In 1932, Lindbergh baby kidnapped; Hauptmann convicted, executed in 1936

At around 10 p.m. on March 1, 1932, the nurse Betty Gow entered the second-floor nursery of the Lindbergh home in Hopewell, New Jersey, and found the crib empty. Charles Lindbergh Jr., the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was gone. She alerted his parents immediately.

On the nursery windowsill, a ransom note demanded $50,000. Outside the house, investigators found a makeshift wooden ladder, its top rungs suggesting the kidnapper had climbed to the nursery window. The note was written in German-accented English, a detail that would later shape the investigation.

Police initially focused on servants and family acquaintances. The nursery was not secured, and the scene was contaminated, as the source records. The case would be marked by early missteps before any real progress.

Despite a massive search, the child was not found alive. On May 12, 1932, his body was discovered in a shallow grave about four and a half miles from the Lindbergh home. The cause of death was a blow to the head. No weapon was ever recovered.

The ransom was paid. A Bronx doctor acted as an intermediary, delivering the money to a man in a cemetery. But at trial, the intermediary never positively identified that man as Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the German-born carpenter who would later be convicted. The identity of the person who collected the ransom remained disputed.