CRIME: Thirteen

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Last week newshawks and amateur numerologists had fun with these numbers:

1) At 9:13 p.m. on March 1, 1932, Charles A. Lindbergh, unaware that his small son was being kidnapped, heard what might have been a ladder falling outside his Hopewell, N. J. home.

2) On March 13, 1932 Dr. John F. ("Jafsie") Condon made his first contact with the kidnapper.

3) Directly in front of seat No. 13 (occupied by a newshawk) Bruno Richard Hauptmann went on trial for his life at Flemington before Justice Trenchard.

4) At 11:13 a.m., the jury left the courtroom to decide Hauptmann's fate.

5) On Feb. 13, 1935, he was convicted.

6) His wife, Anna Hauptmann; his prosecutor, David T. Wilentz; his defense counsel, Edward J. Reilly, and New Jersey's official executioner, Robert Elliott, each has 13 letters in his name.

7) The 13 voting members of the New Jersey Court of Errors & Appeals unanimously affirmed Hauptmann's conviction.

8) The U. S. Supreme Court having refused to review his case fortnight ago, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was resentenced last week (Dec. 13) to die in the electric chair sometime during the week of Jan. 13.

Governor Harold Hoffman of New Jersey (who also has 13 letters in his name), has no power to pardon prisoners, but he can stay executions for as much as 90 days. That the week of Jan. 13 may come and go without Prisoner Hauptmann's paying the supreme penalty for his crime was indicated last week when Governor Hoffman declared: "If Bruno Hauptmann were to be electrocuted tonight there would still be in my mind and, I am convinced, in the minds of hundreds of thousands of people, great doubt that the Lindbergh baby murder had been solved completely and that all the facts in connection with it were known."