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Chapter 1: What events led to the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr.?
In March 1932, the whole world was captivated and terrified by the kidnapping of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh Jr., the baby son of the famed aviator.
And there's a chance that somebody might notice one of the posters who'd recognize little Charles Lindbergh and so furnish a valuable clue.
He was mysteriously taken from his nursery on the second floor of the family's home in New Jersey while his parents were downstairs.
Meanwhile, the child is still gone and the parents are suffering tortures that only fathers and mothers can suffer.
Little Lindy's disappearance, along with the discovery of his body, the arrest and prosecution of Bruno Hauptmann was the original true crime story of the modern media age, yielding countless theories about what really happened to the baby. of the most famous man in America. I'm CBS News correspondent Jim Axelrod, and welcome to a special episode of the 48 Hours Podcast.
I'm joined today by Free Press senior editor and writer Jonah Serra, who's out with a new six-part podcast series about the kidnapping called The Lindbergh Conspiracies. And we welcome in Jonah Serra. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Great for you to be here. 94 years since this kidnapping. So much news has... developed and unfolded since then.
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Chapter 2: How did the media frenzy shape public perception of the Lindbergh case?
So why this? Why does the Lindbergh kidnapping still claim so much interest?
Because it's a 94-year-old mystery. that many people feel has never been solved. I think there's two other aspects to it, though. One is, it's the original true crime story. I mean, it really is. And we're a culture that's obsessed with true crime now. And secondly, I think it gives a snapshot
of a different America, a more innocent country, where a man like Charles Lindbergh could be almost godlike in the admiration Americans had for him, which doesn't really exist anymore. Lindbergh was the first person to prove that flight could be more than daredevils or war machines.
Lucky Lindy, the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic.
It was an American hero kind of thing. It was like, only an American could have done this.
But in terms of Lindbergh as this enormous world hero, he's also a deeply flawed man.
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Chapter 3: What were the key details surrounding the ransom note?
He was a believer in eugenics, as many upper-class white people were at the time. Which is the sort of selective breeding to promote certain traits. Yes. And he made trips to Germany. before the war, and they gave him some medal at one point. And he became part of the America First movement, which was an effort to persuade the country not to go to war.
He also was shown to be, during this period of his life, anti-Semitic.
All right, so take us to March 1, 1932, by Hopewell, New Jersey. What happens?
Well, it was a Tuesday night. The Lindberghs were never at Hopewell, which was really their weekend retreat on a Tuesday night.
Charles Lindbergh was married to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, who was an heiress and very wealthy.
They spent a lot of their time in Englewood. Dwight Morrow, her father, who was a financier and a diplomat, lived in Englewood. They would spend the week in Englewood, and then they went to Hopewell for the weekend.
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Chapter 4: Who was Bruno Hauptmann and what was his connection to the case?
But the baby had a cold. and Anne was feeling pretty rundown too. So nursemaid Betty Gow, she puts the baby to bed. At 10 o'clock, Betty Gow goes upstairs, opens the door, looks into the baby's bedroom, he's gone. Anne would later write, at first I thought maybe Charles was playing a prank.
Believe it or not, believe it or not, he had once before hid the baby for 20 minutes from Anne and Betty as a prank. He did weird things.
It was bizarre.
Yeah.
But that's the first thought.
Maybe he's playing a prank. Right. Maybe he's playing a prank. So they go downstairs, Betty and Ann, and they say, Charles, the baby's missing. And he runs up the stairs.
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Chapter 5: What evidence linked Hauptmann to the kidnapping?
And even before he gets in the room, he says, they've kidnapped our baby. Now, here's another little quirky thing. When Ann and Betty were in the room, they did not see an envelope. When Charles gets in the room, now maybe he was there and they just didn't notice it because then they were panicked. Charles gets in the room and he sees an envelope, which is obviously the ransom note.
So he takes the ransom note and he says, don't open it. We're going to let the police do that. He takes a gun and takes a rifle. He runs outside, can't find anything. He sees a ladder that has been dragged 60 or 75 feet away. And then they call the police.
So quick question about the ransom note, because I know there was some reporting. Not only didn't they see the ransom note, but then they found it on the windowsill.
Yes, that's right.
Windows open, ransom notes on the sill.
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Chapter 6: What were the major flaws in Hauptmann's trial?
Windy night.
Windy night. Yeah. I mean... So you just stumbled on, you just hit upon... the first of many, many, many oddities. Strange things that happen that don't add up. And this is part of the reason the case so fixates people, because once you start to dig in, it's like, oh my God, that happened. Oh my God, that happened. Oh my God, that happened. I'll tell you the next one.
They could find no fingerprints anywhere in the room. Anywhere. On the walls. On the drawers. And the bed, no fingerprints.
Chapter 7: How did the Lindbergh kidnapping influence conspiracy theories?
So what kind of evidence was there? The ransom note, obviously. Okay, so there was the ransom note. There were footprints at the base of the window. Okay. That's got to be helpful. It would be if somebody took a mold, but nobody did because the two cops that came were local cops. By the time the state police showed up, The grounds had been trampled to death by journalists.
Somebody had leaked the fact that the Lindbergh baby had been kidnapped, and journalists just swarmed all over the place.
Now, the New Jersey State Police at that point, run by, and this is a sort of famous last name in American history, Schwarzkopf.
Famous first name, too. Norman Schwarzkopf. Father of Storm and Norman. It turns out he worships the ground Charles Lindbergh walks on.
Chapter 8: What lasting impact did the Lindbergh case have on American society?
So not only does he not investigate the possibility that the parents could be involved, he lets Lindbergh manage the investigation of his own child.
So you have one of the people involved as the parent of this victim dictating to all the investigators what they can and can't do. You mentioned the note, the ransom note.
whether whether it's legit or not what does it say in very broken english it says give us fifty thousand dollars and you'll get your baby back broken english well it was written it was clearly written by somebody who did not speak um for whom english was not their first language so it had misspellings and not just vocabulary problems but um grammar problems but then
Lindbergh then went on to make a series of idiotic decisions. Well, take me through them, though, in terms of the decisions he made that you might be critical of. Well, the first decision he made was to give the ransom note, or a version of it, to a couple of mobsters. because the mob thought, because we needed another element to make it even weirder. Yeah.
So because the mob was known to kidnap people once in a while, although as one of our experts on the podcast says, you know, this was such, he said, if the mob had done it, it would be a professional kidnapping. This was clearly not a professional kidnapping. But once the ransom note was out there, anybody could copy it. It also had a little red mark on it.
And then future ransom notes also had the little red mark. Sure. Well, then the whole thing's compromised at that point. Right. So there could have been anybody. Extortionists, mobsters. Let me ask you about Dr. John Condon.
Jafsy, as he was known. Jafsy, yeah. How does he get involved? So... Who is he?
He writes a letter to his local paper, the Bronx Home News. And he basically says, he's a very pompous, full of himself, 70 plus year guy. And he basically says, I'm gonna add $1,000 to the ransom money that I will contribute for myself. And the kidnappers, put a note in the Bronx home news saying basically, huh, get in touch with us.
But what happens is because the kidnappers give Jafsy a letter to give to Lindbergh, Lindbergh reads the letter and says, okay, You obviously have some contact with these guys or this guy. So you're going to be my intermediary. So Lindbergh is all in with Jafsy. So Lindbergh becomes all in with Jafsy.
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