The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case

On the evening of March 1, 1932, five years after Charles A. Lindbergh made his famous historic flight over the Atlantic Ocean on May 20-21, 1927, and after Charles A. Lindbergh had married the daughter of a wealthy investment banker and his wife had given birth to their child, Charles A. Lindbergh Jr., they discovered that their baby had been kidnapped. They had just moved into a house they had built in a remote wooded area of New Jersey just to get away from the crowds that followed them everywhere the went, when suddenly their baby was gone, disappeared, a kidnapping victim. This quickly became known as "The Crime of the Century." Fortunately, relief came when the public was informed that the perpetrator had been apprehended. The perpetrator, a German immigrant, was quickly brought to court tried, convicted, sentenced and put to death in the electric chair. The public breathed a sigh of relief as the perpetrator of such a heinous crime had been justly punished, and we finally got back at the Germans for starting a war against us. However, there were a few Nattering Nabobs of Negativism who suggested that the case had not been quite so airtight as the public believed. These malcontents suggested that it seemed difficult to believe that the kidnapper had driven up in a car in the remote wooded area, nobody had noticed him although there had been at least five adults and a dog in the home, had climbed up a hastily constructed rickety ladder part of which broke off on the way down, had pried open the window with a chisel, had picked up the sleeping baby who never cried, had carried the 20-month old baby down the ladder and driven off in a car, with nobody noticing any of this.