Charles Lindbergh - "The Crime of The Century"

"The Crime of The Century"

In what came to be referred to sensationally by the press of the time as "The Crime of the Century", on the evening of March 1, 1932, 20-month old Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was abducted by an intruder from his crib in the second story nursery of his family's rural home in East Amwell, New Jersey near the town of Hopewell. While a 10-week nationwide search for the child was being undertaken, ransom negotiations were also conducted simultaneously with a self-identified kidnapper by a volunteer intermediary, Dr. John F. Condon (aka "Jafsie"). These resulted in the payment on April 2 of $50,000 in cash, part of which was made in soon-to-be withdrawn (and thus more easily traceable) Gold certificates the serial numbers of which had been recorded, in exchange for information about the child's whereabouts which proved to be false. The child's remains were found by chance by a passing truckdriver six weeks later on May 12 in roadside woodlands near Mount Rose, NJ.

In response to the highly publicized crime, the Congress passed the so-called "Lindbergh Law" on June 13 which made kidnapping a federal offense under certain circumstances. Known formally as the "Federal Kidnapping Act of 1932", the new statute provided for federal jurisdiction over all future kidnappings in which any victim(s) were taken across state lines and/or (as had occurred in the Lindbergh case) the kidnapper(s) used "the mail or any means, facility, or instrumentality of interstate or foreign commerce in committing or in furtherance of the commission of the offense" including as a means to demand a ransom.

The assiduous tracing of the serial numbers many $10 and $20 Gold certificates passed in the New York City area over the next year-and-a-half eventually led police to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a 34-year-old German immigrant carpenter, who was arrested near his home in The Bronx, New York, on September 19, 1934. (Hauptmann was identified by the license plate number of his automobile which a gas station attendant had written on the bill after receiving it from him in payment for services.) A stash containing $13,760 of the ransom money was subsequently found hidden in his garage. Charged with kidnapping, extortion, and first degree murder, Hauptmann went on trial in a circus-like atmosphere in Flemington, New Jersey on January 2, 1935. Six weeks later he was convicted on all counts when, following 11 hours of deliberation, the jury delivered its verdict late on the night of February 13 after which trial judge Thomas Trenchard immediately sentenced Hauptmann to death. Although he continued to adamantly maintain his innocence, all of Hauptmann's appeals and petitions for clemency were rejected by early December 1935. Despite a last minute attempt by New Jersey Governor Harold G. Hoffman (who believed Hauptmann was guilty but also had always expressed doubts that he could have acted alone) to convince him to confess to the crimes in exchange for getting his sentence commuted to life imprisonment, the by then 36-year-old Hauptmann refused and was electrocuted at Trenton State Prison on April 3, 1936.