''Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping'' is a non-fiction book written by American author Robert Zorn. The books investigate the potential identity of the person who became known as Cemetery John through testimony provided by the author's father. The pseudonym "Cemetery John" was used in the Lindbergh kidnapping case to refer to a kidnapper calling himself “John” who collected a $50,000 ransom from a Bronx cemetery on April 2, 1932. A month earlier Charlie Lindbergh, the infant son of world-famous aviator

Charles Lindbergh Charles Augustus Lindbergh (February 4, 1902 – August 26, 1974) was an American aviator, military officer, author, inventor, and activist. On May 20–21, 1927, Lindbergh made the first nonstop flight from New York City to Paris, a distance o ...

, had been kidnapped from the family home near

Hopewell, New Jersey Hopewell is a borough in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. This historical settlement is located within the heart of the Raritan Valley region. As of the 2020 United States census, the borough's population was 1,918, a decreas ...

on March 1. However, the body of the 20-month-old boy was discovered in woods about from the Lindbergh estate on May 12.

Summary

The identity of Cemetery John has eluded generations of investigators and researchers of the Lindbergh case. In his book, Robert Zorn contends that a German immigrant previously unknown to history named John Knoll was Cemetery John and the real mastermind of the crime. Robert Zorn's father, Eugene C. Zorn, Jr., had been the teenage neighbor of John Knoll in a

German-American German Americans (german: Deutschamerikaner, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the Unite ...

neighborhood in the South Bronx at the time of the kidnapping in 1932. By December 1963, Eugene Zorn had become a nationally renowned economist. One day he came across an article about the Lindbergh kidnapping in ''

True True most commonly refers to truth, the state of being in congruence with fact or reality. True may also refer to: Places * True, West Virginia, an unincorporated community in the United States * True, Wisconsin, a town in the United States * ...

'' magazine while waiting to get a haircut in Dallas. The article contained details about the Lindbergh case with which he had been unfamiliar. These details triggered the memory of Eugene Zorn, who was certain that as a 15-year-old boy, he had unwittingly witnessed his older neighbor John Knoll with his younger brother, Walter Knoll, conspiring at

Palisades Amusement Park Palisades Amusement Park was a 38-acre amusement park located in Bergen County, New Jersey, across the Hudson River from New York City. It was located atop the New Jersey Palisades lying partly in Cliffside Park and partly in Fort Lee. The pa ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

with

Bruno Richard Hauptmann Bruno Richard Hauptmann (November 26, 1899 – April 3, 1936) was a German-born carpenter who was convicted of the abduction and murder of the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. The Lindbergh kidnap ...

, the man who went to the

electric chair An electric chair is a device used to execute an individual by electrocution. When used, the condemned person is strapped to a specially built wooden chair and electrocuted through electrodes fastened on the head and leg. This execution method, ...

for the murder of the Lindbergh baby. Eugene Zorn recalled that although the three men spoke only in

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

, he heard the names "Bruno" (the name of one of the men) and "Englewood", the suburb where the Lindbergh family lived.

References

{{Lindbergh kidnapping American non-fiction books Lindbergh kidnapping