At approximately 9 p.m. on March 1, 1932, in the New Jersey home of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh, the family nurse checked on 20-month-old Charles Jr. and found his crib empty. She alerted Lindbergh, who rushed into the nursery and discovered a ransom note on the windowsill. Grabbing a gun, Lindbergh and the butler searched the grounds. Beneath the window they found footprints in the soil, pieces of a broken wooden ladder, and the baby’s blanket.
The ransom note read:
“Dear Sir! Have 50.000$ redy 25 000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills After 2–4 days we will inform you were to deliver the mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Police the child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are Singnature and 3 hohls”
After weeks of negotiation through an intermediary, the ransom was paid. It didn’t matter. On May 12, a delivery driver and his assistant pulled over about 4.5 miles from the Lindbergh home near Mount Rose. While relieving himself in the woods, the assistant stumbled upon the decomposed body of a toddler. The skull was badly fractured; animals had scavenged the remains. It was Charles Jr. He had died from a blow to the head.
Lindbergh insisted on cremation, his father had been cremated, and it was family tradition, limiting future forensic study. Eventually, German immigrant carpenter Richard Hauptmann was arrested, tried, and executed for the crime. His guilt, however, has been debated ever since.
If interested, I write more about the crime and about Charles Lindbergh’s life here: https://open.substack.com/pub/aid2000/p/hare-brained-history-volume-64-charles?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios
by aid2000iscool
5 Comments
Little did he know that within a hundred years nobody would be able to read cursive.
Here are your twenty bells sir.
What is the meaning of the extraneous ink marks?
This would never work on me because I’d never be able to read it.
Not sure how plausible or if it’s a known theory, but a former history teacher of mine theorized that Lindbergh did it himself, accidentally killed his child then fabricated the kidnapping story. It’s eerie how similar this case is to the Jon Bennett Ramsey case 60 years later.