Volume 34, Number 17 · November 5, 1987
The Case that Will not Close
By Francis Russell
The Lindbergh Case
by Jim Fisher
Rutgers University Press, 480 pp., $22.95
The trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in 1935 for the kidnap-murder of Lindbergh's infant son remains one of the four great American cases of the century, although unlike the other three—those of Sacco and Vanzetti, Alger Hiss, and the Rosenbergs—without political overtones. In all four cases defenders have accused the prosecution of manipulating the evidence, altering or making substitutions of trial exhibits in order to secure a conviction. Such charges are in many instances a last resort for defense lawyers struggling against the weight of contrary evidence, sometimes indeed the only possible defense. In the cases of Sacco and Vanzetti, Hiss, and the Rosenbergs, unless there had been switched bullets, substituted typewriters, forged documents—as claimed by their partisans—Sacco, Hiss, and the Rosenbergs were guilty.
Review, 5649 words
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