Journalist H. L. Mencken called the trial of Richard Hauptmann, the accused kidnapper of the baby of aviator Charles Lindbergh, "the greatest story since the Resurrection." While Mencken's description is doubtless an exaggeration, measured by the public interest it generated, the Hauptmann trial stands with the O. J. Simpson and Scopes trials as among the most famous trials of the twentieth century. The trial featured America's greatest hero, a good mystery involving ransom notes and voices in dark cemeteries, a crime that is every parent's worst nightmare, and a German-born defendant who fought against U. S. forces in World War I.
On the cold, rainy night of March 1, 1932, sometime between 8:00 and 10:00 o'clock, Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the twenty-month-old child of Charles and Anne Lindbergh, was snatched from the second-floor nursery of their Hopewell, New Jersey home. The kidnappers left a small, white envelope on a radiator case near the nursery window. It contained a ransom note:
Dear Sir!
Have 50,000$ redy 2500$ in 20$ bills 1500$ in 10$ bills and 1000$ in 5$ bills. After 2-2 days we will inform you were to deliver the Mony. We warn you for making anyding public or for notify the polise the child is in gute care. Indication for all letters are singnature and 3 holes.
An investigation outside the house revealed a broken three-piece homemade extension ladder. The side rails of the middle section were split, suggesting that the ladder broke when the kidnapper descended with the baby. Investigators also discovered a chisel and two large footprints leading away from the house in a southeasterly direction towards the tracks of a getaway car. In a remarkable oversight, the footprints were never measured.
By the next morning, word of the kidnapping had been broadcast to the world and reporters, cameramen, curious onlookers, and souvenir hunters swarmed over the Lindbergh estate. Any evidence not yet retrieved by police was lost in the stampede.
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