In 1924, Richard Albert Loeb and Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr., two wealthy University of Chicago students who fancied themselves intellectuals, abducted and murdered a 14-year-old Chicago boy simply to prove that they were smarter than authorities and could pull off the perfect crime. The trial of Leopold and Loeb for what the press at the time called the “crime of the century” became a media sensation, inspiring great outrage when famous lawyer Clarence Darrow’s impassioned 12-hour summation in their defense saved them from the electric chair. Besides Leopold and Loeb, most headline-grabbing crime in those years had to do with underworld gangsters, much of it revolving around the bootlegging of liquor during Prohibition. Nine years after the Leopold and Loeb verdict, however, the Wall Street Crash marked the start of the Great Depression, and as authorities struggled to enforce the Volstead Act during a time when Americans needed a drink more than ever, support for Prohibition waned. Shortly after taking office, FDR famously said “I think this would be a good time to have a beer,” and not long after signed a bill permitting the manufacture and sale of beer and wine. Bootlegging as a lucrative criminal enterprise had been on the decline for years as enforcement of Prohibition grew more and more unpopular. But at the same time, more and more Americans were becoming jobless and drawn to criminal endeavors. So what lucrative crime could these desperate individuals pursue? The answer came from the famous Crime of the Century: kidnapping, but for ransom, not for the thrill of getting away with murder. An epidemic of kidnapping developed in the late 1920s and early 1930s that was eventually recognized as “a Rising Menace to the Nation” by the New York Times. This forgotten backdrop is detailed in David Stout’s The Kidnap Years. One metropolitan police chief collected statistics from all over the nation and learned that in 1931 alone, there had been nearly 300 confirmed kidnappings, and of course likely many more, since it was typical for victims’ families not to inform the police of such crimes, as kidnappers usually instructed them. There had been famous cases of abduction and murder during the preceding years, of Marion Parker in California in 1927, and Grace Budd in New York in 1928, the latter killed by the notorious serial murderer Albert Fish. But in 1931, it seemed to become a standard business model. Among the biggest cases that year were the ransoming of the 13-year-old heir to the Anheuser-Busch beer fortune on New Year’s Eve 1930, the abduction of prominent St. Louis surgeon Isaac Kelley in April, and the kidnapping successful fashion designer Nell Donnelly in December. In March of 1932, a year before FDR would take office, a spate of kidnappings occurred. On March 2nd, the son of a wealthy contractor in Ohio was snatched, and on the 14th, a Peoria, Illinois, doctor was kidnapped by a crew of plotters consisting of a petty criminal, a Sunday school teacher, and a former mayoral candidate. Certainly one or both of these kidnappings would have captured the public’s interest had not they been so dramatically overshadowed by another kidnapping that had occurred on the first of March: the abduction of an American hero’s baby boy right out of his nursery, a case that would quickly take the title of “Crime of the Century” away from Leopold and Loeb, becoming a media sensation unlike any mystery before it, and spawning numerous pet theories and alternative views of what happened even after the crime had apparently been solved.

A full accounting of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, called by journalist H.L. Mencken “the biggest story since the Resurrection,” requires first an understanding of Charles Lindbergh’s celebrity, which itself requires a general understanding of his accomplishments as a pilot. Let us therefore begin with a brief description of Charles Lindbergh’s career and life preceding the events in question. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, nicknamed Slim, was a tall and slender young man of 25 when he earned his great fame. The son of a Minnesota congressman, he had been an Army Air Service cadet and later an airmail pilot. It was during this service that he began to dream about being the first person to fly non-stop across the Atlantic. For years, since 1919, there had been a standing prize offered: twenty-five grand would go to the first pilot who flew an airplane specifically non-stop from New York to Paris. Numerous trans-atlantic flights had already been accomplished by dirigibles and by planes if they flew the shorter distance between Newfoundland and Ireland or made a stop at the Azores on the way to Europe, but no non-stop plane flights from New York to France. That was actually impossible, many said, due the weight of the fuel that would be required to travel that distance without stopping, and supporting this assertion was the well-publicized failure of Paul-René Fonck, whose plane was so weighed down that it crashed on take-off. Indeed, there were several such crashes, a few of which resulted in the deaths of pilots. Nevertheless, Charles Lindbergh believed it could be done, with the construction of a custom aircraft. It would have to be a single engine plane in order to reduce weight, and additional fuel tanks would need to be built into the nose, which would block his view from the cockpit, requiring him to use a periscope to see ahead of him. He managed to get the aircraft built with the promise of paying back his financers with his prize money, and on May 20th, 1927, he took off in the custom-designed plane, which he had christened the Spirit of St. Louis. Already the press was following his attempt, and as he flew, listeners heard breathless reports of his progress on the radio. The next day, by the time he triumphantly landed in France, greeted by a cheering crowd, he was already world-famous. His life changed instantly, becoming a series of parades and parties, encounters with royalty and movie stars, and constant badgering by news reporters. More than just a celebrity, though, Lindbergh was thought of as an American hero, winning respect for U.S. aviators during a time when their achievements were largely overshadowed by Europeans. He was knighted in Belgium and awarded numerous different honors, trophies, and medals, including the Congressional Medal of Honor, which had to be awarded by a Special Act of Congress since it typically was only awarded for acts of valor in battle. Lindbergh commenced touring Europe and then the U.S., showing off his plane and waving to adoring crowds. The interest of the press only increased, and as he was an eligible bachelor, much attention was given to his personal life and romantic interests. When in 1929 he married Anne Spencer Morrow, daughter of a U.S. ambassador to Mexico, they had to conduct the ceremony in secret to preserve their privacy. In 1930, when Anne bore his son, Charles Jr., and the newspapers began giving the boy nicknames like Baby Lindy and the Eaglet, they finally decided that they’d had enough of life in the spotlight, and they bought 400 acres outside the little township of Hopewell, New Jersey, about 14 miles north of Trenton, thinking that the distance from the hubbub of the city might afford them more privacy. Little did they know they were about to be thrust into the spotlight far more even than before, and for horrific reason.

Lindbergh posing next to the custom-built *Spirit of St. Louis.*

On the night of Tuesday, March 1st, 1932, the Lindberghs were at their nearly complete new home in Hopewell, having come to stay for a weekend getaway. Present that evening in the two-story, 10-room stone house secluded in the woods overlooking Hopewell Valley were Lindbergh himself; Anne and little Charles Jr., who both were getting over colds; Oliver and Elsie Whately, who served as the family’s butler and cook, respectively; and Betty Gow, a young nursemaid recently engaged by the Lindberghs to look after Charles Jr. Because of the baby’s sniffles, when it had been time to put him to bed, his mother rubbed him with Vick’s Vaporub, and then she and Betty pulled two shirts over him to keep him warm, one of them a flannel garment Betty had hastily cut out and sewn together, before buttoning him into his onesie sleeping suit, placing him in his crib and pinning his blankets down to keep him well tucked in. At around 9:00 p.m., Charles would later recall hearing a clatter and assuming that an orange crate had fallen to the kitchen floor. At around 10:00 p.m., while Charles was in his library and Anne preparing for bed, Betty Gow went to check on Charles Jr. and, not hearing his breathing, she approached his crib and found he was not in it. She rushed madly to find Anne, to see if she’d taken the baby, and finding she hadn’t, she ran downstairs to see if the child with his father. Answering that he did not have the baby, and sensing Gow’s urgency, he went to a closet to find his rifle. They searched the nursery and, experiencing every parent’s true nightmare, found it empty. Charles noticed specifically that the blanket was still pinned down, such that the baby could not have gotten out on his own, and he further saw that the southeast window was up and its shutter open. That’s when his eyes fell to the sill, where he saw an envelope that he immediately suspected was a ransom note. “They’ve stolen our baby!” he cried. Anne ran to another window and peered outside. She thought for a moment that she heard the cry of her child, but Elsie Whately assured her it was only the wind. Charles warned everyone not to touch the envelope, as he wanted it fingerprinted first, and went outside to search the road, where he saw nothing. By 10:40 p.m., Hopewell police officers responded to their telephone call, and by flashlight, the first of the evidence was discovered: footprints in the mud, two deep impressions as from a ladder, and some 75 feet from the house, the ladder itself, a homemade affair separated into three sections. Lastly, a chisel was discovered beneath the window, a tool presumably used to force open the shutters. Upon closer examination of the ladder the next day, it was clear that it had been crudely made, though ingeniously designed so that it could be disassembled and fit into an automobile. Indeed a set of tire tracks had been discovered east of the property, but with no clear tread pattern. What’s more, the side rails of the ladder had split, causing Charles to suspect that the noise he had heard had been the kidnapper’s ladder breaking as he descended with the child. Other than these things, the biggest piece of evidence was the note, which demanded $50,000 in certain denominations and stated that the kidnapper would be in contact within a few days with the location to which they were to deliver it. The letter contained numerous spelling errors, and it concluded with a strange circular symbol with interlocking rings and holes punched into the paper. The kidnapper indicated that this symbol would appear on all future correspondence so that the Lindberghs would know the communication was truly from their son’s captor.

The house in Hopewell that the Lindberghs had hoped would be a peaceful refuge had turned into a circus. Police photographers flashed photographs well into the night outside as well as in the nursery, where they discovered some mud presumably tracked in by the kidnapper. And by the morning, word of the crime having reached the press overnight, their property was swarmed by reporters and even just interested onlookers. Before police were able to control the growing crowd, it is very likely that evidence not noticed in the dark of night was destroyed by their careless trampling the next day. Police efforts were swift and thorough, though. They questioned neighbors, notified hospitals, established roadblocks and checkpoints, and rounded up known criminals and suspicious individuals across New Jersey. No reliable leads turned up, but false leads abounded. Many were the reports of mysterious cars near the Lindbergh estate, or drivers asking directions to their home, or conversations about the baby being overheard, but nothing panned out. Likewise, forensic examination of the evidence yielded nothing. No fingerprints could be lifted from the note, the ladder, or the chisel, and just as no tread pattern was discernible in the tire tracks discovered, so too no tread pattern was visible in the footprints, but as the pattern of some kind of woven fabric could be observed, they suspected the kidnapper had wrapped his shoes in cloth. Concerned that the authorities, whom the kidnapper had stated must not be involved, could make some misstep that would result in harm to his son, Charles Lindbergh insisted that he be in charge of the investigation, an unusual demand, but considering who he was and the extraordinary nature of the case, one to which police investigators agreed. Lindbergh wanted to make contact with underworld figures, thinking they might be able to discover the kidnapper’s identity. Indeed, he brought a local racketeer into the investigation who suggested that the kidnappers were associated with Al Capone’s Chicago mafia organization, and there was even some communication with Capone himself, who was in jail at the time for tax evasion, and teased that he could help find the baby if only he were released. Detectives were doubtful, however, believing that they were dealing with an amateur kidnapper, as a professional would have demanded a far larger ransom. When these efforts also gleaned nothing, it seemed they could only wait for the kidnapper to mail them the next communication. The problem was that the Lindberghs had begun receiving mass quantities of mail, including useless leads from people who thought they were helping, mystical accounts of dreams and psychic visions that were likewise worthless, and new ransom letters that were clearly phony, lacking the kidnapper’s signature symbol. Lindbergh took to placing prominent statements in the newspaper, appealing to the kidnapper to begin communications. On March 4th, the next genuine ransom letter finally came. In it, the kidnapper, who as in the first letter used the collective first-person pronoun “we,” suggesting more than one person’s involvement, expressed anger at the Lindberghs having involved police and made the kidnapping public and demanded an additional $20,000, saying they were forced to involve “another person.” Not only was this letter signed with the unique symbol, it contained many of the same misspellings as the letter left on the nursery windowsill. After that, another letter was sent to the Lindbergh’s attorney, this one demanding some go-between to ensure there would be no police interference in their communications, and in a message published in the papers, the Lindberghs named two bootleggers and speakeasy owners as their representatives. Lindbergh had made their acquaintance during his underworld inquiries, and when he named them as his representatives, thinking the kidnapper would be more comfortable dealing with fellow criminals, it sparked a great deal of public criticism. When no word came from the kidnapper for more than a week, Lindbergh feared that he had made a terrible misstep and that communication had totally broken down.

The ransom note, with the kidnapper’s symbol, left in the nursery on the night of the kidnapping.

In the Bronx, meanwhile, an elderly retired grade school principal named John Condon had been following the news. He revered Charles Lindbergh and thought the crime a terrible disgrace, and after the furor over the intermediaries Lindbergh had named, he took it upon himself to offer his own services as intermediary. Condon was known to be a hardworking educator, and a patriotic and religious fellow, to the point that some thought him an arrogant and haughty busybody, making a show of his principles. In a letter published in the Bronx Home News, he made the offer and sweetened the deal by saying he would add one thousand dollars of his own money to the ransom. Many thought he was attention seeking by sticking his nose in the Lindbergh case. His detractors were quite as surprised as he was when the Lindbergh kidnapper sent him a letter accepting his proposition, enclosing another letter for Condon to deliver to Lindbergh. When Condon telephoned Lindbergh, who had him open and read the enclosed letter, Lindbergh did not seem to take it very seriously until Condon described the symbol at the bottom of the page. That night, Lindbergh made immediate arrangements to meet with Condon. The letter directed Lindbergh to put the ransom money in a custom made box, and included a sketch like something a carpenter might draw. Condon was to be given the money and await word on where to take it. Meanwhile, Lindbergh was to keep an airplane ready for when he was given the location of his son. They made arrangements, the Lindberghs putting messages in the newspaper to the effect that they accepted Condon as intermediary—though they called him by the code name Jafsie, based on his initials J.F.C., in order to keep the press from identifying him. Condon took some toys from the nursery, hoping to present them to the child if the boy were present at the meeting, and thereby confirm his identity by his reaction to them, and he also took the pins from the crib blanket, planning to ask the kidnappers whether they could say where they had seen them before and thus likewise confirm that he was indeed dealing with the genuine abductors. After the message was printed in the papers, Condon received a phone call from a man with a German accent who instructed him when to be at home and expect further instructions. Condon believed he heard the caller talking to someone else during the call, further supporting the belief that there were at least two kidnappers. By March 12th, Condon had in his possession the custom built box they’d made to the kidnapper’s specifications. It was empty, however, as they would not have the ransom money on hand for another several days. At the appointed time when he had been told to always be home in order to receive further communication, a man rang his doorbell. He was a taxi driver who had been approached by a man with a German accent and given an envelope to deliver. In it were directions on where to go with the ransom money, and instructions to be there within 45 minutes.

In a panic, John Condon drove to the location in the letter, a certain porch near a hot dog stand where the letter stated further instructions awaited. His only hope was to meet with the kidnappers and explain the situation, that he did not yet have the money to give them, that he needed more time. At the location, he found a note directing him into a cemetery across the street. Condon went alone into the cemetery, and finding no one, he thought at first that something had gone wrong. Eventually, though, he saw a man signaling him from afar by waving a white handkerchief. Condon approached the man, who wore a dark overcoat, pulled a hat pulled down over his eyes, and held his handkerchief to his mouth and nose to hide his face. He spoke with the same thick German accent Condon had heard on the phone, asking if Condon had the money, and Condon told him he could not bring it until he saw the baby. Seeing a security guard, the man in the overcoat became spooked, leapt over an iron fence and bolted. Condon chased after him, calling to him, and eventually the man stopped running and allowed the 72-year-old Condon to catch up. Explaining his sudden flight, the man said, “It was too much risk. I would get thirty years if I am caught. And I am only go-between. I might burn.” Condon seized on this remark, asking what he meant that he might burn. “What if the baby is dead?” he replied. “Would I burn if the baby is dead?” Condon demanded to know if the baby was in fact dead, and the man reassured him the baby was well. Condon then sought to confirm his identity as the actual kidnapper, producing the safety pins, which the man in the overcoat readily identified as the pins that had fastened down the baby’s blanket in his crib, contradicting his previous claim of being a mere go-between. That is when the man opened up. He said his name was John, that he was part of a six person gang, the leader being a “high-level government employee.” He stated that Charles Jr. was aboard a boat moored some six hours away. Condon offered to be taken hostage so that he could be shown the baby, but John, who would come to be called Cemetery John, refused, promising instead to send the baby’s sleeping suit as proof. A few days after this initial meeting, the baby’s pajamas were indeed mailed to Condon. In good faith, Lindbergh collected the ransom money. However, on the advice of the IRS investigator who had famously put Al Capone away, he recorded the serial numbers of all the bills, and the bulk of the money would be in gold certificates, for already it was believed that the country may soon end the gold standard, at which point the kidnapper would draw attention when spending them or would have to exchange them, affording some further chance of apprehending him.

John Condon, aka Jafsie, the volunteer intermediary.

The Lindberghs continued to communicate with their child’s abductor through vague newspaper ads and received several more, increasingly impatient letters from Cemetery John, or from his superior in the gang, each containing the same familiar spelling errors and circular symbol. It would take another two agonizing weeks to prepare the ransom package and communicate their readiness to make the payoff. On April 2nd, at the specified time, another cab driver left another envelope at Condon’s doorstep, this one directing him to carry the ransom to a certain florist’s greenhouse, where he would find a further note. This time, Charles Lindbergh came with Condon, and he was armed. Upon their arrival, the note once again told him to walk alone to a graveyard located nearby, which Condon did, though he disobeyed the instructions to bring the money with him. He was cagey, realizing that he might be murdered for being the only person who had seen Cemetery John’s face. He skirted the graveyard, looking for an ambush, and eventually, Cemetery John called out to him. They walked to meet one another, and Cemetery John, crouching behind a shrub, demanded he go and get the money. When Condon came back with the ransom, Cemetery John checked it and then gave Condon an envelope, instructing him not to open it for six hours. Condon and Lindbergh then drove some distance up the road before Condon convinced Lindbergh to stop and open the envelope. His hands trembling, Lindbergh read that his son was being cared for by two innocent women aboard a boat called “Nelly” moored near the Elizabeth Islands. That very night, at 2am, he drove to an airfield and took off in a large, amphibious Sikorsky aircraft to search for the boat. For six hours that morning, he scoured the waters surrounding the Elizabeth Islands, buzzing dozens of boat, none of which matched the description of the Nelly provided by Cemetery John. He would continue for days to search the coast for the boat containing his son, to no avail. Thinking themselves double-crossed, they left new messages in the newpapers, but there was no answer. As they waited, the U.S. treasurer distributed a pamphlet to banks everywhere containing the serial numbers of the ransom bills, and a couple days later, the press sleuthed out that this meant Lindbergh had paid the ransom but not received his child in return, and they made it front page news. The press further discovered that Condon had been the Lindberghs’ intermediary and began hounding him, making him useless as their go-between if the kidnappers decided to initiate communication again. These developments caused the Lindberghs to despair of ever seeing their child again. But six weeks later, after continuing to chase false hope in the form of hoax claims, they did see their baby again, though only in the most awful way. A truck driver hauling timber near the Lindbergh’s Hopewell property happened to stop to relieve himself on the side of the road, and as he made his way into the woods to do so, he discovered the remains of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. The Eaglet could be positively identified, as his blonde curls and dimple were discernible despite decomposition and the activity of scavenger animals. But more than that, the baby remained in his undershirts, including the one his nursemaid had sewn for him out of flannel on the night of the kidnapping, while his sleeping suit was missing, because of course his kidnapper had removed it and later mailed it to Condon. Detectives also found a burlap sack near the road in which some blonde hairs matching the babies had been discovered. It appeared that the Eaglet whom all the world was searching for and hoping to find alive had actually been dead more than ten weeks, killed on the very night of the kidnapping by a fracture of the skull, according to the autopsy, and dumped less than two miles from the bed out of which he had been taken.

Following the discovery of the remains, the Bureau of Investigation under J. Edgar Hoover took a more active role in coordinating the search for anyone spending the ransom money, which more and more looked to be the only legitimate avenue that the investigation had left, besides the continued interrogation of Lindbergh household servants and further fruitless searches for a boat called Nelly. A year after the kidnapping, Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office and initiated his sweeping New Deal programs, which included his proclamation to return to the U.S. Treasury all gold as well as all gold certificates like those given to Cemetery John, which meant that about $40,000 of the ransom money would soon become rare and even more noticeable when spent than it already had been. After his first hundred days, Roosevelt centralized the investigation within the Department of Justice, giving exclusive jurisdiction to J. Edgar Hoover’s BOI. As resentment over Roosevelt’s reforms developed, and the suspicion of anti-Semites that he was part of some Jewish Communist conspiracy grew, FDR was actually accused of having something to do with the Lindbergh kidnapping. To many in the Depression, a crime against a wealthy individual like Lindbergh must de facto be a Communist plot, and wherever one cried Communist, another cried Jewish. Incredibly, an anonymous, widely-circulated pamphlet that alleged Roosevelt was protecting the murderer of the Lindbergh baby supposedly because he was Jewish. In fact, Roosevelt had done far more than his predecessor to ensure the killer was caught. In early 1934, as the second anniversary of the child’s abduction loomed, the BOI demanded close scrutiny of all bills being passed in New York, where the ransom currency was turning up at a rate of about $40 a week. Beyond just banks, they provided the booklet with the ransom money’s serial numbers, as well as handy key cards to help identify ransom bills quickly, to nearly every employee handling money in New York City, from grocery store clerks to postal employees, from department store cashiers to gas station attendants. Moreover, a New York City police detective assigned to the case sent letters to every gas station urging attendants to take down the license plate of any customer spending a gold note. That September, two and half years after the crime, these efforts would finally pay off, and an arrest would be made. To most, this would prove the final resolution of the mystery, but to many others, the mystery would never seem to have been solved.

Next time, I will discuss the apprehension of the man believed to be Cemetery John, the Trial of the Century, and the several alternative theories and conspiracy claims that still surround the case today.

The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping - Part One: The Eaglet

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