Crime of Magnitude: The Murder of Little Annie

297 Pages·2016·5.68 MB·English

by  Mark Lemberger

Crime of Magnitude
Crime of Magnitude
The Murder of Little Annie
A true story by Mark Lemberger
Prairie Oak Press
Madison, Wisconsin
First edition, Copyright @ 1993 by Mark Lemberger All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy,
recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Prairie Oak Press
2577 University Avenue
Madison, Wisconsin 53705
Designed by Flying Fish Graphics, Blue Mounds, Wisconsin Typeset by KC Graphics, Inc., Madison,
Wisconsin Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lemberger, Mark, 1951 – Crime of magnitude: the murder of little Annie / by Mark Lemberger p. cm.
ISBN 13 9781537260235 ISBN 101537260235
1. Lemberger, Annie, d. 1911. 2. Murder–Wisconsin– Madison– Case studies. I. Title.
HV6534.M22L46 1993
364.1’523’0977583–dc20
93-6866
CIP
Far-stretching, endless Time
Brings forth all hidden things,
All buries that which once did shine
The firm resolve falters, the sacred oath
is shattered;
And let none say, “It cannot happen here.”
—Sophocles, Ajax
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
The Names
Map
Part 1: September, 1911. Annie’s Gone!
1. The Kidnap
2. Has the Little Girl Been Found?
3. Turn Out the Militia!
4. The Fiend Must Be Found
5. A Maniac’s Deed?
6. The Inquest
7. Read All about It
8. I Am the Man
9. I Can’t Tell
10. Railroaded?
11. The Happayest Angel
Part 2: August, 1920-October, 1921.
Annie’s Ghost is Still with Us
12. A Moral Certainty
13. I Am Guilty
14. The Wiles of Crafty Lawyers
15. The Star Witness
16. The Past Has Gone By
17. Devilish Things
18. A Friend of Yours and Johnson’s
19. I Know Who Killed Annie!
Part 3: October, 1921-June, 1923.
Too Much Zeal ... Too Firm a Belief
20. The Prosecution Might Turn into a Persecution
21. State v. Martin Lemberger
22. I Did Not Lie!
23. I’m Going Home
24. An Unmade Man
Part 4: January, 1924-June, 1927.
A Veritable Nightmare
25. Inhabitants of the Underground
26. Judge Not...
27. I Have Never Retracted Anything!
28. A Passive, Negative Honesty
29. Harassed at Every Side
30. Extremely Improper, Very Reprehensible
Part 5: June, 1928-April, 1938.
A Man ... A Certain Man
31. Wisconsin’s Strangest Crime
32. Convicting the Innocent
Part 6: Who Killed Little Annie?
33. Yellow Journalism
34. John A. Johnson’s Defense
35. The Case against Martin Lemberger
36. Sorenson, Stolen, and the Sicilians
37. The Killer
38. Remember This
Foreword
Except for one brief mention, I had never heard of the murder of Annie
Lemberger until 74 years after the event. Had she lived, Annie would have been
my aunt. My father, Joseph Victor Lemberger, was not born until five years after
his sister’s death.
The Lemberger mystery, never solved and often resurrected in the press,
was splashed across the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal once again in
August, 1985, in a series called “Crimes of the Century.” This was my real
introduction to a mystery that has demanded the majority of my time and
attention from that time until the present.
In 1985 I was a 34-year-old computer salesman in Columbia, South
Carolina. I didn’t really know anyone on the Lemberger side of our family, but,
after asking around, I was told that my paternal grandmother, Magdeline, had
kept a scrapbook on the death of her daughter, Annie. This huge book amazed
me. Before long, my apartment floor was covered with copies of hundreds of
newspaper and magazine articles, chapters from books, and old photographs. I
found it hard to believe the sheer deluge of words evoked by the death of a
seven-year-old girl in 1911. Virtually every major newspaper in the country,
from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, had carried articles about
the mystery from 1911 to the present. Only one child’s death has generated more
coverage than that of Annie Lemberger, and that was because Charles Lindbergh
Jr. was the son of a national hero, perhaps the best-known man in the nation.
Annie’s father was a ditchdigger.
Murders, however lurid, tend to get loud but brief coverage. There is
always a new murder to bump yesterday’s off page one. Why has the Annie
Lemberger mystery never gone away? In part, because it has never been solved.
In part, also, because the aftermath of the crime included some fascinating and
bizarre twists that continued to capture the imaginations of newspaper writers
across all of twentieth-century America. Every few years, some new information
surfaced to exonerate or convict one of the suspects.