Does the mystery live on?

Find out more about the kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby in an event at the library

Forensic Document Examiner Ana Kyle will discuss facets of the Lindbergh case 6 p.m. Sept. 30 at New Haven Public Library, 133 Elm St.

IT all started on March 1, 1932, when the toddler son of aviator Charles Lindbergh and Anne Morrow Lindbergh was abducted from his home in East Amwell, N.J. More than two months later, his boy's body was discovered a short distance from the Lindbergh home. A medical examination determined that the toddler died from a "massive fracture of the skull."
After an investigation that lasted more than two years, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was charged with the crime. The trial lasted more than a year, and on Feb. 13, 1935, Hauptmann was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to die. Though he proclaimed his innocence, he was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on April 3, 1936.
Newspaper writer H.L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial "the biggest story since the Resurrection."


The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the "Lindbergh Law," that made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.

Ana Kyle is a court-certified document examiner with 36 years of experience in the field of questioned documents and psychological profiling through handwriting. She is the author of "The Dead Poets Plus One: the Lindbergh Kidnap Case" (2004), and "Two Men and One Pair of Shoes : The Trial of Richard Hauptmann" (2007).

The information contained here was provided by the New Haven Public Library, only very lightly edited by Elm City Express