April 18, 2011 • 22 mins
On March 1, 1932, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr. disappeared. The kidnappers left several clues at the crime scene, authorities eventually made an arrest and a trial ensued -- but some still wonder whether the right person was convicted.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chalk reboarding and I'm sair Down.
And the topic that we're going to talk about in
this podcast has been requested repeatedly by listeners and hopefully
(00:22):
you all can stomach a really sad podcast because the
story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping really doesn't have any
upbeat moments to speak of. It involves the kidnapping of
twenty month old Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr. From his home
near Hopewell, New Jersey, in what was called the crime
of the century. Yeah, and it really is tragic, not
just because of the kidnapping of a small child, but
(00:44):
the baby was not found alive and in the end
a guy was convicted and executed for the crime. But
there's still some uncertainty hanging around the whole thing, and
that's probably why people are still interested in it today,
because the guy never con us to the crime even
though he was killed for it. That's right, And it
also spread fear and grief all across the nation as
(01:07):
people identified with and really mourned for the two parents,
and they were celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh of course, and
his wife Anne, and their notoriety really made the trial
interesting too, because it was an early example of a
major celebrity trial that consumed the public's attention during the time.
And you often see it compared to another trial that
I think most people will be familiar with. I hope
(01:29):
so at least otherwise I'll feel really really old, um,
and that's the O. J. Simpson trial. Um, just in
terms of the amount of public interests that it generated.
So you can tell by that comparison that is definitely
among one of the most famous trials of the century. Yeah,
it is one of the crimes of the century. It's
hard to pick just one. We were talking about that
when we were titling this podcast. Actually they're they're ironically
(01:51):
several crimes of the century. But this is up there.
So we're gonna take a look at the kidnapping, the investigation,
the trial, and then try to understand why it counted
as a as a crime a possible crime of the century,
to why it captivated people so much. But before we
get into that, we need to talk a little bit
about Charles Lindberg, the famous aviator. Yeah. Absolutely. He was
(02:14):
famous for making the first solo flight across the Atlantic
from New York to Paris on May twenty one and nine.
And he did this to compete for a dollar prize
that was offered to whoever could pull this great feet off.
And he made the flight in thirty three point five
hours on this tiny silver mono plane called the Spirit
of St. Louis. And pretty much from the moment he
(02:36):
landed in Paris, he was an immediate celebrity. I mean,
that's the part I guess that's really significant to our
story here, is that he became uber famous in that moment,
and some people even refer to him as a hero
of folk hero at the young age of five. But
Lindberg really was an aviator. That's the kind of thing
he was interested in flying planes. He was not out
looking to be a super famous celebrity like he camp became,
(03:00):
and he was really quite uncomfortable with a lot of
the trappings of celebrity. He was uncomfortable being in the limelight.
And that's partly because he was just kind of a
regular guy. At least before he made that amazing transatlantic trip.
He was born in Detroit on February fourth, nineteen o two,
and he spent most of his childhood in Little Falls,
Minnesota and Washington, d C. He went to the University
(03:23):
of Wisconsin and Madison, but left during his second year
of college because he did really want to fly and
went to flight school and studied aviation after that, and
before he made that famous trans atlantic flight, he had
just been working as an airmail pilot, flying between St.
Louis and Chicago. Yeah, but as we said, after he
crossed the Atlantic, though, his life totally changed. People started
(03:45):
offering him money for speaking engagements and endorsements, so no
more flying airmail planes for him. He was a star.
He was out on the forefront telling a story. He
went on a nationwide tour promoting aviation, and it was
on a good World tour to Mexico that he met
his future wife, Anne Morrow, who at the time was
twenty one years old and she was the daughter of
the U. S Ambassador there, and they ended up getting
(04:07):
married on May nine after a pretty short courtship. Yeah,
but that really just made him even more famous and
pulled her into that fame bubble too, because after they
got married, the couple was just constantly dogged by the media,
and it said that sometimes they would wear disguises just
so they could venture out in public without getting hassled. Yeah,
(04:28):
it was so bad that it even affected the birth
of their child. They had their first child, Charles Augustus
Lindberg Jr. On June nine thirty and the baby was
apparently delivered at home because Anne was so afraid that
the hospital wouldn't be private or safe enough for for
them to do it there. Yeah, so that's really saying
something if you go, if you go to that level
to to keep your privacy. But they worked on it
(04:51):
full time too, with their living arrangements. Even they lived
in this remote isolated spot acres near Hopewell, New Jersey,
to to maintain that sense of privacy. And by the
time baby Charles was about twenty months old, they were
splitting their time between that house on the weekends and
and parents house in Englewood, New Jersey during the week
(05:14):
so just kind of trying to go back and forth,
keep people on their toes and and be as away
from it as much as they could. Definitely they did
change up that pattern though. On the last weekend of
February ninety two, and that's kind of where the heart
of our story begins. Baby Charles was sick that particular weekend,
so they decided to stay at their country home rather
than make him travel when he was sick. And they
(05:36):
were going to make that work during the week even
though Charles Senior had to go to New York on
business through Tuesday night. So what and did as she
sent for her baby nurse to come stay with them
at their country home. Betty Gal, who was their baby nurse,
she was in Inglewood at the time, so she came
to where they were. So Tuesday, March first is when
all the action starts to happen. And we'll just give
(05:57):
you a few of the rundown of the events of
that day. I should say they remembered happening. What they
remembered happening. Baby Charles seemed to be feeling a little better,
so at seven thirty pm, the two women rubbed mentholated
lotion on his chest and put him to bed. They
then pinned blankets stand around him so that they wouldn't
come off during the night as he slept. Yeah, and
then they both left him to go to sleep, and
(06:19):
Anne went downstairs and Gal went to do some chores
around the house, and she went in to check on
the baby at about eight pm. He was fine, he
was asleep, everything was good, and so she left the
room again. Yeah, and then Charles Sr. Came home. He
rolled up in his car around eight twenty, washed his
hands in the bathroom next to the nursery, and joined
(06:40):
his wife for dinner by eight thirty five. Now, just
as an aside, during dinner, he did recall later hearing
something that sounded like someone dropping a wooden box in
the kitchen. So he heard something, but otherwise uneventful. Yeah,
So nothing much happens for a little bit until Gal
looked in on the baby again at ten pm. He
wasn't there anymore, and the blankets were still pinned down
(07:01):
where they should be, but there was no baby in
the crib, and so she rushed to check with both
parents to see if maybe one of them had had
picked him up and taken him somewhere. But they had
and so Charles Senior rushes out into the rain with
his rifle, finds a broken ladder outside of the nursery window,
and at that point they called the New Jersey State Police.
(07:23):
When the police got there. There were several pieces of
evidence on the scene, thank goodness. I mean, you would
want to have something to go by. But some of
them were helpful, some of them weren't. For example, there
were footprints leading away from the home and off the property,
which had some kind of pattern on them, as if
someone had covered them up with burlap or something, some
sort of material to make the prints seem less. Yeah, exactly.
(07:45):
So they knew definitely that someone else had been there,
but had no way to really track his shoes or
anything like that. Yeah. Well, and then there was the
ladder to the broken ladder that Lindbergh Senior found outside,
and it was uniquely designed to be very portable, made
of all these odd pieces of wood, so it seemed
like a good potential clue. It wasn't just something somebody
(08:06):
had bought at the store. The lowest section, though, had
been damaged, maybe broken while someone was climbing down the ladder,
and that might have been the noise that Charles Sor
heard at dinner. There was also a nine and a
half inch wood handled chisel there. It was probably used
to pry the window open. And last, but not least,
there was a ransom note and it was asking for
(08:27):
fifty thousand dollars, and it offered a lot of clues,
not so much for the information it contained, but the
way it was written. And we're going to read it
to you and then give you a few little extra
notes on the strange punctuation and the strange spelling. But
here it goes, dear sir, have fifty thousand dollars ready,
two thousand, five hundred dollars and twenty dollar bills, fifteen
(08:50):
thousand and ten dollar bills and ten thousand and five
dollar bills. After two to four days we will inform
you were to deliver the money. We warn you for
making any ding public or for the police. The child
is in good care. Indication for all letters are signature
and three holes. So if you look at this note,
(09:11):
and you can probably check it out online, you'll see
that the positions of the dollar signs are in a
weird place there after the figure after the figure out
it than before. And the language used in the note
pointed to someone who was probably European. I mean, you
can tell was Sarah was reading it, she said goot
instead of good, And so the police assumed that it
was someone who was of German or Scandinavian descent. Yeah,
(09:34):
and so of course, though even though the note is saying,
don't make this public, don't get the police involved, the
news of the kidnapping reaches the public immediately and becomes
a huge story. There is a man hunt, everybody is
searching for little Charles Lindberg Jr. And parents with kids
about the baby's age even report being stopped on the
(09:56):
street by police in question, you know, to find out
if this was the kidnapped. Yeah, so every this isn't
big news. Everybody knows about it. And they received two
more notes from the kidnapper, maybe in reaction to this,
I'm not sure, in really quick succession. The first one
raised the ransom to seventy thousand dollars, and if you
read that note, you know he says things like, you
weren't supposed to go to the police, you weren't supposed
(10:17):
to make this public. Now I'm going to have to
keep the baby until things quiet down. Um. So he
wasn't happy about that attention that they were getting. Yeah,
and the line Brooks were having trouble though, even though
these new notes were coming in, they were having trouble contacting,
were communicating with the kidnappers, and then something very strange,
I mean, definitely unusual happens. An outsider, this random citizen
(10:40):
steps into help. And it's this guy, DTR John F. Condon,
And he is a semi retired seventy two year old
New York City school teacher and Bronx resident. And he's
just kind of this activist sort of guy. He writes
into the newspaper, frequently writes letters to the editor at
his local paper, the Bronx Home News, and he's just
(11:00):
the civic advocate of sorts and steps into this super
huge news story, yeah, in a really interesting way. He
writes an open letter to kidnappers in the Bronx Home News,
offering to act as an intermediary in the situation. So
what he wants to do, or what he's offering to do,
is to facilitate the transfer of the money and keep
(11:20):
the kidnappers identity secret in the process. He also offered
to add a thousand dollars of his own cash to
ensure the safe return of the Lindbergh baby. And this
was published in the Bronx Home News on March eighth.
So big deal, yeah, big development in this whole thing. Yeah, absolutely,
And as still bigger development is the kidnappers contact him
(11:41):
by the next evening. They actually want to keep take
him up on this, and they sent him a letter.
The letter was confirmed to be real because it had
the same pattern of interlocking circles on it as the
other letters of the Lindbergh's received did so. At this point,
the family also gives content their blessing to act as
an intermediary in the situation. So we see like we
have a little a plan forming here to get the
(12:03):
two sides together, and it seems to pick up the
pace of the whole thing right away. Because Condon had
two meetings with the kidnapper, and he used the code
name JEFFS, which was kind of a blurring of his
initials John F. Condon, and he used that to communicate
with the kidnapper through newspaper columns. The kidnapper identified himself
as John and would send notes to Jeffs to various
(12:27):
meeting points. And so at first they meet, Jeffs and
John meet at a Bronx cemetery and Jefs tells him
that he needs proof before they proceed with any kind
of exchanging cash or anything. Like that he'd need proof
that Charles Jr. Was alive, And so March sixteenth, Jeffs
receives the babies Pj's in the mail and the kidnappers
(12:49):
demand the cash in two weeks. So it seems like
something is starting to happen. Yeah, So then they schedule
a second meeting on April twod Jeff c let's John
know that the money is ready, and and they end
up meeting the kidnapper and yet another cemetery that seems
to be the place that this kidnapper wants to meet definitely,
and Lindberg is actually waiting nearby in the situation, he's
(13:10):
waiting nearby in a car, and the money transfer does occur.
At this point, a kidnapper gives Condon a note telling
him that the baby is on a eight foot boat
called the Nelly, located off the coast of Massachusetts near
Martha's Vineyard, and so of course people are dispatched to
go and find this boat immediately. Unfortunately, it's never found.
Baby Charles, though was found. On May twelve, ninety two,
(13:34):
a man out walking in the woods came across a
badly decomposed body of a child about only four miles
from Lindbergh's home, and it seemed that the baby had
died from a skull fracture, possibly a fracture that occurred
on the night of his disappearance, and some people believe
that the kidnappers fall that noise that Lindbergh Senior heard
(13:57):
while he was eating dinner might have been might have
been the baby. Yeah, So a tragedy for the family
for sure, But the story doesn't end there. There was
eventually an arrest made, mostly because the money that the
kidnapper had received on that day that they made the
exchange was primarily gold certificates and the Treasury Department had
recorded the serial numbers on those, so after they couldn't
(14:19):
find the boat in March nineteen thirty two, those serial
numbers were released to banks and published in major newspapers everywhere. Yeah,
and so eventually those gold certificates from the ransom payments
started to pop up around the New York area and
so the police were onto it. But in the meantime,
US Congress was passing the Federal Kidnapping Act, which is
(14:41):
known as the Lindberg Law on June twenty, nineteen thirty two,
and sadly kind of poignantly, that's the day that would
have been Charles's second birthday. So the law made kidnapping
across state lines a federal crime, and um made it
punishable by death at that time. And it took a while,
more than two years, but finally investigators did get a break.
(15:02):
In this case, a service station attendant New York City
recorded the license plate number of a man who had
paid with a ten dollar gold certificate. So they traced
the license plate to a Bronx resident, Bruno Hauptmann, and
he was a German carpenter who had entered the us
I legally in ninety three. He had married a German
waitress named Anna Shifter had a kid but in the
spring of nineteen thirty two, suddenly he quit carpentry and
(15:25):
started investing in the stock market, so very suspicious. Police
arrested him on September nineteenth at nineteen thirty four and
found a twenty dollar gold certificate in his wallet, so
even more suspicious, and there were other incriminating clues as well. Yeah,
he had about twelve thousand to thirteen thousand dollars in
gold ransom certificates in his garage, so that's pretty suspicious,
(15:47):
And then he had these sketches of a ladder that
matched the ladder they had found at the Lindberg home, which,
as you remember, was kind of a unique contraption. Yeah,
And also concerning that ladder, they're also found a missing
cross beam on the attic flour that was actually one
of the boards used to build the ladder. And the
only tool missing from this carpenter's tool chest was the
(16:07):
chisel found at the crime scene. And when investigators took
the door trim off his son's closet, they found the
former phone number and address of John Condon written there
in pencil, so handwriting analysts looked at that scribbled note
and looked at Hopman's penmanship in general, and determined that
it was stylistically consistent with the ransom notes that had
(16:30):
been sent by the kidnapper. And then, maybe most incriminating,
Condon later identified him as John who he had met
in the cemetery. Yeah, and in his defense helped him
said that he was holding the money for a friend
named is a Doorfish who had returned to Germany in
nineteen thirty three and had since died. But that really
didn't help him at all. He was still indicted for
(16:52):
murder in the first degree on October eighth, nineteen thirty four,
so helped Him's trial began on January two, nine thirty five,
and Flemington, New Jersey, and it was really highly publicized,
as we talked about in the intro to this podcast,
the hundreds of press onlookers gathering all around the courthouse
as it was going on. And it lasted for more
than five weeks, with a jury deliberation at the end
(17:14):
that lasted for eleven hours. You have to imagine it
was probably pretty hard for them to find a jury
in the first place that didn't know about this crime.
But ultimately Haltman was found guilty on February thirteenth, nineteen
thirty five, and he was sentenced to death. And people
were so wrapped up in this trial. They were so
(17:34):
interested in the case that there were thousands outside the
courthouse calling for the death penalty during the deliberation, so
pretty intense. Yeah, everyone was outraged at what had happened
and they wanted to see what they felt was a
fitting punishment for it. So there was a series of
appeals after that. It went all the way to the
Supreme Court, but they were ultimately unsuccessful, and Haltman was
(17:56):
executed April third, nineteen thirty six. But if you remember
what we said in the introduction, Haltman himself never confessed
to the crime. No, he said that he had been
beaten by the police and forced to produce handwriting examples
that matched the ransom notes. So he kept kind of
holding to a story up until the end, and there
were some people who really believed him. Some people believed,
(18:18):
for example, what the defense counsel had argued that content
was somehow involved. I mean, there were there are a
lot of theories out there, I guess as to what happened,
Like a lot of big trials, everyone seems to have
their own theory about what actually happened. But regardless, the
Lindbergh family seemed ready, if not to put the whole
thing behind them, then at least to get away from
all the media attention in this situation that they had
(18:40):
been in when they were concerned about another kidnapping, because
they did go on to have other children, absolutely, so
they moved to Europe for a while with their son John,
and they didn't return to the U S until before
World War Two. Yeah, there's a time International article that
was written in by Reeve Lindbergh, who was another one
of the and Berg kids, and she talks about growing
(19:02):
up quote in the studied privacy and anonymity of a
Connecticut suburb with its shaded streets and unmarked mailboxes, and
how even though she didn't know her brother, she felt
his loss in their sort of cloistered Childhood's pretty sad,
sad note to end on, but yeah, definitely, And obviously
(19:24):
the family, or Charles Lindberg Senior at least, kept coming
back into the spotlight at various times throughout his life
up until he died in the seventies, but they always
kind of sought this private life. And yeah, it's a
really sad story. Well, we don't want to leave you
on a downer note like that, though, So we have
some slightly related in a more happy way listener mail.
(19:49):
So this message is from Jamie and she wrote that
she's been listening to the podcast for a while and
she is currently traveling around South America with her boyfriend
and they've been you know, taking lots of pictures and
seeing the site. So she wrote in I just listened
to your podcast on Santa ZUBERI and although I've never
read the Little Print, I do have an interesting fact
(20:10):
to share with you. A few weeks ago, I was
hiking in the southern Andes Mountains near Patagonia, Argentina. The
most famous mountain in this region, which is visible from
the town itself, is called fitz Roy. The whole series
of hills and mountains around it is very rocky, and
supposedly fitz Roy itself is one of the top five
most difficult rock climbing scents in the world. Anyways, while
(20:33):
on this hike, we came upon a sign that listed
the names of the different peaks that we could see
from our vista, and one of them is called Senti Zuberi.
I happen to find a little blurb in my guide
book that explained the seeming coincident. Suntic Zuberi supposedly fell
in love with the forlorn and desolate landscape in Patagonia
during his many flights while stationed there for the private
(20:55):
company he worked for. The landscape stuck with him so
much that he even in looted it in his illustrations.
At the little print, so she she points us to
the little Prince, and you can look at this mountain
and compare it to some of the illustrations there are
remarkably similar. I've got to reread that book. Yeah, and
and the book is carefully on the illustration. So I
(21:16):
think that's super cool that his geography would influence not
only like the desert scene, but the mountains as well.
So thank you for sharing, Jamie. So if you'd like
to share any of your own travel experiences with us,
maybe ones that relate to a former podcast or maybe
a future one you'd like us to do, feel free
to email us at History Podcast at how stuff works
(21:38):
dot com, or you can look us up on Facebook
and we're also on Twitter at Myston History. We also
have several articles relating to flight on our website. One
in particular is really interesting. It's what was Man's first
attempt at flight? And you can look that up on
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(21:59):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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a ride. Download it today on iTunes. M
Welcome to Stuff you Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a chalk reboarding and I'm sair Down.
And the topic that we're going to talk about in
this podcast has been requested repeatedly by listeners and hopefully
(00:22):
you all can stomach a really sad podcast because the
story of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping really doesn't have any
upbeat moments to speak of. It involves the kidnapping of
twenty month old Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr. From his home
near Hopewell, New Jersey, in what was called the crime
of the century. Yeah, and it really is tragic, not
just because of the kidnapping of a small child, but
(00:44):
the baby was not found alive and in the end
a guy was convicted and executed for the crime. But
there's still some uncertainty hanging around the whole thing, and
that's probably why people are still interested in it today,
because the guy never con us to the crime even
though he was killed for it. That's right, And it
also spread fear and grief all across the nation as
(01:07):
people identified with and really mourned for the two parents,
and they were celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh of course, and
his wife Anne, and their notoriety really made the trial
interesting too, because it was an early example of a
major celebrity trial that consumed the public's attention during the time.
And you often see it compared to another trial that
I think most people will be familiar with. I hope
(01:29):
so at least otherwise I'll feel really really old, um,
and that's the O. J. Simpson trial. Um, just in
terms of the amount of public interests that it generated.
So you can tell by that comparison that is definitely
among one of the most famous trials of the century. Yeah,
it is one of the crimes of the century. It's
hard to pick just one. We were talking about that
when we were titling this podcast. Actually they're they're ironically
(01:51):
several crimes of the century. But this is up there.
So we're gonna take a look at the kidnapping, the investigation,
the trial, and then try to understand why it counted
as a as a crime a possible crime of the century,
to why it captivated people so much. But before we
get into that, we need to talk a little bit
about Charles Lindberg, the famous aviator. Yeah. Absolutely. He was
(02:14):
famous for making the first solo flight across the Atlantic
from New York to Paris on May twenty one and nine.
And he did this to compete for a dollar prize
that was offered to whoever could pull this great feet off.
And he made the flight in thirty three point five
hours on this tiny silver mono plane called the Spirit
of St. Louis. And pretty much from the moment he
(02:36):
landed in Paris, he was an immediate celebrity. I mean,
that's the part I guess that's really significant to our
story here, is that he became uber famous in that moment,
and some people even refer to him as a hero
of folk hero at the young age of five. But
Lindberg really was an aviator. That's the kind of thing
he was interested in flying planes. He was not out
looking to be a super famous celebrity like he camp became,
(03:00):
and he was really quite uncomfortable with a lot of
the trappings of celebrity. He was uncomfortable being in the limelight.
And that's partly because he was just kind of a
regular guy. At least before he made that amazing transatlantic trip.
He was born in Detroit on February fourth, nineteen o two,
and he spent most of his childhood in Little Falls,
Minnesota and Washington, d C. He went to the University
(03:23):
of Wisconsin and Madison, but left during his second year
of college because he did really want to fly and
went to flight school and studied aviation after that, and
before he made that famous trans atlantic flight, he had
just been working as an airmail pilot, flying between St.
Louis and Chicago. Yeah, but as we said, after he
crossed the Atlantic, though, his life totally changed. People started
(03:45):
offering him money for speaking engagements and endorsements, so no
more flying airmail planes for him. He was a star.
He was out on the forefront telling a story. He
went on a nationwide tour promoting aviation, and it was
on a good World tour to Mexico that he met
his future wife, Anne Morrow, who at the time was
twenty one years old and she was the daughter of
the U. S Ambassador there, and they ended up getting
(04:07):
married on May nine after a pretty short courtship. Yeah,
but that really just made him even more famous and
pulled her into that fame bubble too, because after they
got married, the couple was just constantly dogged by the media,
and it said that sometimes they would wear disguises just
so they could venture out in public without getting hassled. Yeah,
(04:28):
it was so bad that it even affected the birth
of their child. They had their first child, Charles Augustus
Lindberg Jr. On June nine thirty and the baby was
apparently delivered at home because Anne was so afraid that
the hospital wouldn't be private or safe enough for for
them to do it there. Yeah, so that's really saying
something if you go, if you go to that level
to to keep your privacy. But they worked on it
(04:51):
full time too, with their living arrangements. Even they lived
in this remote isolated spot acres near Hopewell, New Jersey,
to to maintain that sense of privacy. And by the
time baby Charles was about twenty months old, they were
splitting their time between that house on the weekends and
and parents house in Englewood, New Jersey during the week
(05:14):
so just kind of trying to go back and forth,
keep people on their toes and and be as away
from it as much as they could. Definitely they did
change up that pattern though. On the last weekend of
February ninety two, and that's kind of where the heart
of our story begins. Baby Charles was sick that particular weekend,
so they decided to stay at their country home rather
than make him travel when he was sick. And they
(05:36):
were going to make that work during the week even
though Charles Senior had to go to New York on
business through Tuesday night. So what and did as she
sent for her baby nurse to come stay with them
at their country home. Betty Gal, who was their baby nurse,
she was in Inglewood at the time, so she came
to where they were. So Tuesday, March first is when
all the action starts to happen. And we'll just give
(05:57):
you a few of the rundown of the events of
that day. I should say they remembered happening. What they
remembered happening. Baby Charles seemed to be feeling a little better,
so at seven thirty pm, the two women rubbed mentholated
lotion on his chest and put him to bed. They
then pinned blankets stand around him so that they wouldn't
come off during the night as he slept. Yeah, and
then they both left him to go to sleep, and
(06:19):
Anne went downstairs and Gal went to do some chores
around the house, and she went in to check on
the baby at about eight pm. He was fine, he
was asleep, everything was good, and so she left the
room again. Yeah, and then Charles Sr. Came home. He
rolled up in his car around eight twenty, washed his
hands in the bathroom next to the nursery, and joined
(06:40):
his wife for dinner by eight thirty five. Now, just
as an aside, during dinner, he did recall later hearing
something that sounded like someone dropping a wooden box in
the kitchen. So he heard something, but otherwise uneventful. Yeah,
So nothing much happens for a little bit until Gal
looked in on the baby again at ten pm. He
wasn't there anymore, and the blankets were still pinned down
(07:01):
where they should be, but there was no baby in
the crib, and so she rushed to check with both
parents to see if maybe one of them had had
picked him up and taken him somewhere. But they had
and so Charles Senior rushes out into the rain with
his rifle, finds a broken ladder outside of the nursery window,
and at that point they called the New Jersey State Police.
(07:23):
When the police got there. There were several pieces of
evidence on the scene, thank goodness. I mean, you would
want to have something to go by. But some of
them were helpful, some of them weren't. For example, there
were footprints leading away from the home and off the property,
which had some kind of pattern on them, as if
someone had covered them up with burlap or something, some
sort of material to make the prints seem less. Yeah, exactly.
(07:45):
So they knew definitely that someone else had been there,
but had no way to really track his shoes or
anything like that. Yeah. Well, and then there was the
ladder to the broken ladder that Lindbergh Senior found outside,
and it was uniquely designed to be very portable, made
of all these odd pieces of wood, so it seemed
like a good potential clue. It wasn't just something somebody
(08:06):
had bought at the store. The lowest section, though, had
been damaged, maybe broken while someone was climbing down the ladder,
and that might have been the noise that Charles Sor
heard at dinner. There was also a nine and a
half inch wood handled chisel there. It was probably used
to pry the window open. And last, but not least,
there was a ransom note and it was asking for
(08:27):
fifty thousand dollars, and it offered a lot of clues,
not so much for the information it contained, but the
way it was written. And we're going to read it
to you and then give you a few little extra
notes on the strange punctuation and the strange spelling. But
here it goes, dear sir, have fifty thousand dollars ready,
two thousand, five hundred dollars and twenty dollar bills, fifteen
(08:50):
thousand and ten dollar bills and ten thousand and five
dollar bills. After two to four days we will inform
you were to deliver the money. We warn you for
making any ding public or for the police. The child
is in good care. Indication for all letters are signature
and three holes. So if you look at this note,
(09:11):
and you can probably check it out online, you'll see
that the positions of the dollar signs are in a
weird place there after the figure after the figure out
it than before. And the language used in the note
pointed to someone who was probably European. I mean, you
can tell was Sarah was reading it, she said goot
instead of good, And so the police assumed that it
was someone who was of German or Scandinavian descent. Yeah,
(09:34):
and so of course, though even though the note is saying,
don't make this public, don't get the police involved, the
news of the kidnapping reaches the public immediately and becomes
a huge story. There is a man hunt, everybody is
searching for little Charles Lindberg Jr. And parents with kids
about the baby's age even report being stopped on the
(09:56):
street by police in question, you know, to find out
if this was the kidnapped. Yeah, so every this isn't
big news. Everybody knows about it. And they received two
more notes from the kidnapper, maybe in reaction to this,
I'm not sure, in really quick succession. The first one
raised the ransom to seventy thousand dollars, and if you
read that note, you know he says things like, you
weren't supposed to go to the police, you weren't supposed
(10:17):
to make this public. Now I'm going to have to
keep the baby until things quiet down. Um. So he
wasn't happy about that attention that they were getting. Yeah,
and the line Brooks were having trouble though, even though
these new notes were coming in, they were having trouble contacting,
were communicating with the kidnappers, and then something very strange,
I mean, definitely unusual happens. An outsider, this random citizen
(10:40):
steps into help. And it's this guy, DTR John F. Condon,
And he is a semi retired seventy two year old
New York City school teacher and Bronx resident. And he's
just kind of this activist sort of guy. He writes
into the newspaper, frequently writes letters to the editor at
his local paper, the Bronx Home News, and he's just
(11:00):
the civic advocate of sorts and steps into this super
huge news story, yeah, in a really interesting way. He
writes an open letter to kidnappers in the Bronx Home News,
offering to act as an intermediary in the situation. So
what he wants to do, or what he's offering to do,
is to facilitate the transfer of the money and keep
(11:20):
the kidnappers identity secret in the process. He also offered
to add a thousand dollars of his own cash to
ensure the safe return of the Lindbergh baby. And this
was published in the Bronx Home News on March eighth.
So big deal, yeah, big development in this whole thing. Yeah, absolutely,
And as still bigger development is the kidnappers contact him
(11:41):
by the next evening. They actually want to keep take
him up on this, and they sent him a letter.
The letter was confirmed to be real because it had
the same pattern of interlocking circles on it as the
other letters of the Lindbergh's received did so. At this point,
the family also gives content their blessing to act as
an intermediary in the situation. So we see like we
have a little a plan forming here to get the
(12:03):
two sides together, and it seems to pick up the
pace of the whole thing right away. Because Condon had
two meetings with the kidnapper, and he used the code
name JEFFS, which was kind of a blurring of his
initials John F. Condon, and he used that to communicate
with the kidnapper through newspaper columns. The kidnapper identified himself
as John and would send notes to Jeffs to various
(12:27):
meeting points. And so at first they meet, Jeffs and
John meet at a Bronx cemetery and Jefs tells him
that he needs proof before they proceed with any kind
of exchanging cash or anything. Like that he'd need proof
that Charles Jr. Was alive, And so March sixteenth, Jeffs
receives the babies Pj's in the mail and the kidnappers
(12:49):
demand the cash in two weeks. So it seems like
something is starting to happen. Yeah, So then they schedule
a second meeting on April twod Jeff c let's John
know that the money is ready, and and they end
up meeting the kidnapper and yet another cemetery that seems
to be the place that this kidnapper wants to meet definitely,
and Lindberg is actually waiting nearby in the situation, he's
(13:10):
waiting nearby in a car, and the money transfer does occur.
At this point, a kidnapper gives Condon a note telling
him that the baby is on a eight foot boat
called the Nelly, located off the coast of Massachusetts near
Martha's Vineyard, and so of course people are dispatched to
go and find this boat immediately. Unfortunately, it's never found.
Baby Charles, though was found. On May twelve, ninety two,
(13:34):
a man out walking in the woods came across a
badly decomposed body of a child about only four miles
from Lindbergh's home, and it seemed that the baby had
died from a skull fracture, possibly a fracture that occurred
on the night of his disappearance, and some people believe
that the kidnappers fall that noise that Lindbergh Senior heard
(13:57):
while he was eating dinner might have been might have
been the baby. Yeah, So a tragedy for the family
for sure, But the story doesn't end there. There was
eventually an arrest made, mostly because the money that the
kidnapper had received on that day that they made the
exchange was primarily gold certificates and the Treasury Department had
recorded the serial numbers on those, so after they couldn't
(14:19):
find the boat in March nineteen thirty two, those serial
numbers were released to banks and published in major newspapers everywhere. Yeah,
and so eventually those gold certificates from the ransom payments
started to pop up around the New York area and
so the police were onto it. But in the meantime,
US Congress was passing the Federal Kidnapping Act, which is
(14:41):
known as the Lindberg Law on June twenty, nineteen thirty two,
and sadly kind of poignantly, that's the day that would
have been Charles's second birthday. So the law made kidnapping
across state lines a federal crime, and um made it
punishable by death at that time. And it took a while,
more than two years, but finally investigators did get a break.
(15:02):
In this case, a service station attendant New York City
recorded the license plate number of a man who had
paid with a ten dollar gold certificate. So they traced
the license plate to a Bronx resident, Bruno Hauptmann, and
he was a German carpenter who had entered the us
I legally in ninety three. He had married a German
waitress named Anna Shifter had a kid but in the
spring of nineteen thirty two, suddenly he quit carpentry and
(15:25):
started investing in the stock market, so very suspicious. Police
arrested him on September nineteenth at nineteen thirty four and
found a twenty dollar gold certificate in his wallet, so
even more suspicious, and there were other incriminating clues as well. Yeah,
he had about twelve thousand to thirteen thousand dollars in
gold ransom certificates in his garage, so that's pretty suspicious,
(15:47):
And then he had these sketches of a ladder that
matched the ladder they had found at the Lindberg home, which,
as you remember, was kind of a unique contraption. Yeah,
And also concerning that ladder, they're also found a missing
cross beam on the attic flour that was actually one
of the boards used to build the ladder. And the
only tool missing from this carpenter's tool chest was the
(16:07):
chisel found at the crime scene. And when investigators took
the door trim off his son's closet, they found the
former phone number and address of John Condon written there
in pencil, so handwriting analysts looked at that scribbled note
and looked at Hopman's penmanship in general, and determined that
it was stylistically consistent with the ransom notes that had
(16:30):
been sent by the kidnapper. And then, maybe most incriminating,
Condon later identified him as John who he had met
in the cemetery. Yeah, and in his defense helped him
said that he was holding the money for a friend
named is a Doorfish who had returned to Germany in
nineteen thirty three and had since died. But that really
didn't help him at all. He was still indicted for
(16:52):
murder in the first degree on October eighth, nineteen thirty four,
so helped Him's trial began on January two, nine thirty five,
and Flemington, New Jersey, and it was really highly publicized,
as we talked about in the intro to this podcast,
the hundreds of press onlookers gathering all around the courthouse
as it was going on. And it lasted for more
than five weeks, with a jury deliberation at the end
(17:14):
that lasted for eleven hours. You have to imagine it
was probably pretty hard for them to find a jury
in the first place that didn't know about this crime.
But ultimately Haltman was found guilty on February thirteenth, nineteen
thirty five, and he was sentenced to death. And people
were so wrapped up in this trial. They were so
(17:34):
interested in the case that there were thousands outside the
courthouse calling for the death penalty during the deliberation, so
pretty intense. Yeah, everyone was outraged at what had happened
and they wanted to see what they felt was a
fitting punishment for it. So there was a series of
appeals after that. It went all the way to the
Supreme Court, but they were ultimately unsuccessful, and Haltman was
(17:56):
executed April third, nineteen thirty six. But if you remember
what we said in the introduction, Haltman himself never confessed
to the crime. No, he said that he had been
beaten by the police and forced to produce handwriting examples
that matched the ransom notes. So he kept kind of
holding to a story up until the end, and there
were some people who really believed him. Some people believed,
(18:18):
for example, what the defense counsel had argued that content
was somehow involved. I mean, there were there are a
lot of theories out there, I guess as to what happened,
Like a lot of big trials, everyone seems to have
their own theory about what actually happened. But regardless, the
Lindbergh family seemed ready, if not to put the whole
thing behind them, then at least to get away from
all the media attention in this situation that they had
(18:40):
been in when they were concerned about another kidnapping, because
they did go on to have other children, absolutely, so
they moved to Europe for a while with their son John,
and they didn't return to the U S until before
World War Two. Yeah, there's a time International article that
was written in by Reeve Lindbergh, who was another one
of the and Berg kids, and she talks about growing
(19:02):
up quote in the studied privacy and anonymity of a
Connecticut suburb with its shaded streets and unmarked mailboxes, and
how even though she didn't know her brother, she felt
his loss in their sort of cloistered Childhood's pretty sad,
sad note to end on, but yeah, definitely, And obviously
(19:24):
the family, or Charles Lindberg Senior at least, kept coming
back into the spotlight at various times throughout his life
up until he died in the seventies, but they always
kind of sought this private life. And yeah, it's a
really sad story. Well, we don't want to leave you
on a downer note like that, though, So we have
some slightly related in a more happy way listener mail.
(19:49):
So this message is from Jamie and she wrote that
she's been listening to the podcast for a while and
she is currently traveling around South America with her boyfriend
and they've been you know, taking lots of pictures and
seeing the site. So she wrote in I just listened
to your podcast on Santa ZUBERI and although I've never
read the Little Print, I do have an interesting fact
(20:10):
to share with you. A few weeks ago, I was
hiking in the southern Andes Mountains near Patagonia, Argentina. The
most famous mountain in this region, which is visible from
the town itself, is called fitz Roy. The whole series
of hills and mountains around it is very rocky, and
supposedly fitz Roy itself is one of the top five
most difficult rock climbing scents in the world. Anyways, while
(20:33):
on this hike, we came upon a sign that listed
the names of the different peaks that we could see
from our vista, and one of them is called Senti Zuberi.
I happen to find a little blurb in my guide
book that explained the seeming coincident. Suntic Zuberi supposedly fell
in love with the forlorn and desolate landscape in Patagonia
during his many flights while stationed there for the private
(20:55):
company he worked for. The landscape stuck with him so
much that he even in looted it in his illustrations.
At the little print, so she she points us to
the little Prince, and you can look at this mountain
and compare it to some of the illustrations there are
remarkably similar. I've got to reread that book. Yeah, and
and the book is carefully on the illustration. So I
(21:16):
think that's super cool that his geography would influence not
only like the desert scene, but the mountains as well.
So thank you for sharing, Jamie. So if you'd like
to share any of your own travel experiences with us,
maybe ones that relate to a former podcast or maybe
a future one you'd like us to do, feel free
to email us at History Podcast at how stuff works
(21:38):
dot com, or you can look us up on Facebook
and we're also on Twitter at Myston History. We also
have several articles relating to flight on our website. One
in particular is really interesting. It's what was Man's first
attempt at flight? And you can look that up on
our homepage at www dot how stuff works dot com.
(21:59):
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
how stuff works dot com. To learn more about the podcast,
click on the podcast icon in the upper right corner
of our homepage. The how stuff Works iPhone app has
a ride. Download it today on iTunes. M
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