(3 of 4)
Prosecution's witnesses will be many. First on the list is Col. Lindbergh. He will swear that he recognized the voice of Hauptmann as the one which called "Hey, doctor, over here, doctor!" the night that he and Dr. John F. ("Jafsie") Condon passed the $50,000 ransom over a Bronx cemetery wall in a vain attempt to get the baby back. About all Nurse Gow can say is that she did not see the kidnapper. Joseph Perrone, a New York taxicab driver, will identify Hauptmann as the man who gave him a dollar to take the message to Dr. Condon which opened up the ill-starred negotiations. The inexplicable "Jafsie" was able only "partially" to identify Hauptmann when first confronted with him. There is literally no telling what the 74-year-old retired Bronx school-teacher will do when he gets on the stand. Last fortnight he made a mysterious motor trip to West Palm Beach on business "connected with the case." He did the case no good when he told reporters there: "No one saw Hauptmann kill the baby. I don't think they can convict him." The doctor thought, however, that Hauptmann might be proven guilty of extortion.
New Jersey's job is to make an entirely circumstantial case sufficiently powerful to convince twelve Hunterdon County jurymen "beyond a reasonable doubt" of Bruno Hauptmann's guilt. In charge of this difficult task is David T. Wilentz, the State's Attorney General who took over the prosecution of the Hauptmann case as soon as it broke last autumn. Small, dark, shrewd 40-year-old Prosecutor Wilentz is not only a good orator and jury handler but an able politician as well. Coming from Perth Amboy in Middlesex County, however, he will have no great local influence with the jurors in Hunterdon County. Last week he charged an attempt by somebody to tamper with potential jurors by circulating a pamphlet to the effect that "Aviator's Baby Was Never Kidnapped or Murdered."
Impervious to politics, ballyhoo, everything except strict justice, is the jurist before whom Bruno Hauptmann will go on trial for his life. He is Supreme Court Justice Thomas Whitaker Trenchard, affectionately called "Uncle Tom" by his cronies in Flemington, where he has presided at the sitting of the Hunterdon County Court for years.
Cases. The prosecution will contend that Hauptmann is guilty because: