtis and Paul Wendel are barely mentioned, and Gaston Means and Evalyn McLean appear not at all.
The groundbreaking Scapegoat (1976) by New York Post reporter Anthony Scaduto was an especially important resource for this novel; but Scaduto concentrates on the Ellis Parker/Paul Wendel aspect of the case, with Curtis getting rather short shrift and Gaston Means (and Mrs. McLean) absent but for one brief mention. On the other hand, his coverage of Isidor Fisch is extensive and impressive. Scaduto jumps around considerably; readers looking for a nonfiction balance probably need to read Fisher and Kennedy and Scaduto.
The first major account of the case was George Waller’s bestseller Kidnap (1961), a readable if conventional and occasionally inaccurate pro-prosecution depiction. Annoyingly, the nearly 600-page nonfiction novel does not have an index.
An extremely important source was journalist Theon Wright’s In Search of the Lindbergh Baby (1981), which is the only one of these books that pulls in all the disparate elements of this convoluted case, and attempts to make sense of them. Like Scapegoat, however, Wright’s book is scattershot, and is best appreciated by readers already familiar with the basic facts.
My candidate for the best nonfiction look at the Lindbergh case is “Everybody Wanted in the Act,” a lengthy article by crime reporter Alan Hynd, published in True (March 1949); it has been reprinted several times in various anthologies, including Violence in the Night (1955) and A Treasury of True (1956). Hynd covered the case for True Detective Mysteries and was the coauthor of Evalyn Walsh McLean’s Liberty magazine serial, “Why I Am Still Investigating the Lindbergh Case” (1938). His cynical reporter’s-eye view-neither pro-prosecution nor pro-Hauptmann-is refreshing; he was also one of the first to voice doubt about the identity of the small corpse found in the woods of the Sourland Mountains. My account of the ghostly doings at Far View derives from this article, and from Hynd’s coauthored piece with Mrs. McLean.
The portrait of Evalyn Walsh McLean herein is drawn from the Liberty magazine serial mentioned above, and Mrs. McLean’s autobiography Father Struck It Rich (1936, cowritten with Boyden Sparkes). Also helpful was Blue Mystery: The Story of the Hope Diamond (1976), by Susanne Steinem Patch. The romance between Evalyn and Nate Heller is, of course, fictional, and I know of no parallel to it in Mrs. McLean’s life.
The portrait of Charles and Anne Lindbergh was drawn largely from their own writings: We (1927), The Spirit of St. Louis (1953), and Autobiography of Values (1977) by Charles; and Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead (1973) by Anne. Also beneficial were Lindbergh: A Biography (1976), Leonard Mosley; and The Last Hero: Charles A. Lindbergh (1968), Walter S. Ross.
Helpful in depicting Ellis Parker were The Cunning Mulatto and Other Cases of Ellis Parker, American Detective (1935), Fletcher Pratt, and a 1938 Liberty magazine series, “Whatever Happened to Ellis Parker?” by Fred Allhoff. Helpful in depicting Gaston Means was Spectacular Rogue: Gaston B. Means (1963), by Edwin P. Hoyt, and “Gaston Means, King of Swindlers,” a three-part serial in Startling Detective Adventures (1933) by Judson Wyatt.
Frank J. Wilson is the subject of two books, both of which were useful in determining the role of the federal government in the Lindbergh case: Special Agent: A Quarter Century with the Treasury Department and the Secret Service (1956) by Wilson himself with Beth Day, and The Man Who Got Capone (1976), by Frank Spiering. Similarly useful were The Tax Dodgers (1948), a memoir by Elmer L. Irey with William J. Slocum; Secret File (1969) by Hank Messick, a thorough study of the IRS Intelligence Division with Messick’s usual unsubstantiated, gratuitous smearing of Eliot Ness; Treasury Agent-The Inside Story (1958) by Andrew Tully, which explores the Capone, Lindbergh and Waxey Gordon cases; and Where My Shadow Falls (1949), a memoir by FBI man Leon Turrou, who calls into doubt the reliability of Jafsie Condon as an eyewitness.
The portrayal of Edgar Cayce is based on material in Edgar Cayce-Mystery Man of Miracles (1956) by Joseph Millard; also consulted were My Life with Edgar Cayce (1970), David E. Kahn as told to Will Oursler, The Psychic Detectives (1984), Colin Wilson, and A Prophet in His Own Country-The Story of the Young Edgar Cayce (1974), Jess Steam. Cayce’s involvement in the Lindbergh case is drawn from the aforementioned Theon Wright book and The Outer Limits of Edgar Cayce’s Power (1971), by Edgar Evans Cayce and Hugh Lynn Cayce, as well as photocopies of transcripts of his actual psychic “readings” and related correspondence. (Although I report only one, Cayce did several readings on the Lindbergh case.)
The story of the fictional character Harlan Jensen’s search for his identity is patterned upon that of Harold Olson, as reported in Wright and Scaduto, including Mr. Olson’s latter-day tracing of the route Edgar Cayce described.
Hundreds of newspaper articles (from the Tribune, Daily News, Herald-American and other Chicago papers, as well as the New York Times and the Virginia Pilot and the Ledger Star) served as source material for Stolen Away. A number of “true detective” magazines of the day proved helpful, including Daring Detective, Startling Detective Adventures and True Detective Mysteries. Among magazine articles that proved useful were “Did They Really Solve the Lindbergh Case?” by Craig Thompson, Saturday Evening Post, March 8, 1952; “The Baby Is Found…Dead!” by Allan Keller, American History Illustrated, May 1975; “The Story of the Century” by David Davidson, American Heritage, February 1976; and “Did the Evidence Fit the Crime?” by Tom Zito, Life, March 1982.