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- [00:00]
Doug
And we're live on Matchday as Doug reaches for a buffalo wing. He's got it. Oh, and he's gone for a can of Pepsi, too. What a finish. There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better. Matchdays deserve Pepsi.
- [00:17]
Joe Nocera
Right at the start of this series, I called the Lindbergh kidnapping the first great American conspiracy. And now that we've been through it together, sorting out all the leads, all the anomalies, all the theories, I think you can see why. You'll also remember what I said in episode one about what I think the consequences of that are. Just a little bit of doubt and it spreads like knotweed. You pull at one cluster and you find another and another and another, until you look up and realize the whole foundation has shifted. That's what's happened with the Lindbergh kidnapping. It started with missing child and three simple clues, and it grew into a mystery that bothers many people to this day. The theories split, as they always do, and each one took root in a different direction. There's the inside job theory. Maybe it was all about the money. Someone in the inner circle who knew the family's routine, knew the house, knew the nursery, and decided to take their cut of the Lindbergh fortune by participating in a ransom scheme. But at some point, it all went terribly wrong and the child died. There's the Lindbergh did it theories. There are two versions of this horrible theory. In one, Lindbergh, while pulling a prank in which he hid the baby, accidentally killed the child. Unwilling to take responsibility, he concocted a kidnapping story. In the second, more deliberate version, the child was, in the father's cold, eugenicist estimation, defective, and would look like a kidnapping with something far more sinister. Charles Lindbergh, controlling, calculating, the man who would go on to openly admire Nazi Germany, was the architect of his son's death. The ransom negotiations he steered himself, the crime scene he controlled. In this version, Lindbergh didn't just know how the story ended, he wrote it. Then there are those who believe little Lindy never died at all, that the body in the woods was misidentified, deliberately or otherwise, and that the boy was taken somewhere, raised under another name, and lived out a life he never knew was stolen from him, that there are people walking around now who carry Lindbergh's lineage. This version never dies either. Knotweed really does. Which brings us to what is now the unlikeliest theory of all. Though it was once what everyone assumed, that a German immigrant, desperate for money, built a ladder, drove to Hopewell alone got extraordinarily lucky that the family happened to be there that night, climbed in through a window and changed history, that the baby died, accidentally or otherwise, that same night, that he demanded and received a $50,000 ransom that the marked bills led back to him. He was tried, convicted and executed. And justice, imperfect though it was, was done. Whichever version you choose says something about you. It says something about how much you trust authority. About how willing you are to live with contradictions and loose ends. About how willing you are to say, I don't know, maybe no one will ever know. Or on the other hand, to say, I don't trust authority because too many times we've been misled, too many times we've been lied to. I'm willing to think the worst until you can prove otherwise. We called this series the Lindbergh Conspiracies to point to the double meaning of the word. It could be a conspiracy that saw the wrong man executed, a cover up, or it could be the Charles Lindbergh's reputation. And how that reputation evolved folds nicely into our age of conspiracy. In other words, because Lindbergh's extraordinary fame, not to mention his later actions, people believe he must have done something bad. Poppy is not in that camp.
- [04:47]
Poppy Damon
Joe, there's even a name for what happens in our brains when we encounter cases like this. It's called pattern recognition theory. Basically, we as humans need stories to make sense. There's an inbuilt sense of story, even some say a five act structure, there's cause and effect. And so when things happen, like coincidences or things that don't have an explanation or our brain actually can't compute, and we say this story has to make sense and that's how you get conspiracies. And I don't think it leads to truth. I don't think in the Lindbergh case that the conspiracies have led us any closer to what really happened.
- [05:33]
Joe Nocera
I'm Joe Nocera and for the Free Press, this is the Lindbergh Conspiracies. This is our final episode. May the best conspiracy win. We've spent a lot of time in this podcast talking to people who believe Charles Lindbergh was involved in the death of his son. We're now going to turn the floor over to two men who think that Lindbergh had nothing whatsoever to do with the kidnapping. And yet the two could not be further apart in what they believe happened. Lets start with Robert Zorn, who we heard from in episode one. His thesis may be the wildest one of them all.
- [06:17]
Robert Zorn
For the last 14 years now, I have devoted myself as a writer and researcher of the Lindbergh case and of the life of Charles Lindbergh. I believe that in the end I will be the person who has brought most amount of truth to this story as well as to the life of Charles Lindbergh. I'm currently working on a biography of Charles Lindbergh to coincide with the hundred year anniversary of his flight to Paris coming up in 2027. And as the only person who has gotten the story of the kidnapping right, I am in a unique position to be the first to tell the complete and true story of Charles Lindbergh's life.
- [07:03]
Joe Nocera
Robert also has a new book publishing this month called the Lindbergh Code which goes into more detail about his theory around the kidnapping.
- [07:11]
Robert Zorn
As I'm going to show to the world, history got it wrong.
- [07:15]
Joe Nocera
According to Zorn, the mastermind of the kidnapping of little Lindy was a man named John Noll K N O L L Or maybe I should call him Cemetery John Knoll.
- [07:28]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
What we have in John knoll is a 20 year old man who came to the US from Germany in 1925 when anti German sentiment in America prevailed. He was shocked to find himself unwelcome in America, the target of discrimination and condescension. Where was the American dream? For him and fellow members of the German American community, it was a mirage, a phony deal as he saw it. And what was the best way to take revenge on America? To attack America's most beloved admired hero, Charles Lindbergh? What better way was there to shatter Lindbergh than to kidnap his 20 month old baby?
- [08:05]
Joe Nocera
Indeed.
- [08:07]
Robert Zorn
Well, the whole story started for me when I was a 22 year old student at the Wharton Graduate School of Business on my spring break and my dad came up and visited me on my vacation. And as I was taking him back to the airport for him to go back to Dallas, he said, Robert, you may think your old man's off of his rocker, but I got a story to tell you. And my hands tightened on the steering wheel as my father was a very sober minded, critical thinker and except in jest, he never said anything that was nutty at all.
- [08:40]
Joe Nocera
Zorn's father proceeded to tell him about a German neighbor who lived three doors down from him in the South Bronx in 1931 when he was just a kid.
- [08:49]
Robert Zorn
John Knoll, my father, at the age of seven was struck in the eye by an alcoholic uncle who in a fit of alcoholic rage punched him in the eye. My dad lost his sight, and as a result, my grandmother would not allow my dad to play stickball or any sports with the kids. And so he's the kind of kid who is looking out the window, watching all the other kids play stickball and having a great time.
- [09:15]
Joe Nocera
Noel took Zorn's father under his wing and got him interested in a hobby, stamp collecting.
- [09:21]
Robert Zorn
One day, invited my dad to go to Palisades Amusement park in New Jersey.
- [09:28]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
My dad had never been out of
- [09:29]
Robert Zorn
the state of New York before. He was one of six kids. He had five sisters, and this was the biggest deal in the world. So anyway, they took a series of subway trains from the Bronx to Manhattan, and then, free, across the Hudson river, they went to this park, which sat at the top of the Palisades Cliffs in New Jersey.
- [09:50]
Joe Nocera
The town next to the Palisades was Englewood, where Dwight Morrow and his wife lived and where the Lindberghs usually stayed during the week. This is where the plot thickens. After spending time in the amusement park, Noel, with Zorn's father in tow, met two men who were waiting for him.
- [10:08]
Robert Zorn
His younger brother, Walter, whom my father knew. Walter worked in the deli, Waltman's Delicatessen at 706 Westchester Avenue in the Bronx with John. And then a third man that my father had never seen before. All of a sudden, the men started talking to one another in German. John knew that my father didn't know how to speak German. Okay, so he feels comfortable speaking in German in front of my father with his brother Walter and this third guy. But my dad picks up that they're talking about some place called Englewood. And he also picked up that John is calling this third guy Bruno. Then John does something very strange. He sends my father home alone, having
- [10:50]
Joe Nocera
never left the Bronx in his life. Zorn's father wasn't really sure how to get back.
- [10:55]
Robert Zorn
And for my father, this was a bit of. I would say this was a minor childhood trauma that he would never, ever forget.
- [11:03]
Joe Nocera
Zorn's father never forgot that day in the Palisade.
- [11:06]
Robert Zorn
At this time, my father is the chief economist of the biggest bank in the Southwest, Republican national bank of Dallas. And he walks into his barbershop at
- [11:16]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
the age of 47.
- [11:17]
Robert Zorn
Ironically, he had almost no hair. And while he's waiting for his name to be called, he reaches out for a magazine on the stack and picks up a magazine called True. And in that magazine was an article about the Lindbergh case. So he's reading about it, and he finds out that the Lindberghs they had been living with Ann Morrow's parents in Englewood, New Jersey.
- [11:44]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
My father reads a little bit more
- [11:46]
Robert Zorn
and then he's saying how that there was a mysterious man in two different Bronx cemeteries, Woodlawn Cemetery and St. Raymond Cemetery. And at the first cemetery, Woodlawn, where my father had just buried his own father in August of 1963. So he's very familiar with the layout and the surroundings.
- [12:05]
Joe Nocera
He started to wonder if the John he knew as a child was that John, Cemetery John, one of the kidnappers. And that's when he asked himself a question, one that still hasn't been fully answered. How many people were really involved?
- [12:23]
Robert Zorn
As it turns out, John Knoll was still living in Toms River, New Jersey at the time that my father told me this story. My immediate reaction was to go down there and confront him, which is something my dad never would have done, but it's something I would have done. But, you know, you're a 22 year old kid, you think you have all the time in the world. And as it turned out, John Knoll died six weeks later. So I've been kicking myself ever since about that. Joe.
- [12:49]
Joe Nocera
This seems like a pretty thin reed upon which to hang a kidnapping. But Zorn feels that the circumstantial evidence backs him up. First, a photo of Noel reveals that he bears a much closer resemblance to Condon's description of Cemetery John than does Bruno Hauptman. Condon said that the kidnapper had a high forehead, large ears, a pointed chin, and a fleshy development on his left thumb that described Noel to a T. Even the thumb thing. Second, he says Noel's handwriting more closely matches the handwriting on the ransom envelopes than Hauptman's. Third, when the manhunt for the kidnappers began, Knoll left the Bronx and moved to Detroit. He also skipped town just before the start of the trial. Zorn, needless to say, views these moves as suspicious. Fourth, he's consulted several criminologists who have told him that Noel's personality fits with that of a potential kidnapper, or worse, a cold blooded killer. Fifth, remember how John Knoll got Zorn's dad interested in stamp collecting?
- [14:03]
Narrator/Documentary Voice
Both Mary Ellen O' Toole and Dr. Craig Newman, who is one of the world's leading researchers of psychopathic personality, believe that John Knoll was embedding clues in my then teenage father to make my father the unwitting archivist of his great crime for history. This was all part of a game that he was playing. There are so many things that no one has ever seen and noticed about this case who have studied it. But one of the things he was doing, he was giving my dad stamp collectibles, including a stamp that was canceled on the very date of the kidnapping, March 1, 1932. He gave my dad two Lindbergh airmail stamps, including a Lindbergh air mail stamp with what is known as a kill mark cancellation.
- [14:52]
Joe Nocera
A kill mark defaces the stamp, obscuring the image, in this case, the image of Lindbergh.
- [15:00]
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- [15:28]
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- [16:02]
Joe Nocera
There is one other thing about Zorn you should know. He despises the ideas pushed by authors like Lisa Perlman, who says that Lindbergh was involved in his son's kidnapping.
- [16:13]
Robert Zorn
It has been said that this child was so badly deformed that his father wanted to get rid of him or they wanted to do an experiment is absolute garbage. So these theories collapse very quickly. I was the first person outside the Lindbergh family to be given the honor and privilege of viewing the 1931 Lindbergh home movies, which run about 15 minutes. And the major focus of these home movies is the baby. This baby was a peach. And this baby, he lost his life at the age of 20 months and endured a horrible kidnapping and murder. This child deserves to be portrayed accurately.
- [17:03]
Joe Nocera
In 2012, Zorn wrote a book laying out his case for Noel being the kidnapper. It was called Cemetery John, the undiscovered mastermind of the Lindbergh kidnapping. Did it convince me and Poppy? Sorry, Robert, it did not. Though to be fair, Publishers Weekly said it makes a strong case to give Zorn his due, though it's quite possible that he cracked one part of the mystery which is that the baby had been put in a burlap sack and was likely lowered down from the window using a pulley system. Remember, the ladder was on the right side of the windowsill. Noel was left handed, so he may have been the one on the ladder. Zorn argues he was, in other words, Hauptman's missing accomplice. There's one other thing I think Zorn is completely right about. There was nothing physically wrong with little Lindy on the standard. Betty Gow testified that he was in perfect health. And Ann Lindbergh, in various letters that she published years later, makes him sound like any normal 20 month old child. This is from a letter she wrote to Lindbergh's mother three weeks before the kidnapping.
- [18:21]
Ann Lindbergh (quoted)
C. Jr. Is trying to stand on his head and look at me upside down through his legs. C. Junior talks a great deal more. He says everything after you. The baby can wind up your music box by himself. He is more interested in the elephant and says something that sounds like elephant, but he prefers the gray pussycat with the flat tail to take to bed at night.
- [18:46]
Joe Nocera
So much for the theory that Lindbergh did it because his son was a cripple of some sort. The other person we spoke to who also believes Lindbergh had nothing to do with it was Robert Cahill. In earlier episodes, he helped walk us through various aspects of the kidnapping. Now it's time for him to give us his view, which is, are you sitting down for this? The prosecution got it right. I asked him why he decided to write a book about the kidnapping.
- [19:17]
Robert Cahill
I was going to go to law school and I thought, you know what? This might be a little, nice little hobby. I'll go down and I'll look at the original documents and find out for myself. Twenty years later my book comes out. And one of the big reasons for my book was so people wouldn't have to go through all the crap that I did trying to find out what really happened, because there's so much evidence and so much documentation on this.
- [19:37]
Joe Nocera
The book was called Haltman's Ladder. A step by step analysis of the Lindbergh kidnapping.
- [19:44]
Robert Cahill
Put it simply. I believe that he put the ladder up, he climbed up and he kidnapped a baby, likely put it in a burlap sack. I say that because there was a burlap sack found at the gravesite. Climbed down the ladder under both his weight and the weight of the baby, broke as the way I've described before, and unfortunately the child died. And I think he panicked and took off and then got rid of the body as quickly as he could some distance away.
- [20:08]
Joe Nocera
How could Hauptman have known which window was the baby's?
- [20:12]
Robert Cahill
The house was not finished in that. There were no curtains on the windows, no drapes. Anybody with a pair of field glasses could have observed the house from the woods. Earlier in that day, Ann Lindbergh had taken a walk. And she had walked right past the nursery. And Betty Gow had held the child up to see his mother and wave and so forth. Anybody observing that would have been able to see that without difficulty.
- [20:34]
Joe Nocera
Next question. Did Houtman have an accomplice?
- [20:37]
Robert Cahill
There's no evidence to prove that there was an accomplice. Could somebody have been sitting in the car?
- [20:42]
Joe Nocera
Sure.
- [20:43]
Robert Cahill
I can't rule it out, but I can't make the conclusion.
- [20:46]
Joe Nocera
Do the ransom notes point to Hoffman's guilt?
- [20:48]
Robert Cahill
When you read the letter, it sounds like somebody who spoke German, naturally, and was trying to write English. The really interesting thing is that the more difficult words were spelled correctly and the easier words were not. Leading the police to conclude that probably the person used a German to English to German dictionary to look up more difficult words. But other words where maybe he felt more comfortable with were misspelled. So they concluded right away that the person who wrote this was likely German.
- [21:16]
Joe Nocera
Do you think Condon could have been involved in the kidnapping?
- [21:19]
Robert Cahill
I've found no evidence that shows me that Condon had anything to do it. He was a local busybody.
- [21:24]
Joe Nocera
What about the fact that Condon didn't identify Haltman in the lineup?
- [21:28]
Robert Cahill
If you accept what Condon offered in his trial testimony, then there's no doubt it's Haltman. The biggest problem with Condon is why didn't he identify Haltman when he went in for the lineup? He says in his book that he knew right away it was. And then he gives a story about, well, I didn't think it was fair. Nonsense. Had nothing to do with him thinking it was fair. And this is speculation to some extent. But my reading of it and my conclusion of it is has always been. I've always thought that Condon did recognize him but didn't just want to say, that's the guy, and then walk out. Because then, well, okay, he'll come back to trial, but where's the glory for him?
- [22:07]
Joe Nocera
There's also that key clue, the chisel.
- [22:10]
Robert Cahill
As for why he brought the chisel, that's all guesswork. I think it was more likely to force a window if he had to, which. There goes the idea in my mind of an inside job. If you accept that because the window was not locked, it couldn't lock that particular one. And if he knew that, why would he bring the chisel?
- [22:26]
Joe Nocera
Does he think there's even a possibility that Lindbergh was involved in the kidnapping and maybe even the death of his son?
- [22:34]
Robert Cahill
The idea that Lindbergh did it is asinine. It shows Boyd research. Here's the thing. Was Lindbergh interested in eugenics? Yes. And you know what relevance that has on the case? Nada. Nothing. I don't have any respect for people who write that Lindbergh did it. I just don't. Okay. It's like saying Lindbergh still believed in Santa Claus. Well, that must mean that Santa Claus came and took the child. It's the same illogical jump in logic. I don't have any respect for people who write that Lindbergh did it. I just don't.
- [23:03]
Joe Nocera
But the clincher for Cahill is the ladder. To him, the ladder proves without a doubt that Houtman did it.
- [23:12]
Robert Cahill
It is an unusual ladder in that it is not the type of ladder you would use for construction. However, it is a ladder that is built to be relatively lightweight, that collapses in on itself so that it can be carried around relatively easy. And the gaps in the rungs would be no good for me, I'm only 5 foot 8. But for Haltman, who was much taller and had long legs, it worked for him, it was cleverly designed.
- [23:37]
Joe Nocera
Naturally, Poppy and I decided we had to see the ladder for ourselves. It's held on display at the New Jersey State Police Museum. Although at his trial, Hauptman claimed that no decent carpenter would ever build a ladder like that, that was clearly not the case.
- [23:56]
Poppy Damon (or another commentator)
I have to say the two things that strike me is it definitely is a very professionally made ladder. I mean, like, I get that it's made from scrap, but it's not. I can see how it's got thought behind it. There's bits sectioned out. It's actually quite complicated that it folds into three pieces. It's not just a piece of shit that he tried to claim later.
- [24:14]
Joe Nocera
That is very true. It's a weirdly complex piece. It's a three section wooden ladder built from four different types of wood. But it also had a hook at the top that some thought might be used to latch onto the window. At Hoffman's trial, prosecutors made much of the fact that a piece of the latter, the infamous Rael 16, came from Haltman's attic. Cahill found that awfully convincing.
- [24:43]
Robert Cahill
There cannot be a rational argument that he wasn't involved because how do you explain that rail 16 came from his attic when. And scientifically, it clearly does.
- [24:51]
Joe Nocera
And he told us Haltmann left the ladder behind for the simplest of reasons.
- [24:57]
Robert Cahill
It broke when somebody went down the ladder and was carrying a sandbag that approximated the weight of the child. The replica ladder broke in the same location that the actual kidnap ladder did. At that point, you know, with a loud crack, you don't know if somebody heard it. And so I think at that point, Altman took off.
- [25:18]
Joe Nocera
There's one thing that could put all of this to rest. A DNA test of the ransom notes, particularly the one left on the window ledge that night, that could only have been left by the kidnapper. The person who's trying to make that happen is Kurt, perhaps the lawyer who first got interested in the law. Because of his fascination with Hauptman's trial, he's been embroiled in litigation with the New Jersey State Police Museum, trying to force officials to test the DNA. So far, he has not succeeded. But the fight's not over yet. The legal battle has actually been going on since 2022. Before he sued, Kurt tried to persuade the state police to voluntarily do DNA testing on the ransom notes. But those conversations went nowhere. DNA testing of the ransom notes is an idea that had been floating around for quite some time.
- [26:18]
Kurt (Lawyer)
In 2003, there was a woman from Florida who asked the state of New Jersey to do a DNA analysis of the evidence that went nowhere. The state of New Jersey said, no, thank you. In the mid 2000s, it came up again. One or two people asked, you know, hey, how come we're not going to do DNA testing of this? PBS and NOVA did a documentary in 2010, 2011, where they asked the same thing. They were shot down with no answer and no explanation at all.
- [26:46]
Joe Nocera
Kurt then asked the New Jersey Attorney General about it.
- [26:49]
Kurt (Lawyer)
During COVID like most of us, I had a lot of extra time on my hands, and I started making calls and looking at things again from a new perspective. I've known the New Jersey attorney general since 2016. I'd consider us at least acquaintances, if not friends. I reached out to him directly, and I thought, let me just ask him directly. Why can't. Well, first of all, can I do some DNA testing if I get the right people involved? He said, let me get back to you. Many, many, many months go by. I don't hear anything back. Hey, just curious.
- [27:21]
Robert Zorn
Yeah.
- [27:22]
Kurt (Lawyer)
No, Kurt, it's not going to happen.
- [27:24]
Joe Nocera
So in September 2022, he filed his first lawsuit with a Researcher named Margaret Sudhaker as the plaintiff. A woman who'd spent a decade volunteering at the very museum she was now suing.
- [27:38]
Kurt (Lawyer)
Margaret Sudhakar is a senior citizen and spent many years volunteering over a decade of her life helping to inventory and archive the state police files of over 225,000 pieces of paper. She spent most Tuesdays there for over 10 years.
- [27:55]
Joe Nocera
Four months later, the case got thrown out on a technicality and the appeal failed too. But Kurt was able to file a new lawsuit in April 2025 because three other interested parties reached out to Kurt to be part of a new suit as plaintiffs. Kurt's brief ran to 200 pages. That one lost at trial in July 2025. Kurt's appeal is going to be heard sometime in 2026. Poppy has been to one of the court dates and it's often a large crowd.
- [28:27]
Kurt (Lawyer)
There's no reason why the times we're living in today we should not be able to re examine older cases to see if justice happened. In the interest of transparency for the public and for the history books.
- [28:42]
Joe Nocera
A big part of Kurt's argument is that in 1981, then Governor Brendan Byrne ordered all the Lindbergh evidence to be made available to the public. DNA testing didn't become possible until the mid-80s. Kurt's says that if DNA testing had been around when Byrne signed his order, it surely would have been done because DNA testing is in the spirit of that order. By the way, Governor Byrne personally believed Haltman was involved, but acted with an accomplice. The state, meanwhile, has argued that DNA testing would damage the envelopes. Kurt told me that's laughable.
- [29:25]
Kurt (Lawyer)
First of all, there's 10 stamps where it's really easy to take a little needle and swipe underneath the stamp. And it's really easy to get under some of this paper, which some of it's not even attached together. It wouldn't even damage or hurt anything. And they just said no.
- [29:40]
Joe Nocera
I asked Kurt what he thought DNA testing would show.
- [29:44]
Kurt (Lawyer)
I think it's more likely than not that at least one of those pieces of paper does not have Houtman's DNA on them.
- [29:50]
Joe Nocera
But would DNA testing end the conspiracies? Kurt gave a firm maybe the argument
- [29:59]
Kurt (Lawyer)
that people are going to say you're never going to be happy is to me, falls on deaf ears. Because this was one of these things that it's to me the greatest criminal soap opera in US history. There were so many characters in it, there are so many odd things that happened to it, and it's frankly a shame that the last probably 40, 50, 60 years of Americans who didn't live through it don't really know much about it, because it's such a fascinating story. So the argument that I would make there is that I think that the only way to get real justice here is to find out, out of these 225,000 pieces of paper, the 15 or so that might have tangible DNA should be examined, should be tested. And if Houtman's DNA is on those 15 pieces of paper, great. I think that the group that I've known now for 20 plus years that have studied every single facet of this case, I think they would be very happy that justice happened, that this thing is probably done.
- [31:01]
Joe Nocera
Here's Nick Gillespie.
- [31:03]
Nick Gillespie
We're always at a stage where the science now is finally perfect and good, whereas in the past it was hazy and bad. But now we had fingerprinting and now we have DNA, and it's perfect. Except in the case that brought DNA testing and its absolute superiority to anything else. And its infallibility is all built around the fact that, like DNA testing, throw it out, because it's always taken under bad circumstances. Same with fingerprints, with the ladder and the floorboards. It is kind of like handwriting analysis and other things like the same. People can look at this and plausibly come to very different conclusions. So, you know, we're constantly shifting in and out of the certitude that science will bring, and it'll project us to a place of pure information and pure justice and all of that. And it always is, you know, it's just eroding. The more we look at it, it just disappears.
- [32:00]
Joe Nocera
The New Jersey State Police Museum shut off access to all the Lindbergh evidence despite Governor Byrne's executive order. It is now reopened to researchers, but by appointment only. What causes people to become wrapped up in conspiracy theories with Lindbergh? A lot of it, no doubt, is due to the fact that the official story is so full of gaps. But there's also something else going on, something rooted in the American psyche. Mariah Fredericks, the author of the Lindbergh Nanny, is another person who thinks Lindbergh was not involved. She thinks all these Lindbergh conspiracies are simply a product of our time.
- [32:44]
Mariah Fredericks
Certainly a desire to grapple with the evil side of eugenics, I think, has led people to really want to delve into that side of Limberg's personality. You know, the reason that I argue against Lindbergh being guilty is not because I have Any interest in redeeming the reputation of Charles Lindbergh or minimizing or normalizing what he did and said. It's because I feel like we're becoming sloppy in how we process information that we're given. And we're not asking ourselves, what is the source? Has this been well documented? And as we see with recent events in accusing immigrants in Ohio of eating pets, people are becoming quite shameless about the stories that they will just simply put out there as part of the narrative. And I think it is important to really look at the actual factual evidence and not just say, yes, this does fit into my vision of good and evil and how it works in the world.
- [33:58]
Nick Gillespie
I think the belief in conspiracy theories is an essential way of making sense of a world where horrible things happen.
- [34:07]
Joe Nocera
That's Nick Gillespie again.
- [34:09]
Nick Gillespie
And, you know, the big issue of this is with jfk, how could a nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald topple, you know, this grand champion of everything good about America and everything good about the Cold War and everything positive? We can't live with that thought. And so we look for conspiracies to explain what is otherwise obvious but tragic or very disturbing and aimless in life.
- [34:35]
Joe Nocera
His wife, Sarah Siskind, has a few thoughts as well.
- [34:38]
Sarah Siskind
Who doesn't hate their dad? You know, Lindbergh, Terrible dude. We gotta tear him down. It's like the loss of childhood innocence. It's like the perfect Shakespearean drama. The ogre father, you know, who kills his children. I think it's, you know, it's just. It's a manifestation of our own internal damage.
- [34:58]
Nick Gillespie
So it's like the Oedipus complex on a, you know, cosmological level. I think there's also something about conspiracy theory, particularly in today's world, where everybody is a conspiracist. Nobody believes. Things just happen. I mean, that's the problem with conspiracy theories, right? At some point, you have to call it a day and get on with your life. And the people who don't, you know, end up being stuck. And depending on who they are and where they're from and what they're hiding from, they might get stuck on Lindbergh or the Rosenbergs or OJ or jfk.
- [35:36]
Joe Nocera
So I suppose the time has come for Poppy and I to come clean. Poppy lines up with Richard Cahill. She has come to believe that Houtman was the sole kidnapper.
- [35:47]
Poppy Damon
Houtman had the ransom money, and to me, that's the only concrete thing you can say. So we know, at the very least, he was the extortionist Whether he was the kidnapper is harder to prove, but I do think that it's the most likely. And to be really honest, it's hard for me to get into any camp that posits a conspiracy that doesn't have more evidence.
- [36:10]
Joe Nocera
Poppy has another reason for wanting to believe in Houtman's guilt.
- [36:14]
Poppy Damon
And to be honest, I ended up thinking that Bruno did it because part of me can sleep easier at night if the right man was executed. And I don't believe in the death penalty. But I do think that I hope that it was him. And I ultimately think that Cahill kind of had an answer for everything.
- [36:34]
Joe Nocera
Me, I came away convinced that there's simply no way one person could have done this by himself. The likelihood that someone working in a Lindbergh household was involved is high on my list of possibilities. Remember, the investigators assumed that they were looking for a team of kidnappers before they stumbled upon Hauptman. Once they had him, the game was how quickly could they get him to the electric chair to satisfy the public's thirst for revenge? Was Lindbergh involved? Given how inexplicable so many of his actions were in the days and weeks after the kidnapping, I don't think it's a crazy notion. Though I must say, the idea that he killed his baby in Dr. Carrel's lab is a bridge too far for me. Complex cases aren't just full of evidence. They're full of noise, red herrings, coincidences, human error. Things that look like threads but lead nowhere. And the more you dig, the more you disturb the ground looking for the root, the more the knotweed spreads. The Lindbergh case will never be fully resolved, not to everyone's satisfaction. The doubt that surrounds it is baked into so much of the way we think about American history now, and that is unlikely to change anytime soon. Conspiracies was written by me, Joe Nocera and Poppy Damon. The producer was Poppy Damon. Original music, including the theme song, was composed by Toby Matamob. Sound design, scoring and mixing was by John Scott. Our wonderful assistant producers were Bobby Moriarty, Monica Ricks, and Adam Feldman.
- [38:33]
Noah Bernstein (Fact Checker)
Full disclosure, I am not a conspiracy theory guy, so I feel like I have to say it's Houtman. But even I will say I do wonder how he did all of that by himself.
- [38:42]
Joe Nocera
Fact checking was by Noah Bernstein. I think it was Haltman and Fish in a group, and I think Haltman's the fall guy. The series was commissioned by Kieran Noonan and Alex Chitty, the head of audio and video at the Free Press is Jana Kozlowski.
- [38:56]
Conspiracy Theorist 1
I don't have a theory on exactly what happened, but I think Charles Lindbergh was involved.
- [39:01]
Joe Nocera
Additional editorial support came from our team at the Free Press. Kara Boyer. I think the mob did it. Frannie Block.
- [39:08]
Conspiracy Theorist 1
I think somebody in that house had to be involved. And frankly, I think Lindbergh was involved. One of the thoughts I had was his wife had an affair later in their relationship. What if she had one before? And maybe Little Lindy wasn't actually Lindbergh's baby.
- [39:23]
Emily Yoffe
Emily Yoffe I am haunted by the fact that Charles Lindbergh, a brave aviator adored by millions, was a prankster who once played the terrible prank of hiding his baby and pretending it was missing. Could Lindbergh have done it again, only this time it resulted in the tragic death of Little Lindy and spawned a cover up?
- [39:45]
Joe Nocera
Lucy Biggers I think Bruno did it
- [39:48]
Conspiracy Theorist 1
and probably got help from someone on the inside.
- [39:50]
Emily Yoffe
Maybe the butler.
- [39:51]
Joe Nocera
Catherine Morissette.
- [39:52]
Mariah Fredericks
There's a reason people say follow the money and so I think it's probably Isadore Fish, the man with the money and Jeff Lubin.
- [40:00]
Nick Gillespie
Lindbergh was involved.
- [40:03]
Joe Nocera
Studio operations by Avery Block and Kobe Quaino. Our actors were Stephen Gay, Wayne Legatt, Robert Kemp, Hannah Kent and Kate Dulcich. Much of our research came from from the books we cited throughout. We provide a reading list in the show Notes. If you want to hear more, head over to the CBS Postmortem podcast where you can hear me talk about the case and about the making of this show. And one other thing, if you like this podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber to the Free Press and leaving us a five star review.
- [40:41]
Robert Zorn
It.