TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1930s) Lindbergh Kidnapping </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1930s Highlights </history> <link 00026><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Lindbergh Kidnapping </hdr> <body> [One of the understandable, if not admirable, responses to unemployment and destitution was a life of crime. Though national myth has it that the most notorious criminals were good-hearted but desperate country boys who robbed banks, a more widespread and truly despicable crime was kidnapping. The snatching of National Hero Charles Lindbergh's son from the family home in rural New Jersey was not the first or last such case in the 1930s. But it was by far the most publicized, and public revulsion over the crime led to passage of a law making kidnapping across state lines a federal crime and permitting F.B.I. help to local police in such cases.] (March 14, 1932) The last person known to have seen 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was his nurse, a dark haired, light-footed little Scotch girl of 26 named Betty Gow. Nurse Gow immigrated to the U.S. in 1928, has been in the Lindbergh's employ over a year. At approximately 8:30 o'clock one evening last week she went to his nursery, tucked Charles Augustus, who had been ailing with a cold, into his crib and went down to the servants' quarters to have a chat with the Lindbergh's butler, Oliver Whedtley and his wife. At 10 o'clock Nurse Gow went to the nursery. The baby was not in his crib. She hurried downstairs and notified the parents. All three ran back upstairs. The first thing they did was to inspect the floor to see if the child had crawled somewhere. He had not. One more look around the room disclosed muddy footprints, an open window-screen and a note on the sill below. The Hopewell police arrived not later than 10:30, for by 10:50 a teletyped message went humming through the length of the State with the news that the first-born of the nation's No. 1 hero had been kidnapped. Instantly an impregnable wall of interrogation, prying eyes and blue steel was thrown around New Jersey's borders as city police and State troopers of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania began stopping cars at all bridge-heads, ferries, and at the mouth of the sub-Hudson Holland Tunnel. By morning a gigantic posse of police, troopers, U.S. Department of Justice operatives, Coast Guardsmen, American Legionaries, Quiet Birdmen, civilians was combing an area from Boston to Baltimore. There had never been such an intensive search party since Booth shot Lincoln. There are many U.S. children whose parents could afford to pay rich ransom for their return were they kidnapped. But no kidnappee in the land could arouse so much public indignation against the kidnapping racket as Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. [A ransom of $50,000 was duly turned over in a Bronx, N.Y. cemetery, but the baby was not returned. No suspect was apprehended for more than two years, until the marked ransom bills began to turn up.] (May 23, 1932) If a Negro from Marshal's Corner, N.J. had not decided to get out of his truck and relieve himself in the woods a mile from Hopewell last week, a half-dozen accredited negotiators and a hemisphere's police would still be looking for kidnapped, murdered Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. At a point 75 ft. from the edge of the concrete Princeton-Hopewell Road, traveled by the child's friends, kin and every official in New Jersey during the 72-day search, William Allen noticed something round and bright protruding from a bound of rubble leaves. It looked like a human skull. It was a human skull. On it and nearby were wisps of yellow hair. Careful examination indicated that the baby had been clubbed to death shortly after being snatched from his crib on the night of March 1. The badly decomposed remains, clad only in a flannel stomach band and an undershirt, lay face down in a shallow depression, possible a hastily scratched grave. On one side was a tall oak. On another was a stump. Through the underbrush 75 ft. back ran the special telephone line strung during the world-wide search. The head showed two fractures, a round hole in the right temple. One leg and both hands were missing. (October 1, 1934) Detectives working on the Lindbergh case had carefully constructed a working model of the appearance, habits and character of the criminal they sought. From the ransom letters and the note left in the empty nursery on Sourland Mountain, psychiatrists had deduced that the man was German, or at least Teutonic. His English was largely phonetic and he used "gute" for "good." He also appeared to be some sort of mechanic: one ransom note had a careful working drawing of the sort of box in which he wanted the money delivered. The ladder by which he climbed to the Lindbergh nursery was of careful, home-made construction, and a New York City toxicologist, examining ransom money as it came in, found emery dust and glycerine esters. Hence the man was likely to be a carpenter or machinist who ground his own tools. Soon after the ransom money began to appear, New York newspapers agreed to lull the criminal's fears by withholding the news. With growing confidence, the criminal increased the rate of circulation. It was evident that he was active in the Bronx and Yorkville sections of New York. A police map showed each spot where ransom money turned up. In a cheap, residential section of The Bronx one day last week 75 concealed agents, city detectives and State troopers watched a man come out of a small stucco house, cross a lane to a frame garage. He backed his black sedan into the sunlight and 75 hearts skipped a beat when the license plate shone with the numerals 4U-13-41. Plainclothesmen followed the car a few blocks, forced it to the curb. "Why am I being stopped?" asked the driver. He had a German accent. A detective tapped him for weapons, found a "hot" $20 gold certificate. "Where did you get this?" "I've been hoarding...." "How long have you had this?" "A few years, gentlemen...." "What do you know about the Lindbergh kidnapping?" "I? I know nothing at all about the Lindbergh kidnapping gentlemen. I am a decent man. I live near here with my wife and child. I am a carpenter, gentlemen." Bruno Richard Hauptmann fitted the image of the Lindbergh kidnapper almost to a T. He had the flat face, the pointed nose, the small mouth. He weighed 180 lb. He had worked in The Bronx lumber yard whence came the scantlings in the kidnapper's ladder. He was indeed, a carpenter. Under the floor and in the walls of his garage was found $13,750 more of the ransom money. (February 25, 1935) Bruno Richard Hauptmann, manacled between two guards, managed to walk from the Flemington courtroom after the death sentence had been passed on him last week. But as he was being led into his cell his knees gave way. The steely-eyed, German ex-convict crumpled, fell on his face. The guards dragged him to his cot. As he lay there, he broke down for the first time since his indictment last October for will-fully killing the Lindbergh baby. "Oh, my God," he sobbed, "I feel awful!" The crowd outside the jail felt fine. Several thousand fold, hysterical as lynchers, held carnival. The bars of the Union Hotel were running full blast. From time to time a tipsy woman would yell: Kill Hauptmann! Electrocute him! When the actual death sentence was announced, the crowd seemed to be of two minds: some screamed joyfully for blood while others hissed and stoned out several courthouse windows. But the world at large, as heard through its Press and Personages, was satisfied that justice had been done. Crowds might scream with excitement and bitter old ladies might clap vengefully when they heard the verdict but there were still plenty of people left who shared doubts. Night before the decision, such a good guesser as Walter Winchell had predicted acquittal in his broadcast. Newspaper interview of men-in-the-street by no means resulted in unanimous opinions as to Hauptmann's full guilt. For plain people, for taxi-drivers, truckmen, "no-collar" workers the case still had its "if" and "buts," regardless of the verdict and the Press's self-righteous applause. [After a lengthy appeals, heavily fraught with politics, Hauptmann was executed in 1936.] </body> </article> </text>