The 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. led to the execution of Bruno Hauptmann, but doubts about his guilt persist. Now, investigators seek to use modern DNA testing to reexamine the case.
The mood was jubilant on the night that 'Little Lindy's' killer went to the electric chair. Some Americans threw 'execution parties' to celebrate, gleefully listening to a live broadcast from the prison in New Jersey where Bruno Hauptmann was to be put to death.
As 2,000 volts shot into the German-born carpenter at the State Prison, all the lights in the nearby city of Trenton momentarily dimmed. The bloodthirsty satisfaction that the public and media took in the execution in April 1936 was hardly surprising. His was a crime that had horrified the world. On March 1, 1932, the 20-month-old son of the renowned aviator Charles Lindbergh had been kidnapped from the nursery of the family's secluded weekend home in East Amwell, New Jersey.
A homemade ladder was found on the ground 70 feet from Charles Jr's first-floor room. A ransom note demanding $50,000 - equivalent to some $1.2 million today - was left at the scene. The sum was unsurprising considering Lindbergh was a national hero after becoming, aged 25, the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic from New York to Paris in 1927, winning a $25,000 prize offered by New York hotelier Raymond Orteig.
But although the ransom money was paid, the child was never returned. Tragically, ten weeks later Little Lindy's decaying body was found at the side of a road by a lorry driver four miles from the Lindberghs' home. The toddler's body had been partly buried and was badly decomposed. His head had been crushed, a hole made in his skull and vital organs including his kidney, lungs and spleen and 'several body parts' were missing.
A coroner's report found that the child had been dead for around ten weeks and had been killed by a blow to the head. But it took two and a half years before police made an arrest - when they traced some of the ransom money to Hauptmann after he used it to buy petrol. The 36-year-old suspect, who'd been a convicted criminal in his native Germany, was dubbed 'The Most Hated Man in the World'.
At his six-week 'trial of the century', which started in January 1935 amid media hysteria, his lawyers offered no expert witnesses on his behalf. Prosecutors glossed over the implausibility of a lone kidnapper somehow managing to snatch a toddler unobserved on a rainy night from a house containing five people and a dog. Jurors were instead encouraged to concentrate on other evidence.
There was the $14,600 of the ransom money found in Hauptmann's garage, the similarities between his handwriting and spelling and those found in the ransom demands, and the discovery - in his bedroom cupboard - of the telephone number and address of the go-between responsible for delivering the ransom money from Lindbergh to the kidnapper. Jurors ignored the fact that there was no conclusive evidence against him: no eyewitnesses, no fingerprints.
His appeals failed and, after giving a brief last testimony in German in which he insisted he was 'absolutely innocent', he was put to death. But what if it was really the mistrial of the century? There have long been doubts about Hauptmann's conviction, with critics focusing on the inept police investigation and the lynch-mob atmosphere around his trial.
Over the years, myriad alternative explanations and suspects have been proffered for a crime whose various weird aspects continue to fascinate sleuths. Now a group of veteran Lindbergh investigators are fighting a legal battle that, by using modern genetic-testing techniques, could conclusively settle the question of whether the court was correct in deciding that Hauptmann, and he alone, was responsible for the toddler's kidnapping and death.
The researchers are currently appealing a judge's decision to deny their lawsuit against New Jersey State Police, the custodian of a vast archive of case evidence. This ongoing legal effort highlights the enduring controversy surrounding one of the most infamous crimes in American history. The case of the Lindbergh kidnapping remains a cautionary tale about the dangers of media frenzy and rush to judgment.
While Hauptmann was executed, doubts persist about his guilt, and the quest for truth continues through modern forensic science
Lindbergh Kidnapping Bruno Hauptmann Charles Lindbergh Trial Of The Century Crime Controversy
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