The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1936-04-04
GOES TOCHAlR
YIELDING NO
.LlGHTONCRIME
Failure To Confess Leaves
Trail OF Doubt Around
The Werld
COURAGE SEEMS TO
MARK LAST WALK
BY HARRY FERGUSON
Copyright 1886 by United Press)

BY HARRY FERGUSON
Copyright 1886 by United Pres,)
| TRENTON. N. j., April A.
(UP)-The state of New Jersey,
which spert $1,2OO,OO0 to capture
and convict Bruno Richard Haup.-
mann, executed thin last night
with a penny's worth of electric
ity.
Hauptmann entered the door of
the death house. at state prison at
Sal p. m.
The first of three shocks went
through his body at SAP IL.
Physicians pronounced him dead
at 8:47 1-2 p. IN.
Before his body ever hung loose
and heavy against the straps of
the electric chair, officials collect
ed from witnesses a dozen affi-
davits, swearing that Hauptmann
had died in the place, time and
manner prescribed by law. Then
they closed their four-year file on
the murder of Charles A. Lind
bergh, Jr.
Hauptmann died without con-
Tossing.
Not word passed his lips as he
entered the electrocution. chamber
and he needed no assistance when
he sat down in the chair.
Nothing that man covets -
money, security for his family,
not even the prospects of escap-
ing the thunderbolt that hit him
last night-could persuade Haupt-
mann to tell why and how and
when The killed the Lindbsrgh
baby.
His failure to confess left
trail of doubt around the world.
Millions, including the governor
of New Jersey, believed no one
man could have committed the
crime, and that the law did only
part of it's work on the spring eve
ming four years and month from
the night when the Lindbergh
baby was kidnapped.
For these millions, a murdered
child still cries out for vengeance
and they will believe through all
their years that sometime and
somewhere a frightened man IS
going to whisper from his death
bed that he, too, had a part in the
bloody business on Sourland
mountain.
But when Hauptmann walked
to his death he did so in the
knowledge that his lawyers and
his wife, Anna, had tried and test
ed every safeguard of the law and
that he still stood convicted and
guilty. -. j..
For one breathless fragment of
minute last night every heart
stood still in the little white-wall-
ed room where death and Haupt-
mann met. It was when the door
swung.
There stood Hauptmann!
For five beats of your heart he
did not move, but waited for the
door to come wide enough for him
and his guards to get through: =,
It was his eyes you noticed
first. They were strange, unbhnk-
ing eyes-cold eyes of washed-out
blue. -
They had dressed him for death
in a gray shirt open at the throat
| in shapeless brown trousers ana
bedroom slippers. At first glance,
only his eyes identified him as be-
ing the man who sat directly IN
front of the United Press cor
RESPONDENT at FlenfnGton dur
ing the six weeks of his trial.
They had clipped the hair Of his
skull, and il cleaned, white and
hard in the light.
J Robert Elliott, the executloner
| stood beside a bucket Of brine in
which he was soaking the sponges
TO be used on Houptmann---s
wrinkled old mechanic of death
putteriug around with his tools
There were more than 80 persons
crowded into one corner of the
room, but if Hauptmann saw
them they must have been moth
ling but a blur of faces to him.
Only one thing stands out darl
and stark in that white room
the oak chair with it's heavy
Heather straps.
! And that chair was the frs
thing Hauptmann saw as he came
through the door with a guart
|Srasping each arm. It was not thu
first time he had looked death il
the eye. He saw it down the stub
by barrel Of a machine gun dur
ing the World war; saw it comini
at him across the fields IN tn,
shape Of men dressed in Frencl
horizon blue and British brown
But he could fight back ct dealt
then, give it blow for blow ant
come through, as he did, un
scathed. There was no fighting
back now, and he knew it. :.
| His face: was pasty, maybe Will
! fright and maybe only with th'
lpallor that prison puts on n1er
who never see the sum- He seemed
to have courage, if courage means
/ that the brain tells the legs TO
i ,.o0a flreeI