The Lindbergh Kidnapping Revisited

Abstract

Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic, nonstop, from Roosevelt Field in New York to Le Bourget airfield, near Paris. The flight changed forever life on this planet. The event also changed forever the life of the pilot, Lindbergh. In his twenties he became a world hero. He married the intelligent and, by all accounts, charming daughter of Dwight Morrow, a man who cast his shadow across the national scene. The young couple's first child, Charles Jr., was born on June 22, 1930. Their lives, which seemed idyllic, suddenly were shattered by a tragic event. On the night of March 1, 1932, the infant son was snatched from his crib in the new family home in Hopewell, New Jersey, in the county of Hunterdon. On the windowsill in the baby's room was a letter demanding $50,000 in ransom. The baby's decomposed body was discovered on May 12, 1932, in a shallow grave several miles away in the adjacent county of Mercer. The autopsy disclosed that the baby had suffered three fractures of the skull and that death was instantaneous. Ludovic Kennedy has written an interesting and fascinating book about the Lindberghs, the crime, the man accused of the crime, and that man's trial. Mr. Kennedy's main thesis is that the accused, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, an immigrant German carpenter, was innocent and that the police and prosecution authorities conspired to frame him and have him executed. The subtitle of The Airman and the Carpenter-"The Lindbergh Kidnapping and the Framing of Richard Hauptmann"-ensures that the reader cannot misunderstand Mr. Kennedy's view of the case. Ludovic Kennedy is proclaimed by the book jacket to be "one of Britain's foremost journalists and broadcasters." The cover's back flap suggests that "Kennedy is perhaps best known for three works which have resulted in pardons for innocent people falsely convicted of murder." Perhaps so, but this book will not make him four for four-not by a long shot! On the jacket cover, Mr. Kennedy unabashedly asserts that: "The principal purpose of this book is to demolish once and for all the long-held and now demonstrably absurd fiction that Richard * Judge, United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.-Ed.