Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of the most famous aviator in the world, was only twenty months old when he was kidnapped from his second-floor nursery at the family estate in Hopewell, New Jersey. A ransom note left behind on the evening of March 1, 1932, demanded $50,000 for the toddler’s safe return. Although the Lindbergh residence was seventy-five miles west of New York City, the NYPD sprang into action. Patrolmen checked every car that entered the city by bridge or tunnel. Detectives scoured hospitals, hotels, and houses, anywhere the abductor might think to hide.
Within several days Lindbergh received two more ransom notes, both postmarked in Brooklyn. Police Commissioner Edward Mulrooney told him that he wanted to stake out mailboxes in the borough and put a tail on anyone who looked suspicious. If the plan panned out, he said the suspect would lead the police right to the baby. But for all of his bravado, Charles Lindbergh was afraid that his son might get killed if a police raid took place. He used his clout to get Mulrooney to back off the idea.
Instead, Lindbergh put his trust in a law enforcement outsider, John F. Condon, a retired grammar school principal who managed to contact the alleged kidnapper through a series of newspaper ads. Condon used the alias “Jafsie,” an amalgamation of his own initials with the letters sie representing the C of his last name. To make matters worse, Lindbergh purposely kept the police in the dark about his decision to rely on a novice. After receiving the toddler’s pajamas as proof of identity, Lindbergh and Condon went to St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx on the night of April 2, 1932, with $50,000 in gold certificates to pay the ransom as per the instructions Condon received. Lindbergh waited in the car while Condon passed the money to a man who identified himself only as “John.” The man was too far away for Lindbergh get a good look at him, and although Jafsie was right next to him, he later claimed that he could not make out his features in the dark. John walked away with the money, but the information he provided about the location of the boy proved worthless. It was only after Lindbergh realized that he had been duped that he notified the police about what had transpired. By then it was too late.
First and second ransom notes sent to Charles Lindbergh were postmarked from Brooklyn.
New Jersey State Police poster seeking information about the boy’s kidnapping.
On May 12, 1932, baby Lindbergh’s corpse was discovered in a shallow grave in the woods surrounding the Lindbergh estate by a trucker who stopped by the roadside to relieve himself. The cause of death was a sharp blow to the head.
Fortunately, for all of his mistakes, Lindbergh had the foresight to write down the serial number of every single bill in the ransom packet. That information was circulated to banks throughout the country. For the next two years, whenever one of the gold certificates turned up, Lieutenant James Finn, who was in charge of the NYPD Task Force handling the case, marked the location on a map in his office. Although some of the bills were spent as far away as Chicago, Finn noticed a definite pattern develop in the Fordham section of the Bronx and in the Yorkville section of Upper Manhattan.
Baby Lindbergh’s corpse was discovered in a shallow grave in the woods surrounding the Lindbergh estate.
Even so, the case might never have been solved if the government had not recalled all the gold certificates in circulation in 1934 when it switched American currency to the silver standard. Citizens were advised that any gold certificates in their possession might become worthless if they were not exchanged for the new bills. Businesses that dealt in cash became particularly concerned. So when a customer pulled into a Bronx gas station on September 15, 1934, and paid for ninety-eight cents of gasoline with a ten-dollar gold certificate, the attendant took the precaution of jotting down the license plate number of the blue Dodge in case the bill was rejected by the bank. The bank informed the police that the certificate had come from the Lindbergh ransom money.
Four days later, Police Commissioner John O’Ryan announced to the world that the NYPD had solved the “Crime of the Century.” Bruno Hauptmann, age thirty-four, was arrested trying to flee from his Bronx home. Police found more than $13,000 in ransom money hidden in his garage along with other incriminating evidence. Although Hauptmann maintained his innocence to the end, he was put to death on April 3, 1936, in the electric chair in New Jersey, where he committed the crime.
Charles Lindbergh leaving the Bronx courthouse during the trial of Bruno Hauptmann.
Bruno Hauptmann stares glumly at the bars of his jail cell after his arrest for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.