Lindbergh kidnapping: History and Key Facts

On March 1, 1932, Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. (born June 22, 1930), the 20-month-old son of Col. Charles Lindbergh and his wife, aviator and author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was murdered after being abducted from his crib in the upper floor of the Lindberghs' home, Highfields, in East Amwell, New Jersey, United States. On May 12, the child's corpse was discovered by a truck driver by the side of a nearby road in adjacent Hopewell Township.

In September 1934, a German immigrant carpenter named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested for the crime. After a trial that lasted from January 2 to February 13, 1935, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Despite his conviction, Hauptmann continued to profess his innocence, but all appeals failed and he was executed in the electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on April 3, 1936. Hauptmann's guilt or lack thereof continues to be debated in the modern day. Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and trial "the biggest story since the Resurrection". American media called it the "crime of the century"; legal scholars have referred to the trial as one of the "trials of the century". The crime spurred the U.S. Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act (commonly referred to as the "Little Lindbergh Law" at the time of its passage), which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.

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