[CRIME & UNDERWORLD] SPENCER, Mary Belle]

No. 2310 Criminal File Exposed! Aviator's Baby Was Never Kidnapped or Murdered [cover title]

[Chicago: Confidential News Syndicate, 1933]. First Edition. First Printing. Octavo (22cm.); publisher's brown printed staplebound card wrappers; 48pp.; photographic illus. throughout. Tiny faint dampstain to upper cover, spine edge just a hint faded, red printed paper cancel ("Aviator's Baby" covering "Limberg's Baby") to upper cover partly separated from perished glue with tiny closed tear touching one letter, one signature neatly separated but present, else Very Good.

Transcript for a mock trial in which the author, the lawyer Mary Bell Spencer, acts as the defense lawyer. Through the course of the trial Spencer convinces the jury that the baby "Charles A. Limberg" of "Hoaxwell, New Jersey," was not kidnapped and murdered, but, due to parental negligence, had wandered off into the woods and was eaten by skunks and other woodland critters. Despite Spencer's compelling argument, and the fact that she sent a copy of this pamphlet to all 150 members of the jury panel of the Hauptmann trial, the German immigrant criminal Richard Hauptmann would eventually be found guilty and executed for the kidnapping and murder of the child. (See Jim Fisher, The Lindbergh Case (1994), p. 274.).

Price: $225.00

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