The Crime Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) by DK

Author:DK
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781465466679
Publisher: DK Publishing
Published: 2017-05-02T04:00:00+00:00

Negotiations begin

Dr. John Condon, a 72-year-old retired educator, read about the kidnapping in a local paper. He wrote a letter to the editor, offering to act as an intermediary between the kidnapper and the Lindbergh family. Upon seeing the letter, the kidnapper wrote to Condon and agreed. They met in a cemetery and the kidnapper returned the pink sleeping suit as proof the boy was safe.

The Lindberghs were then told, through Condon, when and where to leave the money. After the kidnapper received the money, he would leave their baby on a boat named The Nelly, anchored near Martha’s Vineyard off the coast of Massachusetts—between Horseneck beach and Gay Head near Elizabeth Island. The Lindberghs agreed to pay the ransom in order to get their son back safe and sound.

Under cover of night, Dr. Condon made the drop of $50,000, which Condon had negotiated down from the second request. Lindbergh waited in the car. The cemetery was dark and they could barely see the kidnapper, but his German-accented voice came across loud and clear. The man identified himself only as “John,” and left with the Lindberghs’ money. However, he did not hold up his end of the bargain: after an exhaustive search, during which Lindbergh repeatedly flew over the sea, the boat and child were nowhere to be found.

Investigators continued to look for the boy, but had no luck. When Charlie was finally found it was by chance—on May 12, 1932, a truck driver stopping for a bathroom break found a small body covered in leaves in a wooded area near the hamlet of Mount Rose, about 2 miles (3 km) from the Lindberghs’ Hopewell estate.

Buried in a shallow grave, the body had already begun to decompose. Charlie Lindbergh, it seemed, had been dead since the very night he was taken.

Medical examiners determined that the child had been killed with a blow to the head. Decomposition, however, made it impossible to officially determine even the body’s gender. Staff at a nearby orphanage said the body was not one of their children. A discrepancy in the height of the remains raised further questions about the dead child’s identity—Charlie Lindbergh was 29 inches (74 cm) long, but the body found was 33 inches (84 cm). His father and nursemaid, however, positively identified the body based on his hand-sewn flannel nightshirt and a deformed overlapping toe.

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