Читать книгу THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING SUSPECT NO. 1 - Lise Pearlman - Страница 19

7.

An Ominous Beginning

ANNE already knew she was pregnant when the couple looked at cliffside property on the edge of the Palisades not far from her parents’ estate. Anne was concerned that, if they built a home overlooking the Hudson, in an unguarded moment their new baby might tumble into the river below. Her husband told her that “being a Lindbergh it will have more sense than that!”

Though Anne’s first pregnancy soon became a national fixation, it had little effect on the couple’s exploits in the air. She only grounded herself long enough to get over morning sickness. Charles could barely wait for her to accompany him to pick up a new plane on the West Coast in January 1930 and take it out for test spins. He expected her to help him set a new record flying across the country and then take another flight to Panama and Mexico.

While the Lindberghs were promoting air travel in California that January, a transport plane crashed on its way to Los Angeles, making national news. It killed all 16 on board. In a letter to her mother-in-law Anne confided that she sometimes feared they would be next. The aviator son of Lindbergh’s sponsor Albert Lambert had died in a crash in 1929 while teaching others to fly. Such stories happened with disturbing frequency. But Anne trusted that Charles had excellent judgment regarding weather conditions suitable for flight.

For Anne one of the highlights of that trip was getting to know aviatrix Amelia Earhart better. To Anne’s delight and her husband’s consternation, the two women bonded when socializing at the home of a California airline executive. Anne noticed that her husband often displayed jealousy of anyone other than him commanding her undivided attention at a dinner or other gathering.

The Lindberghs’ next stop was San Diego to visit his friend Hawley Bowlus, the manager of Ryan Aircraft, which had built “The Spirit of St. Louis.” Bowlus had just designed his own large glider. Lindbergh pressured Anne into trying a solo flight to help counter the public’s fear of flying. Anne feared being a sacrificial lamb, but acquiesced despite the fact she was then in her second trimester. Before the cameras, Anne forced herself to smile as a half dozen men worked the ropes to launch her off the side of the tallest hill in the area — a feat no one had tried before. Once aloft, Anne simply sat immobilized while the wind carried the glider down to an awkward stop. Yet, by staying aloft six minutes, Anne became the first woman to obtain a gliding license. Her husband was quite pleased. It would be decades before Anne would admit how petrified she had been.

On their return home in April 1930, Lindbergh raised eyebrows again by taking Anne — now more than seven-months pregnant — on a nonstop flight from Los Angeles to New York in an attempt to set a new record. Anne tried to set her mother’s mind at ease. She was “crazy to get home . . and have nothing ahead except June” when the baby was due. Anne was either being as reckless about her first pregnancy as her husband was or she could not figure out how to say no. In retrospect, she realized she was “tempting providence.” Adverse weather conditions compounded what was already an extremely difficult undertaking in a plane with an open cockpit.

Lindbergh soared to 10,000 feet to show that getting above the weather was the best alternative for other pilots. But he had not packed along any oxygen. For the last third of the flight Anne was in agony, with a severe headache and nausea from the fumes, compounded by the lack of enough oxygen. She bore her misery in silence, so as not to spoil his chances at a record or prove she was just “a weak woman.”

When they landed, Anne was fighting back tears and too ill to deplane without help. Yet the airfield was full of reporters. She insisted her husband get rid of the press as quickly as possible and rush her to a doctor. Curious as to the reason for Lindbergh’s brush off, some reporters still lingered as his white-faced wife was lifted out and driven away in a limousine. Her doctor had Anne taken directly to the hospital, worried about the condition of her fetus. The doctor then ordered bed rest for the remainder of Anne’s pregnancy. The next day’s newspaper accounts mentioned Anne’s poor condition upon exiting the plane. Lindbergh was livid. He thought the press should have just reported that the pair made the flight in fourteen and three-quarter hours, setting a new transcontinental record by three full hours.

That late spring of 1930, the Morrow household had its own small hospital ward. Dwight, Jr. was convalescing from his most recent breakdown; Elisabeth was resting from a mild heart attack; and Anne awaited her first born. With time on his hands, Lindbergh offered to take his father-in-law flying over Memorial Day weekend to help him with his new political campaign. Dwight Morrow had been appointed to a vacant Senate seat. He now had to compete in a primary race to win his party’s endorsement for the next general election. For the first time in quite a while, the two men had reason to forget their differences. It thrilled Morrow to have his famous son-in-law take him airborne, publicizing his candidacy with a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.

As the impending birth of Anne’s baby was the center of everyone’s attention, Elisabeth left Englewood to convalesce at the family’s estate at North Haven, Maine. She was depressed by the misfortune of her own failing health and fading prospects. She had just established the preschool in Englewood with her friend Connie Chilton a few months before but wondered if she should uproot herself and consider marriage after all.

Meanwhile, Anne tried to religiously follow her doctor’s orders to stay home for the next two months. But her husband had other ideas. He talked Anne into sneaking out on June 9, 1930 — presumably against doctor’s orders — to test a monoplane. It appalled Mrs. Morrow to see her son-in-law needlessly endanger Anne in her delicate condition, but Mrs. Morrow was powerless to intervene. Tempting fate again when Anne was even nearer her due date, the pair escaped the media on Thursday, June 19, 1930, and drove from Englewood to nearby Teterboro Airport. There, they took a short hop in his plane to Hartford, Connecticut, and back. One assumes Lindbergh brought along the ladder he had built Anne to make it easier to climb in and out.

Lindbergh had made arrangements for Anne to give birth in a private suite at a hospital in New York, but he cancelled those plans just before the baby arrived. Lindbergh refused to share any details. Newspapermen speculated that the baby must have been born early and, perhaps, did not survive due to injuries suffered before birth. So many reporters hovered at the gates of the Morrow estate that the Morrows hired twenty-four-hour guards. But the family remained mum.

To avoid revealing the highly coveted news to a telegraph operator, Lindbergh planned to use an assumed name when he notified his mother of her first grandchild’s birth. He protected the message further by developing a code for the baby’s sex. If it were a boy, the message would read “advise purchasing property”; a girl would be signified by “advise accepting terms of contract.” Anne likely noted the difference in symbolism between the active way her husband characterized a prospective son and the passive language for a daughter. She feared that her husband would be extremely let down if they had a girl.

Photographers crowded by the gates of the Morrow estate for days as Anne’s pregnancy neared its end. On June 22, 1930 — Anne’s own twenty-fourth birthday — Dr. Everett Hawks delivered her new baby son at the Morrows’ Englewood home. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., weighed 7 and ¾ pounds. The family obstetrician noted his head was quite large but told his grandmother that was like his grandfather’s head.

Unlike her husband, Anne was totally absorbed in her new infant. It delighted her that the boy had features of both parents — a variation of their blue eyes, Anne’s nose, his father’s eyelashes, mouth and cleft chin. A household member told the press that the baby’s hair was blond at birth, but that was not so. What the press would focus on more was whether the child had been born with serious health problems, which the family categorically denied. New York Journal reporter Laura Vitray later observed that “a great deal has been whispered from time to time about the Lindberghs’ son not being normal, about its being deaf and dumb.” She didn’t believe it, and he showed no signs of either of those impairments. But the scarcity of pictures kept the rumors going.

Though the family never shared their son’s medical records, it is quite possible that Charles, Jr. did have worrisome congenital issues.

The baby’s pediatrician, Dr. Van Ingen, later described having diagnosed the Lindberghs’ first-born at some point during his check-ups with “moderate” rickets. Van Ingen prescribed strong doses of Vitamin D — equal to 50 teaspoons of cod liver oil, almost 17 times what a child might ordinarily be given. In addition, Van Ingen suggested a heat lamp, and Anne made sure to take the boy out in the sun during the day. The baby’s small toes curled in on both feet, he would be very late in developing teeth, he had unusually dry skin, and two other symptoms which could possibly indicate a far worse condition than “moderate” rickets.

Anne made many visits to the pediatrician during her son’s short life. Yet the only medical record his pediatrician shared with the medical examiner after the boy’s death was his 20-month check-up on February 18, 1932 — less than two weeks before he was kidnapped. Dr. Van Ingen reported that he made a note in that visit of the child’s enlarged, “square” head and unclosed fontanel long after the soft spot in the baby’s head would normally have closed. Back then, doctors depended on primitive x-rays which did not show much. There were no brain scans, ultrasounds or MRIs.

Although not diagnosed by Dr. Van Ingen, both the enlarged, “square head” and unclosed fontanel could potentially have been caused by hydrocephalus — an abnormal build-up of cerebrospinal fluid that, depending on its severity, can possibly lead to brain damage and premature death. Hydrocephalus may be inherited, sometimes caused by traumatic events in utero, including oxygen deprivation suffered at high altitudes, carbon monoxide poisoning, and sometimes by trauma to the head after birth. Brain shunts capable of draining the excess fluid and enabling hydrocephalic children to live long, productive lives were not invented until l949.

Except for insisting at the last moment that Anne should have their child at home in Englewood, Lindbergh had seemed indifferent to the birth of their new baby. Anne, meanwhile, doted on both her newborn and her husband. She was glad to see the baby’s dark hair at birth soon give way to light hair like his father’s. She wanted her husband to identify with their child. A few more photos were then circulated of a smiling blond cherub, with the baby looking the picture of health.

Infant Charlie was dubbed “The Little Eaglet.” He quickly drew attention that rivaled that paid to his father — newsreels and stories featured in scores of magazines and newspapers, even a new song. France adopted the baby as an honorary citizen. Yet photographs remained few and far between. All through July of 1930 Anne remained at the Morrow estate with her newborn. Lindbergh flew other mail routes as a consultant but was impatient for Anne to feel ready to return to the air. She had not joined him for any long flights since late April. Even though the Lindberghs occupied a separate wing of the Morrows’ Georgian mansion, he could not wait to be out from under his in-laws’ roof and back in the sky.

Anne, in contrast, enjoyed tending to her newborn, despite finding it awkward at first to hug him. Anne had just read up on the latest child psychology advising against coddling babies too much. She knew her husband felt the same way. Anne still wanted to stay at home and “do nothing else but care for my baby.” She soon began indulging her instinct to cradle her son in her arms and sing to him. Anne had a beautiful voice honed with frequent practice. It delighted her to serenade her son.

Reporters continued to dig for insights from the Morrow household staff. Whether staff spread information they were not supposed to share, or it was just the sparseness of photographs of “Little Lindy,” the press continued to speculate about the Eaglet’s condition. The preoccupation with their son’s health greatly bothered both Anne and her husband. Indeed, some members of the media were now reporting with more regularity on Lindbergh’s flashes of temper and rude behavior.

Lindbergh felt cornered at Englewood. By early August, Anne yielded to her husband’s constant pestering that she join him again in his flights. The couple left their six-week-old infant in the care of a nanny as they flew for a several-day visit to the Guggenheims in Long Island. That was followed by other trips which took them away from Englewood for the better part of a month. Anne told her mother-in-law it felt like she boarded a plane straight from bed. In early September they flew to visit Evangeline in Detroit. Bad weather on their return trip compounded Anne’s dread. She worried they were tempting fate.

By the time they returned, Anne and Charles had begun serious efforts to find a place of their own. Lindbergh’s focus was on land in central New Jersey near Princeton. Lindbergh found a particularly appealing rural site with an adjacent field large enough to serve as an airstrip. Despite the property’s relative isolation, there was also an express train from Princeton Junction to New York City twice daily for commuters. It took just over an hour each way. By car, the Lindberghs’ new home was about two hours from the Morrows’ estate in Englewood and up to half-an-hour’s drive longer from Manhattan, depending on the traffic.

Lindbergh had deliberately focused his search for a suitable site on property near Princeton University. It seemed an ideal locale for the next phase of his career. Lindbergh first visited Princeton in 1928 by invitation from the brother of his transatlantic sponsor Albert Lambert. Back then, when given a campus tour, Lindbergh asked the university’s president for permission to use its labs in the future for experiments. By 1929, Lindbergh had bought a number of biology books and purchased a high-powered microscope. He likely got strong encouragement to move near Princeton from his advisor and closest friend Henry Breckinridge.

Henry’s middle name, Skillman, honored his mother’s uncle by marriage, a Confederate surgeon who ultimately headed the Kentucky Medical Association. The Skillman family tree actually could be traced back to colonial days in New Jersey. Henry came from a long line of men who attended Princeton. Most of the Skillman men stayed to become prominent local citizens. The nearby town of Skillman, New Jersey, where the State Village for Epileptics was located, was named for another member of his mother’s family tree.

In September 1930, the Lindberghs leased a two-bedroom farmhouse closer to Princeton in an unincorporated area called Lawrenceville near Mount Rose, New Jersey. Lindbergh observed to his delight that the rental property contained a field large enough to land a plane. There was also a road directly from Mount Rose to Hopewell so Lindbergh could easily check on progress in the building of his new home. Meanwhile, Dwight Morrow worried about protecting his grandson from intruders once Charles and Anne moved into their new home. Having already wrangled over trust funds for Little Charlie’s education, the family patriarch’s latest focus was household security at his son-in-law’s and daughter’s isolated farmhouse.

Every week, The New York Times covered the latest reports in a wave of lucrative kidnappings, averaging more than two a day nationwide since 1929. Morrow had become far more attuned to that risk after the incident in April 1929, described earlier, when an extortionist threatened to kidnap his youngest daughter. Police had never solved that crime. As the Depression deepened and kidnapping the children of the well-to-do skyrocketed, the multi-millionaire knew he and his wife remained prime potential victims. As newsreel darlings, Anne and her baby likely provided far more inviting targets.

The two-story rented farmhouse in Mount Rose came with servants’ quarters. The Lindberghs soon hired a middle-aged, British couple, Aloysius “Olly” Whateley and Phoebe Mary “Elsie” Whateley, to take care of the farmhouse for them. Meanwhile, it did not take long before word leaked out to the Lindberghs’ fan base about their rented farmhouse near Mount Rose and the larger farmhouse they were building in the Sourlands. Newspapers started covering the story of the layout and location of their new home in detail. Most intrusive of all was a spread in the New York Sunday Mirror revealing the floor plan and luring readers with the banner headline “THE LONE EAGLE BUILDS A NEST.” When the Lindberghs stayed at the Lawrenceville property on weekends, they were tracked there by reporters.

At the rental farmhouse, Lindbergh established his own household rules akin to those observed at his family camp in Minnesota. He had the Whateleys bring dinner to the table all at once in bowls and serving platters. He and Anne and their guests could then help themselves, not be waited on like at her mother’s mansion by servants bearing separate courses of food plated in the kitchen. With his huge appetite he must have found formal dining an irritating custom. At his insistence, the baby slept in the barn to build his endurance. Anne grew worried about the baby’s safety from prying eyes. She saw to it that Little Charlie was constantly watched over in the barn by Elsie Whateley or herself, or Betty Gow when she came down with the family for the weekend.

As a new mother, Anne fretted over parenting decisions for Little Charlie. Both Anne and Charles attended the third decennial Conference on Child Health and Protection in Washington, D.C., in November 1930, sponsored by the White House. Henry Breckinridge was both on the planning committee and chair of the legislation and physical education committees. Henry’s wife, socialite Aida de Acosta Breckinridge, was Assistant Director of Public Information.

The Breckinridges counted themselves among the elite who enthusiastically promoted eugenics. This conference on child health was in part a think tank for developing public policy. The same eugenics groups which convinced the Supreme Court in 1927 to validate forced sterilization were even more focused than ever before on saving humanity from letting “citizens of the wrong type” procreate. By 1930, the American Eugenics Society had embarked on a national campaign to disseminate statistics that showcased the benefits of eugenics laws.

Anne and Charles were likely quite familiar by then with state fair Fitter Family Contest booths that used flashing red lights to compare birth rates of “able-bodied people” compared to what organizers called “degenerates.” The exhibits aimed to horrify fairgoers with claims that capable children were only born “every seven and a half minutes, whereas a feebleminded child every 48 seconds, and a future criminal every 50 seconds.”

The Washington, D.C., conference the Lindberghs attended featured a number of prominent eugenicists they already knew from New York and New Jersey, the hub of that movement for the past thirty years. They might have met the superintendent of Skillman State Village for Epileptics which was located near the new property they intended to build on. The village had a street in it named Morrow Drive in honor of Anne’s father, who had served on two statewide oversight boards for New Jersey institutions more than a decade earlier. The Lindberghs already knew President Hoover, who himself was a strong proponent of eugenics. Their pediatrician, Dr. Philip Van Ingen, was on the panel that focused on medical care for children.

Of particular interest to the new parents, the conference also featured psychologists who taught the latest ideas about diet, sleep schedule and preschool education. Anne sat up front taking many notes, sometimes accompanied by Aida Breckinridge. The Lindberghs had already begun to follow the advice of popular psychologist John Watson on the care of infants and children. Dr. Watson recommended that babies should be fed on a strict schedule and woken up to change their diapers at 10 p.m. each night, to increase the likelihood they would then sleep through till morning. This practice would reinforce the notion of some of the policemen who later responded to the kidnapping that the crime had to involve insider knowledge.

Both photos courtesy of New Jersey State Police Museum.

Elsie Whateley

Elsie and Olly Whateley were first hired to take care of the Lindberghs’ rental home in Mount Rose, New Jersey, and cook and chauffeur for the Lindberghs when they spent weekends there. The Whateleys moved into an apartment above the garage of the Lindberghs’ new farmhouse outside Hopewell in October of 1931.

Olly Whateley