On the night of March 1, 1932, somebody climbed a homemade wooden ladder, opened a second-floor nursery window, and took the 20-month-old son of America’s most famous man.

What followed was the largest manhunt in American history to that point, a media frenzy unlike anything before it, a trial that newspapers called “the trial of the century,” and an execution that, in the decades since, has been increasingly questioned.

Ninety-four years later, on the anniversary of the day the child’s body was found, the case still raises a question that may never be fully answered: did the state of New Jersey execute the wrong man?

The Lindberghs in 1932

By 1932, Charles Lindbergh was perhaps the most famous person in the world. Five years earlier, at age 25, he had become the first pilot to fly nonstop and solo across the Atlantic Ocean, from New York to Paris. The flight, completed in 33.5 hours, made him an instant global celebrity.

In 1929 he married Anne Morrow, daughter of a U.S. ambassador and an accomplished pilot in her own right. Their son, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., was born June 22, 1930. By the spring of 1932, the family had a 20-month-old boy with curly blond hair, a cleft chin like his father’s, and a habit of laughing at his own jokes.

They lived on a 390-acre estate near Hopewell, New Jersey, in a house they had just finished building. The estate was remote, accessible only by a winding country road through the woods. They had moved there partly to escape the press — partly to escape the threats. The fame had a darker side. The Lindberghs received hundreds of crank letters every week, including kidnapping threats.

The Night the Baby Disappeared

March 1, 1932, was a Tuesday. The Lindberghs had not planned to be at Hopewell that night — they typically stayed at Anne’s mother’s house in Englewood during the week. But the baby had a cold, and they decided not to travel.

The nursemaid, Betty Gow, put the baby to bed in his upstairs nursery around 7:30 PM. She closed the shutters but did not lock the southeast window, which was warped and difficult to secure. At about 10:00 PM, she returned to check on him.

The crib was empty.

An envelope was on the windowsill. Outside the window, on the muddy ground, were two impressions from the base of a homemade wooden ladder — later found in pieces in the woods nearby.

Inside the envelope, a ransom note demanded $50,000 in specific bill denominations. The note was signed with a strange symbol: two overlapping circles, with three small holes punched through them.

The Ransom and Investigation

Within hours, the New Jersey State Police arrived. Within days, the entire country knew.

President Hoover called the kidnapping “the foulest deed in our history.” Al Capone, in prison at the time, offered to help solve it from his cell. Underworld figures contacted the Lindberghs claiming to know who had taken the baby. Psychics, fraudsters, and well-meaning citizens flooded the investigation with leads.

The Lindberghs followed the kidnapper’s instructions. A retired schoolteacher named John Condon, who had inserted himself into the case by publishing an offer to help in a Bronx newspaper, was approved as a go-between by both the Lindberghs and the kidnapper.

On April 2, 1932, Condon met a man at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx. The man, who called himself “John,” took the $50,000 in marked bills. In return, he gave Condon a note saying the baby was on a boat called “Nelly” off the coast of Massachusetts.

The boat did not exist. The baby was not on it.

The Body in the Woods

On May 12, 1932, ten weeks after the kidnapping, a truck driver named William Allen pulled over to relieve himself in the woods about four miles from the Lindbergh estate. In the underbrush, partially buried under leaves, he found the body of a small child.

The body was badly decomposed. The skull showed a massive fracture. Forensic examination determined that the child had died from a blow to the head, probably on the night of the kidnapping. The kidnapping had been, from the start, a murder.

Some investigators — both then and since — have speculated that the child had been dropped accidentally from the ladder during the descent, and that the kidnapper had panicked.

Bruno Richard Hauptmann

For two and a half years, the case went cold. Then, on September 15, 1934, a gas station attendant in the Bronx noted the license plate of a customer who had paid with a $10 gold certificate — a bill from the Lindbergh ransom. The license plate traced to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a 35-year-old German immigrant and carpenter living in the Bronx with his wife Anna and infant son.

Police searched Hauptmann’s garage. Inside, hidden in wall cavities and floorboards, they found over $13,000 of the marked ransom money. Hauptmann claimed it had been left with him by a friend named Isidor Fisch, who had returned to Germany and died there. Fisch was, in fact, real, and was, in fact, dead. Hauptmann said the money had been left in a shoebox in a closet, and he had only discovered it after Fisch’s death.

The prosecution did not believe him. They had a German immigrant carpenter, money traced to the ransom, and a public desperate for justice.

The “Trial of the Century”

The trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann began January 2, 1935, in Flemington, New Jersey, a small town that was overwhelmed by the press. Over 700 reporters covered the trial. Telegraph wires brought the courtroom into homes across America. Newsreels gave it global reach.

The prosecution’s case rested on three pillars: the ransom money in Hauptmann’s possession, the handwriting analysis of the ransom notes (which experts said matched Hauptmann’s handwriting), and a wood expert’s testimony that the rails of the kidnapping ladder had been cut from a board in Hauptmann’s attic.

Hauptmann maintained his innocence. His defense was disorganized and poorly funded. His attorney was widely considered to have been outmatched.

On February 13, 1935, the jury convicted Hauptmann of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to death.

On April 3, 1936, after exhausting appeals, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was electrocuted at the New Jersey State Prison. He maintained his innocence to the moment of his death.

The Doubts That Won’t Die

In the decades since Hauptmann’s execution, serious doubts have emerged about both the investigation and the trial.

The handwriting evidence has been re-examined by modern forensic experts who consider the original analysis unreliable. The wood evidence — specifically the claim that the ladder rail came from Hauptmann’s attic — has been challenged on the grounds that the wood grain matches were inconclusive and that police may have planted or altered evidence. Witness testimony placing Hauptmann near the Lindbergh estate has been criticized as improbable, as the witnesses changed their stories multiple times before trial.

Most damaging: in 1981, evidence emerged that the lead prosecutor and the New Jersey State Police may have suppressed evidence that would have helped Hauptmann’s defense, including witness statements that did not align with the prosecution’s timeline.

Anna Hauptmann, Bruno’s widow, spent the rest of her life trying to clear her husband’s name. She filed multiple lawsuits and petitions for posthumous review. All were denied. She died in 1994 at age 95, still maintaining his innocence.

The Legacy

The Lindbergh kidnapping reshaped American law enforcement. In June 1932, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act — the “Lindbergh Law” — making kidnapping across state lines a federal crime. The case dramatically expanded the FBI’s jurisdiction and budget.

It also changed America’s relationship with celebrity and security. The Lindberghs, traumatized by the relentless press coverage and by their continued vulnerability, moved to England in 1935. They never returned to the Hopewell house. Charles Lindbergh’s reputation, untarnished before the kidnapping, would later be complicated by his pre-war political views — but the loss of his son hung over the rest of his life.

And the question of who actually killed Charles Lindbergh Jr. — whether it was the German carpenter who went to the electric chair, or someone else who got away with the original crime of the century — remains, almost a hundred years later, unsettled.

Subscribe for new investigations

This is the kind of long-form, fact-based reporting we publish at Enigma True Crime. Subscribe to our newsletter to be notified when we publish new investigations.