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Dedication

This book is dedicated to Anna Schoeffler Hauptmann (1898–1994) who, in utter disbelief at the American justice system, lived through the prolonged nightmare of her husband’s sensationalized arrest in September 1934 as the most hated man in America, his murder trial four months later, and execution in April 1936. She spent the rest of her long life fighting to prove the truth of his alibi: that Bruno Richard Hauptmann could not have committed the kidnap/murder of the only son of America’s hero on the evening of March 1, 1932, in central New Jersey because her Richard was picking her up from work at a Bronx bakery when the crime occurred, as he always did then on Tuesday nights.

Despite all obstacles, nevertheless she persisted — and convinced a growing number of people, including both crime reporter Anthony Scaduto and investigative journalist Ludovic Kennedy, of the righteousness of her cause. Without Anna Hauptmann’s dogged determination, the government documents her lawyers uncovered through the Freedom of Information Act, the expert assistance they obtained, and the interviews of aged participants and sleuthing by Scaduto and Kennedy, much of the information relied on in this book would have been lost to history. Hats off as well to New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman, whose thwarted efforts to reinvestigate “the crime of the century” likely cost him his reelection but provided historians with a gold mine of clues.