The Lindbergh Kidnapping The Biggest Story Since the Resurrection

1
The Lindbergh Kidnapping The Biggest Story
Since the Resurrection

• Presented by Jaclyn Holcombe, Matthew Shelnutt,
  and Chad Chisolm

2
Objectives

• Know that Charles A. Lindbergh was considered an
  American Hero for completing the first flight
  across the Atlantic Ocean
• Know that the abduction occurred on March 1, 1932
• Know that the initial ransom note was for 50,000
• Know that Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was killed by
  a massive fracture to the skull
• Know the 5 characteristics used in 2005 to prove
  the rail 16 and the attic board were once one
  piece of wood milling characteristics, natural
  characteristics, knot patterns, surface grain
  patterns, and end grain relationship

3
Objectives

• Know that Silver Nitrate, a newer technique at
  the time, allowed for the lifting of fingerprints
  from the ladder
• Know that TLC is a destructive ink analytical
  technique, and that microscopy is indestructive
• Know that handwriting evidence played a large
  role in convicting Hauptmann
• Know that Hauptmann was convicted of first degree
  murder by a unanimous jury
• Know that the Lindbergh Law states that it is a
  Federal felony to kidnap across state lines

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The Lindbergh Family

• Charles A. Lindbergh
• was considered an
• American Hero for the
• first flight across the
• Atlantic Ocean
• Charles Lindbergh and
• his wife, Anne M.
• Lindbergh, lived in
• Hopewell, New Jersey
• Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., the Lindberghs first
  child, was born in 1930

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The Crime of the Century

• Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped on March
  1,
• 1932 at 20 months old
• A ransom note for 50,000 was left in his nursery
  when the baby was removed from his crib
• The next day a second
• ransom note was delivered
• demanding 70,000
• The ransom was delivered
• on April 2, 1932

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Kidnapping Turns into Murder

• The babies remains were found in May 1932, 73
  days after he was kidnapped
• He was found by a truck driver in the woods close
  to the Lindberg home
• Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. had been killed by a
  massive fracture of the skull 2 to 2 ½ months
  before he was found

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Charles A. Lindbergh Jr.s remains and the his
clothing compared to a clean clothing
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The Suspect

• Bruno Richard Hauptmann was an illegal German
  immigrant that came to the United States in 1923
• Police found Hauptmann when he paid for gas in
  Bronx, New York using a gold certificate
• He was caught with a 20 gold note in his wallet
  and 14,000 in ransom money in his garage

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The Ladder

• The wooden ladder was used to reach the nursery
  window on the 2nd floor
• It was made in 3 sections and held togehter by
  wooden dowels so that it could easily be fit into
  a car
• The ladder was left at the Lindbergs home
  approximately 100 yards from the house

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The Wood Expert

• On May 1933, wood expert, Arthur Koehler from the
  U.S. Forestry Products Laboratory, was brought
  into the case to perform an in-depth wood
  analysis on the ladder
• He was able to determine that some of the lumber
  used to make the ladder had been shipped by the
  National Lumber and Millwork Co. from South
  Carolina to a New York lumberyard near
  Hauptmanns home
• Koehler made this determination by comparing saw
  marks in the lumber from the ladder to the lumber
  that had been milled by the National Lumber and
  Millwork Co.
• Hauptmanns response was No real carpenter could
  produce such rough work

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Rail 16

• Koehler was also able to prove that rail 16 came
  from Hauptmanns attic floor
• While searching his apartment, the detectives
  noticed that a section of the attic floor had
  been removed
• Koehler and one of the detectives took rail 16
  into the attic and compared it to where the board
  had been cut away
• There were many similarities between rail 16 and
  the remaining piece of the board
• 4 square nail holes in rail 16 matched up with
  one of the beams in the attic
• The grain was also the same in both pieces of the
  wood

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Hauptmanns Attic

The floor where part of the board is missing
The floor with rail 16 in place
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2005 Reexamination of the Ladder Evidence

• Rail 16, the attic board, and other evidence
  still exist so Kelvin Keraga and other experts
  used todays technology to reexamine the evidence
  
• First, they proved that the police did not tamper
  with evidence by switching any of the wood using
  photos that had been taken immediately after the
  kidnapping
• Keraga also used the same photos to verify that
  the current rail 16 and attic board (S-226) were
  the original pieces of evidence from the 1930s

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• Next, Keraga and the experts established that
  rail 16 and S-226 were the same board at one time
• They were able to come to this conclusion based
  on
• Milling characteristics cut perpendicular, 8
  knife marks per inch, 6th mark more distinct, and
  coupled marks
• Natural characteristics Southern Yellow Pine,
  color, sapwood, and came from the center of the
  tree
• Knot patterns S-226 above rail 16 which is
  consistent with the growth direction of the tree
• Surface grain patterns knot on S-226 alters the
  that area of the wood, surface area curves and
  yearly growth rings match on both boards
• End grain relationship overlapping end grain
  pictures of both boards shows there
  three-dimensional relationship

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Forensic Fingerprinting

• Shortly after midnight State Trooper Frank Kelly,
  a fingerprint expert, arrived on scene at the
  Lindbergh home.
• Dusting was the most widely used technique at the
  time of the kidnapping, and its use didnt allow
  for the collection of any fingerprints from the
  room the baby was in, the ladder, or the note
  left behind.
• Dusting is typically reserved for porous
  surfaces, and the powder sticks body oils left on
  surfaces.

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Silver Nitrate and Fingerprints

• A fairly new technique at the time was the use of
  silver nitrate to lift fingerprints.
• The silver nitrate reacts with the chloride found
  in fingerprint residue and silver chloride forms
  in ultraviolet light, this new compound reveals
  a reddish-brown fingerprint.
• The use of this technique successfully allowed
  for the removal of partial fingerprints from the
  ladder involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping.

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Contemporary Analyses

• Perhaps more fingerprints could have been
  collected from this scene and used as evidence if
  investigators had access to the techniques found
  today
• Chemical treatments such as tartrazine yellow,
  merbromin, amido black etc. for high contrast and
  visibility.
• Enhancement via superglue fuming, which reacts
  with water in the prints, and produces a white
  mark that can be stained.
• Ninhydrin reacts well with prints on paper and
  porous substances reacts with amino acids to
  turn purple.
• Iodine fuming, such that the iodine is absorbed
  by oily components in the prints, and turns a
  yellow-brown. Benzoflavone can be added to fix
  the fingerprint, which turns it dark blue.

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Analysis of Handwriting

• A total of 1,400 words were collected from all of
  the submitted ransom notes and notifications sent
  by Hauptmann, as well as his collected personal
  documents.
• These printed words were used by investigators to
  link Hauptmann to the crime, based on some of the
  following criteria
• Word and letter spacing
• Height and width of a letter
• Lettering slant, or the degree of slant to the
  left or right.
• Diacritic placement, or where the ts are crossed
  and the is are dotted.
• Pen lifts, or when and where a pen is lifted
  during words or between words.

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Ink Analysis

• Forensic analysis of ink is used to identify the
  same or different inks on a document for
  casework.
• There are several techniques to analysis inks
• Non-destructive
• Infrared luminescence
• Visual luminescence using a microscope
• Destructive
• Thin Layer Chromatography (TLC)
• Capillary Electrophoresis (CE)

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Non-destructive Technique

• Analysis of documents under a microscope can be
  informative as a first step. The investigator may
  be able to see slight changes in ink color, not
  visible to the naked eye, that could be
  indicative of alterations, or in this case
  handwriting similarities

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Disadvantages

• Different pens may coincidentally contain inks
  which have identical infrared and visual
  properties
• If inks cannot be differentiated from one another
  by these examinations it is unlikely to be able
  to identify a specific pen as having written
  various entries on a document.

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Ink Analysis

• Today, crime investigators specialized in
  forensic science are using Thin Layer
  Chromatography to identify different inks
• New process, is called Capillary Electrophoresis
  (CE)

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Fact about Inks

• Most inks are not made of just one color of ink,
  but are made of several colors of inks that
  combine to form the desired color
• Green ink, for example, is a combination of blue
  ink and yellow ink
• Black ink, which was used to write the ransom
  note, is often a combination of several colors.
  Black inks from different manufacturers will be
  composed of different combinations of colors
• Investigators can analyzed the black inks from
  different pens found in the suspects' possession
  and compared them with the ink used to write the
  ransom note

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Destructive Technique

• thin-layer chromatography (TLC)
• An ink sample is spotted on a silica-gel slide
  and separated into its components by a solvent
  system
• The spots can then be visualized under visible or
  ultra-violet light then compared to a reference
  library (e.g. the Secret Service's TLC library
  consists of 8,500 inks)
• It's an important technique

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To the Case

• The Plaintiff could have used ink samples from
  the ransom note and compared it to something the
  defendants wrote
• TLC is also used to isolate dating tags that have
  been added to inks by some manufactures

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Disadvantages to TLC

• The process can't be automated
• The TLC plates should and needs to be stored in a
  controlled environment (if not, no spectroscopic
  data is obtained)

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Destructive Technique

• Capillary electrophoresis (CE)
• A minute volume of ink is injected in a narrow
  silica capillary filled with a buffer solution.
  Electrical current is then applied to the
  capillary to separate the ink into its components
• Each component passes a photodiode array
  detector, which records an ultraviolet-visible
  spectrum. This process also detects non-dye
  additives in the ink that potentially can be used
  as identifiers.

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Advantages of CE

• This process permits the separation of ink into
  its different pigments
• Automated
• Fast
• Results can be stored in a database for future
  searches

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CE

• Because of the small volume necessary for
  analysis, the remaining solution could be further
  processed using current law enforcement
  procedures for confirmation.
• This technique is not limited to ballpoint pen
  inks and can be applied to food dyes, textile
  dyes, and ink-jet dyes.

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Sentence

• The trial began on January 3, 1935 in Flemington,
  New Jersey
• Jury was released on February 13th, 1935
• at 1121 a.m. to determine the verdict
• After 11 hours, the jury reach a unani-
• mous vote of guilty of first degree murder
• Judge Trenchard sentenced Hauptmann
• to death
• He was to be electrocuted during the week
• of March 18, 1935 but it was postponed due
• to his appeal
• He was finally electrocuted at Trenton State
  Prison on April 3, 1936 at 847 p.m.

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Lasting Results

• Due to the Lindbergh baby kidnapping on June
  17th, 1932, Congress passed the Lindbergh Law
  which states
• Kidnapping across state lines is a
• Federal felony

33
References

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• http//pagesperso-orange.fr/fingerchip/biometrics/
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• Johnson, David. "Lindbergh Kidnapping
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• Aituo, Russell. "The Lindbergh Kidnapping The
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• http//www.nj.com/lindbergh/index.ssf?/lindbergh/e
  vidence.html
• Leeds, Curtis. "Lindbergh New Technology key in
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  _technology_key_in.htmlgt.
• Keraga, Kelvin. Testimony in wood. 2005.
• "Lindbergh Kidnapping Evidence Photographs." New
  Jersey Department of State Archive. NJ Department
  of Law and Public Safety. 13 Apr 2008
• http//www.charleslindbergh.com/kidnap/index.asp
• http//www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/H
  auptmann/Hauptmann.htm
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• msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms704040.aspx
• www.code-magazine.com/Article.aspx?quickid0704112
  
• www.enotes.com/forensic-science/ink-analysis
• www.fdeservices.com/Ink.htm