Cemetery John
The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping
by Robert Zorn
The Overlook Press
It was the “Crime of the Century,” the “biggest story since the Resurrection,” and 80 years later, we’re still riveted and repulsed by what happened to the Lindbergh baby.
Five years after famed aviator Charles Lindbergh piloted a solo flight to Paris aboard the Spirit of St. Louis in 1927, his 20-month-old baby, Charlie, was kidnapped from his home in a ritzy suburb of New Jersey.
The investigation lasted two years — in the most extensive manhunt ever at the time — and brought about new federal laws on kidnapping. If it could happen to the most famous man in the world, no child was safe.
Charlie’s decomposed body was eventually discovered, discarded by the side of the road. A German immigrant, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was executed for the crime in 1936.
Now, after years of research, author Robert Zorn says in his new book “Cemetery John” that Hauptmann couldn’t have acted alone.
Zorn believes that a German immigrant and deli owner named John Knoll truly masterminded the crime but was never punished, living free to the age of 74.
Zorn is in a unique position to explore the story. His father, Gene, a teenager at the time of the kidnapping, was befriended by Knoll, who lived three doors from him in The Bronx. The two shared a love of stamp collecting.
Before his death in 2006, Gene and his son began compiling a damning portrait of Knoll: a conversation connecting him to the convicted kidnapper; handwritten letters linking him to the ransom notes; and suspicious behavior exhibited after the crime.
Zorn promised his father on his deathbed that he would get justice for the Lindbergh family. A businessman by training, Zorn donned a reporter hat, interviewing dozens of experts from FBI profilers to forensic psychiatrists, combing through a quarter-million worth of case files and traveling around the world in search of clues.
Knoll was born in 1904 in Germany. Even as a child he was “reckless, impulsive, unpredictable, lacking in empathy.” People called him “Schah,” German for Persian king for his grandiose personality. As a teenager, he slept with a pistol under his pillow and was arrested for urinating and spitting on a group of French soldiers.
He immigrated to the States in 1925 and lived in the Melrose section of The Bronx, working as a deli clerk.
One year before the Lindbergh crime, the author’s father witnessed Knoll with a man who called himself Bruno discussing a rich suburb called Englewood, NJ, where the Lindberghs lived.
The crime itself could not have been accomplished by one person, experts now say. The kidnappers used a wooden ladder to get to the second-floor nursery — a feat that was likely “impossible” alone. There were also two sets of footprints at the scene, according to police reports.
Thanks to modern handwriting analysis, Zorn was able to get experts to compare the ransom notes given to the Lindberghs and self-addressed letters by Knoll to Zorn. They found that there’s a 95% likelihood that Knoll helped author those letters.
With Knoll as a suspect, everything can be re-examined. During the ransom negotiations, Lindbergh sent an emissary to meet with a man who called himself “John” at the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx.
“Cemetery John,” as he was called then, had a pointed chin, a high forehead and a German accent (all key characteristics of Knoll). “Cemetery John” also had a strange mass on his left hand; Knoll was born with a genetic deformity on his left thumb. A police sketch from the time is eerily accurate.
A month after the kidnapping, “Cemetery John” and a supposed lookout met up to collect the ransom of $50,000 in gold certificates. The man had promised that he would return the baby alive, which was a lie.
One prevailing theory is that Charlie had died during the kidnapping when the ladder had broken on the climber’s descent.
Two years after the crime, Hauptmann was caught using some of the gold certificates to pay for gas — but he was carrying only a portion of the ransom. He was convicted and sentenced to death. Just two days after his conviction, Knoll sailed to Germany first class (which would have been five times his annual rent in The Bronx).
According to interviews with Knoll’s extended family, when he got on home soil, he walked into a local church, rang the bell and proclaimed in German: “I’m back! It’s me!”
Knoll moved around the country for the rest of his life, eventually settling down with his wife in Toms River, NJ.
He died by falling off a ladder, much like how little Charlie likely passed away. “It’s poetic justice,” Zorn says.
“Even though he is dead, I hope this brings a measure of justice.”