In the hours that followed, the state police scoured the mansion in the tiny town of East Amwell, New Jersey searching for clues. What they found was a ransom note left by the kidnapper demanding $50,000 for the safe return of the child, a discarded homemade ladder, and a chisel. The kidnapper left no fingerprints.
The Lindberghs received numerous letters by people claiming to be go-betweens with the kidnapper. One man by the name of Dr. John Condon claimed to have established contact with the kidnapper and a deal was set up. At a cemetery in the Bronx, Condon paid the supposed kidnapper $50,000 in marked gold certificates in exchange for the information that Charles Jr. was in a boat off the Massachusetts coast.
After two months of desperate searching by Charles Lindbergh and the police, the tiny remains of Charles Jr. were found only a few miles from the Lindbergh home. The boy died from severe blows to the head, many believed to have been caused by a fall from the makeshift ladder the kidnapper had used to reach the second story nursery.
It took two years to track down the marked ransom money. They led to a German immigrant by the name of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German born Bronx carpenter. $14,000 of the ransom money was found in his garage and a board cut from his attic floor was used in the homemade ladder. Hauptmann declared his innocence of the crime, claiming that Isidor Fisch, a fur dealer he knew who had fled to Germany and died there, left the ransom money in the garage.
The kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby to this day has been considered the crime of the century. Often compared in popularity to the O.J. Simpson trial, the press flooded Flemington, NJ during the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. It was unheard of that someone would dare to kidnap and murder the son of the world’s greatest hero – the man who flew the first solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was the perfect criminal – few doubted his guilt. He was an illegal German immigrant with a criminal past and widespread World War propaganda referred to Germans as “Huns” and “Baby Killers.” During the trial the evidence against him, including possession of the marked ransom money, the board taken from his home to create the homemade ladder, and seven handwriting experts who said Hauptmann’s handwriting matched the ransom note, was enough to convince the jury of his guilt.
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