A Trial Captivates America: The Lindbergh Case Begins

They called it the trial of the century before the century was half over. Bruno Richard Hauptmann sat in a Flemington, New Jersey courtroom on January 2, 1935, accused of kidnapping and murdering the twenty-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh, the most famous man in America. The child had been taken from his second-floor nursery on the night of March 1, 1932, and a ransom note demanding $50,000 was left on the windowsill. The kidnapping consumed the nation for two years. Lindbergh had become an international hero after his solo transatlantic flight in 1927, and the abduction of his infant son generated a media frenzy that dwarfed anything the country had seen. A ransom of $50,000 in marked gold certificates was paid through an intermediary in a Bronx cemetery. The child''s body was found 72 days after the kidnapping, partially buried in woods less than two miles from the family home. The cause of death was a massive skull fracture. Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter with a criminal record in his home country, was arrested in September 1934 after spending a marked $10 gold certificate at a Bronx gas station. Police found $14,600 in ransom money hidden in his garage. Forensic analysis matched wood from a homemade ladder used in the kidnapping to floorboards in Hauptmann''s attic, a pioneering use of wood-grain evidence. Eight handwriting experts testified that Hauptmann had written the ransom notes. The defense pointed to inconsistencies in witness testimony and argued that Hauptmann''s deceased business partner, Isidor Fisch, had left the money with him. The jury deliberated for eleven hours and returned a guilty verdict. Hauptmann was executed in the electric chair on April 3, 1936. The trial''s media circus was so extreme that cameras were subsequently banned from federal courtrooms for decades.