On This Day: Lindbergh Baby Kidnapped

Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was the first child of celebrity couple Charles and Anne Lindbergh. Charles Lindbergh was famous after becoming the first person to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean.

Betty Gow, the child’s nanny, put him to bed at 7:30 p.m., and checked on him an hour and a half later only to find his crib empty. 

That night, Lindbergh's son was taken from his home near Hopewell, N.J. An unknown person entered the second-floor nursery and abducted the child. All the kidnapper left behind were muddy footprints, a ladder used to gain access to the nursery and a note which was not made public, according to a March 14, 1932 article in Time magazine.

PBS recounts Charles A. Lindbergh’s initial reaction: "I looked at the crib. It was empty. I ran downstairs, grabbed my rifle, and went out into the night.”

The ransom note read as follows:

“Dear Sir,
Have 50,000$ redy 25000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-4 days will inform you were to deliver the Mony.
We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the Polise the child is in gut care.
Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holds.”

After several false ransom notes and dead-end leads, the Lindberghs paid $50,000 to a man calling himself “John.” The man claimed the child was on a boat in Martha's Vineyard, but he wasn’t.

The body of a toddler was eventually discovered near the Lindbergh home 72 days after the abduction, and was identified as Charles Jr., according to PBS.

In October 1934, Bruno Hauptmann was indicted for the child's murder after some of the ransom money was discovered in his possession, according to the FBI's Web site. Hauptmann, a German carpenter, had been living in the United States for 11 years.

Although Hauptmann was executed for the baby’s murder, there are those who claim that the body found 75 years ago was misidentified, and that the Lindbergh baby is alive and well.

Over the years, men—and women—have claimed to be the long lost infant, some even bearing a physical resemblance to the dead child.

A man claiming to be the Lindbergh baby writes on his Web site, charlesalindberghjr.com, “When I was in my early 20s, I worked for the John Deere Company where Colonel Guy Ade was my boss. He told me that FBI agents had visited with him on three different occasions and he said ‘I know who you are and have known for quite some time. You are the kidnapped son of Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, you are Charles, Jr.’”

Despite being a black woman, Geneva E. Cato Fields stated that she is Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr., the Hunterdon County Democrat reported in 1998. She claimed to have blocked memories of her birth as the white male because of a sex-change operation and skin dye procedure that hid her true identity. Fields wrote a memoir about her life as the long lost child called "I Located Myself, The Lindbergh Baby Alive." She said that "every time I see my [Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr.] picture in the paper I want to cry."