New Jersey vs. Hauptmann Trial Transcript

On March 1, 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. , the twenty month old son of famed aviator Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, was kidnapped. A month later, on April 2, 1932, Colonel Lindbergh paid $50,000 in "gold certificate" currency (which currency type President Roosevelt recalled a year later due to the Depression) as ransom to an unseen individual at a Bronx, New York cemetery. A little over a month later, on May 12, 1932, the partially decomposed body of Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. (or of someone fitting his description) was found in a wooded area 5 miles from the Lindbergh home. Two and a half years later, on September 15, 1934, a gas station attendent received a $10 "gold certificate" from Bruno Richard Hauptmann, and its serial number matched that of the ransom money. Hauptmann was arrested at his home in the Bronx four days later and tried at the Hunterdon County Court in Flemington, NJ for a period of 32 days of hearings between January 2, 1935 and February 13, 1935. Convicted of murder and kidnapping, he was executed at Trenton State Prison on April 3, 1936. His widow, Anna Hauptmann, bas since (as late as 1985) maintained his innocence and endeavored to clear his name.

The Stenographer's Transcript represents twenty-two days of hearings from the total of thirty-two days. Their incompleteness is due to the occasional absence at the hearings of the newspaper reporter, Samuel G. Blackman (a Rutgers College 1927 alumnus) who possessed this copy of the Transcript until donating it to Rutgers in September of 1986.

Newsclippings from 1934 to 1985 covering the case from Hauptmann's arrest until the most recent appeals of his widow were also donated by Mr. Blackman, and are available in acid-free photocopy form in the final box of the N.J. vs. Hauptmann collection. Chronologically arranged, they also include articles by Mr. Blackman on the occasion of the 20th, 25th, 40th and 50th anniversaries of the case.

The final folder in the collection contains correspondence to Mr. Blackman from various persons regarding unresolved aspects of the case, plus notes toward his articles, and a photograph possibly used by the Associated Press.