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犯罪与劫案
1932年3月1日 · 新泽西州霍普韦尔
劫机与绑架状态: 已侦破
详细档案目前仅提供英文版本。
图片: Unknown author · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
$ 50.000ransom, paid in recorded gold certificates
Since his solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927 Charles Lindbergh had been one of the best-known people in the world. To escape the press he and his wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh had built a secluded house near Hopewell in New Jersey. Kidnappings for ransom were becoming more common in the United States during the Depression, but were still a matter for the individual states.
On the evening of 1 March 1932 the twenty-month-old child was taken from his cot on the first floor. A note demanding $50,000 lay on the windowsill; a home-made ladder was found outside. Through an intermediary the ransom was handed over on 2 April in a cemetery in the Bronx. On 12 May a lorry driver found the child's body in woodland a few miles from the house.
The serial numbers of the ransom notes had been recorded. In September 1934 a man paid at a filling station with one of them; the attendant wrote down the number plate. That led to Bruno Richard Hauptmann, in whose garage more than $14,000 of the ransom was found. Experts also linked the wood of the ladder and the handwriting of the notes to him. Hauptmann continued to deny everything.
The trial in Flemington in 1935 was followed by hundreds of journalists. Hauptmann was found guilty and executed on 3 April 1936. Critics point to the pressure of publicity and to weak spots in the evidence, and allow for accomplices; most historians do consider his involvement proven. The 'Lindbergh Law' of 1932 made kidnapping across state lines a federal crime.