This program can now be seen in it’s entirety at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/killed-lindbergh-baby.html
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Colonel Charles Augustus Lindbergh–the Lone Eagle–became the most famous human being on earth. And when he and his lovely wife Anne produced an adorable baby son, Charlie, an eager press quickly dubbed him Little Lindy or sometimes just the Eaglet. But on the evening of March 1, 1932 Lucky Lindy’s luck ran out. Bold kidnappers snatched his baby from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey, while everyone in the house was awake. Negotiations with the kidnappers stretched out for weeks. But Little Charlie never came back. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell. Now, NOVA is reopening one of the most intriguing, grisly, and confounding crime mysteries of all time as a team of expert investigators employ state-of-the-art forensic and behavioral science techniques in an effort to determine what really happened to Lindbergh’s baby and why.
John and I investigated the case for our book, The Cases That Haunt Us and concluded that the official version and trial verdict – that Bruno Richard Hauptmann was solely responsible for the abduction and murder – could not be right.
In the fall of 2012, a man named Robert Zorn approached us and said that after conducting his own exhaustive investigation, he believed we were correct, and that he could supply the missing names. That launched us on a new leg of the investigation, which is detailed in this episode of Nova.
In addition to Zorn, the program features Mark Falzini, New Jersey State Police archivist and the world’s leading authority on the case; and Dr. John Butts, former chief medical examiner for the state of North Carolina, a distinguished pathologist with a special expertise in equivocal child death. Through his own forensic examination, Dr. Butts gives impressive scientific weight to John’s behavioral analysis of how the baby died. Professors and historians Lloyd Gardner of Rutgers University and Paula Fass of the University of California, Berkeley, offer their own fascinating perspectives on the case, as does master carpenter and amateur sleuth Kevin Klein, who has made a detailed study of the central piece of evidence, the kidnap ladder.
The Cases That Haunt Us is available from Amazon.com and other sources. Check out our BOOKS section on the website.
The program was produced and directed by Larry Klein, co-produced by Mark Olshaker and written by Olshaker and Klein
Initially I thought the baby was accidentally killed but now I believe that the baby was intentionally killed because it is like you said on the show that taking care of a baby would have been problematic. But, also I think the baby was killed because at least one of the kidnappers had a hell of a lot of anger. There was more to this kidnapping than just the money which brings me to the following question. Hauptmann had a criminal record back in Germany, well how to you go from being a thief to being a coldblooded killer of an innocent baby who can’t fight back? Hauptmann had a child of his own. It’s hard to understand.
ok anyone know where i can watch it legally since i cant on the site due to rights restrictions global media is a thorn in my side
so anyone got a link that will work for uk viewers
$14,000 recovered with Hauptmann + more then $3,000 recovered by the banks is greater then 1/3 of the money ($50,000/3+$16,666.66).
I would hope it was recorded but was there a log of: When, Where, and by whom (any repeat merchants) that the money was recovered from?
Was this information plotted to look at how the money was moving around in relationship to Hauptmann’s location? Maybe it would show if the other 2/3 was heading out of the country or somewhere else.
Oops. I meant to ask ; What is the weight of the ladder?
Was is the weight of the ladder?
Could one person easily carry both it and the child?
How did the kidnapper(s) know which window to go to?
It would not be easy to get out through the window to the ladder while holding the baby. It would be easier to hand the baby out from the window to someone else on the ladder. That points to at least two accomplices. If it was an inside job could someone from the household have handed the baby out the window?
On what floor was the nursery at the Morrow estate?
These are interesting questions. And they are clearly an essential part of Reilly’s summation argument at teh trial. http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/Hauptmann/rileysumm.htm
Bill James, the great baseball writer, says you have to take seriously the views of the people who were actual observers. Reilly sat tle through the trial, had access to all the evidence and had access to Hauptmann. What is interesting is that legal ethics require a lawyer to allow a defendant to testify, even if he knows the testimony to be perjury. But he cannot, in closing argument, make the case that the testimony is true. In summation, Reilly never references Hauptmann’s alibi. But the argument he makes is that it must have been an inside job and makes some good arguments for that. By the way, Dr. Douglas suggests that the murder was pre-planned. I think one guy may have been cold enough for that, though I think it unlikely, if there was a gang it is not possible for them to agree to murder a baby. I think it more likely that the child was struck to immobolize him and to keep him from crying. There was for a long time the notion that you could “knock someone out” and that person would recover without any ill effects. If murder was planned, suffication or strangling would seem much easier. Anyway, read teh summation.
Here’s another possibility we think strong: If the child actually were injured in the descent from the ladder, this makes caring for him – not to mention keeping him quiet – all the more problematic. It is therefore possible that one of the kidnappers killed him when it became clear they could not deal with an injured child, nor could they bring him for medical care without being caught. This would also account for the dump site so close to the house. They may have realized that if they were stopped and there was a crying, bleeding baby in the car, they were dead men.
Joe, you mentioned that Hauptmann’s attorney tried to link the Ransom Letter to Fisch without success. Wasn’t Hauptmann convicted partly from being the alleged letter writer?
The shows experts exonerated Hauptmann as the author, so maybe they could now convict Fisch as letter writer with modern analysis techniques.
Back in the late 1970s, I read Scaduto’s book. At the time there was no internet for quick evaluation, so it had to be taken on its own terms. On its own, the book was fairly convincing. Now it has been largely discredited, but that wasn’t true then. Anyway, in about 1980 I had occasion to use a psychologist who did personality analysis from handwriting. He was pretty good at it. After we finished the work that we had to do, I asked him about the Lindbergh ransom notes. He laughed and said that the topic was chapter 1 in every handwriting analysis text. He said that he believed that Hauptmann wrote the letters. That was good enough for me. Wilipedia has a decent discussion of this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindbergh_kidnapping There are problems with Fisch, too. The guy had TB and if he had money, why didn’t he go to a sanitarium or at least to a dry climate, not to Germany. But he apparently paid for his tickets with gold notes. Somewhere there is an anomaly, I just don’t know where.
How much of the money was recovered by the Banks?
By the beginning of 1934, more than $3,000 of ransom money had turned up, much of it in five-dollar bills. In January of that year, it was showing up at banks at a rate of about $40 a week, all in tens, suggesting the passer had used up all his fives. The break occurred on September 18 when a teller at the Corn Exchange Bank in the Bronx noticed the ten-dollar-bill with the license plate number written on it, which was then traced back to Bruno Richard Hauptmann.
I thought this show was very good. I have done a bit of research on the Lindbergh Kidnapping and I agree that there was more than one person involved and that help from the inside was garnered. Help came from either the nanny or the servant Violet Sharp. One thing that was not mentioned in the show was the fact that one of the Lindbergh dogs used to always accompany them to the Hopewell house. The dog liked to sleep outside of Charlie’s bedroom. For some inexplicable reason the dog was not there that night. I think the dog might play some significance because dogs are very good about alerting a household when a stranger approaches, at least my dog is. Who held the dog back and why? Also, would it be worth starting a petition to the New Jersey State Police to provide DNA samples from the licked flap of the “Begg” letter to the ransom notes? I’m game!
I thought the program was good and well done and on Nova ‘no commercials’….bonus! I learned a couple new things….
1. I always thought the baby was probably killed accidentally by being dropped when the ladder broke as the 1930’s officials said….but now I’m convinced it was always the plan to murder the kid immediately for three reasons…..
The skull cracked on 1 side not on top as usually said, the distinct hole punched clear through behind the ear on the other side execution style.
When I saw where Hauptman and all the German suspects lived (in the Bronx German enclave). These weren’t ‘houses’ but flats, rented rooms, duplexes, jammed wall to wall right on the busy neighborhood sidewalk. Where were these guys planning on keeping a toddler secret hostage…bring it home to their wives, down that sidewalk, through those thin walls where he could be heard/ noticed, with a whole country on the look out for him? A great point was they couldn’t leave a baby that age alone at another location, they couldn’t guard it themselves for fear of being missed by their wives/ neighbors/ jobs…and if these guys couldn’t even afford to ‘buy’ a ladder….how could they even ‘afford’ another secure location.
Third the body being found so close to the scene hammered behind the ear (the pathalogist made another great point…you can’t punch through bone accidentally with a policemen’s stick), so they didn’t even want to risk traveling with the kid much less keep him.
2. I think Hauptman didn’t name his 2 accomplices (the money was obviously split in 3rds) because they used the old criminal device and threatened him. He was already caught they got word to him….keep your mouth shut and we’ll take care of your wife and kid for life with the other 2/3 of the money. ‘Squeal’ on us and not only will your wife and kid die of poverty in the Great Depression, but our associates on the ouside will kill them. What did Hauptman have to lose then, he was already done and in prison. Take a chance and save his wife and kid or squeal and assure at least their poverty if not murder. I think experienced criminals would have come up with that threat, knowing how helpless one of their members would be on the inside if he cared about his family on the outside. Just a theory.
Good show.
Saw the show and just had a couple of thoughts.
Hauptmann has 1/3 of the money ($14,000 at the time of his arrest) and none of the marked bills except for a $10 bill shows up for 2 1/2 years. If the gas station attendent hadn’t questioned the bill, would that one have gone unnoticed as well?
Knoll suspected by Zorn. Zorn documents spending spree by Knoll three weeks after kidnapping and $700 spent on 1st class tickets to Germany 3 weeks before Hauptmann trial.
If the spending spree was ransom money, how did it go unnoticed by the banks since it was shortly after the kidnapping? If the $700 used for the tickets was ransom money shouldn’t that have raised some interest since it was a large quantity of gold certificates used almost a year after they were discontinued and ransom money back in the news?
How hard were the banks really looking for the marked bills?
Good mystery.
Actually, many banks were looking for the money pretty diligently, and by the time the gas station $10 bill turned up, ransom money had been appearing at banks in the New York area for quite some time; it was just that none of it could be traced to a particular passer by the time bank personnel noticed it. If Knoll was the guy, how he actually paid for his ticket and whether he had laundered the money first remains a mystery.
In Ludwig Kennedy’s book, “The Airman and the Carpenter”, I thought I remember Fisch was known to use Hauptmann’s name for his own purposes. Maybe it was Fisch who was using Hauptmann’s name with John Knowle and Knowle didn’t know Fisch well. Can we compare Fisch’s handwriting with the ransom notes? What about the doctored employment records that showed Hauptmann was working?
For most of my early life, I believed Hauptmann was the sole guilty murderer. Kennedy’s book changed my mind and Fisch and Knowle seem to be the prime suspects.
Hauptmann’s lawyers tried to say Fisch wrote the letters, but couldn’t convince their own experts that he did.
While there is certainly room for controversy and divergent opinions, we really don’t agree with Kennedy’s analysis, nor do the vast majority of case experts such as NJ State Police archivist Mark Falzini.
Thank you all so much for your thoughtful and trenchant comments.
Just finished watching the show. A couple of comments. When determining whether there is a conspiracy I have two rules, determine know fact, apply Law of Parsimony. IF there is a co-conspirator, the most likely suspect is Isidore Fisch. Hauptmann says the money came from Fisch. Fisch left the country shortly after the kidnapping, went to Germany and died shortly thereafter. It seems to me that Hauptmann is likely to name a co-conspirator rather than a random stranger. Also, a return to Germany may make sense for a German in the 1930s, not so much for a German Jew. The critical question here, of course, is where is the ransom money? If Fisch took the money back to Germany and died before he could dispose of it, it may yet be hidden in Germany or may have been destroyed one way or the other during the war. Lastly, there is another FBI agent who has a somewhat convincing argument that Hauptmann acted alone. http://jimfisher.edinboro.edu/lindbergh/a1988_1.html
The only problem I see with Fisher’s analysis is that his explanation that Hauptmann spent all the money doesn’t seem to comport with known facts.
You’ve made some very good points, Joe, and Fisch remains a strong suspect, including for the reasons you cite. Unfortunately, in a show of this length, it is impossible to go into all of the theories, but I suggest you take a look at the Lindbergh chapter in our book, THE CASES THAT HAUNT US, where we do deal with him.
We find some of Fisher’s arguments highly compelling; others we disagree with. But that is all part of what is so tantalizing about this eighty-year-old case that refuses to die.
I just got the book on my Nook. Thank you for the kind words, they are precious few anymore. Also on my Nook is Bugliosi’s book on the JFK assassination. I find his arguments quite compelling, wonder what you thought?
Bugliosi’s book on the assassination is an excellent analysis in our opinion. Another fascinating book is Gus Russo’s BROTHERS IN ARMS, which sticks with the lone assassin theory but does original reporting on Oswald’s Cuban and Russian connections, using recently declassified KGB documents and interviews with former Cuban intelligence agents.
two questions still remain…who did write the ransom note?
what happened to the other 1/3 of the money?
dfmjr49,
If you pick up any standard textbook on handwriting analysis, chapter 1 is the Lindbergh baby ransom notes. Most will say Hauptmann wrote the notes. Hauptmann had about $15,000, so its the other 2/3.
At this point, we may never know who wrote the ransom notes. But we have studied the originals carefully and along with state-of-the-art handwriting analysis, we believe we can say two things conclusively: The writing diverges so dramatically from one to the next and then back again that we do not see how they could all have been written by the same person, and on at least several of the notes, that person could not have been Hauptmann, which powerfully strengthens the case for more than one offender.
As far as the money, it was actually 2/3 of the money that was never recovered. It may have been passed in Europe by one or more of Hauptmann’s co-conspirators, or it may still have been hidden. Either way, it is another of the great mysteries of the case.
Because that is really a case that haunts us!
Just curious, this being the 50th anniversery of the Kennedy assassination, would there be a profile of Oswald as the assassin coming on these pages?
That’s a good idea, Joe. John and I have studied it closely and we will post our opinion in the near future.