Murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr.

On the evening of March 1, 1932, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was discovered missing from his crib at the family's Highfields estate in East Amwell, New Jersey. A ransom note demanding $50,000 was found on the windowsill, along with a broken wooden ladder and impressions in the ground outside the nursery window. No usable fingerprints were recovered from the note, the ladder, or the nursery, aside from the child's own prints.

The investigation, coordinated between the New Jersey State Police, local Hopewell authorities, and eventually the Bureau of Investigation (forerunner of the FBI), was complicated by public interference at the crime scene and unauthorized intermediaries, including underworld contacts arranged by figures close to Lindbergh. A retired schoolteacher, John F. Condon, became an intermediary with the purported kidnapper, who used the alias "John" and met Condon at two Bronx cemeteries. Ransom of $50,000 was ultimately paid on April 2, 1932, but the child was not returned.

On May 12, 1932, the body of a toddler was found by a truck driver's assistant near Mount Rose in Hopewell Township, about 4.5 miles from the Lindbergh home. The child's nurse, Betty Gow, identified the remains through overlapping toes and a handmade shirt. The cause of death was determined to be a blow to the head. A household servant, Violet Sharpe, who had given inconsistent statements about her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping, died by suicide on June 10, 1932, before a fourth scheduled police interview; her alibi was later confirmed and her involvement ruled out.

Investigators tracked ransom bills as they surfaced around New York City over the following two years. On September 18, 1934, a bank teller flagged a ransom gold certificate bearing a penciled license plate number, which was traced to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German immigrant carpenter living in the Bronx. A search of his home turned up over $14,000 in ransom bills, a notebook sketch resembling the ladder used in the kidnapping, and Condon's address written inside a closet. Wood from Hauptmann's attic floor was later matched by expert analysis to the ladder recovered at the crime scene.

Hauptmann was indicted for extortion in New York and for murder in New Jersey in September and October 1934. His trial in Flemington, New Jersey ran from January 2 to February 13, 1935; he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Hauptmann maintained his innocence throughout, claiming the money had been left with him by a deceased former business associate, Isidor Fisch. His appeals, including to the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals and the New Jersey Board of Pardons, were unsuccessful. He was executed in the electric chair at New Jersey State Prison on April 3, 1936.

The case prompted passage of the U.S. Federal Kidnapping Act. Hauptmann's widow, Anna Hauptmann, pursued unsuccessful lawsuits in the 1980s seeking to overturn the conviction, and various authors have since raised questions about the investigation and trial evidence, though other researchers maintain the conviction was sound.