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| In Search of |
| the American Sherlock Holmes: |
| Tracking down Ellis Parker and the Second Lindbergh Kidnapping. |
| A literary true adventure by John Reisinger |
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| Chapter 3- A Safari to the Garden State-Part 1 |
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| Driving up I-95 to Trenton wouldn`t be so bad if someone hadn't gone and built Philadelphia right in the way. |
| My wife and I crept through the exhaust haze and gritty gray urban vistas with anticipation and finally arrived at our destination, the New Jersey State Police Museum in West Trenton. It was a pleasant, if somewhat lonely place. There were more police than visitors when we arrived. Soon, however, some school kids showed up on a class trip and the place was humming. The police had some people demonstrating fingerprinting and other CSI techniques, so we had our prints taken. They promised they wouldn`t keep them..... |
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| My wife Barbara was not just along for a day out. She has a talent that makes her indispensable for research; the ability to extract information from people without trying. In her presence, people somehow feel compelled to spill the most intimate details of their lives and the lives of everyone they know. A complete stranger standing in line with her at a supermarket will suddenly turn and tell her all about her daughter's pregnancy, her husband's hernia, and her son's alcohol problem. Without prompting, people tell her things they wouldn`t tell their doctor. If I could put Barbara in a room with Ellis Parker for an hour, she could write the book. |
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| We were not able to go through the archives that day, but I wanted to see the museum's Lindbergh display. The Lindbergh section of the museum covered an entire wall and had the name Lindbergh spelled out in giant children`s blocks, which struck me as somewhat creepy. In the ceiling-high display case, a room actually, was the kidnap ladder, a bill from the ransom money, and a pile of other artifacts, including the baby's sleeping suit. |
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| Next to the exhibit was the electric chair from the Trenton State Prison, sort of a nice juxtaposition of crime and punishment. From the size of the exhibit it was easy to forget that the man ultimately convicted of the crime had actually been caught in New York. There was little that was new in the exhibit, but seeing some of the things I had recently read about gave a new perspective. For instance, most accounts talk about the "crude" ladder, but the ladder was actually cleverly designed for lightness and portability. |
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| Our next stop was Highfields, the estate of the Lindberghs, or rather the current estate of some of New Jersey`s juvenile malefactors. The place isn't easy to find in the wooded rolling farmland of New Jersey, but we finally pulled in the long driveway and saw the white painted stone house that is in so many photographs. As we approached, we had a clear view of the second floor window the kidnapper had entered in 1932. No kidnapper could get through it now, however, since the window was plugged up with a window air conditioner. The shutters had been removed, including the ones with the defective latch on the nursery window. |
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| We knocked on the front door and were ushered into the library to await a guide who would take us in tow. The wood paneled library is where Charles Lindbergh was probably sitting while his son was being kidnapped from the nursery overhead. As we sat looking around the room, we noticed two things; the library contained no volumes about the kidnapping, and footsteps could be clearly heard from the room above. |
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| "How could he not have heard someone upstairs?" Barbara asked rhetorically. |
| "And look how clearly you can see the stairs and the hallway," I said. "How could anyone have come down the stairs and get to the front door without being seen?" |
| We felt like detectives already. |
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| The director soon showed up and took us around. The Lindbergh house is surprisingly small on the inside, and is chopped up into rooms that would not be out of place in a modest townhouse. We went upstairs to the baby's room, which is now a computer lab and tried to visualize someone creeping through the window (without the air conditioner) to snatch the baby. The fireplace with the blue and white Delft tiles around the opening was still there, as was the windowsill where the kidnapper left the ransom note. The crib was long gone of course.…as was the baby. |
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| Our tour guide took us through the narrow upstairs corridor and down the back stairway past the servants` quarters and the kitchen, then to the three-car garage where the state police set up their headquarters back in 1932. The lads in situ seemed to be hard at work at various absorbing tasks and hardly noticed us. |
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| Outside we traced the path the kidnapper probably took as the house loomed over us. The director told us that people come from around the world to see the place, often showing up unannounced only to be turned away. Finally, they gave us a pamphlet, postcards, and a schematic map of the kidnapping. The Albert Elias facility staff had obviously done this before. |
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| On the way to Mt. Holly we stopped at the Burlington County Library to see their files and to look at their copy of The Cunning Mulatto. The librarian was helpful in digging up obscure newspaper clippings, some from the 1800s. Then she turned us in a direction I hadn't thought of. |
| "You know who you should see?" she said. "The Surrogate." |
| "The surrogate what?" I asked. |
| "The County Surrogate. He's the guy who registers the wills. He's been around a while. He probably knows all about Ellis Parker." |
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| As we drove into Mt. Holly, we looked for the courthouse where Ellis Parker had his office. On High Street we found it, along with the Elks Club, where Parker would often hang out in his spare time. A little further down was the old jail, now the Mt. Holly Prison Museum. Behind these old piles was the new Burlington County office building, a modern high rise. |
| "Well, this is it," I said. "I`ll bet people here will know all about Ellis Parker." |
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| We walked into the old courthouse to find Parker's old office. It seemed a reasonable place to start. The first floor was empty except for a guard who managed to look bored and suspicious at the same time. I explained I was an author looking for Ellis Parker's office. |
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| "Is he an attorney?" the guard asked. |
| "Uh, no. He was Chief of Detectives." |
| The guard's expression didn`t change. |
| He's not Chief of Detectives," he replied, confident he had caught me in a lie. |
| "No, this was in the 1930s. Parker was involved in the Lindbergh case." |
| "Well, he's not here now." |
| "I know he's not here now. I`d just like to look around for his office upstairs." |
| There's nothing up there but courtrooms. I can't let you go up unless you have a case." |
| "Maybe I should just sue somebody," I muttered. "Then I could get onto the courtroom floor. How about just a quick look?" |
| The guard shook his head. He was one of those people who shake their head in refusal while you're still asking the question. He was back on familiar ground now, keeping out the riff-raff. "Can't do it." |
| "Thanks for your help." |
| We left and emerged into the Mt. Holly sunlight. |
| "He must be with the Welcome Wagon," said Barbara. |
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| Next door was the Prison Museum, a massive gray structure that could have been KGB headquarters if it had been in Russia. This was where Ellis Parker placed the criminals he tracked down. Several of them were also hanged here. The man at the counter welcomed us and led us upstairs to look through the files. This was a lot more promising than Sgt Schultz at the courthouse. |
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| Unfortunately, the county executive hadn't blown the safe yet, so we had to be content with assorted files and photographs. We also were shown several dusty old ledgers from around the turn of the century that recorded arrests. Ellis Parker's name appeared frequently as arresting officer for everything from horse thievery to indecent exposure. The entries looked as if they had been written with a quill pen. There was also a photo of Ellis Parker standing on the steps of that same building. The director arrived and looked in on us and made some suggestions. He said he was working on getting the county executive to open the safe. |
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| "Well, I guess our next stop is the new office building to see the Surrogate," I said as we emerged. |
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| "As long as we don't have to go through the old courthouse to get there." Barbara replied. |
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| What will they find in the new county office building? |
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| Will they meet the real Surrogate, or a surrogate Surrogate? |
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| Does anyone in Mt Holly know who Ellis Parker was? |
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| Don't miss Chapter 4- |
| A Safari to the Garden State- Part 2 |
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