Why We’re Reopening the Lindbergh Files

On the night of March 1, 1932, someone climbed through a second-floor window in a house on a remote New Jersey estate and took a baby. The baby was later found murdered. But it was not just any baby taken and killed. He was the son of world-famous aviator Charles Lindbergh—the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic, and far and away the most recognized man in America at the time.

The case of Little Lindy, as the press called him, captured the attention of America like no crime had before or since—even more than O.J. Simpson or the Menendez brothers. The country was hooked as the investigation into the “crime of the century” unfolded through horrific discoveries, suspicions, an arrest, and a trial. But what seemed like an open-and-shut case at the time has since become far murkier. In this age of true crime, there is renewed fascination, not to mention doubt, about who actually kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Indeed, today, there is an effort underway to force New Jersey to use DNA testing on the ransom notes to see if, 94 years later, the mystery of who kidnapped Little Lindy can be settled once and for all.

There are just so many strange details about this story. The baby was kidnapped from the family’s country house on a day they never typically stayed. Nobody in the house heard anything—not even the family dog, who didn’t bark. After the baby was taken, Lindbergh himself directed the police investigation; among other things, he refused permission for his staff to be interviewed. The police acquiesced. When ransom notes emerged, they were written in broken English and had a visible symbol of interlocking circles at the bottom of them.

It’s a story steeped in enigma, and that’s why we decided to tackle all these mysteries—all the facts that don’t add up—for a new podcast entitled The Lindbergh Conspiracies, which premieres today.

We visited the New Jersey house where it all happened. We stood under the window to the room from which the baby was snatched. We went to the cemetery in the Bronx where a $50,000 ransom was handed over. We conducted experiments. We read Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s heartbreaking diary accounts and letters. We measured the distance from the crib to the ladder. In short, we became obsessed.

Obsession seems to grip everyone who starts digging into the Lindbergh case. We spoke to more than 25 researchers, many of whom had wildly different theories of what happened that night. We’ve heard it all: that the mob was involved; that an insider did it; that the man executed for the kidnapping, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was set up. These are people who have devoted an astonishing amount of time and energy into investigating the case. We came to think of it as the first great American conspiracy. So join us on the investigation into the crime of the century. Once you go down this rabbit hole—trust us on this—you’ll find you can’t turn back.

Could author Robert Zorn be correct that the real killer was a sociopath named John Knoll? Did the recent investigations into the baby’s corpse and parts of his body being preserved point to a eugenics experiment gone wrong? And just what about the mafia? Did they have something to do with this? You’ll have to listen to find out.

Listen to The Lindbergh Conspiracies, a new podcast from The Free Press.

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