Tag Archives: Trial

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.

THE BIG REASON WHY O.J. SIMPSON GOT OFF MURDER

They called it the trial of the century. I call it the travesty of all time. Either way you look at it, the O.J. Simpson murder case was exceptionally high profile. Millions of people around the world watched the eleven-month spectacle known as the O.J. trial. It had all the right TV elements—celebrity superstar, the Dream Team defense, allegations of corrupt cops, supposedly compromised witnesses and contaminated evidence, not to mention playing the race card from the bottom of the deck. It ended with O.J.’s acquittal when the jury nullified his indictment. Twenty-five years later, the big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder is now black and white.

Before examining the big reason why O.J. got off, it’s necessary to look at the overall picture—the preponderance of the evidence—and examine investigation and trial components to see what went wrong. It’s the combination of prosecution errors and defense counsel tactics that turned an open-and-shut homicide case into a three-ring media circus. Ultimately, this shameful chain of events caused jurors to reject convicting an absolutely 100% guilty man.

How I got onto this subject was recently reading (or trying to read) Outrage by Vincent Bugliosi. The 1996 book is subtitled The Five Reasons Why O.J. Simpson Got Away With Murder. You might recall who Vincent Bugliosi is. He’s the power-prosecutor who put away the Charles Manson Family and wrote the book Helter Skelter.

Vincent Bugliosi had no part in the O.J. prosecution. He was commissioned to write a critical book. As a lawyer who prosecuted over a hundred murders in his career, and losing only one, Bugliosi earned the right to critique the O.J. trial. That he did with ferocity in Outrage.

I find Bugliosi’s writing style hard to read. He’s verbose and rambling, bombastic and sarcastic, not to mention arrogant and conceited. Give me a good Bob Woodward book any day, but I did make it through Outrage. I also went down a spiraling research tunnel that started with internet rabbit-holing, and I found more people with equally-great accreditations who had one more point to offer than Bugliosi’s five reasons why O.J. got off the murder charges.

I agree with all five of Vincent Bugliosi’s reasons. Just because I don’t particularly care for his script doesn’t mean he’s wrong on any point. I just think he missed another major point that led to the indictment’s nullification—and he failed to summarize his five points into the one big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder. Before I list Bugliosi’s five criticisms, the 6th point, and the overall #1 reason, let’s do a quick review of the case history.

The O.J. Simpson Case History

Orenthal James Simpson was a black National Football League superstar. He was also a movie star and product endorser for a major orange juice producer. Over the years, O.J. got the nickname “The Juice”.

O.J. married Nicole Brown, a white woman, in 1985. They were wealthy, had two children, and had a host of celebrity friends. They also had extreme marital challenges—many fights that ended in violence.

Looking back, Nicole Brown-Simpson was the classic victim of battered woman syndrome. The murder investigation identified sixty-two documented incidents where the Simpsons fought. They resulted in his threatening her life, her seeking protection in women’s shelters, and even the police intervening and arresting O.J.

Nicole filed for divorce in February 1992. She cited irreconcilable differences rather than repeated assaults and mental cruelty. Despite the divorce, O.J. kept stalking Nicole. She called a women’s shelter four days before her death, reporting continual harassment from O.J. and that a set of keys for her home were missing.

On June 12, 1994, Nicole Brown-Simpson attended a dance rehearsal for her daughter in Santa Monica, California which is the Los Angeles suburb where they lived. O.J. was there as a legitimate father, and he attempted to reconcile with her. Nicole refused. She then went to dinner at a restaurant where Ron Goldman worked.

Ron Goldman and Nicole weren’t a romantic item. They were friends, and Nicole’s mother accidently left her eyeglasses at the restaurant when the dinner party left. Once Nicole got home, a phone call verified the glasses were left behind and Ron Goldman offered to drop them off at Nicole’s home when he got off work.

Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman were found stabbed to death outside Nicole’s home. They were discovered by a neighbor at 12:10 a.m. on June 13, 1994. Autopsies indicated their times of death to be approximately 10:30 p.m. on June 12.

O.J. Simpson was an immediate suspect. The LAPD followed a trail of blood from Nicole’s home to O.J.’s estate—a five-minute drive away. O.J. was already gone. He’d taken a red-eye to Chicago and was in a hotel room when LAPD detectives phoned him to give him the notice that his ex-wife was dead.

O.J. Simpson flew home to Los Angeles. He consented to an interview with detectives in which he denied involvement in Nicole and Ron Goldman’s deaths. He could not offer a verifiable alibi for the murder time, and he gave a weak explanation for a recent cut on his left hand.

The LAPD investigative team identified enough physical evidence to tie O.J. Simpson to the murder scene, as well as tying the victim’s blood to his personal residence. The DA filed a two-count murder indictment against Orenthal James Simpson for the criminal deaths of Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ronald Goldman.

The DA and O.J. Simpson’s lawyer worked out a surrender deal. But, instead of surrendering at the police station, O.J. Simpson pulled off the most famous slow-speed chase in the history of the world. Many millions watched on live TV as O.J. in a white Ford Bronco crawled along a LA freeway—O.J. in the back with a handgun to his head as his buddy drove slowly along with a mass of lights-flashing police cars right behind.

O.J. finally surrendered—without a violent incident. He went into custody while the police searched the Bronco. Besides O.J. leaving three letters which amounted to confessional suicide goodbyes, the police found $8,000 in cash, his US passport, a disguise with a hat and false whiskers, as well as a change of clothing and a .357 revolver. If there ever was evidence of a flight risk, this was it, and O.J. Simpson remained in custody for the next year and a half while his eleven-month farce trial played out.

I’m not going to go into the mass of evidence surfaced in the Brown-Goldman investigation and dealt with in the O.J. Simpson trial. That is far too complex for a blog post. Unfortunately, it was far too complex for the prosecution team to present, and far, far too complex for a jury to grasp—especially when the Dream Team defense did everything they could do to cloud the jurors’ vision.

In Outrage, Vincent Bugliosi identified five reasons why O.J. Simpson got away with murder. I’m convinced he’s right. However, I’m convinced there’s one more significant reason why the jury nullified Simpson’s indictment. But we’ll start with Mr. Bugliosi’s points.

1. Media Crime and Pretrial Coverage Influenced the Jury

I have no doubt whatsoever the massive live-media coverage of the slow-speed, white Bronco chase embedded itself in the nation’s psyche. Especially Los Angelers where it hit close to home as they scurried to overpasses to watch the scene pass by. You just don’t forget something as crazy as this.

I know I didn’t. I watched the performance up in Canada, and I was a murder cop with eighteen years of experience when this nut-show went down. I’d certainly heard of O.J. Simpson from his NFL fame, and I kinda got a kick outa his spoofy character in the Naked Gun movie.

I can’t imagine the impression the chase, arrest, and the wait-up to the trial took on the Los Angeles jury pool. And I can’t imagine anyone able to serve on the jury not hearing of the pre-trial events. Or having a pre-formed opinion about O.J. Simpson, his domestic situation, and the Los Angeles justice system.

2. Venue Change From Santa Monica to Downtown LA

Bugliosi is livid about this in Outrage. He has a good right to be. This was a shady, shady deal. Bugliosi pins this on a political move by the LA County Da, Gil Garcetti, who Bugliosi greases as a political hack of the lowest form.

Bugliosi may be right, or he may be wrong, about DA Garcetti’s character. But the decision to venue change from the suburban crime scene jurisdiction of Santa Monica to the urban downtown core of the City of Angeles was a fatal move. The juror gene pool racial demographics of inner LA compared to outer SM are cheese to chalk. The juror perceptions are even further apart.

O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown-Simpson lived in upscale Santa Monica because that’s where their peers lived. O.J. was no more inner-city black than I am an Ivy League white. There’s a thing in jury common law that says a person has the right to be tried by peers in their local jurisdiction. (It might even be in the Constitution—yes, just checked.  Amendment 6 covers this for US citizens.) Putting the Simpson case into a downtown LA jury pool, rather than into a Santa Monica peer-pool—a lesser-educated and racially different peer-pool—entirely changed the social dynamics, and this seriously affected the jury panel’s psyche.

3. The Judge Lance Ito Factor

Who can forget the totally-out-of-his league O.J. Simpson trial judge by the name of Lance Ito? This guy had no more business running a major murder trial than I do performing in Carnegie Hall. Man, what a travesty of justice, and he was sitting on the bench through the entire process.

Bugliosi dismisses Lance Ito as a star-struck buffoon—someone who was unfit for Night Court (if anyone remembers the old comedy sit-com where the judge was actually the one with street smarts) or to replace Judge Judy. Good Lord, during the trial Judge Lance Ito would accept fan gifts and invite celebrities back into his chambers.

Bugliosi finds many faults in Lance Ito—justifiably found faults. But the biggest fault he finds in Ito—and a fatal fault for the trial—was Ito allowing the Dream Team defense to gut Detective Mark Fuhrman and drag his entrails through the trial muck as a racist goon who surreptitiously planted false evidence to frame The Juice. This lack of judicial ethics and irresponsible legal jurisprudence did enormous damage to the jurors’ impartial mindset.

4. Horrible Prosecutor Performance

Marcia Clark and Christopher Darden led the O.J. Simpson prosecution. Bugliosi criticizes Clark, a white woman, as being far beyond her experience and competency in handling the OJ case. He suggests that Darden, being a black man, was only there to serve as a token colored man.

I don’t want to pull the race card regarding the black and white prosecution pair as the dream team did, but I think both Marcia Clark and Chris Darden weren’t up for the job. In Bugliosi’s opinion, and mine, Clark and Darden blew it. Big time. Especially in clearly explaining the physical evidence like DNA in the bloodstains so the common juror could understand and accept the reality of how the murders happened and who caused them.

Bugliosi lists dozens of f-ups the prosecutors pulled. They didn’t establish O.J.’s motive by fully exposing the battered woman syndrome. They failed to disclose O.J.’s desperation to avoid capture during the Bronco chase. The jury never heard of the guilt-admission notes and the disguise, let alone of O.J. Simpson’s incriminating statements made to friends and the police. All around, Bugliosi paints a portrait of a weary and beaten pair of prosecutors who just wished the pain would stop.

5. The Prosecutors’ Final Submission

Bugliosi leads his reader through a maze of evidence. He sets the scene for prosecution failure from the onset, and it gets worse as the story unfolds. I kept reading, even though I wished he’d just shut up and tell the goddamn story as Stephen King so wisely advises in his tutorial to writers.

Clark and Darden played right into the race card trap the Dream Team ingeniously set for them. By ingeniously, I don’t mean it was truthfully, morally, or ethically right. It was the defense strategy right from the start, and the prosecution was blind to it.

The prosecution summary—the summation to the jury—agreed that Mark Fuhrman, the racism whipping boy, was a racist, however, that should not detract from the factual evidence showing O.J. was guilty. Jonnie Cochran, of the Dream Team, blew it out of the water by saying Fuhrman was, “A genocidal racist, a perjurer, America’s worst nightmare, and the personification of evil who single-handedly planted all of the evidence in an attempt to frame Simpson for the murders based purely on his dislike of interracial couples.”

Judge Lance Ito let ‘er slide.

——

I completely agree with Vincent Bugliosi’s five points about why O.J. Simpson got away with murder. But I think there’s one more. It’s a major point which, in the culmination of the Bugliosi Five, supports the big reason—the root cause—of why OG Simpson got off murder.

It’s not just the showmanship of the media lead-up with the slow-speed chase. It’s not just the celebrity hype. It’s not just the venue change. It’s not just the Ito factor. It’s not just poor prosecutor performance. And it’s not just the piss-poor summation.

It’s something much deeper that was at work during the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

Racism.

O.J. Simpson was ethnically black. Throughout his professional life, though, O.J. Simpson was essentially white. He worked with white people. He socialized with white people. He married a white woman. And his Dream Team was essentially white—exception being Johnnie Cochran.

O.J. Simpson’s jury was essentially black. There were nine black jurors, two white jurors, and one Hispanic juror on the panel. They were sequestered for 265 days and, if you know of the Stockholm Syndrome, you can imagine the long-term influence that confinement had on the jurors.

After eleven months of sole interaction, the O.J. Simpson jurors returned a not guilty verdict on all counts after less than four hours of deliberation. Their minds were made up, and there was little discussion. Unanimously, the O.J. Simpson jury nullified the indictment charging O.J. with murdering Nicole and Ron.

Null? Nullify? Nullified? Nullification? I’ve used variances of nullification throughout this piece. In my opinion, nullification by the jury is the big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder.

Null is a legal term. You’ve heard of a contract being “null and void”. Nullify means rejecting the deal and putting an end to it. For jury trials, Merriman Webster dictionary says it means, “Acquitting a defendant in disregard to the judge’s instructions or contrary to the jury’s finding of fact.”

In the O.J. Simpson indictment, where he stood charged with intentionally murdering Nicole Brown-Simpson and Ron Goldman, the evidence was overwhelming that O.J. was 100% guilty. A blind half-wit would conclude that upon impartially hearing the evidence. However, the O.J. Simpson trial jurors unanimously disregarded the facts, and their duty to find the facts and decide to ignore the facts. Their impartial judgment was seriously compromised by the well-played defense race card.

There was a recent undercurrent to the O.J. jury decision, or their decision to nullify the indictment. Rodney King. You might remember the Rodney King trial from 1983 where white police officers were acquitted for beating King, a black man. King’s jury held ten whites, one Latino, and one Asian. Two years later, a reverse racial mixture acquitted or nullified the indictment of O. J. Simpson.

Nullification is an old legal concept. It’s been around for centuries and refers to cases—criminal and civil—where juries side with an accused person (or corporation) and let them off no matter how strong their wrongdoing evidence is. Here’s a definition of jury nullification from Cornell Law School:

Jury Nullification — A jury’s knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the jury’s sense of justice, morality, or fairness. 

Jury nullification is a discretionary act and is not a legally sanctioned function of the jury. It is considered to be inconsistent with the jury’s duty to return a verdict based solely on the law and the facts of the case. The jury does not have a right to nullification, and counsel is not permitted to present the concept of jury nullification to the jury. However, jury verdicts of acquittal are unassailable even where the verdict is inconsistent with the weight of the evidence and instruction of the law.

At its core, nullification occurs when a trial jury reaches an anti-fact-based verdict when they disagree with the law or they disagree that the state should be prosecuting the accused. Indictment nullification also happens when the collective jury wants to make a social statement such as racial inequality or persecution.

There’s nothing to stop a jury from nullifying an indictment. Once it’s in the jury’s hands, and inside the deliberation room, it’s theirs to do what they see fit. They hold no currency. They have no account.

O.J. was black. He murdered two whites. The jury was powerfully black. The system was predominantly white. The big reason why O.J. Simpson got off murder was because of jury nullification due to racism.

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.