"New Jersey's Sherlock Holmes" Meets a Bad End

February 4,1940: Ellis Parker, legendary Burlington County detective, died in federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Parker, instructed by New Jersey Governor Harold Hoffman to further investigate the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, hired several men who kidnapped Paul Wendel, a disbarred attorney, held him in Brooklyn and beat him until he agreed to confess to guilt in the Lindbergh case.  Once brought to Trenton, Wendel recanted and Attorney General David T. Wilentz refused to prosecute him. When Hoffman refused to extradite Parker and his son to New York for trial on kidnapping charges in 1936, they were federally prosecuted and convicted of kidnapping under, ironically, the Lindbergh Act.