George Lashway, murder suspect John Kinney’s father-in-law, testified that John didn’t support his family adequately (he and his young wife had three children), so Lashway was obliged to take care of them. In deep poverty and with nowhere to go, the family had recently moved into George’s home.

Lashway then told about an unusual incident involving his son-in-law. Kinney had asked to be awakened at 3 am on Wednesday, December 29, so he could go to his home (near Bouvia’s) and start a fire in the fireplace. When George went out to feed the horses at 6:30 that morning, he encountered Kinney, who said he had fallen asleep for a few hours after starting the fire. That absence identified a window of opportunity for Kinney to have committed the crime. Lashway also identified the gun that Kinney had borrowed for so long from George Trudeau, and had returned on January 2. » Continue Reading.

A century ago, it was common during the Christmas holidays for North Country lumber camps to empty, at least briefly. In 1909, in far northeastern New York, the men of Altona in Clinton County enjoyed a welcome break after several weeks in the woods.

Near the settlement of Purdy’s Mills, the camp cook, Adolphus Bouvia, closed down operations on December 23. Widowed a year earlier, he planned to return home and spend time with family, friends, and neighbors, some of whom worked with him on the lumber jobs. » Continue Reading.

From a forensics perspective, Dr. Erastus Hudson voiced his deduction that the Lindbergh kidnapping was an inside job, based on evidence with which he was personally familiar. “A point of great importance rested in the absence of any fingerprints on the nursery window and its remarkably broad sill. Kelly [of the New Jersey State Police] had powdered it a few hours after the kidnapping. No prints were found, although Betty Gow [the child’s nurse] and Mrs. Lindbergh had opened and closed the window that same night. Miss Gow had rubbed the child’s chest with an ointment, the oleaginous base of which would have augmented the secretion of the finger ridges in leaving clear prints.

“Of course, there would have been older prints as well. The reason Kelly failed to get all these prints was because they must have been washed off. Someone with a pail of water and cloth undoubtedly bathed those spots where fingerprints must have been left. They did so between the time Betty Gow put the baby to bed and about four hours later, when Kelly began investigating. » Continue Reading.

On March 13, 1932 Erastus Hudson of Plattsburgh was asked to visit the crime scene in the Charles Lindbergh home to secure whatever evidence he might produce. First using the standard dusting process, which was best for solid surfaces, he found no prints in the nursery on any items that had already been checked, confirming Kelly’s results, but he did find thirteen on the baby’s books and toys. These were extremely valuable because the baby had been born at home, and thus no fingerprints had been taken. Those gathered by Hudson were the only means of identifying the baby for certain—if he were ever found.

Turning his attention to the ladder that had yielded no prints to police experts, Hudson spent a couple of days applying his innovative process. He estimated collecting “more than 500 fingerprints and fragments, some of which were sufficient to be of value.” » Continue Reading.