Bruno Richard Hauptmann Trial: 1935 - Discovered Through Ransom Money

More than two years later, in September 1934, a man named Bruno Hauptmann used a $10 gold certificate to buy gasoline. Because gold notes were rare (the United States had just gone off the gold standard), the station attendant jotted down Hauptmann's license number and took the $10 bill to a bank, where it was identified as part of the $50,000 ransom paid by Lindbergh. Hauptmann was arrested. The jury would face the accused carpenter, who lived with his wife and son (now almost the same age as the Lindbergh baby when he died) in the rented second floor of a house in the Bronx, a borough of New York City. Hauptmann, who had a record of petty crime in his native Germany, had voyaged to America twice in 1923 as a stowaway. Apprehended and sent back the first time, he was successful on his second try.

Discovered behind boards in Hauptmann's garage was $14,590 in bills from the ransom. A New York Times compilation of his assets totaled $49,671. Written on the trim inside his bedroom closet was the address and telephone number of Dr. John F. Condon, a 71-year-old retired Bronx schoolteacher who had turned up as a self-appointed go-between when Lindbergh, not yet aware that his son had been killed, was negotiating with the kidnapper for the delivery of the ransom. Within earshot of Lindbergh, Condon had met the presumed kidnapper in the dark to hand over the money. When Lindbergh would testify, that "is the voice I heard that night," in identifying Hauptmann as the man he had heard when the ransom for his kidnapped baby was handed over, America believed him implicitly.