The kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr. was the crime of the century. It was one of the first high profile cases to receive obsessive media attention.
In 1932, the 20-month-old son of aviator Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped. The kidnapper left a ransom note demanding $50,000.
The ransom was delivered. But the baby was not. A month later, the body of Charles Lindbergh Jr. was found. The cause of death was never determined.
Police tracked the gold certificates that had been used to pay the ransom. They tracked and arrested Bruno Richard Hauptmann. In Hauptmann's house they found the unspent ransom and designs for the ladder used to kidnap Charles Jr.
The papers of Robert Conway and Grace Robinson at UW's American Heritage Center give us a peek into the press coverage of the Lindbergh case.