Lindbergh Kidnapping Case

LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING CASE

LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING CASE. What the media of the depression era hailed as "the crime of the century" began on the night of 1 March 1932, when someone abducted Charles Lindbergh Jr., twenty-month old son of aviator hero Charles A. Lindbergh, from his New Jersey country home. A month later, the Lindbergh family paid $50,000 in ransom through an intermediary, but the baby, whose body was finally found in May, was not returned. In response, Congress passed the Lindbergh Kidnapping Law of 1932, which made it a federal crime to take a kidnap victim across state lines. Two years later, police arrested a German-born carpenter, Bruno Hauptmann. A New York City tabloid hired the flamboyant attorney Edward J. Reilly to represent Hauptmann, whose 1935 trial produced a six-week media spectacle. Though he called more than 150 witnesses, including Hauptmann himself, Reilly could not shake crucial evidence against his client, including about $14,000 in traceable ransom bills in his possession and a ladder (used in the kidnapping) that had been repaired with a board from his house. Rebuffing all entreaties to confess, Hauptmann insisted that a now-deceased friend had given him the money. Convicted in February 1935, Hauptmann was executed on 3 April 1936. Until her own death in 1994, his widow Anna Hauptmann championed his cause. Ironically, as Lindbergh's reputation suffered, in part because of his pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic stances during the late 1930s, thinly documented arguments for Hauptmann's innocence gained currency.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fisher, Jim. The Ghosts of Hopewell: Setting the Record Straight in the Lindbergh Case. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999.

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Hixson, Walter L. Murder, Culture, and Injustice: Four Sensational Cases in U.S. History. Akron: University of Akron Press, 2001.

Norman Rosenberg

See also Kidnapping .