Tag Archives: New Jersey

THE CIRCUS TRIAL OF THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY — THE HALL-MILLS MURDERS

On September 14, 1922, illicit lovers Edward Wheeler Hall and Eleanor Reinhardt Mills were murdered near New Brunswick, New Jersey. Hall, age 43, was a married Episcopalian minister. Mills, age 34 and married to a different man, was a soprano in his church choir. Three people—Hall’s legal wife and her two brothers—were charged with the crimes but acquitted. One hundred years later, few alive today have heard of the Hall-Mills murder trial but, back then, it was a media circus on par with the 1990s O.J. Simpson fiasco.

Normally, I write original material for the Dyingwords blog. Today, however, I’m going to plagiarize a bit because this description from The Yale Review says more about the sensational Hall-Mills side show than I can do justice to:

This steaming porridge of lust, murder, and scandal proved irresistible to the tabloids. As one eminent chronicler of the period outs it: “The Hall-Mills case had all the elements needed to satisfy an exacting public taste for the sensational. It was grisly, it was dramatic (the bodies being laid side to side as if to emphasize an unhallowed union), it involved wealth and respectability, it had just the right amount of sex interest–and in addition, it took place close to New York City, the great metropolitan nerve-center of the American press.”

The frenzied coverage turned the old Phillips farm, where the bodies were found, into a major tourist attraction. On weekends, the crime scene became a virtual carnival with vendors hawking popcorn, peanuts, soft drinks, and balloons to the hordes of the morbidly curious who arrived “at the rate of a thousand cars a day.” Within a few weeks, the crabapple tree, under which the bodies were lying, had been completely stripped of every branch and bit of bark by ghoulish souvenir hunters, while one enterprising individual peddled samples of the dirt surrounding the now-infamous tree for twenty-five cents a bag.

Back to the story of what happened, who probably did it, and why. Let’s start with the case facts.

The Reverend Ed Wheeler was born in Brooklyn and received his theology degree in Manhattan. He moved to New Jersey in 1909 and was tenured at the Evangelist Episcopal Church in New Brunswick. Here he met Frances Noel Stevens who was eight years his senior and filthy rich, being an heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune. They married in 1911 and had no children.

Eleanor Mills did have children. She was married to James E. Mills who was a sexton in Hall’s church and a rather n’er-do-well. Eleanor was an attractive and vivacious lady with an exceptional voice. She was a core member of the church and became Hall’s mistress.

It was no secret in New Brunswick’s society that Mills and Hall were having an affair. In fact, they were quite open about it. Many in the congregation gossiped and disapproved—not just of a clergy-parishioner relationship but the societal misalignment. Hall’s wife and family were upper class while Mills belonged with the working poor.

On September 16, 1922 (two days after Hall and Mills disappeared) a young couple walking through an orchard happened upon the bodies. Mills and Hall were lying side-by-side on their backs with their feet facing a crabapple tree. Hall was to Mill’s left with his arm touching hers while Mill’s arm was stretched, touching his. Hall’s Panama hat covered his face while Mills’ scarf wrapped her neck. Between the two were ripped-up love letters that Mills and Hall had previously passed back and forth. Notably, Reverend Hall’s calling card was set at his feet.

Autopsies showed both had been shot with a .32 caliber handgun. Hall received one gunshot wound to the head with the bullet entering above his right ear and travelling downward, exiting the left rear of his neck. Mills had three gunshot wounds. One was in the center of her forehead two inches above the nose. A second plowed through her right cheek. A third pierced her right temple.

There were minor bruises on Hall but couldn’t be conclusively linked to a struggle. Mills, on the other hand, had her throat slit from ear to ear, practically decapitating her. Her tongue had been extracted and was missing.

The initial investigation was How Not to Process a Crime Scene 101. The police failed to secure the area and a mass of onlookers had access not only to view the bodies but in handling evidence like the love letters and the calling card. The story quickly spread and became the frenzied craze described in the Yale Review excerpt.

From the onset, Hall’s wife—Frances Stevens Hall—was the prime suspect in setting up the murders. Not committing them, though, as that suspicion fell on her two brothers, Henry Hewgill Stevens and William “Willie” Carpender Stevens. The district attorney quickly took the case before a grand jury theorizing that Frances was the jealous mastermind while Henry and Willie were the obliging gunmen.

The grand jury didn’t buy it due to a lack of evidence. They rejected an indictment and the case went dormant for four years. In the legal system, that is.

In the news system, the Hall-Mills murder case was far from forgotten. The early 1920s was a vibrant time. Americans were recovering from a war and a pandemic. They wanted a release. The media gave it to them with the birth of American-style tabloids which rejected the stiff-collar, upper-crust reporting style of the New York Times.

William Randolph Hearst began publishing British-like papers targeting sensationalism. Hearst’s New York Daily Mirror competed with the already established tabloids New York Daily News and the New York Graphic. Hearst, being the cunning entrepreneur he was, looked to one-up the competition. He found one story that had it all—love & sex, money, and murder. Throw in a philandering clergyman and he had what Americans of the Roaring Twenties wanted to read.

The NY Daily Mirror resurrected the Hall-Mills murder case in 1925. Investigating reporters dug up “new evidence” which was so publicized that the New Jersey officials couldn’t ignore it. There were a few overlooked items from the 1922 investigation that showed up on the tabloid covers.

One was that Willie Stevens owned a .32 caliber pistol. Two was that Willie Stevens’s fingerprint was on the calling card found at the dead feet of Ed Hall. Three was the “Pig Woman” who claimed to have seen the murders go down.

This time, the New Brunswick grand jury indicted the three original suspects. The trial started on November 3, 1926 in neighboring Somerset, New Jersey. And if the original crime scene was a media gong show, that held nothing compared to the trial. At least three hundred news reporters covered the 33-day debacle.

The Pig Woman was the star prosecution witness. Now, there’s a story behind this pig lady. Her name was Jane Gibson or Jane Easton or Jane Upson, depending on what she wanted for the day. Jane got her pig woman name from being a farmer who kept hogs on the property next door to the orchard where the Hall and Hills bodies were found.

The Pig Woman never surfaced in the 1922 investigation, but she miraculously appeared when the tabloid coverage began. Jane stated that on the evening of September 14, 1922, her dog began barking and indicating toward the orchard. Being curious, Jane rode her mule over to the site and witnessed the three accused Stevens siblings there with the victims. As she was leaving, she heard gunshots, then went back to see Mrs. Frances Hall weeping over her dead husband’s body.

Now credibility is an important issue in witness testimony. It doesn’t help a jury’s impression when the witness’s mother (Jane’s own mom) kept yelling from the back of the courtroom while her daughter was testifying, “She’s a liar. A liar. A liar.” Nor does it create a reassuring picture when the star witness, who’s being called a liar, testifies from a hospital bed that had to be wheeled into the packed-to-over-capacity courtroom.

The three accused, Frances Stevens Hall, Henry Stevens, and Willie Stevens, all took the stand and testified on their own behalf. Frances, the stoic, denied any motivation, means, and opportunity. Henry’s defense was “Prove it. I have nothing to hide”. Willie was a special case. He was known as “Nutty Willie” in the community and probably had high-functioning autism. Apparently, he played the prosecutor like a hooked fish.

To use the cliché “in the end”, the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie. Their dream team defense counsel turned the trial into a class war where Ed Hall stooped to be with a common cheating wife like Eleanor Mills and they deserved what they got. Here’s a quote from a Rutgers pdf paper titled The Hall-Mills Murder Case: The Most Fascinating Unsolved Murder in America:

Frances Hall was presented as a paragon, along with her two brothers. “Have they been thugs?”, her lawyer asked the jury. ”Have they criminal records? Are they thieves? No. They are refined, genteel, law-abiding people, the very highest type of character, churchgoing Christians, who up to this time enjoyed the perfect admiration and respect of their friends and neighbors.”

When the jury acquitted Frances, Henry, and Willie the media manic trial was over, but the tabloids milked it until another sensational case came about. In 1932, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s baby was abducted and murdered. The tabloids finally closed the Hall-Mills case.

Over the last century, there’ve been numerous books written and articles submitted that looked at the Hall-Mills murders. There’s a guy named Julius Bolyog who came out 47 years after the murders stating he was a middle-man between the Frances and Willie connection and the hired killers. I seriously question his credibility. His account doesn’t pass the smell test, but you can listen to a 9-part recording produced in 1970 documenting Bolyog’s claim.

Then there’s the exhaustive work by Gerald Tomlinson titled Fatal Tryst: Who Killed the Minister and the Choir Singer? This author somehow concludes the Ku Klux Klan did it. Whatever.

So, what do I think? What an old murder cop thinks? Someone who’s been there, done that in murders?

The first thing to mind is the body positions. This was ritualistic. Hall and Mills were placed on their backs, touching each other, facing the crabapple tree with their torn love letters between them for a reason. These murders were all about infidelity.

I don’t think they were killed at this site. Rather, they were shot elsewhere and transported to the orchard knowing full well they’d be found, and the statement made. The killers wanted their victims publicly presented and a message sent.

I say killers (plural) because I don’t believe Hall and Mills were done at the dump site. It’d take two people to load, transport, and display the bodies. Handling a limp dead body by yourself is a tough go. Believe me. I was a coroner, and I know about the challenges in handling dead bodies.

I find the gunshot wounds telling. Ed Hall was shot from above and downward. From his upper right to his lower left. Eleanor Mills was shot three times, and it seems to me the shooter had to work on her. I’d say the first shot caught her struggling and zipped through her cheek. The second was more controlled and went through her temple. The third was a finish-off through the forehead after she was face-first controlled.

Control. This crime speaks to a planned control. The killers and plotter had to find the two—Ed Hall and Eleanor Mills—together and take control so they would initially cooperate. This might have been in a vehicle as it’s had to quickly get out of a vehicle when things go deadly fast.

I speculate the killers sucked Hall and Mills into the back seat of a car. Hall was on the rear driver’s side. Mills was on the rear passenger’s side.

By sucking in, I mean blackmailing. Somehow, the killers got Hall and Mills attention to get them controlled. Blackmailing will do that.

The gunshot patterns are telling. I speculate the shooter was in the passenger front position. The other killer was behind the wheel. The shooter first pulled the trigger on Hall which explains the downward, right-to-left trajectory.

I speculate Mills immediately turned left toward Hall when he was shot, exposing the right side of her face to the gunman. The shooter turned the pistol on her and got the first bullet through her cheek as she was moving to her left. The second shot to Mills got her in the right temple which would be a natural trajectory. The third shot was a fate-de-complete in her forehead. Probably this was post mortem in the orchard because the exhibit list records one .32 casing found at the death site.

The throat slit? I speculate this was also symbolic, but I don’t speculate this was done in the car. Too hard to do and too messy—too much blood. I’d say this was done post-mortem, in the orchard after the bodies were placed. The throat-slit and de-tonguing symbolism? Something about a message not to talk, I’d guess.

Who do I speculate were the mastermind, shooter, and wheelman?

I use two homicide investigation principles I’ve known for years. One is Occam’s razor—where when presented with two opposing hypotheses, the simplest answer is usually the correct answer. The Ku Klux Klan? Or within the family?

Two is the time-tested principle that the stranger the case, the closer the answer is to home. The Ku Klux Klan or the family?

So who, in my old murder cop opinion, planned it, carried it out, and why?

Frances Stevens Hall ordered it to send a message to New Brunswick’s society. She’d had enough of her cheating husband embarrassing her with a low-class floozie. She needed to send a strong social statement to maintain her wealth and power status.

I’d say Henry pulled the trigger while Willie was behind the wheel. It’s just a guess. But I’d say Willie, with his autistic creativity, staged the dump scene.

Then, again, who am I to speculate 100 years after the fact.

WHO REALLY KIDNAPPED AND KILLED CHARLES LINDBERGH’S CHILD?

They call it The Crime of the Century—the 20th century that is. On March 1st in 1932, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s twenty-month-old son was brazenly snatched from his second-story nursery at the Lindbergh mansion outside Hopewell, New Jersey. The boy was found dead in nearby woods on May 12th. In 1934, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was charged, convicted, and executed in the electric chair for being the sole perpetrator of the crime. But was he?

The “Little Lindy Case” is an armchair detective’s delight. It’s been one for nearly ninety years and shows no sign of going away. There are dissenting sides in the Bruno Hauptmann camp. Some say he was guilty as hell. Some say he was totally innocent—as he steadfastly proclaimed up to the moment they ran 10,000 volts through his head. And some say he had a part, for sure, but other co-conspirators were involved.

Hauptmann was caught red-handed with marked ransom money as well as being linked to the crime through indisputable physical evidence. There’s no denying this. However, there were no eyewitnesses or anything other than circumstantial factors that secured Hauptmann’s fate. He never confessed and proclaimed total innocence to the end.

Were there others who kidnapped and killed Charles Augustus Lindbergh Junior or “Little Lindy” as he was known? Let’s look at the case facts that have been so well presented and preserved over the years.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh Senior was nothing special before he burst into fame. Lindbergh was the first man to fly solo and non-stop from America to Europe in 1927. A relative once said, “If it weren’t for surviving that flight, he’d have ended up running a gas station in Minnesota.”

But the world was ready for a hero like Charles Lindbergh in the pre-depression days when heroes were rare and the markets were tanking. Lindbergh was a poster boy of bravado, daring, and handsomeness and that led him to money. He married millionaire socialite Anne Morrow in 1929 and they produced a son, Charles Jr. in 1930.

Charles and Anne Lindbergh relished privacy after being world-famous celebrities. They’d hobnobbed with presidents and royalty and business leaders and everyone in the ranks of entertainment, publishing, and charity. They needed a getaway and built a home in rural New Jersey which was far from the New York madness.

A nanny laid Little Lindy to rest in his crib at nine p.m. on the night of March 1, 1932. She returned for a check at ten and the toddler was gone. Charles Lindbergh was in the home at the time and he took over—finding a handwritten ransom note near the sill of the open window. It demanded $50,000 for the child’s safe return.

The local police contacted the New Jersey State Police for help. A search of an already-contaminated crime scene (caused by the Lindbergh family interference) found three clues later proving vital. First was the note that was handled by many. Second was a home-made wooden ladder with peculiar construction thought to be used by the perpetrator(s) to climb to the second-floor window for access. Third was a wood chisel found lying on the ground below the window.

By the next day, the Lindbergh kidnapping news hit the wire and went world-wide. Masses of curiosity seekers plagued the mansion scene and any attempt to keep negotiations secret was shattered. Already, theories formed and frauds threatened to take a focused investigation into the gutter.

On March 5, Charles Lindbergh Sr. got a follow-up communication in the mail. It was also handwritten and obviously done by the first note’s hand. This led to an intermediator being appointed to negotiate with the note writer. A series of fifteen hand-written notes or communiques followed before the $50,000 in ransom was delivered to a shadowy man with a German accent in a dark New York cemetery.

Charles Lindbergh Jr.’s body was accidentally discovered on May 12, 1932. It was 75 feet off the road, 2 miles from the Lindbergh home. The remains were decomposed and consistent with death occurring at the same time of the abduction. An autopsy found a fractured skull, but the true cause of death couldn’t be established.

All law enforcement levels helped in the Lindbergh case. One was the Internal Revenue Service who devised a clever plan to mark the ransom money. They used a controlled amount of “Gold Currency Notes” that had individual serial numbers, therefore being identifiable to the Lindbergh case.

The genius of the “Gold Notes” is that the U.S. Treasury already planned to move off a gold-based currency system by 1933. This wasn’t public knowledge at the time of the ransom payment and the bills would be recognized as common tender. The IRS people knew, however, that these notes would soon be publicly recalled and note-holders would be required to cash them in or lose the value. That would force the ransom notes to be circulated instead of hoarded.

The plan worked.

Shortly after the payment, the IRS and the police distributed a serial number list of ransom Gold Currency notes to all banks in the New York and New Jersey area. Sporadically, marked bills showed up in the Bronx region but no pattern emerged. But once the Gold Note recall came, marked bills flooded the region.

In September 1934, a Bronx service station manager received a $10 Gold Currency note. He knew nothing of the trap, but he knew of the recall and protected himself against counterfeit by recording the passer’s car license number on the bill—New York marker 4U-13-41. The manager deposited the marked bill at his bank where an astute teller checked the serial number and found it was a Lindbergh bill.

The police ran the plate. It came back to Bruno Richard Hauptmann of 1279 East 222 Street in the Bronx. They surveilled the place, arrested Hauptmann leaving home, and found another marked Gold Currency bill in his wallet. The search of his home found a lot, lot more.

Bruno Hauptmann was a thirty-five-year-old illegal immigrant from Germany. He was once deported from the US because of his European criminal record—a loner and cat-burglar with an MO of using ladders to access second-story windows. Hauptmann also had a carpentry background with the skills and tools to make a wooden ladder.

The police searched Hauptmann’s premises. In his garage was over $13,000 of the marked ransom money cleverly rolled up and hidden inside specially-made wooden boxes. That included more Gold Currency notes as well as standard United States Treasury bills.

The police also found materials and tools consistent with building the wooden ladder found at the scene, a matching toolset to the scene wood chisel, and significant writing samples that linked Bruno Hauptmann to the fifteen notes written to the Lindberghs.

Bruno Hauptmann was tried before a New Jersey jury in 1935. It was the “Trial of the Century” by any standards and was a media circus. After weeks of evidence from hundreds of witnesses, the jury unanimously convicted Hauptmann of kidnapping and murdering Charles Lindberg Jr. in the first degree.

There were motions and appeals and short stays, but Bruno Hauptmann lost his life to Old Sparky on April 3, 1936. He never confessed or named accomplices. Till the switch was thrown, Hauptmann denied all involvement.

Despite what seemed like a clear-cut case, this muddied matter has had intense scrutiny since day one. It still has. There are online cults that would slit their wrists for a chance at post-death clemency for what they believe was a wrongful conviction and the execution of an innocent man.

Why do they believe that? It seems like despite the evidence and how fair the process, it’s simply impossible to convince some people of the truth when they already have a mindset to want the alternative. Here are the main evidence points in what led to Bruno Hauptmann’s conviction.

The Ransom Notes

The first note surfaced inside the room where Charles Lindbergh Jr. was abducted. It was hand-written in particular ink on particular paper. The writing was unique in that it was script with printed numerals and the signature was absolutely outstanding.

The note writer used a pattern of two colored and overlapping dots with three holes perforated through them. No doubt, this was foreplaning to identify the real kidnapper from copycats. This signature remained consistent through the subsequent fourteen more notes delivered to the Lindberghs.

Hauptmann’s known handwriting specimens matched the ransom notes. The best experts in the fields agreed on this. The defense, at trial, could not rebut this. Also, similar paper with matching tears was in his house as well as matching writing implements and the hole-punching tool. Bruno Hauptmann wrote those notes and there was no denial.

The Wooden Ladder

The homemade wooden ladder also sunk Bruno Hauptmann. It was found fifty feet from the abduction second-story window and it was unique. It was made, according to professional opinions, by someone with carpentry skills and was designed to be disassembled in three pieces so it could be transported in a passenger car.

A wood expert with impeccable credentials testified about the ladder at Hauptmann’s trial. He was able to trace wood components in the scene ladder to pieces Hauptmann had sourced at a lumber supplier Hauptmann had worked for as well as boards coming from the attic floor in Hauptmann’s house.

The expert physically matched what’s known as “Rung 16” to Hauptmann’s attic boards through wood grains, nail holes, knots, cuts, plane marks, and species. There was no question—in the expert’s or the jury members’ minds—that Bruno Hauptmann personally manufactured this ladder with materials and tools found at his home.

The Tools

The scene search at the Lindbergh residence found a wood chisel on the ground below the nursery window. It was a “Buck Brothers” brand with a ¾ inch cutting width. When the police searched Bruno Hauptmann’s garage/workshop, they found a matching set of “Buck Brothers” wood chisels. It was complete, except for the ¾ inch tool.

The police also found a wood planning tool in Hauptmann’s shop. It had a particular 2-degree bevel cutting edge with striations on the blade that physically matched the plane marks on ladder members. This was proven at the microscopic level and was a breakthrough in the courts accepting forensic toolmark evidence.

Furthering toolmark evidence, the investigation team also proved that a handsaw in Hauptmann’s tool kit cut and prepared sections of the homemade ladder. The saw kerf width, teeth settings, and stroke angle were consistent with cuts on the ladder’s members.

Then there were the nails. The nails in the scene ladder precisely matched a stock of nails found in Bruno Hauptmann’s garage. The size, shape, length, and materials were identical to what nails were in the Lindbergh ladder.

The Money

Without question, Bruno Hauptmann had the Lindbergh ransom money. And without question, no one else had a stash of it either. That’s because Hauptmann acted alone and there was no one else to share it with.

The forensic accountants did an amazing job for their time. This was before the computer and online banking days when transactions got recorded in ledgers and on carbon paper receipts. The banking sleuths followed the money and they sealed the case.

Bruno Hauptmann received $50,000 in various forms of United States negotiable currency. The forensic accounting team accounted for $49,986 of this going through Bruno Hauptmann’s hands. That was from cash-on-hand, bank deposits, transfers, withdrawals, purchase receipts, and stock market investments. The team estimated Hauptmann lost over half on bad investments.

Were Other Parties Involved in the Lindbergh Kidnapping and Killing?

The short answer is “No”. There’s not the slightest suggestion—based on evidence—that anyone else was involved in the Lindbergh plot. During Hauptmann’s trial, his lawyer Edward Reilly tried to build a smokescreen around Hauptmann being a participant rather than a killer. Reilly wasn’t the most effective barrister in the barn. His nickname was “Ed – Death House – Reilly” as he had a somewhat abysmal track-record of losing capital murder cases and sending his clients away.

No, there is no evidence of anyone co-conspiring with Bruno Hauptmann to kidnap and kill baby Lindbergh. That’s because non-events leave no evidence. It didn’t happen any other way than Bruno Hauptmann—acting alone—planned and carried out this heinous crime.

Why did he do it? Money. Pure and simple. He wanted the money and the prosecution did a marvelous job of painting Hauptmann from a pauper to a prince pre-and-post crime. He lived high off the hog for a few years after collecting the ransom, then he got piggishly careless and was caught.

How did he do it? This takes a bit of analogy. For one thing, this action of climbing to a secondary window in a high-profile mansion and stealing a child while the house is full of awake adults takes a lot of balls. Maybe a lot of stupidity, but no one anytime ever said Bruno Hauptmann was stupid.

There’s plenty of evidence that this crime was planned out far in advance. One of the ransom notes said it was planned for a year. The ladder-building—so planned that it was built in three sections so it could be disassembled and transported in a passenger car—to the ¾ inch chisel probably used to pry open the window implies planning. Then there was the child removal.

It makes no sense that a cat-burglar kidnapper would climb a rickety, three-piece home-made ladder and pry open a window to a nursery to abduct a live twenty-pound child and carefully carry him down by the same route. The most logical scenario is the perpetrator killed Little Lindy in his crib—probably by smothering or strangling— and tossed him out the window (accounting for the skull fracture), then descended to ground, picked up the deceased and took the little boy down the road where he dumped the toddler’s body in the bush.

There are details about the “Crime of the Century” that’ll never be known. But one thing’s for sure based on evidence and common sense. Bruno Richard Hauptmann really did kidnap and kill Charles Lindbergh’s child.