Loading summary
Transcript120 lines
- [00:00]
Instacart Advertiser
A PSA from Instacart. It's Sunday 5:00pm you had a non stop weekend. You're running on empty and so is your fridge. You're in the trenches of the Sunday scaries. You don't have it in you to go to the store, but this is your reminder. You don't have to. You can get everything you need delivered through Instacart so that you can get what you really need. More time to do whatever you want. Instacart for for one less Sunday. Scary. We're here this holiday season. Instacart is bringing magic to the people who make it magic for others. Get delivery and deals on everything you need this season. Whether it's a last minute holiday decor, emergency coverage for the holiday party, or just avoiding going out in the cold, Instacart is here. Plus November 24th to December 23rd is deal month with savings from your favorite retailers and deals on grocery, electronics, beauty, toys and more. Download the Instacart app to get a little magic delivered today.
- [01:03]
Don Wildman
This episode is brought to you by Perk, the intelligent platform for travel and spend. Made to free up time and cut down costs, Perc removes the time sucking, friction filled tasks that slow teams down and burn them out so you can focus on the work you are actually hired to do. The projects and decisions that move a business forward, not the endless admin of booking trips, chasing receipts or wrangling travel policies. As someone constantly spinning a bunch of plates on my job, PERC helps me gain back all important time to work on what really matters. Researching American history for you, our listeners. With Perc, you can forget about spending time digging up that hotel dinner receipt from last quarter or trying to book a work trip across 100 open tabs. Perc has you covered. No more tedious tasks that eat away your day. Perc powering real work discover perc@perc.com americanhistoryhit morning streams through the windows of a New Jersey house. Normally quiet, peaceful, secluded, it now buzzes with investigators from the New Jersey State Police. Outside, officers search the grounds for clues. They discover a ladder, footprints inside. Upstairs, detectives huddle in a child's nursery where, near the window, a ransom note sits in an evidence bag. The handwriting is jagged, the wording oddly constructed. The head of the State police, Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkopf, is officially running this investigation, but he defers to the man of the house, none other than the legend of the skies, Charles Lindbergh. Schwarzkopf gives orders to his men while Lindbergh, America's hero, moves from Room to room with a tent of authority. But beneath his calm composure, Lindbergh's face is pale. His son's crib is empty. And soon the world will be watching. This investigation is only hours old, but what is transpiring here? The kidnapping of an innocent child and the hunt for the perpetrator will become known as the crime of the century. And greetings to you. Thanks for listening. This is American History hit and I'm Don wildman. On Tuesday, March 1, 1932, a horrifying crime shattered a New Jersey family in and instantly seized a nation's imagination. A child, a toddler, taken from his own crib. A ransom note left by the kidnappers and the victim's father. No ordinary man, but the most famous aviator on earth, Charles Lindbergh, the hero who had just five years earlier crossed the Atlantic in the Spirit of St. Louis. Like all true crimes of the century, the Lindbergh kidnapping rose beyond mere criminality. It became a full blown cultural spectacle, splashed across front pages, magazines and radio waves as America hung on every new twist of the story. Today we join the media blitz after the fact in the company of Thomas Dougherty, cultural historian, professor of American Studies at Brandeis University. Go Judges, a prolific author whose latest book, Little Lindy Is Kidnapped. How the Media Covered the Crime of the Century, was published by Columbia University Press. Hello, Professor Dougherty. Tom, great to have you with us.
- [04:43]
Professor Tom Doherty
It's great to be here.
- [04:45]
Don Wildman
I mentioned the date already, but let's cover the context.
- [04:49]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah.
- [04:49]
Don Wildman
Time and place. So important in this story. The Lindbergh kidnapping happens in 1932 in North Jersey, not too far from New York, and we're in the midst of the Great Depression. Fundamental to the story, isn't it?
- [05:02]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. Also what's fundamental is, I think you noted, is we're beginning the age of universal broadcasting with radio.
- [05:09]
Don Wildman
Yes.
- [05:10]
Professor Tom Doherty
One of the contexts you mentioned in passing, of course, is everybody knew who Charles Lindbergh was in 1932 because of his historic flight across the Atlantic in 1927. But I think what might be underscored about Lindbergh in that moment, and this always sounds like hyperbole or sort of, you know, advertising ballyhoo and superlative, is when Limberg successfully crossed the Atlantic In May of 1927, he became the most famous, admired, beloved man on the planet. A phenomenon that has really never been repeated in human history where because now we have sort of universal connective web of live radio transmission via shortwave, everybody is yoked to this moment in a way, they had never universally been yoked and instantaneously to a news story. So the 33 and a half hour flight that Lindbergh makes on that date is something all Americans now are intimately involved in. Now, if Lincoln had been assassinated, everybody got the word at a different time and mourned in their own way. But this is something that happened, by all accounts, utterly spontaneously. Nobody knew that the entire nation was going to react this way. So there was an emotional investment in Charles Lindbergh that I think we really can't imagine today of universal esteem and adoration. And I don't think that word adoration is hyperbolic in this sense. So in that context, when the baby of this beloved man is kidnapped in 1932, it was something people were personally invested in. So usually when you think of a crime story, you know, even the terrible ones, you know, the murderer, Sharon Tate or, you know, Nicole Brown Simpson, we don't know those people. And our investment in the story is imaginative and vicarious. But with Lindbergh and his child and the mother and Merle Lindbergh, people felt they knew them. They felt that this was sort of a member of the family. So that's the kind of the big cultural background. And then the media background is radio now has reached a level of penetration where everybody either has a radio in their home or there's one on the apartment floor that people now can be universally linked to this breaking news story. And in fact, the word breaking news and bulletin all come about at around this time in 1932. This is the first story everybody wanted instantaneous information on.
- [08:00]
Don Wildman
And it's also at the end of the Roaring Twenties. I mean, we're in the middle of the Depression, so those are over. But that sense of a new age in America and the big buzz of the cities and, and what's happening with radio especially is. I mean, RCA is taking over. It's like, you know, if you take Apple or any of the. The iPhones and technology in the middle of everything in our lives, we're cynical about it now, of course, we're so used to it, but it was brand new in those days, and it was going to fix things. And it was very exciting and it was real. You know, this is a real effect. So into that societal mix that's going on comes this extraordinary crime to this extraordinary individual.
- [08:39]
Professor Tom Doherty
And it sometimes seems like there'll be an historical incident that will happen right at the time that the media has reached a level of penetration that it can accentuate and report that incident. So in the American tradition Another example might be the assassination of John Kennedy, which comes right at the moment where the networks are universal and now have something like the capability to do remote pickups from Dallas or from Andrews Air Force Base.
- [09:08]
Don Wildman
You're speaking my language because constantly on this podcast series, I'm talking about how media pushes events at any age, really back to the telegraph. You know, I mean, how. How the tech, technology really is at the front of so much that's new and different in America, in society itself.
- [09:25]
Professor Tom Doherty
It's also the first time where people reach for the dial to get news.
- [09:30]
Don Wildman
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:31]
Professor Tom Doherty
And we will do that for the rest of our lives and for the rest of the 20th and into the 21st century, is when we want information, we will go to an electronic device.
- [09:40]
Don Wildman
Yeah. What we're about to talk about, what happens in the Lindbergh house, kind of vicariously happens in everybody's house because of radio now is entering in and penetrated the personal lives of Americans. So let's talk about where this happens. It's in Hopewell, New Jersey. There's a cast of characters involved in this whole story. We're going to really drill down on Charles Lindbergh in a moment, as we have already started. But let's talk about his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and their marriage. They had just gotten married fairly recently, and this is their first house that they're living in that they've built on the wave of his fame and I guess the beginning of the fortune. But he's married into big money, isn't he?
- [10:18]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. Ann Murrah was one of three daughters. Sounds like King Lear of a very wealthy banker and later United States senator. And he meets her while he's doing a goodwill tour in Mexico City where he's the father, is one of the ambassadors, and just like in a fairy tale, there are three daughters. And say what you will about Lindbergh, he picks the one of real character that Ann Murrow was a. A quiet girl. And of course, Lindbergh could have had any woman on the planet. And the minute he, you know, he's 25, handsome, looks like Gary Cooper. In fact, the immediate question people had when he came back from 1927 is, who's the princess that's gonna marry this great American prince, Charles Lindbergh. And he picks Anne Lindbergh, who will emerge over the next decade as an extraordinary person in her. Her own right. Of course. He immediately teaches her how to fly, and she becomes one of the best aviators of her time. Not as well known as Amelia Earhart. Yeah. You know, she realized, in fact, that the reason Lindbergh taught her how to fly is that she was then going to be the navigator and the radio man for his exploits. And they go flying some routes around Alaska and overseas because Lindbergh had this very prophetic vision of flight was going to be for passengers. So you needed to get up like Howard Hughes. You needed to get up above the atmosphere. And he had to pioneer flight paths that are still kind of used by some of the airlines. And so she was like a remarkable woman.
- [11:51]
Don Wildman
She becomes a noted poet, as a matter of fact, doesn't she? I remember this because a girlfriend of mine gave me an Anmore Lindbergh poet when I was 17 years old. That's my introduction to her.
- [12:01]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. She wrote memoirs and philosophical meditations, and some of them were some of the bestselling books of the 1950s. And unlike Charles, kind of also had the capacity to look back and reflect on your mistakes. You know, like Charles, especially when he gets into the Nazi stuff, would, you know, never second guess himself. So she's a remarkable woman in her own right.
- [12:23]
Don Wildman
And we're just underscoring what a power couple they really are. Everybody has their attention on these folks. They have one child whose name is Charles Jr. So his namesake.
- [12:32]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah.
- [12:32]
Don Wildman
The victim of this crime, the direct victim of this crime, this boy was how old at the time of the crime?
- [12:38]
Professor Tom Doherty
He was 20 months old. So just starting to, you know, talk and do a little crawling and toddling.
- [12:44]
Don Wildman
As you mentioned, he was developmentally challenged, fair to say.
- [12:48]
Professor Tom Doherty
Well, there's a lot of dispute about that. He had sort of a little deformity in one of his feet, which will become important because a lot of people said they had the baby, and that was the way they told, and his head was a little large. So, yes, there is some talk that the child might have, as you said, been developmentally challenged, but nobody outside of the Lindbergh family had any inkling of that. Certainly not the kidnapper.
- [13:13]
Don Wildman
Right. This is stuff that we run into. And when we talk about the crime itself, he was on medication, which was what's such an important part of getting him back. And the worries that the family had exactly. That medication had to do with his mental situation or what was that treating.
- [13:29]
Professor Tom Doherty
He had some kind of not exactly hydrocephalic head, but his head was a little abnormally large. And if you see the pictures, you can kind of tell that as well.
- [13:41]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Now let's talk a little bit more about Charles Lindbergh. I just want to understand. We've covered a lot here, but I want to get some biographical details. 1902, the guy's born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a Swedish born immigrant, a U.S. congressman, as you mentioned, he was one of the first congressmen to oppose the American entry into First World War, which was kind of a legacy for Charles Lindbergh. Lindbergh drops out of University in 1922 to pursue a career in aviation, which was just the biggest, sexiest thing, of course, to do because it was coming out of World War I, where they first started using them in military. He enrolls in the Nebraska Aircraft Corporation's flying school. He most famously, of course, undertakes. He's basically a mail carrier for a while there, and then he undertakes the first successful nonstop transatlantic flight from New York to Paris. The Lindbergh flight spirit of St. Louis. He began to gather wealthy sponsors and resources for this historic flight in obscurity, but then would become hugely famous. 1927, May 20th. Takes off from Long island, lands in Paris 33 and a half hours later, met by a teeming crowd of some 150,000 people. Just picture that in your mind in a field. Oh, my Lord.
- [14:53]
Professor Tom Doherty
There are newsreels of that, as you probably know, and Lindbergh. They expected Lindbergh to land in one section of LeBron Field. And everybody's sort of near the tower waiting for him, and he lands in another section. And so what you see in the newsreels, you don't actually see the landing, although in documentary films they'll put in another landing he made for continuity purposes, but you'll see the entire crowd shift to the left of the frame as they're chasing the plane down.
- [15:23]
Don Wildman
Well, it was an incredible thing. I mean, there's no way to overstate how amazing this was.
- [15:29]
Professor Tom Doherty
Everybody thought he was going to die. You know, it's like it was an incredible event. A couple weeks earlier, two famous French flyers were trying to go from Paris to New York because there was a $25,000 prize for the first plane that could do that. And these famous World War I French flyers are never heard from again. And so the notion that a lone individual could fly 33 and a half hours across the Atlantic was something that was unbelievable. William Shire, the who would later go on to cover Nazi Germany and write the famous book the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, was a cub reporter working for one of the Paris newspapers at the time, one of the American branches, and he talks about talking to survivors of the Lafayette Escadrille. There is an American airman's Club. And he goes down there and talks to the, the flyers and they say we admire this young man, but you know, he's got to go into the ocean. No human being can do this. And Shire goes out and meets the Limburg plane. That's his first big story, which is not a bad first byline if you're a cub reporter.
- [16:41]
Don Wildman
That's right. There's a lot about Charles Lindbergh that comes out later on and we're going to talk about that under more of a later part of this conversation. But he's a mysterious figure in many regards and some of that has something to do with this story as well. But we'll, we'll cover those negatives, no matter, you know, kind of hard to get away from that later on in this talk. I want to get to the crime itself. Tuesday, March 1, 1932. Let's go through the details. I can, I can kick you off here. Between 8 and 10pm we're at nighttime here in a place called Hopewell, New Jersey where you can visit. And as a matter of fact, this house still stands. And I know this because I did a television special and traced the whole crime, including climbing up this ladder as we'll talk about. Surprisingly, this house is not any kind of historic house. It's actually owned by the state of New Jersey and it's a home for teenage girls. You know, it's a dormitory basically and it's, it's as, as unspectacular as you get. And in fact it is a very modest home even when they built it. People should understand this is not a grand estate we're talking about. Fairly small as a matter of fact. So between 8 to 10pm that night, March 1, 20 month old Charles Junior is abducted from his second floor nursery in the Lindbergh home. So this is one floor up, there's a ladder being used and they get in through that window, come in and snatch the kid out from the thing. I'm saying they, it was likely one person who went in there. Charles and Anne are at home at this time and there had been dinner and we're past dinner of course, because it's eight to ten o'. Clock. The actual crime I believe happens about 9:30 at night. Is that right?
- [18:16]
Professor Tom Doherty
That's what they estimate, yeah.
- [18:18]
Don Wildman
Can you take us through the events that transpire through the evening? Then how do they discover the kidnapping?
- [18:23]
Professor Tom Doherty
Well, Betty Gough comes in and sees that there's no baby in the crib and she assumes that the mother she had put the baby to bed and she assumes that the mother was playing with it and the mother is not. And then they go down and think maybe Charles is playing with the baby and he is not. And then the house is in an uproar for the next 30 minutes or so and they call the police. Finally, and by chance, there's actually a reporter who's calling into the police to just find out if anything's going on. So he gets this big scoop very close to the time that the kidnapping happened. So by around midnight there's actually reports on the radio and the wire service about this kidnapping that will be the crime of the century.
- [19:09]
Don Wildman
It's creepy.
- [19:10]
Professor Tom Doherty
It's really creepy. It's shocking. And by our standards, of course, you mentioned true crime earlier and now we're all like true crime forensic experts. Right. Anytime a case breaks, we're all armchair detectives. But at the time, first of all, nobody thought something like this could happen. And then there's an extraordinary what in retrospect level of incompetence by the police. They're trampling over evidence, reporters are all over the place. Passerbys are coming right up to the, the grounds of the, the Hopewell estate and mucking things up, you know, and eventually they discover the limberg. On the second trip into the nursery, they discover that there's a ransom note being left for the child.
- [19:55]
Don Wildman
Exactly. It's sitting on the chest right where the kidnappers come in through the window. And when they're taking this baby out. Now the really important factor in this is the baby is not a small baby. This is a year and a half old child we're talking about. That's not like taking a little tiny infant. They've got a full on walking toddler supposedly I guess in a sack. We never find out exactly how they did this, but that child had to be carried down a ladder. Now he was sleeping presumably, so maybe that's okay. But it's a very difficult thing to do what they are trying, what they've done. And so they pull this child out the window and then come down this hand built ladder which is a crazy construction anyway. And that's how this is accomplished when they do their. When the police come and Charles has grabbed his gun and is out there with his flashlight, they're looking through the woods, they discover that wooden ladder, or rather was it on the house? I can't remember.
- [20:55]
Professor Tom Doherty
The ladder was on the grounds of the estate. That's where they discovered it.
- [20:58]
Don Wildman
Okay. But it's clear that that's how this is all had. There's footprints in the mud nearby the house. They understand what has happened. It is shocking. It is awful. Local and state police are called, FBI later notified and after this short break we're going to take right now, we'll detail this police investigation and figure out what happened.
- [21:22]
Verizon Advertiser
This holiday, Verizon is helping you bundle up incredible gifts and savings. You'll get the latest phone with a new line on my plan and a brand new smartwatch and tablet. No trade in needed even on our lowest price plan. That's two gifts for your family and one for you or two for you and one for someone else or three gifts for you and only you. Either way, you save big on three amazing gifts at Verizon, all on the best 5G network. Visit Verizon today. Rankings based on RootMetric Truth Score Report dated one each 2025. Your results may vary. Service plan required for watch and tablet. Additional terms apply.
- [21:52]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Advertiser)
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of free 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day, you know. Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [22:16]
Verizon Advertiser
Of $45 for free month plan equivalent to $15 per month required new customer offer for first three months only. Speed slow 135 gigabytes of network's busy taxes and fees extra.
- [22:21]
Instacart Advertiser
See mintmobile.com Grief doesn't keep a calendar. Anxiety doesn't clock out after five. Depression doesn't care if it's your busy season, but support can still fit into your life. With Grow, you can find a therapist who meets you where you are. They connect you with thousands of independent licensed therapists across the US offering both virtual and in person sessions. You can search by insurance provider, specialty treatment methods and more to find a therapist who works for you. And if it's not the right fit, switching is easy. There are no subscriptions, no long term commitments. You just pay per session. Find therapy on your time, evenings, weekends and Cancel up to 24 hours in advance at no cost. Whatever challenges you're facing, GrowTherapy is here to help. Sessions average about $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. Visit growththerapy.com acast today to get started. That's growththerapy.com acast growtherapy.com acast availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.
- [23:31]
Jerry Insurance Advertiser
Tired of your car insurance rate Going up. Even with a clean driving record, you're not alone. That's why there's Jerry, your proactive insurance assistant. Jerry compares rates side by side from over 50 top insurers and helps you switch with ease. Jerry even tracks market rates and alerts you when it's best to shop. No spam calls, no hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Switch with confidence. Download the Jerry app or visit Jerry AI Acast today.
- [24:08]
Don Wildman
Okay, welcome back with Professor Tom Daugherty talking about the Lindbergh kidnapping. In the immediate aftermath, Tom, of Charles Jr's disappearance, what actions do the authorities take? Give me the early stages here.
- [24:21]
Professor Tom Doherty
Well, they, of course, are going through the estate to try to look for evidence, but so much of the evidence is mucked up. They don't even get a good footprint out of the footprints in the mud because there are reporters and all kinds of hangers on who are trampling it. And you mentioned the FBI. And one of the reasons this case is so important is that the utter incompetence of the New Jersey State Police, which is led by a guy named Norman Schwarzkopf, which, if you're a historian of the Gulf War, you might remember that his son, Storman Norman Schwarzkopf, who is a much better general than his father, was a police officer. That Norman Schwarzkopf, senior, first of all, he was deferential to Lindbergh, so he didn't really take control of the case. Yes, and this is also hard for us to imagine, but Lindbergh's stature was such that nobody was going to gainsay Lindbergh. So when Lindbergh says, I trust all my servants that, you know, the people that you would like, really give the third degree to were like Betty Galbin, nurse, and some of the other servants in the house. And the police don't really do that because Lindbergh says, lay off. Lindbergh also tells J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, who comes in to offer his assistance to bug off, go back to Washington. And Hoover does, because J. Edgar Hoover is not quite the J. Edgar Hoover he's going to become. So there's no sort of federal intermediary authority with forensic expertise investigating the case. And this is not sort of like 2020 hindsight.
- [25:55]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [25:56]
Professor Tom Doherty
People at the time criticized the New Jersey State Police for their level of incompetence. Like even what we knew in 1932 to do, they by and large didn't do. So they mucked up a lot of the forensic evidence.
- [26:09]
Don Wildman
Yeah, there were no prints found. I mean, they check for fingerprints in the nursery. They found nothing. Experts conclude that the kidnapper wore gloves, cloth soled shoes. It's a hard floor in there. There's a hardwood floor. There's no carpet in there. Apparently, lots of noise would have been made had they not been careful. And the ransom note is examined, noting that it had numerous spelling and grammatical errors. I'm going to just read a bit of this, of this note for you here. It reads like this. And this is what they find in an envelope inside the room. This is a movie unspooling in front of us. It's incredible. Dear sir, have $50,000 and the dollar bills in the wrong place with $50,000 ready spelled R E, D Y. 25,000 in 20 bills, 15 in 10 bills and $10,000 in 5 bills. Oddly, after 2 to 4 days, we will inform you where spelled W E R E, to deliver the money spelled without an e. Okay, so there are a lot of misspellings in this. We warn you for making any ding with a D public or for notify the police. The child is in gut care spelled G, U, T. Care. Indication for all letters are signature spelled wrong. And three H, O, H, L, S, whichever that. Whatever that means. It's a. It's a mess. Okay? And it's not intentionally made a mess of. We. We imagine, or you can assume it seems like someone who doesn't speak English or write it at least wrote this note. And that's an important factor here.
- [27:47]
Professor Tom Doherty
So one other thing, Don, that you might want to mention now is there's a symbol at the bottom of the note that the kidnapper has created. It sort of looks, we will find out later, like the Mercedes Benz symbol at the bottom of the note that the kidnapper has put there. So when cranks get in touch with you, if the note doesn't have this special symbol, you can know that they're a crank. So that sort of becomes the certification that you're really in touch with the kidnapper.
- [28:19]
Don Wildman
Interesting, interesting. Can you describe the visual of this for our radio audience?
- [28:24]
Professor Tom Doherty
It's kind of like a circle with, like, some crosses in it, you know?
- [28:29]
Don Wildman
Okay, but it's not like your classic hostage note with magazine letters. This is a typed note or a written.
- [28:35]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah, no, no, it's a handwritten note. And then there's a symbol that will serve as the kind of signature certification that when somebody gets in touch with you about this kidnapping, if you see that symbol, you will know that the authentic kidnapper is in touch with you and not a crank.
- [28:53]
Don Wildman
Got it. Let's talk about that media covering this. It spreads like wildfire, right?
- [28:59]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah.
- [28:59]
Instacart Advertiser
Yeah.
- [29:00]
Don Wildman
If ever that phrase crime of the century was invented for anything, it was this.
- [29:03]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. And I actually do think it is the crime of the century. One of the things that this crime does in media terms is it's for the first time, we see kind of the three tributaries of the modern media matrix all come together. And you mentioned print, newspapers, which, of course, have been around a while, wire service, syndicated reporters, wire photos. And then the second thing is radio, which in 1932, as we mentioned, has just reached that magic moment of what media scholars call penetration, which means now it's kind of part of the lifeblood of the culture. And then the third tributary is the moving images, the newsreels. The sound newsreels had just come on and, you know, sound had come into the motion picture medium in the newsreels in 1930. So the newsreels are also covering the story. The newsreels are on the scene with airplanes and with their motion picture cameras the next morning, and they're actually taking films at the Hopewell estate. They want to get Lindbergh and Mrs. Lindbergh to make a statement for the cameras, but they never do. But one of the newsreel guys asked them, he says, do you have any home movies of the baby? Lindbergh says, initially, no, but then the newsreel guy says, well, I kind of remember some home movies being taken. And then Lindbergh remembers, yes, the family had taken some home movies of the child on its first birthday. And they get a copy of that home movie to issue with the newsreels that very day. So that night, the kidnapping happens on a Tuesday night. By Wednesday, the newsreel cameras are on the scene at Hopewell. And by Wednesday night in New York and New Jersey, the newsreels kind of serve as an all points bulletin to what in America today you'd call an Amber Alert with home movies of the baby that they will show in theaters around America, saying, you know, everybody, keep an eye out for this baby. And it was allegedly as what everybody at the time says, the first time the newsreels had used home movies in one of their regular newsreel issues. So all three of the media. Yeah, print, radio, and the newsreels are coming together to cover this story. And for the radio and the newsreels especially, what they realize now where in the past, both on radio or in the newsreels, they basically just read what the newspapers told them. So on. So radio news was a guy reading the newspaper headlines and then saying, if you want further details, consult the New York Herald Tribune or whatever paper that night. But the newspapers start withdrawing their reporting from the radio because they know now that radio can do instantaneously what the news papers have to do in several hours before they can put the papers on the street. It has the unintended consequence of creating broadcast journalism because radio now realizes we need our own reporters on site. So they start sending their own radio reporters on site in Hopewell and in Trenton to cover the story. So I think you could make an argument it's really the beginning of modern broadcast news.
- [32:27]
Don Wildman
I get you. Yeah. It's one of those phenomenal moments. Yeah. This will all take place over a period of a couple of months. There's a lot of story here. We have to sort of pick and choose how we do this because it's very detailed. If listeners are noting, as we go, a little bit of a weirdness to the story, there's a lot of weirdness to the story. And we're going to cover those possibilities at the end of this episode. But in the meantime, let's get down exactly what happened. All this has to do with these ransom notes that start coming March 6th. About a week later, a new ransom letter arrives at the Limbert home. It's sent from Brooklyn, New York. The note says the ransom has been raised now to $70,000. It's big money in the 1930s. A third note arrives at Charles Lindbergh's attorney's address, identifying a man named John Condon, kind of out of nowhere. He should act as an intermediary between the kidnappers and Lindbergh's. You know, this. This really came kind of out of nowhere. So he met with a supposed representative of the kidnappers, who claim, now this is a crazy episode out there in the Bronx. He goes to an appointed place, which is near a cemetery you can still walk next to, and there he talks to a figure behind the bushes. And he never sees a clear picture of him, but this person speaks with a foreign accent. He stays in the shadows so Condon can't see this face, and he tells him that Charles Jr. Is fine. All right, so now we're in mid March. Take us through the events of March 16, and I'm talking about Condon receiving the toddler's sleeping suit. Yeah.
- [34:03]
Professor Tom Doherty
John Condon is one of these weird characters. And you mentioned there are a lot of conspiracy theories about the Lindbergh case. And one of the things that Gives some oxygen to these theories. Is. Is no matter what scenario you buy, this is a weird case. It's not only the crime of the century, the kidnapping of the most famous baby in America, but it has all these sort of weird, circuitous, oddball moments.
- [34:28]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [34:29]
Professor Tom Doherty
Now, any detective will tell you that, you know, any crime case sort of has this. You know, all the threads aren't going to be put together at the top of the hour after the, you know, one hour of crime drama is over. But the Limberg case has, like, 97 of these weird moments. And perhaps the weirdest is the involvement to this guy, John Condon, who has no other association with the Limbergs except that Condon mentions in his local Bronx paper He was, like, 72 years old, very colorful local character known around the Bronx. One of these guys that all the community knows. And he mentions we're going to need an intermediary between the kidnapper and the Lindbergh family to secure the ransom money and then hand it over.
- [35:14]
Don Wildman
He volunteers himself.
- [35:15]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. And it's a dangerous job because you can, you know, after you turn over the money, the kidnapper could kill you. Right. And so he gets in touch. He gets a letter. After he puts this notice in the local paper. He gets a letter from the kidnapper the next day which has that certification symbol on it. And he calls up the Lindbergh household, who are getting all kinds of calls from all kinds of cranks. He talks to the Lindbergh's lawyer, who is kind of the. The middleman for the case here. And Condon calls him on the phone and says, I've got this letter here, and it's got this symbol on it. And that's when the lawyer invites Condon to come out to the estate.
- [35:58]
Don Wildman
I see.
- [35:58]
Professor Tom Doherty
And he meets with Condon, and you have to believe Condon is who he says he is for at least one strain of this story. So he comes out, he meets with the lawyer, and the lawyer says, well, what's in this for you? You're risking your life. And Condon says, well, I do want something. And the lawyer thinks, aha, now comes the mercenary motive. And what Condon says is, I want to be the man who puts the baby back in Mrs. Lindbergh's arms.
- [36:29]
Don Wildman
Wow.
- [36:29]
Professor Tom Doherty
And that's all Condon wants.
- [36:31]
Don Wildman
And Charles Lindbergh, as we mentioned, is in charge of this investigation. Basically, he's saying yes to these things.
- [36:36]
Professor Tom Doherty
He's basically run. Yeah, he. Yeah, he's running the case, which is.
- [36:39]
Don Wildman
A very weird thing when you Think about it.
- [36:41]
Professor Tom Doherty
The whole story is strange.
- [36:44]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [36:44]
Professor Tom Doherty
And so Condon meets a man he will call Cemetery John. Because in Good Egg or Allen Poe fashion, where do they decide to meet? A cemetery. And they have some dialogue there. Condon tries to fool the guy by saying, you know, Bistu Deutsch? Are you German? And the guy doesn't fall for it. And then they go back for another meeting, for another cemetery and hand over the ransom money, which you mentioned is initially $70,000. And the Treasury Department has gathered some money in gold certificates.
- [37:19]
Don Wildman
Yes.
- [37:20]
Professor Tom Doherty
There are so many bizarre details to this case. Maybe I don't want to burn your listeners with too much of this, but the cash money is going to be in something called a gold certificate, which is a special kind of currency and a special kind of bill which the Treasury Department knows next election cycle, in all likelihood, we're going to go off the gold standard. These certificates will be withdrawn and they will be rarer in currency and in circulation.
- [37:45]
Don Wildman
Interesting.
- [37:46]
Professor Tom Doherty
And so they're actually angry when Condon kind of gets the kidnapper to agree for 50,000 instead of the 70,000 because that means there'll be fewer bills in circulation. He hands over the money. The kidnapper says that the baby is in a boat off Martha's Vineyard. It's a total wild goose chase. They never get the baby.
- [38:06]
Don Wildman
Time passes. May 12, 1932, more than two months after the kidnapping. The body of this little boy, Charles Lindbergh Jr. Is located in the woods near Mount Rose, which is four and a half miles from the Lindbergh case. He's deceased.
- [38:21]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. Basically, people expect that the body had been there since the night of the kidnapping on March 1st, 1932. It's been decomposed. There've been, you know, some animal damage as well in the body. You can actually see the Hopewell estate from the little mound where the body was discovered. So. So the assumption is the baby had died that night during the kidnapping. Either it had been intentionally killed and disposed of, but you get the sense that what happened is on the way down, the kidnapper broke a rung of the ladder and the baby's skull was crushed either on a rock, on the ground or on the ladder itself. And so now the kidnapper is there with a dead baby on the grounds of the Hopewell estate, and he gets rid of it.
- [39:08]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Interestingly, Lindbergh insists on a cremation and very swiftly. But it was blunt force trauma that really creates this fractured skull that was the cause of the death.
- [39:19]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. And there was an autopsy and some pictures of the body as well. And since we're talking media, this is a moment, of course, one of the things that's kind of hard for us to recapture, Don, I think, is nobody really expected the baby to be killed. There was always the expectation that there'd be a ransom exchange, the baby would be returned to the Limburgs, and there would be nationwide rejoicing. And there were some communities that actually had planned little celebrations where there'd be a little parade and the bells of the church would ring when the news of the rescue of the Limburg baby broke out. Instead, what happens is the body is discovered, the press is called together, and the news breaks on radio that the baby had been killed. And the cultural historian Frederick Lewis Allen has this poignant phrase about how in the 1930s, many people whose memories are otherwise vague about that decade remember exactly where they were when they heard the news that the Limberg baby had been killed. And the next morning, the New York Daily News has its famous headline. Two words. Baby dead.
- [40:31]
Don Wildman
Yeah. Heartbreaking, truly, but on another level altogether.
- [40:35]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. And Will Rogers, the great humorist and commentator of the time, who knew the Limbergs and knew the baby, talked about how the nation feels one emotion, and that is, of course, stunned, stupefied grief, which in a nanosecond turns to a bloodthirsty need for revenge to find the man who has slain the Limberg baby.
- [41:00]
Don Wildman
It changes from a kidnapping to a murder case. And. And now the investigation is a whole nother kind of can of worms. From 1932 to 1934, this massive investigation is underway. FBI is now involved. They're tracking these bills for over two years. And a few of the bills turn up in scattered locations. Over the course of 30 months, several bills were turning up in New York City being spent along a route of Lexington Avenue connecting to the Bronx down to the east side of Manhattan. In those days, this was a very large population of Austrian, Germans. This was Yorkville, you know, in. In Manhattan part. And it was. A lot of Germans lived in this area. So there's a lot of clues that they're. They're on to something here in this area. And one day, a gas station attendant at a Manhattan gas station notices a gold certificate.
- [41:53]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah, well, the Treasury Department wisely had paid the ransom in gold certificates and kept a record of the serial numbers of the ransom bills. And so every bank teller, every hardware store operator near their cash register has this list of $20 bill serial numbers for 20 and $10 bills. And this German Guy comes up to pay for some gas, and he pays it with a $10 gold certificate. And the alert gas station attendant looks at it, has a little bit of conversation with the guy, who speaks with a German accent. The gas bill is like $96. He gives them a 10. And as the guy is driving away, the gas station attendant kind of looks at the bill and it just starts feeling a little hinky. He turns over the bill and writes the license plate of the car that's just bought the gas. He turns it into the bank that weekend. And then that Monday, the banker at the bank gets the hit for the serial number. And he turns it over, and there's the license plate of the guy, which the local New York cops trace to this house in the Bronx.
- [43:07]
Don Wildman
As you mentioned, the license number was registered to one Bruno Richard Houtman, German immigrant who happens to have, when they look into him, a criminal record back in Germany. He had $20 of the ransom money on him when he is arrested. And more than $14,000 was found in a suitcase, or rather in the walls. Some of it was in the walls of the garage. Pretty damning. Haltman claimed the money was left to him by a recently deceased business partner named Isidor Fish, who had returned to Germany. He denies all connections to the crime. We're often running on what becomes the trial of the century. Police search his home. This is important. We're going to take a break in a moment, but I just want audiences to understand. The police search his home. More evidence is found. A sketch of the ladder similar to the one at the scene of the crime is found in the home. A piece of wood from which an exact match to the wood in his attic was made. So one can assume he pulled out that wood and made this crazy contraption of a ladder which probably led to the child's death of his own. Hauptman was indicted in the Bronx for extorting $50,000 from the Lindberghs. He actually extorted them for more. And later, indicted in New Jersey for the murder of Charles Jr. The governor of New York surrenders him to New Jersey authorities. And here we are. Haltman is moved to Hunterton County Jail in Flemington, New Jersey. And we are going to see a trial like this nation has never seen before. Right after the break.
- [44:41]
Instacart Advertiser
A PSA from instacart. It's Sunday, 5pm you had a nonstop weekend. You're running on empty and so is your fridge. You're in the trenches of the Sunday scaries. You don't have it in you to go to the store. But this is your reminder. You don't have to. You can get everything you need delivered through Instacart so that you can get what you really need. More time to do whatever you want. Instacart for one less Sunday. Scary. We're here.
- [45:12]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Advertiser)
Hey, Ryan Reynolds here wishing you a very happy half off holiday because right now Mint Mobile is offering you the gift of 50% off unlimited. To be clear, that's half the price, not half the service. Mint is still premium unlimited wireless for a great price. So that means half day.
- [45:31]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah.
- [45:32]
Ryan Reynolds (Mint Mobile Advertiser)
Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment.
- [45:36]
Verizon Advertiser
Of 45 for a free month plan equivalent to 15 per month required new customer offer for first 3 months only. Speed Flow Hacker 35 gigabytes of networks busy taxes and fees extra. See mint mobile.com.
- [45:50]
Don Wildman
And we're back with Professor Tom Doherty, author of the book Little Lindy is how the media covered the crime of the century. So, Tom, New Jersey authorities now have who they suspect was behind the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh the Junior. And now we have the trial, the likes of which this nation has never seen before, mostly due to the celebrity of the father, Charles Lindbergh. But we have a country already fascinated with salacious and criminal crimes for that matter. You go back to Jack the Ripper in London. We're coming out of the Victorian age in a way. People are very interested in this kind of stuff. What did the trial of Richard Hauptman say about the state of American culture at this point? Your book is all about this.
- [46:31]
Professor Tom Doherty
Well, the first thing it says is we really want this guy to be electrocuted. And one of the reasons that he's tried in New Jersey at the site of the crime and not in New York, where they can only get him on extortion, is we want a capital murder case. And at the time, kidnapping was not a capital murder. However, the New Jersey law said that if somebody died while you're committing a crime, say like breaking and entering, then you can execute the person. So that's why New Jersey gets the case and why New York is so willing to give up Bruno Richard Houtman is because we want this to be a capital murder case and we want the suspected perpetrator of the kidnapped murder of the limberg baby to be strapped into the electric chair. And so the trial is held, as you mentioned, in January of 1935 in Flemington, New Jersey. It's still the biggest thing that ever happened to Flemington New Jersey, all the biggest crime reporters and gossip columnists of the day come down to cover this case. Radio should have been able to cover the case live. There was a request by the broadcast networks to be able to put their microphones in, in the courtroom, but the governor says no, that'll be too sensational. The newsreels also want in. And the judge in the trial, a guy, Judge Trenchard, Thomas Trenchard, says to the newsreels, and I think he's a little angry that the governor kind of had kept the radio out. This is his courtroom. He says to the newsreels, you can put a camera in the balcony and have sort of like moving cameras, a moving camera on the floor, but you cannot film any testimony or you cannot film any time the trial is actually in session only when there are breaks between the actual testimony. But you can keep your camera up there. And they kind of make it a quiet camera. It's wired for sound, but it's up there on the balcony only taking pictures allegedly of non testimony.
- [48:37]
Don Wildman
The evidence presented for this thing. First of all, Charles Lindbergh Sr. Is front and center for this. Again, he's on the stand for a lot of this. He basically tells the story and talk about dramatic. You've got the murderer of his son supposedly in front of him and he's telling the everybody how he thinks it happened. The evidence is the ransom bills were tied to Haltman. The wood analysis of the latter. The handwriting experts link the notes to him. Testimony from John Condon. He sounded like a German guy out there in the night. Defense isn't very strong. It's all circumstantial due to no reliable witnesses and so forth. And by February 13, 1935. Remember, this started in 32. That's how big a long story this was. Bruno Richard Hauptman is convicted of first degree murder and kidnapping and is of course sentenced to death. He appeals twice. This takes some time. Both of those appeals are denied. And then we have the execution which happens in the Trenton prison. I forget the name of it, but it's April 30th. Yeah, the state prison. 3rd April 1936 at the state prison in Trenton, New Jersey. A gloomy sight to this day if you stand outside those walls, a man is executed by electric chair. He had turned down. This is important. He turned down a large offer from a newspaper outlet crazy to think of for a confession as well as an offer to commute his sentence to life without parole in return for his confession. He, he turned down both of those things. And went to the electric chair.
- [50:06]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah. And in those days, you know, the warden would come out on the steps of the prison and, you know, all the presses there. And the first question that the press always yelled. And people were executed a lot by lecture chair in the 1930s, as you know, from Warner Brothers movies. The first question they always asked was, was Houtman game? Which means, you know, did he go to the chair stoically and courageously rather than as a sniveling coward? And the warden says, yeah, he was game. He was very game. So Houptman goes, yeah, to the chair in the end. And in those days, the reporters are witnessing the execution. They searched the reporters very thoroughly to make sure nobody had a camera on them. Because in the 1920s there was a famous case where a reporter had snuck in a camera and got a picture of Ruth Snyder, who is a murderess.
- [51:02]
Don Wildman
Right.
- [51:03]
Professor Tom Doherty
There's actually a kind of a blurry photograph of her being electrocuted that's on the front page of the Daily News with the indelible headline Dead. And so they searched the reporters pretty thoroughly in those days. And then there are accounts of Haltman, of course, going to the chair stoically after Haltmann's execution.
- [51:25]
Don Wildman
Some have questioned the conduct of this interview. This is where we want to turn this conversation a bit. There's a lot of theories about all the kind of crazy way that this unfolded. It's dangerous territory. It's touchy territory to get into. Because basically everything about this is up for questions. So anything we might suggest here, you can find some other version of this in another way. But let's talk about a few things. There has been accusations of witness tampering, planting of evidence, the wood in the attic and so forth. Haltmann's wife, Anna, sued the state of New Jersey for an unjust execution of her husband. Dismissed, she fought to clear his name until 1995. All of these things now, they all pale in comparison to what is suggested about Charles Lindbergh himself. Now, we started to talk about this when we were going over his biography. I want to circle back to this, about him becoming so notorious in those days as a Nazi sympathizer, an admirer of Germany and the rise of Nazis. Along with that came his own feelings about eugenics. His belief in strength and purity of very much in keeping with Aryan thinking in those days. He is the beginning of the America first movement. The First America First Movement back in the Pre World War II era. Believing that we shouldn't have gotten into that war, you know, all this is a big mixed bag that I'm throwing out here. Not necessarily related to this kidnapping, but we look back on Charles Lindbergh as a questionable individual in many ways. Front and center, as far as I'm concerned with this investigation, is that he chooses to run it and it all happens in his house. And it's a very odd coincidence of many different things happening that make you look at the man himself and wonder. Anyone who doesn't know this story or have any familiarity know will just be blown away by this. Could Lindbergh have been involved in this crime? Many have suggested that he was.
- [53:24]
Professor Tom Doherty
Yeah, but like so many other conspiracy theories, you sort of have to use an Occam's razor test here.
- [53:30]
Don Wildman
Exactly. Yeah. No, I know.
- [53:32]
Professor Tom Doherty
How did he get the ransom money to Houtman's house? You know, because basically, if you take like kidnappings, if they find the ransom money in your house, there's a 90% chance you're the kidnapper. Like maybe the real kidnappers came by and decided to hide the ransom money in your house randomly, right?
- [53:49]
Don Wildman
No, no.
- [53:50]
Professor Tom Doherty
And then how about the notes? How about the wood, the forensic evidence, which basically they had traced to a lumber yard in the Bronx before they actually had Houtman's name.
- [54:00]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [54:01]
Professor Tom Doherty
So the conspiracy theories, it's a lot easier to use Occam's razor and say that this guy that you have all the forensic evidence against.
- [54:10]
Don Wildman
Yeah.
- [54:11]
Professor Tom Doherty
Including the fact that he went out and bought a lot of high end electronic equipment right after the ransom money is overturned, is probably the kidnapper. However, you're right, there are these like, hinky details in the Limberg case. That means that you can go down a rabbit hole very easily with this case in a way that you can't with, like other cases that, you know, have one or two elements. The Limberg case has a lot of these elements that if you're of a conspiratorial mindset, would allow you to believe that something else is going on. Either the gangsters had kidnapped the baby, that Limberg had kidnapped the baby, that the German American Bundt had kidnapped the baby. And then of course, if you're an anti Semite, you believe that the Jews had kidnapped the baby to perform. That's what the Nazis said in Disturmer for their Jewish blood rituals. I mean, there you can go down the craziest rabbit holes with this case now. And some of the things just flat don't make sense about the Lindbergh case. So.
- [55:15]
Don Wildman
Well, for our purposes, Today, I want listeners to understand we're here to tell the story of this kidnapping, the events that happened here. So we've done this. I'm just following that up with. Oh, boy. If you look into this case, there is a lot to wonder about. Not unlike every other major case like it, top of the list, jfk. Will we ever answer these questions? Probably not. But as far as Limber's concerned, I can't believe there hasn't been a major movie and a major series done about this guy because he goes on to have this extraordinary life that is so strange beyond this strange experience. You know, his whole life is like this. It's amazing.
- [55:53]
Professor Tom Doherty
One of the things, if you're looking at the crime of the century, the limberg moment, say from 27, the flight 32, the kidnapping 35, the trial, you got to sort of historically put your and imaginatively put yourself in a place in which you don't know about Charles Lindbergh's later life where he starts cozying up to the Nazis in 1938 and then in 1940, 41 is the most famous spokesman for the isolationist, anti Semitic American first movement.
- [56:27]
Don Wildman
Yep.
- [56:27]
Professor Tom Doherty
And so that's sort of difficult to do because we're looking through Lindbergh case. From what we know about Lindbergh afterwards.
- [56:36]
Don Wildman
Well, I hope we've whet your appetite to know more about this case and you can do so by starting with this man's book. Little Lindy is how the media covered the crime of the century. My guest, and that's the author of that book is Thomas Doherty. Thank you very much, sir. It was a pleasure to meet you and I hope we meet again.
- [56:51]
Professor Tom Doherty
I do too, Don. Take care. Thanks again.
- [56:55]
Don Wildman
Hey, thanks for listening to American History hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. All kinds of content from mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great. But you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, share it with a friend. American history hit with me, Don Wildman.
- [57:24]
Professor Tom Doherty
So grateful for your support.
- [57:30]
Verizon Advertiser
This holiday. Verizon is helping you bundle up incredible gifts and savings. You'll get the latest phone with a new line on my plan and a brand new smartwatch and tablet. No trade in needed even on our lowest price plan. That's two gifts for your family and one for you or two for you and one for someone else or three gifts for you and only you. Either way, you save big on three amazing gifts at Verizon, all on the best 5G network. Visit Verizon today. Rankings based on Root Metric Truth score report dated 1 2025. Your results may vary. Service plan required for watch and tablet. Additional terms apply.
- [58:00]
Don Wildman
AI agents are everywhere, automating tasks and making decisions at machine speed. But agents make mistakes. Just one rogue agent can do big damage before you even notice. Rubrik Agent Cloud is the only platform that helps you monitor agents, set guardrails, and rewind mistakes so you can unleash agents, not risk. Accelerate your AI transformation at rubrik. Com. That's rubric. Com.