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Prisoner. Flemington's strictly modern jail was built in 1930. Since Oct. 19 it has housed in Cell No.1 Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the 34-year-old German carpenter whom the people of the State of New Jersey charge with first degree murder. Hauptmann's wife Anna and their infant son Mannfried have been living in a Flemington boarding house ever since he was extradited from New York. Townsfolk nod kindly to her as she walks down the main street with her son. His jailers also say that Bruno is "a nice guy." But ever since he has been in the Flemington cell, hard electric lights have burned on Hauptmann day & night while three guards have stood outside his cell, two inside. None has uttered a word. This modification of the common police practice of the ''gold-fish bowl" has not budged Hauptmann's stolidity. His resolute refusal to talk is one of the defense's big assets. When Hauptmann crosses from the jail to the jam-packed courthouse on Jan. 2, he will have maintained under considerable pressure a dogged three-month insistence on his innocence.
Defense, Shortly after Hauptmann's arrest in The Bronx with $20 of the Lind bergh ransom money in his pocket, Anna Hauptmann fell into the hands of one Harry Whitney, who has since described himself as the Hauptmanns' "business manager." At first Hauptmann refused to have any lawyer, discarding several of his wife's selection. By the end of his first week's imprisonment, however, he had agreed to retain James M. Fawcett of Brooklyn. It was Lawyer Fawcett who unsuccessfully fought Governor Lehman's extradition warrant before The Bronx County Supreme Court. He was subsequently succeeded by Edward J. Reilly. also of Brooklyn, who has an impressive record for getting his clients off murder charges. Story was that Fawcett was dropped because he wanted Hauptmann to plead insanity. Reilly has been nothing if not aggressive in his handling of the pre-trial ballyhoo. He criticized the New Jersey police for bungling the investigation, declaring that the case could have been settled by competent hands in 48 hours. He staged a birthday party for Baby Mannfried. He shrewdly pointed up the prosecution's weakness by trying to get a bill of particulars forcing the State to answer twelve questions in regard to its line of action. The court ruled that only the last question, "What was the cause of death?", need be answered. The answer, from the Trenton County physician's report: "Diagnosis of death is a fractured skull due to external violence."
Lawyer Reilly has often and bitterly protested about the manner of Hauptmann's incarceration, and last week accused the Federal Government of transferring two Department of Justice investigators to the West because they were implicated in trying to beat a confession out of his client. The Department of Justice promptly replied that the agents, if needed, would be back at Flemington in time for the trial.
Associated with Lawyer Reilly is a local attorney named Lloyd Fisher who defended Boat-Builder Curtis. Prime witnesses for the defense are Mr. & Mrs. Frederick Christiansen, in whose Bronx bakeshop Anna Hauptmann worked at the time of the crime. He is expected to testify that Hauptmann called for Anna there on the night of the kidnapping.