Who Stole the Lindbergh Baby?
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Charles Lindbergh was having a drink in his study late at night when his son's nurse and sitter, Betty Gow, entered in a rush. The baby was missing. Lindbergh, tall and hard-eyed, ran past Betty into the room of his son, Charles Jr., commonly called "Little Lindy." Lindy's crib was empty except for a note on the pillow written in scrambled English.

Dear Sir, have $50,000 ready, $25,000 in $20 bills, $15,000 in $10 bills, and $10,000 in $5 bills. After two to four days, we will inform you where to deliver the money. We warn you for making anything public or for notify the police the child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are signature and three holes.

It was just after 10:00 PM on March 1st, 1932. Charles Lindbergh was just 30 years old, but already the most famous man in the United States. He was America's aviator, a pilot and writer with exceptional wealth and more than his share of enemies. Still, Charles Jr. was less than two years old. Even those who hated Lindbergh would balk at such an innocent target.

The idea of someone snatching the baby from his crib while he slept was horrific to the point where newspapers would describe it as "the crime of the century." But all of that happened later. On the night of March 1st, Charles immediately ran outside of the family mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey. He was armed with a pistol and followed by his butler, Ollie Waitley, who was similarly armed.

They swept the extensive grounds of the property with flashlights and quickly discovered obvious signs of a home invasion. A broken wooden ladder lay directly under Lindy's window, as well as a baby blanket. Lindbergh and his wife, Anne, both reached out to different police departments, bringing in local, state, and, soon enough, even federal authorities.

Charles leaned on his unprecedented celebrity to bring attention to his son's kidnapping, involving the Bureau of Investigation, the precursor of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as the Office of Strategic Services, which would later become the Central Intelligence Agency. The Lindbergh kidnapping shook the country and was watched from around the world. Charles Lindbergh was as close to a superhero as anyone in the US in 1932.

The fact that even someone so powerful and popular could be attacked at such an intimate level shocked rich and poor alike. More than $75,000, which is more than a million in today's currency, was raised and offered for information about the kidnapping. Charles inserted himself directly into the investigation, using his power to push authorities towards certain suspects and evidence.

Little Lindy was found on the morning of May 12th, 1932, a little more than two months after disappearing. But that was only the beginning of a multi-year mystery that remains in question today. Part one, the Lindbergh legend. Charles Lindbergh was born in 1902. He was born into a well-off, but not particularly wealthy or influential family. By the time he was 25,

Nearly every household in the United States knew his name. Lindbergh began tinkering with machines as a child, showing incredible talent with mechanical devices, and eventually going to college for engineering. He dropped out in his sophomore year and took up flight training instead. If Lindbergh was skilled with machines, his abilities as a pilot bordered on the supernatural.

After a successful career as an airmail pilot, Lindbergh began competing in prize flights across the country. Young, handsome, and absolutely fearless, Charles took aim at the most prestigious flight challenge available: a transatlantic flight between New York and the U.S. and Paris, France. Airplanes were still in their early years in 1927, occasionally fragile, often unpredictable.

A true transatlantic flight had never been accomplished before Lindbergh set off in his custom single-seat monoplane, the Spirit of St. Louis. The trip took nearly 34 hours with the Spirit flying through fog, skimming waves, and suffering from icing. Lindbergh had no advanced navigation equipment, not even radio gear. He thought it would make the plane too heavy, and he needed every available ounce of fuel.

Charles Lindbergh took off from New York as a pilot. He landed in Paris as a sensation. The next few years for Lindbergh were full of ticker tape parades, speeches, continental and international tours, and a monsoon of awards and wealth. It's hard to imagine today that a pilot reached such celebrity, but at the time, Charles was something like a cross between an astronaut, rock star, and political figure.

By 1932, Lindbergh had toured 82 American cities, 18 Latin American countries, received the Medal of Honor, and was named the first-ever Time magazine Man of the Year. Charles Jr. was Lindbergh's first child. His kidnapping brought the perfect family crashing down to Earth. The investigation spread like an oil spill from New Jersey across the East Coast.

Scientists and other professionals in the forensic field examined the evidence at the scene for fingerprints, footprints, and even attempted to gain clues from the wood used in the broken ladder. The ransom note was reviewed and studied. The handwriting, the cadence, the patterns, every spelling error was a potential breakthrough. Authorities determined that the author of the note was likely not a native English speaker, possibly German, and likely new to the country.

The note also contained a special code: two connected blue circles over a red circle with three holes punched into the paper. This would allow the Lindberghs to identify genuine communication from the kidnappers in case hoax letters were sent to the family. A total of 10 ransom notes would be sent over the next month. A number of intermediaries were brought into negotiations.

But the kidnappers identified the minor celebrity John Condon as the preferred go-between, which the Lindberghs agreed to. Going by the alias Jasphy, Condon began to communicate with the kidnappers using classified ads placed in specific newspapers. At one point, he even met a shadowy figure going by the name John in a cemetery to discuss the ransom.

The kidnappers raised their initial demands from $50,000 to $70,000, but Condon showed up to the arranged drop with only the original $50,000. The payment was in gold certificate bills. They were not marked, but officials did log all of the serial numbers so they could be tracked after use. The timing was perfect. Gold certificates were on the eve of going out of circulation.

Owners would need to exchange their certificates for new legal tender. Condon made the drop on April 2nd, putting the money in a custom wooden box that would be easy to identify if it was found in someone's possession. Instead of exchanging little Lindy for the ransom, John informed Condon that the boy was healthy and in the care of two women who did not know about the crime. The child would be returned promptly, the kidnapper promised. Part 2

- The fate of little Lindy. A month passed without word from the kidnappers or any sign of Charles Lindbergh Jr. Then, on a sunny morning in early May,

The boy's tiny, smashed body was discovered about five miles south of his home in a patch of woods off of a back road. The corpse was badly decayed, a victim of sunshine and animal scavenging. The cause of death was a vicious head wound, an attack of blunt force trauma hard enough to crack the infant's fragile skull. The country raged and grieved over the death of something so pure

Now authorities were dealing with a murder case and suspicion swung out like whips in a dark room. Police were determined to catch this killer and they were not gentle in their search. Violet Sharp, a British woman working for the Lindberghs, was questioned repeatedly and forcefully when she gave conflicting statements and appeared nervous. But her alibi ultimately checked out and it seemed likely she was simply intimidated. Unfortunately,

Violet committed suicide by cyanide before she was cleared. Condon also received his share of suspicion as the killer's handpicked go-between, but Lindbergh stood by his acquaintance and no evidence was found pointing toward Condon being on the inside of the crime. Without those connections cleared, police were stumped. Federal authorities were chomping at the bit to take over, but were stuck in a support role until the discovery of little Lindy's body.

The FBI was placed in a coordination role on May 13, 1932, the day after the corpse was found. Out of suspects, law enforcement was forced to wait to see if their trap would spring. They distributed 250,000 lists containing all of the recorded serial numbers from the ransom funds to dozens of banks, mostly in New York. Sure enough, reports began to trickle in of bills being exchanged and spent.

though the authorities were always too late to catch the transaction in progress. But they were able to see where the bills were popping up, narrowing their search to the Bronx and Manhattan boroughs of New York, particularly around the Yorkville neighborhood. Suspicion increased when investigators went back to their theory that whoever wrote the ransom note had a German background. Yorkville was a neighborhood mostly populated with Austrian-German immigrants.

A lucky break led to the arrest of a man living in that neighborhood. A perceptive bank clerk found another of the ransom bills in a Manhattan bank. The bill had a license plate number scribbled in the margin. It turns out that a gas station manager had rejected the bill because the customer trying to spend it was acting suspiciously. Before the man returned the money, however, he quickly wrote the suspect's license plate and pencil on the bill in case it was a counterfeit.

Doing so would help the police track the note's owner. It worked perfectly. Even though the gold certificate was not counterfeit,

The $20 bill was part of the more than $14,000 sum from the Lindbergh ransom that was found in the house of the man linked to the license plate. Richard Hottmann, a German immigrant with a criminal past. Once Hottmann realized he was being watched by police, he fled, leading authorities on a car chase before finally being locked in and captured.

Despite his initial response, Hotman consistently maintained his innocence. The man was 33 at the time, fair-haired with a broad face, a former carpenter between jobs. Police questioned him through the first night into the second day non-stop, throwing in a beating for good measure. Investigators were positive they had their man.

Part 3. A trial under the eye of the world. Hotman's trial was nearly as much of a circus as the initial news of the kidnapping. The court was surrounded by reporters. Hotman himself was bombarded with offers for exclusive interviews, rights to his life story, and intense pressure for a confession. But the man maintained his innocence throughout, even when new evidence emerged that further linked him to the Lindberghs.

Investigators tore Hottman's house apart, searching for clues and managed to find something damning written inside of the man's closet. It was John Condon's address and phone number. Hottman's explanation for why he had personal information from the Lindberghs go-between was weak. The address, he claimed, was in the newspaper.

Like much of the country, Hottman followed the kidnapping and he told police that he kept a little record of interesting developments, though he had no recollection of adding the phone number. This was a direct quote from Hottman: "I must have read it in the paper about the story. I was a little bit interested and keep a little bit record of it and maybe I was just on the closet and was reading the paper and put it down the address. I can't give you any explanation about the telephone number.

Investigators were skeptical. When pressed about the money with serial numbers matching the ransom found in his house, Hottmann told police that all of the bills belonged to his friend and occasional business partner, Isidore Fish. Fish left America for Germany in 1933, dying there prior to Hottmann's arrest.

Since Fish owed his partner money, Hottman said he felt justified in keeping the money when he found thousands of dollars in a shoebox while cleaning out Fish's house. Investigators remained skeptical. Additional evidence began to pile up around Hottman. A handwriting expert matched Hottman's writing with the style seen in the ransom note. He didn't have a strong alibi.

only the word of his wife that he was with her and, in fact, had missed work on key days involved with the kidnapping and ransom collection. Experts even linked wood found in the man's attic to the broken ladder discovered outside of little Lindy's bedroom the night of the kidnapping. Condon and even Lindbergh both claimed that they recognized Hotman's voice as a kidnapper.

Hottmann's defense tried to bring in some of their own expert witnesses in, but several requested payments and were declined, and others who were retained were never called to the stand. It did not take the jury long to return with a guilty verdict. Hottmann was sentenced to death by electrocution. He appealed the verdict twice with no success. A reprieve from the governor delayed Hottmann's death, but did not prevent it.

Three years after the trial, appeals exhausted and with no further options, the switch was flipped. Hottman died with electricity coursing through his veins, nerves, and muscles on the night of April 3rd, 1936. The case was solved, the murder avenged, and justice was done, except questions lingered and still linger about the investigation, particularly the involvement of America's aviator, Charles Lindbergh.

Part Four: A Harmless Prank Charles Lindbergh was a prankster. He had a certain reputation for enjoying jokes and for tricking people, though many of the pranks were surprisingly dark. One rumor claims that Lindbergh once replaced a friend's drink with a few slugs of bleach. The man only swallowed a small amount of the fluid, but it was enough to make him terribly ill.

The rumor then claims Lindbergh watched, cold-eyed and blank, as his friend choked and got driven away to the hospital. While the bleach incident is unverified, Lindbergh was not shy about sharing personal views that were considered extreme even for the time.

The man was an outspoken racial supremacist, believing that white people were superior, a view that was popular with the growing Nazi movement across the ocean during the peak of Lindbergh's popularity. He was openly anti-Semitic and did not have much faith in the abilities of women. Lindbergh liked to trick women in particular, and his pranks didn't so much cross lines as long jump them.

Just three weeks prior to little Lindy's disappearance, Charles had played a cruel prank on his wife, Anne. The pilot removed the infant from his nursery and secreted him away in a closet within the house. Anne had panicked and was distraught when her husband finally revealed the trick.

The experience was so fresh in her mind that both Anne and Betty Gao assumed that Charles was playing another prank the night that Charles Jr. disappeared. Neither Anne nor any of the servants noticed the ransom note in the nursery during the first, terrified sweep of the room. It was Charles who found the note. From that point on, he unofficially ran the entire investigation.

He had so much leverage that the New Jersey State Police and even the FBI shared information with him and often deferred to his directions. The amount of money and power and influence Lindbergh threw at the investigation was beyond anything seen before. He was even allowed to sit at the prosecution's table during the trial of Hottman, wearing a gun and a shoulder holster the entire time.

many of the expert witnesses that damned Hottmann came into question following the trial. The wood expert in particular, who claimed that a board from Hottmann's attic was used in the construction of the ladder, fell under scrutiny. It seemed strange that a trained, career carpenter would pull a board from his own attic floor rather than simply use a piece of lumber.

The New Jersey governor at the time, Harold G. Hoffman, was never convinced that Hottman was the sole perpetrator of the crime, or even guilty at all. But after the first limited reprieve, the political pressure became enormous for him to step away. The country wanted justice for little Lindy, and Hottman had been judged guilty. But even after the man died, those questions remained.

Lindbergh had insisted that police not stake out the location of the ransom drop. He held the reins every step of the way and steered investigators towards his personal theories. Though the ladder and nursery were dusted for fingerprints, Hottmann's never appeared. Hottmann was given several opportunities to confess. In 1936, he was even offered a deal: admit Gill to avoid the death penalty.

A confession would allow him to commute his sentence to life without parole. He still refused to confess. Anna Hotman went to her grave some 60 years later, maintaining her husband's innocence. A court convicted Hotman and a switch killed him. But almost 100 years later, there's uncertainty. Some people speculate that Lindbergh's second attempt to play a prank by hiding little Lindy may have gone wrong.

an accidental death, a fall, suffocation, all would require a coverup. The Lindbergh baby kidnapping has been closed officially since 1934. But who really killed little Lindy remains fiercely debated.