The ghosts of Hopewell : setting the record straight in the Lindbergh case /

Some cases never die: Sacco-Vanzetti, the JFK assassination, and O.J. Simpson, among others, compete with the Lindbergh kidnaping for the "crime of the century" title. Because complex events are never tidy and anomalies occur, loose ends inevitably flap in every revisionist breeze, and there will always be those who will pledge (sometimes against all common sense and evidence) to persist in their search for "the real killer." And so it has been with the Lindbergh case. Most sensible people might have thought the case definitively settled in the 1930s, but a wave of sentiment seeking to rehabilitate the reputation of Bruno Hauptmann crested in the 1980s and '90s. Fisher, a former FBI agent now turned professor, intends to show in this book that the original decision of the judicial system had it right, that the circumstantial evidence against Hauptmann was overwhelming and devastating, and that even new fragments of information tend to confirm his responsibility. The book makes a very good read, although the author's editorializing and emotional style sometimes seem like overkill. Although of course it will not be so, this book deserves to be the last word on a tragic crime. General readers; undergraduates. R. B. Lyman Jr.; Simmons College

Conspiracy buffs have long held that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was framed for the 1932 Hopewell, New Jersey, Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder case. His wife struggled until her death to have the conviction reversed, and her cause has been championed through TV programs, articles, and books. As trust of police and politicians has decreased in recent years, it has become more plausible to the public that there might have been a conspiracy. Fisher, a former FBI agent and criminologist, seeks to permanently destroy the controversy by displaying the weight of evidence against Hauptmann and the flimsy reasons in support of a frame-up. The author's work, which also debunks the people who claim to be the Lindbergh baby, is thoroughly documented with footnotes and a lengthy bibliography. Fisher's approach is clear-eyed and compelling. He provides a fascinating insight into the cloud of confusion and disinformation that has surrounded the case. This book will certainly be on the "must read" list of true-crime fans. --Eric Robbins

The author, a scholar and former FBI special agent, updates his 1987 The Lindbergh Case (Rutgers Univ.) to scrutinize theories on who really was responsible for the Lindbergh kidnapping, concluding that Bruno Hauptmann was indeed guilty. Fisher takes a clear and comprehensive approach to the historical record, physical evidence, the justice system, and commentators both contemporary and more recent, adding his own insights into the never-ending public mania for celebrity and controversy. More photographic evidence could have been used to bolster his arguments, and the grammar could have been more carefully edited. Occasionally, Fisher is a little too quick to dismiss other theorists as cranks without justifying his opinion. In addition, his earlier title and Susan Hertog's Anne Morrow Lindbergh: Her Life (LJ 10/15/99) note an experimental reconstruction by police of the kidnapper's ladder that is not mentioned here. Given the passage of time, the gaps in the evidence, and new forensic techniques, it's not likely that anyone will ever have the final word in a case like this, but Fisher's book provides straightforward coverage of a perennially interesting subject. For all collections.--Barbara Ann Hutcheson, Greater Victoria P.L., BC (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Former FBI agent Fisher (Fall Guys, 1996, etc.) offers an arch, engaging rebuttal to a recent generation of Lindbergh conspiracy theorists, and to true-crime revisionists generally. As Fisher tells it, the tangled tendrils of this distant event, coupled with political and academic trends of recent decades, have made it convenient and profitable for various factions to discredit the state's trial and execution of Bruno Hauptmann as the sole malefactor in the Lindbergh infant's kidnap-murder. Fisher perceives a malign cynicism in both the actions of various bit-players (pulp writers, con-men) who produced spurious, red-herring-laced reflections on the case in the 1940s and '50s, and in recent works like Anthony Scaduto's Scapegoat and Ludovic Kennedy's The Carpenter and the Airman that variously excuse or whitewash Hauptmann. While his tone is generally acidic, he is most withering towards those who, in alleging official incompetence or collusion in framing Hauptmann, take advantage of deceased subjects who can no longer defend their actions. Yet Fisher also offers a lucid, organized, and deeply detailed rebuttal of the conspiracists; his intimate familiarity with the case makes a complicated crime easier to understand, and somewhat justifies his vitriol. There's a surprisingly touching verisimilitude in Fisher's portrait of the vanished Depression era: its general urban desperation, the unemployed yeggs who sought to exploit the Lindbergh tragedy, and the weird controversies that ensued when New Jersey's governor insinuated himself, post-trial, on the convicted defendant's behalf (evidently to camouflage his own illegal dealings). Hauptmann himself is convincingly portrayed as a low-grade sociopath and repeat offender whose lack of criminal cleverness and incapacity for remorse has played neatly to his revisionist supporters. This latest addition to the post-Lindbergh flood stands as an entertaining, readable, and comprehensive summation of a dark event and its transcendent cultural afterlife that will enrage Hauptmann apologists but capture the attentions of judicious true-crime buffs and other interested readers.