Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 470 - Trial of the Century: The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

In many ways, America's modern obsession with true crime began on March 1st, 1932, when the 20th-month-old-son of the most famous man in America, aviator Charles Lindbergh, was kidnapped from his fortress of a home. The press would cover the subsequent investigation and trial of the man responsible like the press had never covered a crime before. There was so much public interest in this case, that Charles and his wife would literally leave the country to avoid the public's intense and overwhelming interest in their lives. Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

On March 1st, 1932, America's so-called Crime of the Century, as described in numerous U.S. papers at the time, occurred when Charles Augustus Lindberg Jr., the 20-month-old son of the famous aviator Charles Lindberg and his wife, Ann Morrow Lindbergg, disappeared from his nursery in Hopewell, New Jersey. Once the baby's absence was discovered, a search of the premises, was immediately made in a ransom note demanding $50,000 was found on the nursery windowsill. It was a parent's worst nightmare come to life. and the press would be there to capture and print every horrible, painful detail of what would follow. It was unfathomable. It seemed like this kind of thing just couldn't have happened to a couple like the Lindbergs. They were the equivalent of American royalty. Their fame, adoration, and wealth should have insulated them from something like this, but somehow it didn't. Charles Lindberg, only 30 years old when his son disappeared, was easily America's biggest celebrity.

He had achieved national fame for being the first American aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean without stopping, which he had done five years earlier in 1927. Other pilots had crossed the Atlantic before him, but Lindberg was the first person to do it solo and non-stop, and no one had flown further. His feet was the culmination of a decade of flight training and stunts that most pilots would have never dreamt of taking on. At the age of only 20, he had left college to become a barnstormer, a pilot who performed daredevil stunts. And then after training, as an Army Air Service Reserve pilots, he went on to win the highly sought-after Orteg Prize.

A man named Raymond Orteg offered $25,000 to the first aviator to fly nonstop from New York to Paris. 25K, back when that was worth a lot more than it is now, back when it was worth almost a half a million dollars. Several pilots over several years were killed or injured while competing for this coveted prize. By 1927, it still hadn't been won. But Lindberg believed he could do it if he just had the right plane, and he was able to persuade nine St. Louis businessmen to help him finance the cost of the plane he desired, and he chose

Ryan Aeronautical Company of San Diego to manufacture it. He named it, Spirit of St. Louis. And on May 20, 1927, Lindberg took off in Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field near New York City at 752 a.m. local time. He landed at Le Bourgete Field near Paris, May 21st, at 1021 p.m. Local time. 5.21, back in New York. Thousands of cheering people, gathered to meet him. Over 100,000. He'd flown more than 3,600 miles or 5,790 kilometers in roughly 33 and a half hours, and he'd made it to his destination with very little in the way of navigational equipment compared to pilots today. Lindberg's feet gained him immediate national and international fame. The press quickly named him Lucky Lindy and the lone eagle. Americans and

Europeans alike idolized, the shy, slim young man from Detroit and showered him with numerous honors. He was almost immediately contracted to give a three-month nationwide tour. Flying the spirit of St. Louis, he touched down in 49 states, visited 92 cities, gave 147 speeches, and wrote a full 1,290 miles in parades alone. Also became a diplomat of sorts. At the request of the U.S. government, Lindberg flew to various Latin American countries in December of 1927 as a symbol of American goodwill. And while in Mexico, he met Anne Spencer Morrow, the daughter of Dwayne.

White W. Morrow, the American ambassador there. Lindberg married in in 1929, and for several years they enjoyed living the dream of a happy and prosperous life sheltered from any and all tragedies, nothing but prosperity. But then three years later, the unimaginable occurred, and the Lindbergs found themselves at the center of what would go down as one of the most infamous American crimes of the 20th century, a crime whose press coverage essentially marked the beginning of our current American obsession with true crime. Who kidnapped the Lindberg baby? Someone was caught, but

did they actually do it? This crazy story right now on another history and true crime combo edition of TimeSuck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to TimeSuck. You're listening to TimeSuck. Well, happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious.

I'm Dan Cummins, the suck maestro, Lord High of the Suckverse, professional weirdo, amusement park survivor. And you are listening to TimeSuck. Hail Nimrod, Hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy, bojangles, and glory beat a triple M. A quick reminder that next Monday, September 8th at noon Pacific time, this is the 2025 Bad Magic Street Team stickers will go live at bad magic productions.com, the seventh round of putting stickers in weird places. These stickers are free, little sticker packs to the first 500 people who grab them before they're gone. You just pay shipping, and then you stick them in fun and funny places, you take a picture, you post that picture online at Instagram or on Instagram or Facebook with the hashtag Bad Magic Street Team so we can find it. Taggis, that also works, and we'll announce the winner of a $200 merch credit on November 3rd. Thanks in advance, have fun.

Thanks also to those who have checked out the animated version of my old Maybe I'm the Problem album, stand-up album. now on YouTube, Thomas Royal at Salty Monkey Media on social, did such a good job, packed a ton of time suck references into that animation. And before I get started, looking forward to seeing so many of your beautiful faces this week at the wet, hot, bad magic summer camp, hell yeah, hell, Lufina, we're going to have so much fun. And now on to a topic that finds us once again in the world of true crime and is responsible, at least in part, for our modern conception of what true crime is, or how we consume it. Coverage of the Lindbergh baby kidnapping was really the first time the world saw the three

pillars of modern media converge on true crime, print journalism, radio, and newsreels, which later became television and digital media, all coming together to continuously assault the sensibilities of the American public and ignite outrage and intrigue that would keep them glued to the latest developments in twists and turns in this case. Radios, which most Americans had in their homes, blared constant uproids. updates about the Lindberg baby and sensationalistic theories about who kidnapped him. All this information or misinformation at times was played right into your home if you're in America in the 1930s. Film newsreels, meanwhile, were still emerging as a new form of media. They'd become pretty

prevalent, but they hadn't ever covered an event like this before. The Lindberg family's footage of the Lindberg baby was the first time that home movie footage was ever incorporated into newsreels. Crazy to think how much home movie footage or anything shot on a smartphone is played on the media today. Newspaper covered to the Lindberg baby kidnapping was massive. There were 12 daily newspapers in New York City in 1932 alone, and they all sent out squadrons of reporters to cover this story. And the more reporting they did,

the more people became obsessed with the story. Imagine if there was only one streaming network available to all of us, like just Netflix, nothing else. And also no social media, no YouTube, no other place to watch a docu-series. and instead of letting you pick which docu series you wanted to watch, Netflix only broadcast one of them at a time, right? A pre-designated time, it was broadcasting just the Lindbergh baby disappearance details

and everyone in the country interested in true crime, most of the country, not just watching it, but watching it all at the same time. That's what this was like. You could not go grab a coffee at some local diner or have dinner out at some packed restaurant and not hear about this. It wasn't just the talk of the town, it was the talk of the nation. And it was also big daily news and many other nations as well, and for months and then sporadically for years. If this had been someone not well known, say your average factory worker in Detroit or a farmer somewhere in rural Tennessee,

the case wouldn't have gotten nearly as big as it did. It's important to remember that Lindberg was one of the most admired men in all of the world when this went down. Easily the most famous man in the U.S. You know, one of the most famous men, you know, just in a world where there was so many fewer celebrities than there are today. People were already used to paying attention to Lindberg for years, seeing him in the media because of his feats, and now there was a nasty true crime story attached to him. It's sort of like if when a Lionel Messi's kids were to be kidnapped, or better yet, well, I hate to say the word better, worse yet. Let's go with worse yet. if Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift

do actually end up getting married and then they do have a kid and then that kid is kidnapped. But not even that horrible hypothetical, which I obviously hope never happens, truly encapsulates just how big this story was. Because now, thanks to how wildly polarized and politicized

our culture has become, there isn't anyone, at least not a single person I can think of, who America universally loves, who is also constantly in the news. Today, even celebrities who have quite literally, never made a public political statement, are still thought to be on one side of the other, right? rampant speculation online. And then most people, you know, not on their

quote-unquote team, assign all kinds of values to them, fucking hate them. We are truly living in such bat-shit crazy times. But back when the Lindberg baby disappeared, it was not like that. Not quite yet. Nazi Germany would soon change things in that way, but at 1927, seemed like fucking everybody loved, truly adored Charles. Lindberg and threw him his wife Anna and their child. There was a deep, deep emotional connection to him felt by virtually every American. And when he hurt, they hurt. In a parent's worst nightmare and a sensationalist journalist dream scenario,

this case unfolded over years with the media covering it all the while. The baby was kidnapped in March of 1932, a ransom payment was made in April, and then the child's dead body was found in May. But it wouldn't be until September of 1934, over two years later, when a man named Bruno Richard Hoptman was arrested a German-born construction worker who allegedly kidnapped the Lindbergh baby with a homemade wooden ladder.

And his subsequent trial would generate more intense media coverage than ever. And one of the things that happened to the trial or resulted the coverage, which would be true forever on, was that forensic evidence became fucking fascinating to people. There were no shootouts or dramatic confrontations. There were no fingerprints, no gun.

Nobody could really place Hupman at the crime scene. I think I pronounced the T the first time of his name, which I shouldn't have done. Instead, what happened was a relentless accumulation of forensic detail, which together led unmistakably to Bruno Richard Hoppin, details like ransom money bank records, handwriting analysis, even analysis of the wood grain of a ladder. People became obsessed with these details. They were reading 3,000 words a day in the New York Times alone about this case.

This was equivalent to something you see in the true crime genre today with these 15-part series that lead you to, every little nook and cranny of the investigation. So much of that started with the Lindberg case. But interestingly, for a case that was covered so heavily and thoroughly, there are still many questions. Why and how was the child taken from the nursery at a time when everyone inside the house was still awake? Why did Bruno Hauptmann continually claim he was innocent to the point he turned down the chance at life in prison in exchange for a confession, shortly before his execution? Was he innocent? Or did someone commit the crime along with Hauptmann? Why would a

real kidnapper knowing the child was lying dead less than five miles from the house undertake such excruciatingly long unnecessarily drawn out negotiations and risk discovery of the corpse. Is there any chance that the corpse was found that was found near the Lindberg estate was someone other than the Lindberg baby? Could the Lindberg baby still be alive? Are you the fucking Lindberg baby? I mean, I doubt it because I don't think this podcast hits very hard with the 90 plus demo, but who knows? Let's dig in. Before we walk through the details of this case in the timeline, let's first look more closely at your grandma. What's that crazy bitch been up to lately?

Did you know that that old Buck Cherry song was written specifically about your sweet, sweet nana? You're crazy, but I like the way you fuck me. Hey, you're crazy bitch, but you fuck so good on my top of it when I dream. I'm doing you all night. Snacks yourself down my back to keep her right. Oh yeah You're crazy bitch But you're fuck so good

You're Nana Oh God Snitches all down my back To keep it right on Nana was fucking wild She used to go full clip monster Anyway What I meant to say

Or should have said Was let's first look more closely At the pre-Kidnapping lives Of both Charles Lindberg And Spencer Maro Following that side road The narrative will be pretty much straightforward today

And we'll focus on the development Of the kidnapping case In the timeline and then talk about the lives of the Lindbergh's following all of this after the timeline. Starting with Charles, he'll be born into an already mighty legacy. Charles Augustus Lindbergh, our Lindbergh,

was born in Stockholm, Sweden, hangy-banggy-Huta, January 20th, 1859, the eldest of seven children of August and Louise Lindberg. August had been a member of the Swedish parliament who immigrated to the United States when Charles Sr. was about a year old after being charged with some illegal banking activities. Family settled in Melrose, Minnesota,

a little town of about 3,500 people now, only several hundred people then, mostly known for being a predominantly German population. Daddy Lindberg grew up and left Melrose and graduated from the University of Michigan Law School in 1883. Following his graduation, he returned home. Practice law, just 40 miles from Melrose in the slightly bigger community of Little Falls, Minnesota.

Town is somewhere around 1,500 people then, over 9,000 now. The Lindbergs would stay in Little Falls until 1909 when Charles Sr. was elected to Congress from the 6th Congressional District. And three years earlier in 1887, he had married Mary LaFond, daughter of Moses LaFond, a prominent man in Little Falls. Together they had two daughters, Lillian and Eva, before Mary died in 1898. In 2001, Charles married Evangeline Lodge Land, daughter of C.H. Land, in Detroit, Michigan.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh, born February 4th, 1902, would be their only child. Meanwhile, Daddy Lindbergh held his seat in Congress through 1916. He'd been elected on the Republican ticket soon became one of the leaders of the progressive Republicans in Congress. His activities as a member of this group included the attempt to unseat Joseph Cannon as Speaker of the House, opposition to the reciprocal trade policies of the Taft administration, opposition to the Federal Reserve, America's central banking system, and opposition to the Wilson administration's attempts to aid allies during the first years of World War I. And those views did not make him a lot of friends. In fact, they did the opposite.

Had to have been interesting for his son years later to be so beloved by the American public when so many Americans once despised his father. In the 1910s, 1920s, Daddy Lindberg began a number of political magazines and newspapers, all of which failed. One paper of note was called the Lindberg National Farmer. Books and pamphlets written by Lindberg, which were, widely distributed, included why is your country at war, the economic pinch, and who and what causes the panic. His anti-war writings and speeches during World War I caused him to be branded by many as a traitor, to the point that at the time, Lindberg was prevented from speaking

in many parts of the state and was opposed by many powerful public opinion-forming agencies. Lindberg's main concern, however, was the monetary policies of both Republican and Democratic administrations. Although Daddy Lindberg's career would start strong, it had come to a disappointing end when Lindbergh was defeated in several subsequent elections, a 1916 run for the U.S. Senate, 1918 bid to be the governor of Minnesota,

run for U.S. Congress in 1920, a 1923 run for a special United States senator seat election, and a second bid in 1924 for the governorship of Minnesota. Five big losses in a row. Kind of. He actually died during that final fifth campaign, but he was

widely projected to lose, and to lose big. Charles Lindbergh, his son, who would be 22 when his dad died, would not become a politician or a lawyer. He'd become a pilot and a damn good one. As I mentioned earlier, Charles A. Lindberg was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1902. While his family had moved to Little Falls, Minnesota, when he was still a toddler, and he would spend a lot of time there growing up. He also spent much of his childhood in Washington, D.C., thanks to his dad's political career

and ambitions. Lindberg showed exceptional mechanical ability as a kid. And at age 18, after graduating from high school, he was accepted, entered, the University of Wisconsin to go study engineering. However, engineering, despite his talent for it, was not his passion. He was far more interested in the exciting young field of aviation than he was in school. He was coming of age during the age of the aviator, a brand new and terribly exciting type of explorer. In 1903, just a year after Lindberg's birth, the Wright brothers made their first man-powered, controlled flight in the U.S.

Three short years later, 1906, Alberto Santos-Dumont made the first success. powerful powered flight in Europe. Three more years after that in 1909, Louis Blerio, a French aviator, made the first airplane crossing of the English Channel. He was in the air for 36 minutes and 30 seconds, and he traveled approximately 23 miles. Then in the spring of 1919, when Charles was 17, three Navy Curtis flying boats set out to beat the competition and be the first to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. The new flying boats, affectionately known as Nancy's, had a wingspan of 126 feet, much larger than that of a Boeing 727 with its 108 foot wingspan, and an overall length of 69 feet. They originally had three tractor Liberty engines that produced 1,200 horsepower.

Fully loaded, each craft weighed roughly 24,000 pounds. As the large, three large flying boats turned into the wind on the morning of May 8th, 1919, their wakes formed graceful arcs, approximately 1,200 people, U.S. Navy personnel, reporters and families of the crews watched from the shore at the Rockaway Beach Naval Station on the western portion of the Rockaway Peninsula in New York City, borough of Queens, as the aircraft climbed after takeoff. The three planes turned eastward, soon disappeared into the haze. Then at 10 a.m., John H. Tower sent word that the planes had left Long Island on the first attempt to fly across the Atlantic Ocean. At noon, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, yes, that FDR, sent him. sent the following message. Commander John H. Towers, USN, USS, NC4, delighted with successful start. Good luck all the way, Roosevelt.

The route, which started at Rockaway Naval Air Station, ended in Plymouth, England, would consist of six legs. The first was 540 nautical miles to Halifax, Nova Scotia. Second was 460 miles to Trapassi Bay near St. John's Newfoundland. The third and longest leg of the Atlantic crossing would take the flying boats from Trapassi Bay to Horta and the Azores. a distance of 1,200 nautical miles after a short hop of 150 miles to Ponce de la Gata, or Delgada, also in the Azores. The crossing concluded with an 800 nautical mile flight to Lisbon, Portugal. Finally, a 755-mile flight to Plymouth would end the journey. During the 24-day duration of the nearly 4,000-mile flight, news of the flying boat's progress was featured on the front of most American newspapers, and Charles Lindbergh read all about it.

He was amazed, he was excited, and he wanted in. Two years later, now 20 years old, he decided to really go for it. We left school to become a barnstormer, a pilot who performed ridiculous daredevil stunts at fares. Oh my God, barnstorming wildly popular source of entertainment in the rural 20s. The end of World War I had left many trained pilots out of work, itching to fly again, filled out rush. The military also had a surplus of aircraft. They didn't have any use for. Mostly the Curtis JN4 biplane, Jenny, as it was known, which they then sold to former aviators and civilians for a

fraction of their original prices. The former pilots' boredom and bravery, combined with access to inexpensive but still fast and agile planes, eventually led to the rise of the activity that earned its name from the aerobatic pilots who would land their light planes in fields and use local barns as venues for impromptu air shows. Pain and spectators would gather around these barns. How fucking fun was that?

To watch these daring pilots attempt a variety of super dangerous tricks. Daredevil stunt pilots would perform maneuvers like spins, dives, loop-de-loops. barrel rolls, dangerously low altitudes and aerialists literally working alongside these pilots would attempt daring feats like wing walking jumping from one plane to another mid-flight what the fuck I would die in my first attempt

they even did shit like put on mid-air tennis match demonstrations men, women, even children worked as aerialists you can find these videos online and it's so fucking insane in 1926 10-year-old Mildred Unger danced the Charleston on top of one of these biplanes, 2,000 feet up in the air,

no parachute. It doesn't look like she's tied to the plane either. After watching the video, I immediately had to look her up see if she made it to, if she survived to adulthood. And she did, but what the fuck? CPS would snatch Mildred

for that shit today immediately. Back in 1927, most people thought it was cool. They celebrated it. I don't know, maybe they were just used to kids dying a lot more back then. Losing another 10-year-old when most families lost about a third to half of their kids. All right, shrug it off.

Get the next kid up there, dancer scared the last off. Yeah, Mildred survived all her stunts, as did a lot of other barnstormers, but so many would die. In 1923 alone, 85 barnstormers were killed, 126 injured, and 179 recorded accidents. By the early 1930s, an estimated 18 of the 23 most prominent aerial performers had already been killed in fatal stunt accidents, with four others suffering career-ending injuries. It's fucking insane. almost everybody died or was maimed if they stuck around long enough. And I'm sure this was part of the admiration and awe that surrounded barnstorming.

You know, when you bought a ticket and you were watching somebody do a death-defined trick, you knew it was actually death-defined. Like they were actually truly risking death. And there was a decent chance this might be their last performance. After barnstorming for two years in 1924, Lindbergh, clearly a daredevil, a dude with balls of steel, not only do that, but do it for two years. Well, he enlisted in the U.S. Army so that he could be trained as an Army Air Service Reserve Pilots. Then in 1925, Lindberg graduated from the Army's flight training school at Brooks and

Kelly Fields near San Antonio, Texas, as the very best pilot in his class, an ace. After Lindberg completed his army training, the Robertson Aircraft Corporation of St. Louis hired him to fly the mail between St. Louis and Chicago, and now he gained a reputation as a cautious and capable pilot. But he was bored. He had no interest to being a mail carrier. for any length of time. He wanted a bigger dopamine rush, he wanted to make a bigger name for himself and also probably wanted to be fucking rich.

The promise of a big cash payout had to have helped lead him to become the first American to cross the Atlantic solo. And before moving forward, let's take a second to look at the man who would put up the cash prize for such a flight.

Raymond Orteg was born in 1870 in a little sheepherding community up in the French Pyrenees, real humble beginnings. After spending the first big chunk of his childhood, looking after his dead sheep, He immigrated to the U.S. alone at the age of only 12, which is 13 francs in his pockets.

He moved in with an uncle, took a job as a bar porter in New York City, making $2 per week. Soon after that, he found work at the Hotel Martin and Greenwich Village, where that little sheep fucker. Not sure he did that. I hope he didn't, but, you know, who knows? He worked his way up in the hotel serving as a waiter, then head waiter, then hotel manager. And then in 1902, when he was 32, he had saved up enough money to buy the hotel, and he did. That's awesome. He renamed it the Hotel Lafayette in honor of the Marquis de Lafayette, a young French nobleman who had served as George Washington's aide-de-camp.

Soon thereafter, he acquired a second property, the Brevort Hotel in Greenwich Village. Clearly, the dude knew how to run a profitable hotel. As a hotel owner, Orteg spent much of his time after World War I listing to French pilots regale him with these amazing stories of their brave exploits, you know, and over time he developed his passion for aviation and began to dream of all. the ways in which commercial air travel could just, you know, revolutionize the world. In 1919, news had reached Orteg of a nonstop flight that had been made between Newfoundland and Ireland, and he began to contemplate how he might help further progress be made.

So in a letter to the Arrow Club of America, he wrote, Gentlemen, as a stimulus to courageous aviators, I desire to offer, through the auspices and regulations of the Arrow Club of America, a prize of $25,000 to the first aviator of any allied country crossing the Atlantic in one flight, from Paris to New York or New York to Paris, all other details in your care. And while that may not seem like a huge jump to go from Newfoundland to Ireland to New York to Paris, the distance, a total of around 3,600 miles was actually twice that of the flight from Newfoundland to Ireland.

And initially, it seemed impossible. All the extra fuel that would be needed for that trip would make any plane of the day far too heavy to make that flight. and as a result, the prize offer expired in 1924 without anyone ever trying to claim it. Nevertheless, Ortegg's offer of a 25 grand purse spurred technological improvements, and many pilots were still determined to try and win it. As such, Orteg extended the deadline another five years, and by 1926, nine teams had come forward to formally compete.

And this competition was not without its share of failed attempts and tragedy. Of the nine pilots that attempted to make the crossing, six died. while in transit. Still, Lindbergh was undeterred. Death surrounded all pilots back then, far more dangerous to fly than it is now. He still thought he could do it if he had the right plane. And that obviously would cost money, more money than he had. So he started looking for investors. And he found nine guys in St. Louis, who agreed to fund the creation of a new kind of airplane, Harold M. Bigsby, Harry F. Knight, Harry H. Knight, a lot of fucking Harry's. Albert Bond Lampert

J. D. Wuster Lampert E. Lansing Ray, Frank H. Robertson, William B. Robertson, and Earl C. Thompson. Harry F. Knight, Harry H. Knight, by the way, we're brothers. Not father and son. Who the fuck does that?

Who gives two of their kids the exact same first name? That's fucking weird, right? Ryan Airlines of San Diego would restore, or excuse me, retrofit, one of their Ryan M2 aircrafts for Lindberg's flight, The customized plane dubbed a Ryan, NYP, or New York Paris, had a longer fuselage, a longer wingspan, and some additional struts to accommodate the weight of the extra fuel. The engine powering the plane was a Wright J5C manufactured by Wright Aeronautical, the aircraft manufacturer founded by the Wright brothers.

Lindberg had his plane, now named Spirit of St. Louis in honor of his St. Louis financial backers, custom built with extra fuel tanks in the plane's nose and wings. One gas tank mounted between the engine and the cockpit actually blocked most of Lindberg's view through the windshield. That's fucking ridiculous. Lindberg had to use instruments to guide him, archaic instruments, you know, compared to navigational instruments of today. He actually had a retractable periscope that he could and would slide out of the left side window

for a limited forward view. Just thinking about flying that way, makes me anxious. Imagine trying to drive and not being able to see out of the windshield. I just did a cross-country road trip with my son Kyler. We drove about 600 miles a day for five days to get his car back to his campus, and he likes to zip to the detriment of my nervous system. He likes to zip even through road construction

on I-70 going through the Rockies, around fucking tight corners, still wanted to hustle. Literally might have been the closest I've ever come to an actual panic attack. If he would have been using a fucking periscope to see ahead as we whipped around those corners next to 18-wheeler's through road construction, I think I would have just started screaming

until either he pulled over or he just crashed and died. But Chuck? Well, Chuck was unfazed. No, good on him. He was more of a man than I am. And before we hit a bit more about how insane his most famous flight was,

time for today's first at two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon. Thank you, Space Isers, for sticking around. Help us make monthly contrabble, oh my God, monthly charitable contributions. Those are words. get the entire catalog ad free.

Get episodes three days early and more. Woo-hoo! Thanks for listening to those ads, and now let's check in on Lucky Lindy's record-breaking transatlantic flight. On May 20th, 1927, Charles Lindbergh, now 25 years old, took off from Roosevelt Field on Long Island, and some 33 hours later,

after apparently falling asleep here and there, and also flying in an altitude of roughly 10 fucking feet for a while above the Atlantic to make sure he wouldn't find. fall asleep again and would be locked the fuck in, he landed the spirit of St. Louis at Paris's Le Bourgett airfield after circling the Eiffel Tower just for fun. That's very cool. An ecstatic crowd of some 150,000 people had gathered at the French airfield to witness this historic moment. Some especially enthusiastic witnesses dragged Charles out of the cockpit.

The crowd carried him around on their shoulders, cheering for him for about half an hour, I Yes. Then a squad of French soldiers with fixed bayonets had to stop the crowd from pulling more parts off of his plane to take home of souvenirs. It was madness. Orteg was vacationed and in France at the time he traveled to Paris immediately when he heard what Lindbergh had done, met Lindbergh, arranged for the purse to be awarded quickly. Deals a deal. The French foreign office flew the American flag the first time it had ever saluted someone who was not ahead of state. And Lindbergh immediately becomes a huge celebrity. One reporter said that, crowds were, quote, behaving as though Lindberg had walked on water, not flown over it. The New York Times printed in above the fold page-wide headline in huge letters that said, in all caps, Lindbergh does it. The prize also led to a considerable increase in public awareness and interest in aviation. Orteg inspired madness, as how historian Joe Jackson dubbed the 12 years of extraordinary aviation progress that followed Lindberg winning the Orteg Prize. Hawaii was reached by an airplane later in 1927. The first U.S. to Australia route was flown the next year in 1928. Former

suck subject, Amelia Earhart, became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic four years after that in 1932. Multiple patents were awarded for jet engine designs and rocket-fueled aviation was tested. Massive U.S. carriers, Delta and American Airlines actually date back to this era. Delta founded in Georgia in 1928, American Airlines formed from a conglomeration of 82 different small airlines through a shit ton of acquisitions in 1930. In the summer of 1939, Pan Am launched the first regular passenger service from the U.S. across the Atlantic on its Boeing flying boats. Between just 1926 and 1928, and mostly from the conclusion of Lindberg's flight and the end of

1928, the U.S. experienced a 30-fold increase in the number of airline passengers, from 5,782 a year to 173,405. Lindberg's historic flight also led to a 300% increase in the applications for pilot licenses and a 400% increase in the number of licensed aircraft in the U.S. in the space of just a single year following this flight. And thanks to a hugely successful, widely attended whirlwind coast-to-coast tour, the Spirit of St. Louis was personally viewed by 30 million Americans within just one year of Lindbergh claiming that prize. Lindberg was honored with a plethora of major awards, celebrations, and parades. President Calvin Coolidge gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor, the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Less than eight months after his famous flight, Lindbergberg was honored as the first time magazine man of the year when he appeared on the magazine's cover at the young age of just 25 on January 2nd, 1928. Several decades later, the winner of the 1930 best woman aviator the year award, Eleanor Smith Sullivan, would say that before Lindberg's flight, quote, People seemed to think we aviators were from outer space or something. But after Charles Lindbergh's flight, we could do no wrong. It's hard to describe the impact Lindberg had on people. Even the first walk on the moon doesn't come close. The 20s were such an innocent time, and people were still so religious. I think they felt like this man was sent by God to do this.

And it changed aviation forever because all of a sudden the Wall Streeters were banging on doors looking for airplanes to invest in. We'd been standing on our heads trying to get them to notice us. But after Lindberg, suddenly everyone wanted to fly, and there weren't enough planes to carry them. That's pretty wild. Dude had the right interest at the right time when it came to aviation. Plus, you know, tremendous skill, drive, and courage.

And that led him to just fucking exploding in the zeitgeist. If his passion would have been equestrianism or, you know, cycling or juggling or something else random, he could have still done something, you know, comparably incredible. And almost no one comparatively would have given a shit. directly following his big flight in addition to touring Chuck got to writing and barely two months

after Lindberg arrived in Paris GP Putnam's Sons published his 318 page autobiography titled We It would be the first of 15 books he eventually wrote or to which he made significant contributions

The dust jacket on the book noted that Lindberg wanted to share the quote story of his life and his transatlantic flight together with his views on the future of aviation and that we referred to the spiritual partnership

that are developed between himself and his airplane during the dark hours of his flight. We was quickly translated into most major languages, sold more than 650,000 copies in the first year alone, which earned Lindberg very quickly $250,000, you know, roughly. So much more than it might sound. $250,000 in 20, you know, back then in 1927, translates to over $4.7 million today. And again, that's just from one book. in just one year. And while he didn't get paid directly

to bounce around the country, given speeches and being thrown parades, all his expenses were covered, and the publicity obviously helped sell a bunch more books. And who was covering his expenses? Lindbergh was flying around the U.S., encouraging people to support aviation

on behalf of the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the promotion of aeronautics. The Daniel Guggenheim Fund would sponsor Lindberg on a three-month nationwide tour flying the spirit of St. Louis. He would touch down, as I mentioned earlier, 49 states, visit 92 cities, give 147 speeches, and ride 1,290 miles in parades alone. And on his travels, Lindbergh learned about the pioneer rocket research of Robert H. Goddard,

a Clark University physics professor, Lindbergg persuaded the Guggenheim family to support Goddard's experiments as well, which would lead to the development of missiles, satellites, space travel, all kinds of shit. He also made some appearances outside the nation. I don't think how much he made or didn't on all those other trips, his public record, but he became truly wealthy in a very short amount of time. And it was on a diplomatic trip to Mexico, also funded by the Daniel Guggenheim Fund for the promotion of aeronautics, that new money Lindberg would meet his future wife and Spencer Morrow.

So let's talk about her now. Born June 22nd, 1906 in Englewood, New Jersey, and Morrow Lindberg was the daughter of businessman, ambassador and U.S. Senator Dwight Morrow. and poet and women's education advocate Elizabeth Cuddermore. So quite the pedigree. Anne grew up with both wealth and privilege. Her family spent summers on the seashore at Martha's Vineyard,

a little island just off the shore of Cape Cod, Massachusetts. And she would also spend time on the island of North Haven off the coast of Maine to fucking bougie-ass places, not just money, but old money. 1927 to age of 21. Anne headed to Mexico City to visit her parents while on Christmas break from Smith College. where she was a top student, and that's where she would meet Charles, and she was instantly spitting,

and she could not wait to get naked and fuck. She wrote in her diary, quote, I need some of that sky dick, no cap. Chuck has real fuckboy aura, want real man vibes, deep in this waspuss, NGL. I don't know what she said. Actually, you know what she said.

She didn't say that. He's taller than anyone else, she wrote. You can see his head in a moving crowd, and you notice his glance, where it turns as though it were keener, clearer and brighter than anyone else's lit with a more intense fire what could i say to this boy anything i might say would be trivial and superficial like pink frosting flowers i felt the whole world before this to be frivolous superficial ephemeral okay so she did kind of you know feel what i was

writing earlier she just expressed it in a classier way uh charles was just a smitten and just four dates uh later they were engaged he wasn't the only looker in this relationship she was sexy as fuck they wanted to get it on and they wanted to do that yesterday but they'd have to wait for two years charles was a busy man she still had college uh the pair would get married may 27th 1929 in inglewood new jersey uh then they would take to the air together and having quickly learned how to fly and act as a radio operator uh the two two had an unusual relationship at least for the times charles seemed to actually treat her like an equal they were real partners and while there were certainly good equal marriages before our modern era charles could have easily

subscribe to the gender norms of the day, made Anne stay at home or take a back seat. But he didn't. And you could understand why, if you read his autobiography. In the book, Lindberg criticized the womanizing pilots he met during his day's barnstorming, also criticized army cadets for their facile approach to romantic relationships. He wrote that the ideal romance was stable and long term with a woman with keen intellect, good health, and strong genes. He added that his, quote, experience in breeding animals on our farm taught him the importance of good heredity. Okay.

That's interesting last point and some foreshadowing of things we'll talk about after the timeline. But the first points are all good. Easy to see how people fell in love with the new Lindbergs. After her marriage,

Anne Maro Lindberg became the first woman in America to earn a first class glider pilot's license. And it would be seven months pregnant with her first child in 1930 when she broke the transcontinental speed record by a full three hours, flying as co-pilot and radio operator

with Charles and a Lockheed serious low-wing monoplane from L.A. to New York in 14 hours and 45 minutes. In 1934, she would become the first woman to win the National Geographic Society's Hubbard Medal for serving as radio operator and co-pilot to her husband Charles on two flights, totaling 40,000 miles spanning five continents. Damn, 40,000 miles. It's awesome. She would also set a new long-distance wireless communications record of 3,000 miles for which she received the female Harmon Trophy in the Veteran Wireless Operators Association Gold Medal. The first woman to do so, she would be inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in 1979

and then into the International Women and Aviation Pioneer Hall of Fame in 1999. But that doesn't bear on our story today, so let's back up to the 1930s. Look at the early years of Charles and Anne's marriage before the kidnapping. The glamorous Lindbergs were seldom out of the news as they made pioneering flights to Latin America and Asia becoming, quote, the first couple of the skies. As critic Alfred Kazan observed, quote, to millions around the world, reading of the Lindbergs flying everywhere in their own Lockheed Syria seaplane, looking at photographs of the perfect looking couple,

the lone eagle and his mate landing in Siberia, China, Japan, the Lindbergh seemed to enjoy the greatest possible good fortune that a young couple could have. Right, how cool. Young, wealthy, and love. traveling the world together being adored at every stop when Anne gave birth to Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the couple's first child on June 22nd, 1930, the family started spending most of their time at their rural home called Highfields,

East Amwell, New Jersey, just a few miles from another town called Hopewell, New Jersey. East Amwell had around 1,200 people. Hopewell had around 4,000, some sources were referred to them living in Hopewell, some will say Amwell or East Hamwell. All the same area. You know you fucking load it.

when your home has its own name and their house has its own Wikipedia page. It's been used since July 1st, 1952 actually, as a juvenile rehabilitation center by the New Jersey Department of Corrections, which is kind of fucked up since it's the place where the baby was kidnapped. Behave, boys, don't make me Lindberg you. Kids go missing from this house, they don't come back, you feel me? The Lindbergs built Highfields in 1931 on a secluded spot on the Sowerland Mountain to be an escape, a safe haven from the spot.

spotlight brought on by their celebrity status. Also, the Sowerland Mountain location, while secluded, afforded easy access by air and automobile to the Lindbergh's offices in New York City to the laboratories, the laboratories of nearby Princeton University, to which they have been granted access. The 2.5, Soria stone building, originally sat on 380 acres in a heavily wooded region of a winding road, appropriately named Lindberg Road, and 380 acres. That is massive. Over half a lot of half a square mile of property. And they bought that property for $2,500. They were fucking loaded during the Great Depression, so their money went, you know, even further than it would now with the equivalent cash today. The house was designed by architects, Delano and Aldrich, a prominent New York firm, and Matthews Construction Company served as the contractor and builder. It's unclear how much of a role the Lindbergh played in the design of the house, but it did reflect their desire for privacy and safety. That can be seen in several features throughout the house, like discreetly camouflaged skylights.

Also, the stone walls of the house were 28 inches thick. They gave the house a, quote, fortress-like quality. It wasn't a place where anyone should have ever been able to kidnap a child, but that would still, of course, happen. And it would add to the dark fascination about this kidnapping, right? If somebody could take the baby out of this house, no child was truly safe. And now that the stage has been set,

let's get under the crime of this week's timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-suck timeline. March 1st, 1932. A day that seemed normal enough, but would go down as one of the most infamous days in true crime history. 20-month-year-old Charlie had been suffering from a cold during the last weekend of February 1932, the 27th, and 28th. it was a leap year that year baby boy was still under the weather monday the 29th because of this the lindbergs were laying low having a quiet night at home on march first and was already pregnant with the couple second child john but was only two months along during the day betty gow charlie's nurse and a young scotswoman rubbed some medication on the baby's chest to relieve some congestion and about seven thirty p m betty and anne put charlie junior to bed then betty and lindbergs went about their separate chores at night at roughly ten p m betty went up dares to check on Charlie, and he was gone.

And then she, of course, started to freak the fuck out. And she yelled for Charles and Anne, who, of course, also started to freak out, or did they? This is what they would tell investigators. But it might not be the truth, according to some theorists. Betty initially might have confronted Charles about another terrible practical joke. Let's check this out before moving forward real quick. Gregory Algren and Stephen Monier. I wrote a book about the kidnapping published in 1993 called Crime of the Century,

the Lindbergh kidnapping hoax. Algren was a criminal lawyer in Manchester, New Hampshire. Monier was the chief of police in Goffstown, New Hampshire. And they read about how Charles loved to play practical jokes, which is true, that were both reckless and cruel. Apparently, he loved to fuck with his wife, especially. And about two months before this kidnapping, according to these authors, Charles, quote, had hidden the child in a closet, presumably to frighten his wife. Fucking what?

That is wild. Put the baby in a closet to try and. and freak out his wife. I'm fucking kidding me. I said, I'm fucking kidding. Right, Miles? If true, that's bonkers. Look, I love a good practical joke.

Love to mess with my wife. Love to joke around with the kids. But hiding a toddler in a closet to make your wife think that the kid might have wandered off or been stolen. Yeah, that's really funny. That's really funny.

But is it worth it? No. It's not worth how upset that's going to make everybody. Probably not. Unless your wife, you know, doesn't hold grudges. It's quick to forgive.

Then, yeah, of course it is. That's funny. But again, still fucked up. and would write a letter to her mother-in-law saying her first thought when her son disappeared was that it was one of Charles's pranks. The letter was later published in one of Anne's books called A Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead in the mid-70s. These authors, the two authors, theorized that Lindbergh snuck the child out of the house, accidentally dropped him and killed him, then wrote a fake ransom letter, and let another dude take the fall for his son's death. I don't think I believe this, but it's a theory. It's out there. This feels like the place to mention it.

We'll get into more theories after the timeline. Right now, let's return to the narrative that most people agree on. Charles Lindbergh later recounted his initial reactions to finding out that his son had disappeared when he wrote, I went upstairs to the child's nursery, open the door, and immediately noticed a lifted window. A strange-looking envelope lay on the sill. I looked at the crib, it was empty. I ran downstairs, grabbed my rifle, and went out into the night. This is what was written in the ransom notes, full of misspellings, which I will read as written.

Dear Sir, have 50,000 Reedy, $25,020 bills, $15,010,000 bills, and $10,0005 bills. After two to four days, we'll inform you were to deliver the Mooney. We warn you for making any ding public or for notify the police, the child is in gut care. Indication for all letters are signature and three holds. he's trying to write a signature there at the bottom of the note you know in fairness they didn't have a spell check back then at the bottom of the note were two interconnected blue circles surrounding a red circle with a hole punch through the red circle and two more holes to the left and right

very strange uh if the baby was indeed kidnapped the baby was either not taken by somebody very educated or taken by someone educated enough to mask the degree of literacy or taken by someone whose uh language first language was not english and i got to wonder uh does that sound like like your dad. Have you asked your dad about the Lindberg baby? My dad claimed not to even know the Lindberg baby was ever kidnapped, which is fucking weird, right? I mean, he doesn't know that. I've heard about it. He should have heard about it. Seems a little suss. Maybe my dad and your dead worked together. Anyway, by 10.30 p.m. that night, radio news bulletins were announcing the story

to the entire nation. Nearly every newspaper in the country gave the story prominent placement in their March 2nd editions, and pretty much immediately supposed the sightings of the Lindberg baby were coming in from all quarters. California. Michigan, Mexico, just everywhere. None of them turned out to be genuine. Meanwhile, an official investigation was kick it off. After the local Hopewell police were notified, the report was telephoned to the New Jersey State Police

who took charge the investigation, and during their search at the kidnapping scene, the night, junior, when missing, traces of mud were found on the floor of the nursery. Footprints, impossible to measure, were found under the nursery window, two sections of the ladder that had been used in reaching the window,

and one of the two sections were found. One of the two sections was split or broken, where it joined the other, indicating the latter may have broken during either the ascent or descent or assent. I don't know why I said assent. No one says that way.

You know, when you assent something. What are you doing? I'm assenting. I'm assenting, okay? There were no blood stains in or about the nursery, nor were there any fingerprints. Whoever taken the child

seemed to have wiped away any evidence, they'd be there. Household and estate employees were quickly questioned and investigated. New Jersey State Police would offer a 25 grand reward for anyone who could provide information pertaining to the case. And because of depression, changing things,

actually 25 grand was now equivalent to 600 grand today. 1932, the investigation kicked off full steam ahead the next day. March 2nd, 1932 after a conference with the Attorney General and J. Edgar Hoover, young director of the U.S. Bureau of Investigation, which would be called the Federal Bureau of Investigation or just three years. They contacted the headquarters of the New Jersey State Police in Trent, New Jersey. the Hoover officially informed the organization that the U.S. Department of Justice

would grant Colonel H. Norman Schwarzkoff, the superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, the full assistance, full cooperation of, you know, essentially the FBI, and bringing about the apprehension of the party's responsible for the kidnapping. He advised New Jersey State Police that they could call upon the Bureau

for any facilities or resources, manpower, whatever, that might be helpful. The special agent in charge of the New York City Office of the Bureau, which at that time covered the New Jersey District, was instructed accordingly and upon instructions from the director, the special agent in charge, communicated with the New Jersey State Police

and the New York City Police, offering, again, just any assistance the Bureau might be able to lend. And the B-O-I-FBI would help the New Jersey State Police. They would need help because this investigation was messy. Along with police, well-connected and well-intentioned people arrived at the Lindbergh Estate, military colonels such as Henry Skillman, Breckenridge, a Wall Street lawyer, William J. Donovan, a hero of the First World War who later headed the Office of Strategic Services, aka the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, they offered their services. So it's like fucking all hands on deck, essentially, you know, equivalent to the day, like FBI, CIA, Department of Justice, everybody's helping.

Lindberg and these men have speculated that the kidnapping may have been perpetrated by organized crime figures. And they thought that the letter was written by somebody who spoke German as their native language. so many people would enter this case claiming to have valuable information and a lot of them would turn out to be frauds one such person was a real character named Gaston B means

may have been pronounced as Gaston but I feel like it was Americanized to Gaston it's a funny name either way the B actually stood for Bullock so Gaston Bullock means giving a name as if he was just destined to be a con man

sounds like a dude who tied damsels to train tracks If you were up to his favorite pastime, tying women to railroad tracks. He soon had unexpected company. If you look at his Wikipedia page, he's literally described as, quote, an American private detective, salesman, bootlegger, forger, swindler, murder suspect, blackmailer, and con artist. And on March 4, 1932, Gaston was approached by Mrs. Evelyn Walsh McLean of Washington, D.C.,

who felt she may have been of material assistance to, Lindberg in procuring the return of his child. She wanted to help. She had some money. Mrs. McLean had become acquainted with Means as a result of some investigative work, which Means had performed for her husband some years before, and Means informed her that he felt certain he could secure a contact with the kidnappers. Inasmuch, he had been invited to participate in a, quote, big kidnapping some weeks prior. But he declined, of course, because he was a great dude, obviously.

Means went on to claim, this is all bullshit, that his friend was responsible for the Lindberg kidnapping. And the following day, means reported to Mrs. McLean, that they had made contact with the persons who had the child. He then successfully induced Mrs. McLean to hand over to him $100,000 to be used just fucking cash, to be used in paying the ransom, which he said had been doubled, and that is equivalent to over $2.3 million today. And Mrs. McLean just fucking gave that much money during the Great Depression, no less, to a dude named Gaston B. Means. Because he said he could use it to bring back the baby of a couple Mrs. McLean. did not even know personally. Evelyn sounds very sweet

and may be gullible as fuck. Until April 17th, 1932, Gaston, but Gaston again is funnier, he kept Mrs. McLean waiting daily expecting the return of the child during this period he purported to be in communication

with the alleged leader of the kidnappers who he referred to as the Fox. Finally, Mrs. McLean requested the return of her hundred grand and more money. She had advanced him for, quote, expenses. And when he failed to do that,

she called the authorities, of course, and the case was quickly turned over to the FBI. Means and the Fox, who was found to be a man named Norman T. Whitaker, a disbarred Washington attorney and another low-life grifter, were both apprehended, Means later convicted of embezzlement and larceny

and sentenced to serve 15 years in a federal penitentiary. Bucking Gaston. Whitaker in Means, also later convicted of conspiracy to defraud, each sentence to serve two years, each in a, or what did I say, each again,

each sentence to serve two years in a federal penitentiary I think I'm saying that word right finally consistently could do a whole suck about Gaston Jay Edgar, or excuse me about Gaston Jay Edgar Hoover once called him quote the most amazing figure in contemporary criminal history because of his unique ability to weave a believable

albeit fraudulent story that grifter would die in prison just a few years later in 1938 at the age of 59 and now let's return to the investigation of 1932 A second ransom note was discovered March 6th, five days after the disappearance. It was post-march in Brooklyn, New York, March 4th, also carried the strange perforated red and blue marks, and this ransom demand was increased to $70,000.

A police conference was then called by the governor of New Jersey in Trenton, which was attended by prosecuting officials, police authorities, and government representatives. Lindbergh also hired private investigators. If only, you could have hired Sonny Hollister, store detective, the best P.I. in the suck first. He's been keeping various cheesecake factories crime-free for fucking years now. Detective Sonny Hollister here. Cheesecake factory store detective. Been a long time, meat, sacks. I'm still fighting crime. I'm 100% confident. I would have found the missing child in the first 48 hours. I've done it before. Someone once left their baby in the Columbus,

Ohio, eastern town-centered location back in 2009. They had one too many coconut margaritas and fell into a proverbial food coma, when they topped off a plate of Evelyn's favorite pasta with a slice of triple-berry bliss cheesecake. Where was the child? Left in the bathroom. How did I find it? I listened. He was screaming.

Babies aren't quiet. They're noisy. They cry a lot. One of the many reasons I've chosen to remain single and childless. Too much fuss. I would have asked each and every Lindbergh neighbor and every residence of the ten closest towns if they'd heard any loud incessant crying the night little Charles was missing. I would have asked where they heard that racket coming from.

I would have created a bawling baby map. Lots of tacks, lots of string. I would have kept expanding that map until bang, bang, chicken, and shrimp. There's that loud, fussy, big-headed rug rat. So there you go. It is that easy. Until next time, you keep listening to True. crime. I'll keep stopping it. Stay Sunny, everyone. I think he made that sound a lot easier than it

probably was. But, you know, there you go. He's confident. You got to be fucking confident if you're a PI. It's good to hear from Sonny. I was starting to think that maybe he died from some like cheesecake-induced diabetes or something. Now let's return to the story. Right after we take today's second and two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. Now let's return to March of 1932 when life is sadly falling apart for the Lindberghs. Meanwhile, the ransom notes, they keep coming. Two days later, March 8th, they get a third one sent to Lindbergh's attorney Henry Breckenridge.

This new note informed them that an intermediary appointed by the Lindbergs would not be accepted. Like the second note, it was postmarked from Brooklyn, also included those weird fucking perforated marks. It arrived in the Breckenridge's mail. The note told the Lindbergs that John Condon should be the intermediary between the Lindbergs and the kidnapper or kidnappers and request a notification in a newspaper that the third note had been received.

Instruction specified the size of the box the money should come in and warn the family not to contact the police. Why are so many kidnappers so fucking complicated when it comes to ransom demands? Just fucking add, just set up the money one place. Also, who the hell is John Condon? John F. Condon was a 72-year-old retired teacher and coach from the Bronx who was a well-known personality in the area. Sounds like one of those dudes, you know, people refer to as the mayor.

You know, just because they know everybody and everybody knows them. It sounds like a character. Next day, March 9th, 1932, Condon calls the Lindbergh claims that he has made contact with the kidnappers. Condon had written a letter to the Bronx home news, offering to act as an intermediary between Lindberg and the kidnapper prior to the third ransom letter. So, you know, he's just a random dude who wants to help. Then somebody purporting to be the kidnapper contacting him. Condon operating under the alias Jafsey is now allowed by Lindberg to do. try to contact the kidnapper at same day march ninth the fourth ransom note is received by mr conden

and uh per the kidnapper's latest instructions conden places a classified ad the new york american reading money is ready jaffsy condon then waited for further instructions from the culprits and i yeah keep saying plural because he's assuming it's at least two people uh march 10th 1932 mr connor received 70 000 in cash from the linbergs jesus immediately starts negotiations for payment through various newspaper columns. About 8.30 p.m. March 12th, after receiving an anonymous telephone call, Condon receives a fifth ransom note delivered by Joseph Peroni, a tax cab driver, who said he received it from an unidentified stranger.

The message stated that another note would be found beneath a stone at a vacant stand 100 feet from an outlined subway station. This note, the sixth, found by Condon, where the writer said it would be. Following instructions in this new note, so many fucking notes, Mr. Condom had an unidentified man who called himself John at Woodland Cemetery near 23rd Street in Jerome Avenue. And there they discussed payment of the ransom money. The stranger agreed to give proof of the child's identity. During the next few days, Mr. Conner repeated his advertisements, urging further contact,

stating his willingness to pay the ransom on March 16th. The baby has now been gone for two weeks. Can you imagine if this is your child? Somebody took him. You don't know who. You don't know where they are, what's being done to them. You don't even know if they're alive. It's been two weeks of constant worrying.

Holy shit, my nerves would be shot. It would be a fucking wreck. I would want so bad that you go full Liam Neeson from taking. Except I don't have his special set of skills. That same day, a baby sleeping suit as a token of identity and a seventh ransom note are received by Mr. Condon. The suit was delivered to Charles and Ann Lindberg, who confirmed it was their sons, fuck.

I mean, kind of good, I guess, because you're like, okay, okay, maybe they really have him. Condon continued placed in his newspaper advertisements. an eighth ransom note received by Condon March 21st His name sounds so much like condom and sits in on complete compliance

saying that the kidnapping had been planned for a year But still the Lindberg's They don't know When or if they're going to get their son back March 29th now Betty Gow the Lindberg nurse Finds one of the infant's thumb guards

Worn at the time of the kidnapping Near the entrance to the estate Such a weird thing this thumb guard You ever heard of a child's thumb guard It's fucking insane it was this metal and cloth contraption the main one back in the 1930s was called a baby Alice thumb card

you'd have this piece of thick cloth with metal wire inside that would go around your baby's wrist and then up from this wrist wrap was a metal wire that would go up along over the top of the thumb kind of make a little metal cage

often described as an iron cage that went over the entirety of the thumb the wrist wrap would secure it in place looks like a medieval torture device and it made it very unpleasant for little tykes to try and suck the thumbs. Sometimes to prevent the kids from getting it off, each of their arms would also be tied

with more cloth like restraints to the sides of their crib. And a few sources mentioned that this was the set up little Charles slept with. Both arms tied to his crib like he's, yeah, just like one arm tied to one side, one arm tied to the other fucking metal wire cage over both of his thumbs. The fuck, it's wrong with people.

I know it was a different time, but I cannot imagine doing that to little Kyler or Monroe. Details like that, some other details about Charles that I'll cover later, maybe wonder like what kind of dad he was. And I actually asked the internet, quote, was Charles Lindberg a terrible parent? And here's the AI exact quote that came back. It is widely documented that Charles Lindberg was a terrible parent,

marked by his strict, emotionally distant, and secretive nature. His beliefs in eugenics and his cold controlling parenting style deeply affected his children, both legitimate and illegitimate. I love how blunt robots are. more than his other kids later. For now, I'll get back to focusing on the search for his first. The following day, March 30th, the ninth ransom note, my God, was received by Condon,

threatening to increase the demand to 100 grand now and refusing a code for use in newspaper columns. So many fucking notes. Again, why is it so complicated? If I'm the Lindbergs, I'm now assuming that whoever's writing these notes is just loving, toying with me, right? Enjoying the hope, frustration, and pain these notes are causing.

A fucking 10th ransom note received by Mr. Condon on April Fool's Day, April 1st, 1932, it instructs him to have the money ready the following night to which Condon confirms their meeting in a printed act. And on April 2nd, $50,000 in ransom money equivalent to almost $1.2 million today is delivered by Condon to, quote, Graveyard John, while Charles Lindbergh waits in a nearby car. Oof. Graveyard John gave Conn then a note supposedly revealing the baby's whereabouts. The note led Lindberg and Condon in search of a boat called the Nellie between Horsneck Beach, gay head near Elizabeth Island. But no boat, no baby

are found. Lindberg had been double-crossed, and he must have been beyond devastated. How much did he regret that he did not go against instructions and try and kidnap that John motherfucker, then maybe put some bullets in one of his kneecaps, threatened to put several more in his gut

if he didn't immediately take him to his kid? Truly cannot imagine the primal rage I would feel. I would legitimately want to fucking murder every single person associated with my child's kidnapping in any way. Everyone who had a hand in it just gets two bullets in the fucking skull. A few weeks later, a horrible discovery

will be made. The baby by the, you know, going all this back and forth, all this ran some bullshit and it was all just a big show. It was none of it was based and this kid's still being alive. 3.15 p.m. May 12th, 1932, a truck driver named William Allen stopped just north of the small village of Mount Rose, New Jersey,

approximately two miles from the Lindbergh home to relieve himself in the nearby woods. About 75 feet off the road, he looks down, sees a baby's head and a foot. protruding from the ground. It's the rotting remains of Charles Jr. Partially buried, already badly decomposed. The baby's head had been crushed.

There was a hole in the skull. Some of the limbs were missing, probably taken away by fucking animals. Nevertheless, the body is positively identified, then cremated in Trenton, New Jersey, on May 13, 1932. The coroner's examination showed that the child had been dead for about two months,

meaning the baby was killed shortly after going missing, possibly even dying the same night he went missing, possibly dying right away when the kidnapper took him. Corner also determined that child's death was caused by a blow to the head. The kidnapping investigation was now a murder investigation. Charles and Anne were naturally completely devastated. And poor Anne, if you recall, is pregnant. Her first child's dead, second child, still inside of her.

Her and Charles had it all. Their future could not have looked brighter, and now they're in hell. The nation mourned for them. More than the nation, actually. People all over the world are following this story and following it closely, and they want to know who would do this, who would kidnap, and then killed the Lindberg baby. Frustradingly, the investigation into finding the bastard or bastards who had done this would be slow going. The only real leads, the police had to go on were the serial numbers from the ransom money. They'd already paid out, which had been carefully recorded.

The first of those bills would surface in New York City three days after the ransom was paid over the next two years. More and more would appear slowly the authority. would, you know, start to hone in on whoever did this. The New Jersey State Police announced May 26, 1932, that the offer of a reward not to exceed 25 grand for information resulting in the apprehension and conviction of the kidnapper or kidnappers. Again, that amount equivalent to about 600 grand today

because of the Depression. Copies of this notice of a reward were forwarded to the FBI, or by the FBI, excuse me, to all law enforcement officials and agencies in the U.S. In early June, same year, began to suspect the crime had been perpetrated by somebody to Lindbergh's new. Most of the suspicion fell upon a woman named Violet Sharp, a British household servant in the home of Mrs. Lindberg's mother, Mrs. Dwight Morrow.

She had given contradictory information regarding her whereabouts on the night of the kidnapping. It was reported she appeared nervous and suspicious when questioned. So she was questioned again. Then she was questioned a third time. And just before she was going to be questioned a fourth time, June 10th, she died by Sue. after she swallowed a bunch of silver polish that contained cyanide, and that had to have been fucking painful. And then sadly, right after she died, her alibi regarding her movements on the night of March 1st, 1932, were completely corroborated. It was ascertained with complete certainty

that she had zero connection to the abduction. The stress of being a suspect was simply more than she could bear. The stress of the kidnapping, combined with the pressure the police were putting on her all the questions about her movements. Night of the baby's disappearance led to her admission that she had been casually dating a couple of dudes that week. Scandalous for the time, even though lots of people did it, and that pushed her over the edge. The police were then criticized for how heavy-handed they were in dealing with her. And that is tragic.

So whoever killed little Charles Jr., essentially killed her too. And now investigators have no prime suspect. The investigation moved to center on the latter using the crime now. Police had quickly realized it was crudely built, but built nonetheless by somebody familiar with Wood who was mechanically inclined. So who was that motherfucker? The ladder had been thoroughly examined for fingerprints, had been exhibited to builders, carpenters,

neighbors of the Lindbergs, nothing turned up from all that. However, some slivers of the ladder had been analyzed and the type of wood used in the ladder had been identified. Could that lead to the killer? Investigators thought that maybe an even more thorough examination in the latter by a wood expert would yield even additional clues or even more clues.

And in early 1933, such an expert was found and called in Arthur Kohler of the Forest Service from the U.S. Department of Agriculture color disassembled the ladder painstakingly identified you know what pieces they had painstakingly identified the types of wood used and examined the tool marks looked at the pattern made by nail holes thought that some of the would have been used before an indoor construction he summarized his findings in a report to report that would actually play a very key role in the trial to come may second 1933 14 months after the kidnapping the federal reserve bank in new york discovers two hundred and ninety six ten dollar gold certificates and and won $20 gold certificate, all Lindbergh ransom notes. These bills were included among the currency received at the Federal Reserve Bank, May 1st, 1933, apparently had been made in one deposit. Immediately upon discovery of these bills to deposit tickets at the Federal Reserve Bank for May 1st were examined, one was found bearing the name and address of one J.J. Faulkner, 537 West 149 Street, and had marked thereon gold certificates 10 and 20 in the amount of $2,980. However, despite an extensive investigation, that depositor was not located.

There was no one living at that address by that name. So somebody just, you know, made up some bullshit when they got these things deposited. Examination of the ransom note by handwriting experts resulted in a virtually unanimous opinion that all the notes were written by the same person and that the writer was of German nationality but had spent some time in America. Mr. Condon described John the man he had met under cover of darkness twice as Scandinavian. so, you know, in the ballpark of being German, and believing he could identify the man spent considerable time viewing the numerous photographs of possible suspects and known criminals.

To help Condon, the FBI, retained the services of an artist to prepare a portrait of John from descriptions furnished by both him and Joseph Barone, the taxi cab driver who had delivered one of the ransom letters to Mr. Condon. A few months later, with an arrest still not in sight in September of 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt stated in a meeting with Director Hoover that all work on the case be centralized within the Department of Justice. He requested the director to convey his views

to Attorney General Homer Cummings with the suggestion that the Attorney General make a request of the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, aka the IRS, either through the president or directly for a detailed report of all work performed by the IRS Intelligence Unit.

Truly all hands on deck for this one. The longer this goes on, the worstest looking for American law enforcement. People are thinking if one of the nation's most popular figures a man deemed a hero can't find justice for his son who could on october 19th 1933 was officially announced that the fbi would have exclusive jurisdiction and so far as the federal government was concerned in the handling of any investigative features of the case the lindberg case would end up changing law enforcement procedure now kidnappings would not be

handled by whatever local authorities were around but would go straight to the fbii and that change came directly from this uh january 17th 1933 A circular letter is issued by the New York City Bureau Office to all banks and their branches in New York City requesting an extremely close watch for ransom certificates, and the following month in February, all Bureau offices are supplied with copies of the Bureau's revised pamphlet containing the serial numbers of these ransom bills. The New York City Bureau Office distributed copies of this pamphlet to all kinds of employees, handling currency in banks, clearing houses, grocery stores in certain selected communities, insurance companies, gas stations. airports, department stores, post offices, and telegraph companies. Prior to this case, the passage of ransom bills had been reported to either the FBI, the New York, excuse me, the New Jersey State Police, or the New York City Police Department, none of which had complete information.

Therefore, arrangements were affected whereby investigation of all such ransom bills detected in the future could be immediately conducted jointly by representatives of the three interested agencies. In March 1934, in another attempt to identify the individual who received the ransom, some payment. Representatives of the New York City Bureau office held Mr. Condon or had Mr. Condon prepare a transcript of all conversations had by him with John, right, that cemetery John figure, on March 12th and April 2nd, 1932. Those are the dates which Mr. Condon had personally contacted the kidnapper in order to negotiate the return of the child, the payment of the ransom. These conversations were during March 1934, now transcribed in detail on phonographic records by

Mr. Condon who imitated the pronunciations and dialect to John. This way, the nationality, education, mentality, and character of the kidnapper could be more clearly defined. It was now on record for future use. This was also new. It doesn't seem to this had been done in an investigation before, at least not in the U.S. For a period of seven months, prior to August 20th, 1934, no gold certificates are discovered, except those we mentioned that were found in the Federal Reserve Bank. But then, starting on August 20th, 1934, and extending into September, a total of 16 gold certificates are discovered, most of them in the vicinity of Yorkville and Harlem. It seems as if a long-awaited opportunity had finally arrived.

It was law enforcement zeroing in on their man, somebody who maybe felt like the heat had died down enough so they could finally start spending that ransom money as they pleased again. As each bill was recovered, investigators put a colored pin marking the location of the recovered bill. bill in a large map of the metropolitan area, showing the movements of the individual or individuals who might be passing the ransom money. In keeping with the cooperative policy previously established with the New Jersey State Police and the New York City Police Department, teams composed of a representative of each of these police agencies and a special agent of the Bureau are organized to personally contact all banks in Greater New York and Westchester County. As a result, the various neighborhood banks discovered where the bills had changed hands. And now it became possible for investigators to

traced the bills to the actual person who had originally passed them. For the first time in the case, investigators managed to question the bank tellers and get a description of the dude who had handed them those bills. And that description fit the description Mr. Condon had given to a tea of Cemetery John. So finally, after fucking two years, felt like Catch the Lindberg Baby's Killer was actually about to happen. Investigators soon determined that the bills were being passed principally at corner produce stores, and now they started interviewing those employees.

And then on September 15th, 1934, another break in the case. And attendant received a bill in payment for five gallons of gasoline. The filling station attendant being suspicious of the $10 gold certificate after previously having spoken with law enforcement, recorded on the bill the license number of the automobile driven by the purchaser. And that license number belonged to Bruno Richard Halpin. So I'd try to sneak that dick in the middle like we weren't going to notice. At 1279, east 22nd Street, Bronx, New York.

days later, about 1.20 p.m. September 18th, the assistant manager of the Corn Exchange Bank and Trust Company at 125th Street and Park Avenue, New York City, telephone the New York City Bureau office to advise that a $10 gold certificate had been discovered just a few minutes previously by one of the tellers in that bank. They quickly found that this bill had been received in the bank from a gas station located at 127th Street in Lexington, and a dude who like Bruno had been there that day. A Hauptman's house was now closely surveilled by federal and local authorities throughout the night of September 18th and the next day on the 19th

the police arrested Bruno Dickface Hauptmann a 34 year old German-born carpenter A $20 gold ransom certificate was found on his person at the time of his arrest and his description again matched perfectly with John

as described by Mr. Condon in his house a pair of shoes was found which had been purchased with a $20 ransom bill recovered on September 8th 1934 Houtman admitted several other purchases which have been made with ransom certificates He claimed to be holding the money for a friend, Isidore Fish, who had since died.

Very quick note about this supposed fish dude. Born in 1906 in Germany, Isidore Fish came to the U.S. in 1925 with his friend Henry Ullig. In early 1932, he met Hauptmann. The two became friends and business partners, agreeing to split profits and losses of Fish's fur business and Hauptman's stock investments. A frail and sickly dude, Fish decided to return to Germany to visit some family in the winter of 1933. and the night before he left, according to Houtman, he left several items with Houtman,

including a big fucking bag of ransom cash, which makes zero cents. Then on March 29th, 1934, fish died as some kind of illness back in Leipzig, Germany. Saying he was given a big bag of blood money that he didn't even know was blood money will become one of the main pillars of Houtman's defense at his upcoming trial.

That's a fucking crazy defense. Yeah, yeah, I had the ransom money. How? Well, a guy just, he gave it to me. A friend of mine. just left me a giant fucking suitcase of cash. I mean, he didn't tell me it was cash. He just said, hey, hold on in this suitcase. Don't look in it.

And then he went to Germany for a long time, and then he died. And I eventually said, you know what? I'm not proud of it, but I looked into it. And it was nothing but cash. Get the fuck out of here. That never happens. On the night of September 19th, 1934, Halbin was positively identified by Joseph Peroni,

the taxi, that taxi cab driver, who had, you know, help with one of the ransom exchanges, or a little meetings, I guess. was identified as the individual from whom he had received the fifth ransom note to be delivered to Mr. Condon.

Following day, September 20th, ransom certificates in excess of $13,000 are found hidden in the garage of Outman, equivalent to over $310,000 today. That's a fucking lot of money for a carpenter. An unemployed carpenter at that

to have hidden in his garage. Shortly thereafter, Bruno was identified by Mr. Conant as John, the recipient of the ransom. Investigators also found that Bruno was in possession of a Dodge sedan automobile, or automobile, which matched the description of a car seen in the vicinity of the Lindbergh home the day before the kidnapping. So, not looking good. Shortly after his apprehension, specimens of Hauptman's handwriting are flown to Washington, D.C., where a study is made of them in an FBI lab there.

The lab makes a positive identification. Bruno Hauptman is the person who wrote the ransom notes according to handwriting experts. So he's looking real guilty. Further investigation into Hauptman's background makes him look even more guilty. They discovered that Hauptmann was a native of Saxony, Germany, where he had a criminal record for multiple robberies and where he had spent some time in prison. Early in July of 1923, he had stowed himself away aboard the SS Hanover in Bremen, Germany, arrived in the port of New York City, July 13th, 1923, where he was very quickly arrested and deported. After another failed attempt at re-entry in August, Hauptman successfully re-entered the U.S. illegally in November of 1923, now aboard the SS George Washington, and then just two months, later, October 10th, 1925, excuse me, not two months, two years, months, years, what is time?

Houtman married and a Schulfur, a New York City waitress. Their son, Manfred, would be born eight years later in 1933 during his legal stay in New York City. And until the spring of 1932, Houtman worked on and off as a carpenter. However, a short while after March 1st, 1932, the day of the kidnapping, Houtman began to trade rather extensively in stocks or at least that's what he told his wife he was doing and then he never worked again and that looks just a bit suspicious

Houtman is indicted in the Supreme Court Bronx County, New York, charges of extortion on September 26, 1934 but of course bigger charges are quickly coming. Two weeks later on October 8th in Huntington County, New Jersey, Bruno is indicted for murder. On October 19th

he's removed to the Hunterton County jail, Flemington, New Jersey to await his trial and now one of the so-called trials of the century gets underway in the small town of Flemington, New Jersey, January 3rd, 1935. About 5,000 people lived there today. Only about 2,500 lived there back in 1935 for the start of the trial. Roughly 60,000 people, reporters, novelists, movie stars, society matrons,

just random fucking people crammed into this tiny town, a town with one hotel, with one bar, to accommodate some of the biggest names in journalism, them. Walter Winchell, Fannie Hurst, Damon Runyon among them. The jury was chosen quickly, consisted of eight men and four women. Thomas Trenchard, the trial judge,

instructed the jurors not to read the newspapers, not to listen to the radio. Don't talk to anybody about the trial. But each day, the jurors had to walk back and forth between the courthouse and the union hotel where they were being isolated from the public. Jurors waited through the crowds where newsboys were shouting the latest headlines.

Hawkers were selling miniature Lindberg Ladders. People are encouraging the jury to, quote, send Hopman to the chair. You know, so no pressure. When the jurors ate their meals in the hotel dining room, they were separated from other diners, mostly reporters by nothing but a thin cloth curtain. So they're hearing all kinds of shit about the case. You can bet your ass. These reporters are also doing their best eavesdropping, you know, in their dorms or in their rooms at night. Excuse me, jury members could also hear radio reporters loudly broadcasting news of the trial from a temporary radio station that had been set up one floor below. It's fucking impossible

to avoid, you know, information from the outside world. judge trencher tried his best to maintain an orderly courtroom but it was difficult he banned typewriters but scores of reporters continually sent handwritten news copy by messenger boys to some telegraph wire operators in the courthouse attic more than once judge trenchard had to warn courtroom spectators against laughing giggling or applauding despite trenchert's effort to crack down on sensationalism you know the trial would still become very sensational and make its way to the wider world five newsreel companies covered the trial by This time, newsreels have become a popular feature in movie theaters all across the nation. The newsreel outfits pooled their efforts and set up a camera enclosed in a box to deaden its noise, focused it on the witness stand. The camera used special film that did not require additional lighting. A directional microphone was secretly put up behind the jury box. The whole apparatus operated by remote control.

This way newsreel companies capture the testimony of a number of witnesses, including Lindberg and Hauptmann on sound movie film and distributed it to theaters all over the nation in the world. apparently the county sheriff had agreed to the filming arrangements on condition that none of the footage be shown in movie houses uh-uh not before the end of the trial but they just completely ignored that and the camera stayed in the courtroom judge trenchard mentioned that he was unaware any filming was taking place during the trial i don't know how to fuck he would not notice but that's what he said in any event the judge angrily did close down the operation two-thirds of the way through the trial when newsreels of testimony were shown when he found out they were being shown in most of the country's first-run theaters but then the end of the trial would end up having portions filmed anyway and you can find a lot of this footage online today. Here's a little edited short of some trial moments that was

aired in British theaters sorry about the poor quality but you know it's a long fucking time ago I'll read some of the stuff just written on the screen and starts off saying Gaumont British News Special Sensational scenes at close of Lindbergh kidnapping trial

these pictures from inside the court during the actual trial From the most realistic newsreel drama ever screened. The stage is set for the utmost intensity of drama as Hauptmann takes the witness stand. Questioned by his own lawyer Riley, the Bronx carpenter in German accent, begins his string of denial. On the night of March the 1st, 1932, were you on the grounds of Permanel and Berg? Hope one was good. That wasn't enough.

On the night of March the first 1932, did you ever be able to? of the night of time of Lindberg and I take from that nursery Charles Lindberg Jr. Defense attorney Riley listens as Hauptmann denies the kidnapping. So, you know, this

kind of thing is common today, obviously with better sound. But that shit brand new back then. People couldn't believe around the world that they were witnessing inside the courtroom, like what was going on inside the courtroom, actually, you know, watching footage of Hauptman, you know, deny that he was involved in the kidnapping,

being seen footage of Lindbergh, you know, emotionally upset about testimony, all sorts of shit, you know, and people back then, just like people today with kind of stuff, you know, fucking riveted. Now back to the trial. This trial would last six weeks. Habman was defended by Edward, Big Ed Riley, a flamboyant attorney who was reputed to have his best days behind him. Let's run down the evidence against Hauptman. There's a lot of it. The key evidence tying Hauptman to the actual kidnapping was a section of attic floorboard taken from Hotman's Bronx apartment that precisely matched the grain of wood used for rail 16 of the latter found in the kidnap scene. Moreover, rail 16 had four square nail holes that matched

the nails used in Hauptman's attic exactly. Several jurors said after the trial that this wood evidence was the most significant evidence when it came to proving Hauptman's guilt. And yeah, the entire ladder was found there. I think earlier I was a little confused. But yes, the two little pieces were broke but uh you know whoever did this haupin probably uh went up the ladder came down the ladder left the ladder when they fled with the baby next was the fact that haughtman had a criminal record back in germany as i went over earlier uh one of his conviction convictions excuse me that i did not mention involved a second store robbery job using a ladder uh third was witness millard whited a local logger living a mile from the lindberg house who testified he saw haupman prowling around

the lindberg estate two on two occasions in the days before the kidnapping. And then there was all the handwriting evidence. Mr. Condon's telephone number and address were found scrawled on a doorframe inside Bruno's closet. Houtman's handwriting had many points of obvious similarity with the ransom notes. For example, both Houtman's handwriting and that found on the ransom notes had backward ends, unclosed O's, the very same shaped T's, and the same, you know, unique curls added

to the Y's. Houtman also misspelled Many of the same words That were misspelled in the ransom notes For example, Hauptman and the author Of the ransom notes Both misspelled where as were Hour as Ower

Later as ladder And boat as bowed So very specific mistakes And then there was also Mr. John Condon's witness testimony John of course being the man Who delivered the ransom money To another dude also named John In a Dark Cemetery

Or at least a guy who identified himself as John and he testified that this John strongly resembled Bruno Howpen. Likewise, a taxi driver testified that the man who gave him a note to deliver to Mr. Condon was Howpen. A famed aviator Charles Lindbergh would also testify. Lindberg dressed in a rumpled gray suit and a blue tie, told the jury how at 9 o'clock on the night of his son's disappearance, he'd heard a noise that sounded, quote, like an orange box falling off a chair. The sound, of course, might have been that of his child falling to his death. Not sure why he didn't investigate.

Lindberg was asked if he knew whose voice he had heard near a New York cemetery say, hey, doctor. Sometimes Mr. Condon is referred to as Dr. Condon. Lindberg replied with an error of assurance that was Hauptmann's voice. Cross-examining Lindberg, defense attorney Edward Big Ed Riley pursued a bizarre line of questioning.

He suggested the kidnapping and murder of Charles' son was carried out by some neighbors who were upset about Lindberg's decision to not allow them access to a forest in which they had previously hunted. Because that makes sense. I mean, if I really want to go hunting somewhere and then the owner wouldn't let me,

the very first thing I would think of doing would probably be like killing that motherfucker's baby. I mean, if they're still, if they're not going to let me hunt, I can at least try and, you know, balance the scales of justice, right? Oh, I can't shoot a deer? Well, I'm going to fucking kill your kid then. That's a bunch of nonsense.

Continuing, Riley suggested through questions that Lindberg was negligent and not looking into the backgrounds of his maid, Betty Gow. and other household servants that those servants might have somehow been responsible for this crime.

The reason that Lindberg's dog didn't bark that night, Riley suggested, was because this was an inside job. Finally, Riley tried to cast suspicion on Mr. Condon, asking Lindberg, did it ever strike you that a mastermind

might insert an ad in the paper and answer it himself? Lindberg didn't crack. He said he was positive that his son's kidnapper and killer was Halpin. Then Betty Gow, the Scottish maid,

who was the last person in the house to see young Charles Lindenberg would testify in the fourth day of the trial. She identified the sleeveless undershirt she had made for the baby herself. She said that was the one found on the baby's corpse and told how she had identified the baby at the morgue. Riley, in a harsh cross-examination of Gao, which did not win any support from the jury, intimated that she and some of her friends had been accomplices in the crime.

Riley showed Gao photographs of the Purple Gang, a notorious group of Detroit criminals, and demanded to know whether she knew any of them. She said she did not. Gow fainted as she walked back to her chair then after Riley's attack, but was quickly revived. You don't hear about a lot of people faint now. But back then, right?

Feels like a lot of people fainted. From like stories of this era. Always people feigning. So much fainting. Makes me hear like sign-filled in my head. What is the deal with all the faining? Was they not drinking enough water? Do they not pay attention to their blood sugar?

What is the deal? You know, the prosecution next called three state troopers to the stand. The first corporal Joseph Wolfe described seeing a large footprint in the mud near ladder marks by the nursery window. He estimated the footprint to be larger than a size nine, and Bruno Hauptmann's actual shoe size, which was never conclusively established, was, I guess, larger than a nine. On cross-examination, Wolf was ridiculed for not measuring the footprint and for not knowing whether the print came from a left or a right shoe. The second trooper, Lieutenant Lewis Bournemann, identified a ladder in the courtroom as the one he had discovered on the night of the kidnapping, line 75. feet from the Lindbergh home. A third trooper, Sergeant Frank Kelly, described what he found and didn't find, like fingerprints, in the baby's room in the night of the crime. Amanda's

Hockmouth, an 87-year-old witness who lived alongside the road leading to the Lindberg estate, took the stand to tell the jury that on the morning of March 1st, 1932, he saw a man in a green car with a ladder in it, passed by his house, and proceed towards the Lindberg home. Hockman said the man in the car glared at him. Okay. And the man you saw a look out of that automobile glaring at you is he in this room? Prosecutor David T. Willant's Attorney General of New Jersey asked. Yes, Hockmouth answered, pointing his finger at Hopman, and as he did so, a power failure sent the courtroom into semi-darkness. How dramatic. Defense attorney Riley had a quick explanation for the lights going out, saying,

it's the Lord's wrath over a lying witness. The most widely anticipated witness in the trial was the always ready to pontificate John Condon. Condon began his testimony by stating his age is 74, his residence as the Bronx, quote, the most beautiful borough in the world. Wildens led Condon through a description of events leading up to his meeting in the cemetery, then asked, who did you give that money to? And Condon answered, I gave the money to John. And who is John? John Condon answered deliberately, is Bruno Richard Hauptman. With that revelation, dozens of news messengers scrambled out of their chairs. Judge Trenchard had to restore order. On Cross Riley and Conchman,

Condon sparred over the significance of Condon's refusal to make positive identification of Hopman in a lineup in the Greenwich Police Station. Condon said he had identified Hopman at the time, but withheld his declaration of identification. Riley accused Condon of splitting hairs and words. On the eighth day of trial, Colonel Norman Schwartzcoff was quizzed about handwriting specimens, and he identified two as having been voluntarily produced by Hoppin. Soon the prosecution had introduced a total of 45 specimens, including 15 ransom notes, nine automobile registration applications in Hopman's handwriting. Using blow-ups of the specimens, a series of document examiners and handwriting experts, including John Tyrell,

told the jury that Hopman was the author of all the ransom notes. One expert, Clark Sellers, went so far as to assert, quote, he might as well have signed the notes with his own name. County physician, Dr. Charles Mitchell, who performed the autopsy on the Lindberg baby, would testify about the baby's fractured skull. He would tell the jury that, quote, the blow that caused the fracture was struck prior to the death of the child. Listening

to the doctor's graphic testimony about the autopsy, Hauptmann sat white-faced and frozen. Lindberg, for the first time, visibly affected by the trial testimony, sat with his shoulders bowed. Can you imagine? Listening to some doctor talk about how your baby was killed while the

likely killer is sitting in the same room. How badly would you want to rush him, push past, you know, people to get to him, get your hands around his neck? How badly would you want to sneak a gun into the courtroom and just fill him full of holes. After testimony concerning Houtman's alleged passing of gold notes

from the ransom money, Wylands called his last witness a balding 47-year-old zylotomist, aka wood expert. You don't hear xylodomist a lot, a great scrabble word.

X-Y, L-O-T-O-M-I-S-T. Holy shit, you get a lot of points. He's a dude from Madison, Wisconsin. Madison, what? He's a dude from Fashcom. He's fucking turning to Boomhauer there. He's a fast boy. He's from Madison, Wisconsin.

Try his article one meter. No, he's from Madison, Wisconsin. His name, yeah, Arthur Kohler, who we met earlier, Kohler identified the board in the kidnapped ladder as having come from a lumber store in the Bronx. Given the location and shape of the nail holes and the grain of the wood, Kohler argued that the board must have at one time

been joined two boards found in Bruno Hauptmann's attic. As Kohler stepped down from the witness stand, Wylance announced the state rests. And everyone in America, again, is hearing about all of them. this. The trial completely dominated every form of media of the day, every day during the entirety of this trial. When Houtman took the stand, he denied all involvement with the crimes. He denied any connection to the kidnapping or the ransom notes, claimed that the money found in

his garage had been left by his now-decease German friend, Isidore Feitch, which I mentioned earlier. Houtman said that he was told by police to misspell the words in his handwriting samples that were also misspelled in the ransom notes. Wylance's cross-examination of Houtman would be rough and effective. He began with questions about Houtman's criminal record back in Germany. Then Wylens asked Houtman how he spelled the word boat, right? One of the misspelled words on the last ransom note. And Houtman replied, B-O-A-T, swing in a miss, or maybe not. Wylance walked to the prosecution table, picked up a ledger taken from Houtman's apartment, pointing to a page in the ledger, Wilin asked Houtman, will you please look at this one word? The word was boat, spelled in

Houtman's ledger as B-O-A-D, just like the ransom note. Somebody had been practicing their spelling for the trial. So I was a bit of a mic-drop moment in the courtroom. A question followed question for two days. Questions about his finances. Why would he just stop working after finding a bag of fucking money that belonged to his now dead German friend? Why not try and find that man's relatives?

Give them the money? Questions about Condon's phone number found written in his closet about the missing board and his attic, et cetera, et cetera. A parade of alibi witnesses beginning with his. wife Anna followed Haupman to the stand to say that none of them were compelling witnesses would be an understatement. A young Swedish man named Elvert Carlson testified he saw Hauptmann, who he literally did not know until he saw his picture in the paper following his arrest on his bakery on the night of the kidnapping. But then under cross-examination, confessed he

could not begin to describe a single other customer who appeared that same day. Wyland's also revealed Carlson to be a thief, a bootlegger, and a man with a history of mental instability. Another witness, August Van Henke, claimed to have seen Houtman walking his dog in the Bronx at the time with the kidnapping, but then on cross, Ben Hanky turned out to be a speak-easy operator and a shady man of many aliases. Witness Peter Somner created a stir when he testified he saw Isidore Feach with Lindberg's maid, Violet Sharp. But Sondner turned out to be a professional witness who would testify for a fee, a dude who would say anything for a dollar. It's a fucking tool. And so it went. Nearly every defense witness to take the stand fucking annihilated on Crot's

examination. After presenting a total of 162 witnesses, lawyers delivered their summations. Riley suggested implausibly that the crime was a conspiracy involving Condon, Fish, and Sharp amongst others. He theorized that the ladder was planted near the Lindbergh House by clever disloyal workers to throw police off the track of what was really an inside job. Sharp stole the child, then committed suicide when she realized the net was closing in. Wylins followed with a five-hour summary of the evidence against Haupin, who he called the lowest animal in the animal kingdom, and public enemy number one of this world. While this concluded by telling the jury, the defendant is either the filthiest, vilest snake that ever crawled through the grass, or he is entitled to

an acquittal. There should be no thought of mercy if they are convinced of his guilt. After giving final instructions, Judge Trenchard sent the jury out to begin deliberations at 1121 a.m. February 13th, after the jury retired to discuss its verdict, news organizations geared up to be the first to announce the decision to the world. Actually, almost everybody expected a guilty verdict. Only one question remained, would the jury recommend life in prison or death? Reporters smuggled a portable radio transmitters into the courtroom

to instantly flash the verdict using a predetermined code. Outside, a crowd of about 10,000 people waited in the night. As the bright light to the newsreel cameras played over the crowd, they shouted, kill Houtman, kill Houtman, kill Houtman. Somebody got so worked up, they fucking hurled a rock through one of the courthouse windows. At 1028 that night, the courthouse bell finally rang

signifying that the jury had reached its decision after 11 hours of deliberation. Hauptman was guilty of murder in the first degree and he was sentenced to death. Newsreels would let everybody know about this in the following days. Now listen to the searching cross-examination. When you took that money from that shoe box,

You boxed down into that garage, and you took those gold certificates and put them in a basket. One nap or another, five, tens and 20s, whatever they were, you didn't count it, did you? No. And you left it laying in a basket all night and you didn't count, didn't? You left in another night and you didn't count. Nothing. And the reason you didn't count it was because you knew, didn't you. I didn't know anything.

During the cross-examination, Hauptman contradicts himself and is forced to admit that he lied. When you were arrested with this Lindbergh ransom money, you had a $20 bill. Lindberghant some money, did they ask you what you got? Did they ask? You did. Did you lie it over or did you tell them the truth? Did you lie to them or did you tell them the truth? I said nothing to you.

You're alive, didn't he? I did, yes. So ends the great trial with the verdict of murder in the first degree. Before the verdict was announced in the courtroom, a reporter handling one of the portable radio sets accidentally sent a coded message to how it would be sent to life in prison. Thanks to modern technology,

this news was immediately broadcast across the nation and then moments later, the jury recommended the death penalty, so somebody got in trouble. Messenger boy yelled the correct verdict from a second floor window of the courthouse to the crowd below. According to the New York Times, quote, a great shout went up from the outside and the throng pressed closer to the court building.

Charles and Anne Lindberg Listen to the verdict on the radio at their house They could hear the jubilant Howells of the crowd in the background Charles interestingly, disgustingly turned off the radio And said, that's a lynching crowd The defense of course appealed The very next day, Halman was interviewed in jail

By two reporters One of them asked, Are you afraid of going to the electric chair Bruno? And Halban replied, You can suck my fucking dick No, he said, I wish, he said, You can imagine how I feel When I think of my wife and child but I have no fear for myself because I know that I am innocent.

If I have to go to the chair in the end, I will go like a man and like an innocent man. Eight months later, October 9th, 1935, the Supreme Court of the state of New Jersey upheld the verdict of the lower court. Bruno Hauptmann still sentenced to death. By this time, public hysteria from the case, there were still constant headlines, had driven the Lindbergh family out of their home, out of the country, over to Europe, where they would stay until 1939. They couldn't go anywhere in the U.S. without being constantly asked about their dead child. Fucking brutal.

Houtman's appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States was denied December 9th, 1935. He was to be electrocuted the following month, January 17th, 1936. However, that day, the governor of the state of New Jersey granted a 30-day reprieve to look further into the case. But then on February 17, 1936, Houtman is resentenced to be electrocuted during the week of March 30th, 1936. And on March 30th, the pardon court of the state of New Jersey denies Houtman's final petition for clemency. So a few days later, at 8.44 p.m. April 3rd, 1936, 36-year-old Bruner Richard Hauptmann put to death in the electric chair.

He would share one final statement in German that said, I'm Sarkrat, I like Lebe is, a band's Zikendrick film as to she hen Hunty Jagen Gernick Katzen Ike, Ease

Nour, Erdust Butter von Minim Schwanz Shweb of Diengolvish Steik Mardine Ome in the arch I kind of wish I could speak German That wasn't what he said That wasn't anything

That was me trying to say things in German Like, stick your grandma up my ass But I don't think I fucking said anything right Here's the translation what he actually said I am glad that my life in a world which has not understood me has ended soon I will be at home with my lord

so I am dying an innocent man fuck off should however my death serve for the purpose of abolishing capital punishment such a punishment being arrived and only by circumstantial evidence I feel that my death has not been in vain I am at peace with God

now you're not I repeat I protest my innocence for the crime of which I was convicted however I die with no malice or hatred in my heart the love of Christ has filled my soul and I am happy in him but then Jesus Christ put out a statement within hours that said

fuck that clown he's going to hell no doubts about Hauptman's guilt still existed not with me after hearing this I'm like no that guy for sure did it but there were doubts despite not changing his fate to life in prison the governor of New Jersey himself voiced doubts about the verdict

some would continue to claim howman's innocence in the years that followed directly following Hauptman's death some reporters and independent investigators came up with numerous questions regarding the way the investigation was run and the fairness of the trial. Questions were raised concerning issues ranging from witness tampering to the planting of evidence twice during the 1980s, decades later. Anna Hauptmann would sue the state of New Jersey for the unjust execution of her husband.

Both times the suits would be dismissed. And now let's get out of this trial timeline and catch up with the Lindberg's life following the trial. Good job, soldier. you've made it back barely so what became of the Lindberg's after the kidnapping and trial of the century

quite a bit mostly porn no quite a bit though but first let's talk about how their legacy influence the law and some good news the Lindberg kidnapping led Congress to pass the Lindbergh law

a law that made kidnapping a federal offense if the victim was taken across state lines or if the mail service was used for ransom demands and as a result of the 1935 Lindberg baby kidnapping trial photographers and cameras were banned unless given special permission in all federal and most state courts would be impossible to determine exactly how the unruly crowds ambitious reporters with newsreel cameras you know may have influenced the 12 men and women who had to decide the fate of Bruno Richard Hauptman the focus of modern communications

on the trial of the century altered our notions of privacy free speech and a fair trial as surely as Charles Lindbergh's solo flight across the Atlantic changed the face of global transportation. Now on to the Lindberghs themselves. As I mentioned in late 1935, after the Hauptmann trial, Lindberg, his wife and their three-year-old son John, moved to Europe.

Just looking for some privacy and some safety. Charles, whose battles with the media over issues of privacy were longstanding now, confided to a friend that, quote, we Americans are a primitive people. Americans seem to have little respect for the law or for the rights of others. yeah fucking bingo

still true today too many people selfish short-sided don't give a fuck about the rights of others since you know other people aren't me I care about me

imagine what the world could truly look like if we were just a little bit less selfish as a species the Lindenbergs would find sanctuary in the English countryside but then two years later

they would move again this time to a beautiful tiny four acre island off the northwest coast of France where Charles would work as he had been working for a while

Alexis Carell, a French physician. After his sister-in-law developed a fatal heart condition in 1930, Lindbergh would go on to help invent an artificial heart between 1931 and 1935, at least the concept for one. He had moved to France to develop it with Dr. Correll, a French surgeon, biologist, whose research included experiments in keeping organs alive outside of the body. Lindberg's device could pump the substances necessary for life throughout the tissues of an organ. Very fucking cool.

Wasn't his first scientific project either. Before that, Lindberg wrote to the Long Gene watch company and described a watch that would make navigation easier for pilots. It was first produced in 1931. The Long Gene Lindbergh, Our Angle Watch actually is still produced today, and it's a gorgeous watch, by the way. Back to Lindberg's heart pump, it was far from perfected. In 1938, Lindberg and Karel would describe an artificial heart in the books in which they, or in the book in which they summarized their work called The Culture of Organs. But it was actually decades before one was built. In later years, Lindbergh's pump was further developed by others,

eventually leading to the construction of the first heart-long machine. So Charles was doing some really cool stuff, also doing some not-so-cool stuff. His buddy, Dr. Karell, had some strange thoughts, eugenicsy thoughts that would go on to make a lot of people see Lindberg in a very different light. It seemed like Karell's medical motivations were to advance a portion of the population through medical breakthroughs and also to eliminate other people he found undesirable. So, you know, eugenics. As Corell put it, quote,

there is no escaping the fact that men are not created equal as democracy invented in the 18th century when there was no science to refute it would have us believe. I mean, I understand why we can't go down this road. But he's not wrong. Hear me out. You really truly think that we're all created equal.

Go to a fucking monster truck rally. Ask yourself how many other people watching along with you had a fair crack at birth to grow, up and become a doctor or a hedge fund manager or a professor come on no just like some people are born with more athletic skills than the rest of us not everybody is capable of becoming a pro athlete no matter how hard they train you know some people are bigger stronger faster than others you know just at birth some people uh some people are also born with less or more mental skills than the rest of us that is just basic biology if life is a race we all have very very different starting lines

but that does not mean we should start sterilizing or eliminating people as much as I would fucking love to get rid of some people. Dr. Coro would offer that the human race is pushed forward by the elite and I probably shouldn't double down and agree with this dickhead

and his widely condemned beliefs. But he's right again. I mean, come on, small percentage of the population has always dragged the rest of us, usually kicking and screaming into the future with their innovation and ingenuity. Dr. Correll felt it unfortunate that, quote,

we don't yet understand the genesis of great men. Perhaps it would be effective to kill off the worst of us and keep the best, as we do in the breeding of dogs. Very unpopular opinion. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to kill off the worst of us. And I do think we'd be better if I could just get rid of about, I don't know, half the world's population, at least.

But that's just a fun fantasy for me, based primarily in an urge just to get rid of people who just fucking annoy me. Not based on any racial lines or socioeconomic class division. I just enjoy thinking about how much more fun the world might be for me to live in, specifically. If I can just make people, you know, I think are assholes, you know, just disappear forever. Maybe, maybe be exploded or something. But in practice, this is obviously terrible, or I hope it's obviously terrible, because who I think is undesirable is not necessarily going to be who you think we should get rid of.

And if we all got rid of everybody we didn't want around any longer, we would all be dead. Eugenics is a terrible slippery slope. when you really start to get into the weeds. For most of us it is, but it wasn't for Dr. Carell, which speaks to his arrogance and it wasn't for Charles Lindberg either. Also wasn't for fucking Hitler

and his goons who were rising in power at this time. While in Europe in the late 1930s, Lindberg was invited by the governments of both France and Germany to tour the aircraft industries of their countries, and he was especially impressed

with the highly advanced aircraft industry of Nazi Germany. He would visit Germany in July of 1936. He'd visit several times. but this is one visit. And during this visit, he would become the first American to examine Germany's

newest bomber, the Juncker's J.U.88, Germany's frontline fighter aircraft, also the Measures Schmidt, the Mejersmith BF 109, which he was allowed to pilot. He said of the BF.109 that he knew of, quote,

no other pursuit plane, which combined simplicity of construction with such excellent performance characteristics. While in Germany, Charles and Anne attended the Summer Olympic Games as special guests of field marshal Herman Gurin

head of the German military air force the Luftwaffe not a good guy and Lindberg's had a fucking great time with him Charles and Ann

very taken with Germany and by the way at this time the Nazis had already barred Jews from serving in the German

armed forces they'd already passed the Nuremberg laws. Jews were no longer considered German citizens Jews could not

marry Aryans nor could they fly the German flag Jewish doctors had already been barred from practicing

medicine and German institutions and two concentration camps had already been constructed and opened. Were the Lindbergs aware of all this? Almost certainly. Did Charles care? Almost certainly not.

Lindberg was becoming a radical anti-Semite, as we will soon uncover. Lindberg was also convinced that no other power in Europe could stand up to Germany in the event of war. He wrote later, The organized vitality of Germany

was what most impressed me. The unceasing activity of the people and the convinced dictatorial direction to create the, new factories, airfields, and research laboratories. Living in Europe, working side by side for years, with Dr. Karell had apparently led Lindbergh to think that certain races, quote, demonstrated superior ability in the design,

manufacture, and operation of machines, and that, quote, the growth of our Western civilization has been closely related to this superiority. Lindberg also admired, quote, the German genius for science and organization, the English genius for government and commerce, the French genius for living and the understanding, of life. He believed, quote, in America, they can be blended to form the greatest genius of all. By the fall of 1938, the Lindbergs were making plans to move to Berlin permanently. And by the fall of 1938, the mandatory registration of all property held by Jews inside the Reich had been enacted. A third concentration camp had been opened. Adolf Eichmann had

established the Office of Jewish Emigration in Vienna to increase the pace of forced Jewish expulsion. Germany was mere weeks away from a decree forcing all Jews to transfer retail businesses to Aryan hands, and all Jewish pupils being expelled from German schools. And yet, in October of 1938, Lindbergh is presented by Gurin on behalf of the Fuhrer, fucking Hitler himself, the service cross and, uh, or excuse me, the service cross of the German eagle for his contributions to aviation. And that little award ceremony did not go well. Back at home for the Lindberghs, and it shouldn't have. News of Nazi persecution of Jews

had been filtering out of Germany for quite some time by this point. Many people were repulsed by the sight of an American hero wearing a Nazi decoration. Lindberg, by all appearances, considered the medal to be just another accommodation, no different from any other, which is fucking ludicrous.

Many consider this attitude to be naive at best, others sought as an outright acceptance of Nazi policy, including a hatred of Jewish people. A few years later, in 1940, and a famous comment about Lindberg to Detroit's former FBI field office special agent in charge in July of that year,

automaker and noted anti-Semite Henry Ford would say, when Charles comes out here, we only talk about the Jews. Less than a month after the presenting of the medal back in 1938, the Nazis orchestrated a brutal assault on Jews. They came to be known as the night of broken glass.

I've talked about that in several past episodes. Nazis and their sympathizer smashed the windows of Jewish businesses, assaulted many Jewish people, burned homes, burn synagogues, Scores dead, killed people between 20 and 30,000 Jews were arrested, sent to concentration camps to their deaths. Around this time, the Lindbergh decided to cancel their plans to move to Germany and return to the U.S. in April of 1939. But they didn't head back just because they wanted to help the Jewish cause.

No, Lindberg now turned his attention towards keeping his country out of a war in Europe. To be fair at this time, most Americans did share his isolationist views. Following Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakian in Poland, Lindberg opposed sending aid to countries under threat, writing, quote, I do not believe that repealing the arms embargo would assist democracy in Europe. If we repeal the arms embargo with the idea of assisting one of the warring sides to overcome the other, then why mislead ourselves by talk of neutrality? Yeah, man, I mean, yeah, why would you stop the Nazis? Maybe because they're fucking evil.

He equated assistance with war profiteering, writing, to those who argue that we can make a profit and build up our own industry, by selling munitions abroad, I reply that we in America have not yet reached a point where we wish to capitalize on the destruction and death of war. But what about stopping the slaughter of literally millions of innocent men, women, and children? Isn't that a reason for some kind of intervention? In 1941, Lindbergh joined the America First Committee, an organization that opposed voluntary American entry into World War II.

I mean, concentration camps are going full fucking steam ahead now. Lindberg became a leading spokesman for the committee, even publicly criticizing President FDR, who thought that the Nazis had to be stopped in their conquest of Europe. Lindberg saw Nazi victory at this point as certain and he thought America's attention should be placed elsewhere saying these wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder

this is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion Building on his belief that quote racial strength is vital Lindberg published an article in Reader's Digest stating that our civilization depends on a western wall of race and arms which can hold back the infiltration of inferior blood Jesus. Not only did he not want to stop with the Nazis were doing with the Jews,

kind of sounds like he was happy about the Holocaust. By this point, if he wasn't already, he was fucking full-blown white supremacist. In a speech he gave in Des Moines, Iowa, September 11th, 1941, Lindberg decided to identify what he saw as the pressure groups pushing the U.S. into war against Germany. He said,

the three most important groups who've been pressuring this country towards war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration. of Jewish Americans, excuse me, he went on to say, quote, instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.

God damn! The greatest danger to this country? Sounds like a fucking proud boy. It sounds like a modern-day conspiracy theorist. He continued by saying, I'm not attacking either of the Jews. Jewish or the British people? Yeah, you are. Both races I admire, but I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours for reasons which are not American wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests. But we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction. God, man, it's just straight up white. supremacy. Before he gave that speech, his wife, Anne, felt the speech might tarnish his reputation unjustly. She wrote in her diary, I have the greatest faith in Lindbergh as a person, in his integrity,

his courage, and his essential goodness, fairness and kindness, his nobility, really. How then explain my profound feeling of grief about what he is doing? If what he said is the truth, and I'm inclined to think it is, why was it wrong to state it? He was naming the groups that were pro-war, no one minds his naming the British or the administration, but to name Jew is an American. Even if it is done without hate or even criticism, why? Maybe because fucking millions are being killed in Europe at that time. Jesus.

It was racist to isolate Jewish people, single them out, criticize them from wanting America's help and saving the lives of Jewish people in Europe, people who were often family members. It was wrong to do that. Then, just like it is wrong right now, to try and forbid people protesting on behalf of innocent, Palestinian men, women, and children

dying needlessly in Gaza. Right? It doesn't matter if you agree with their protests or not. That's not the fucking issue. That should factor into the right to protest 0%. It's supposed to be the land of the free, free to disagree. Imagine if you had family there, they're starving, and you're told it's, it's anti-American.

What are you doing? Stop. It's just, that's, that's, that's not American to protest. A bunch of fascist bullshit then and now. Lindberg was rightly denounced as an anti-Semite. His mother-in-law, sister-in-law, publicly opposed his views. Good number of civic and corporate organizations cut all ties in affiliations with him. His name was even removed from the Water Tower in his hometown of Little Falls, Minnesota. Lindberg then resigned his commission in the Army Air Corps after President Roosevelt publicly denounced him.

Roosevelt even told Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, quote, If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this. I am absolutely convinced Lindbergh is a Nazi. Not like a Nazi, is a Nazi. Meanwhile, many Americans are accusing Lindberg of being a Nazi sympathizer or just a straight-up Nazi because now he refused to return the German Nazi medal he accepted. But all of that sentiment will change, or most of it will, following one fateful day. December 7, 1941, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the entry of America into World War II,

the U.S. was now at war on two fronts in Europe and in the Pacific. Despite having resigned his military commission in 1939, Lindberg was eager to fight for his country now to his credit. But FDR, not having it. He said, you can't have an officer leading men who thinks were licked before we start. Fair. Rejected by Roosevelt, Lindberg worked as a private consultant to Henry Ford. Ford was manufacturing B-24 bombers in a Michigan plant. In 1943, Lindberg convinced United Aircraft to send him to the Pacific as an observer. His work there, though, will involve a good deal more than observation. Lindberg will fly more than 50 combat missions as a civilian, including one in which he will shoot down an enemy fighter.

The 42-year-old Lindberg, often bested men half his age and feats demanding intense physical ability. Didn't have good racial views, but was still a fucking ace. Drawing on his extraordinary piloting skills, Lindberg instructed others on how to conserve fuel, how to extend their flying range by up to 500 miles. By August of 1945, both Japan and Germany had been soundly defeated. Evidence of Nazi atrocities against Jews now shocked the world. Shortly after the war ended, Lindbergh toured a Nazi concentration camp and wrote in his diary, Here was a place where men in life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation.

How could any reward and national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of such a place? So maybe he was starting to get it now. Or maybe not, Lindberg still refused to admit he was wrong in his assessment of the Nazis as basically good people who just kind of got off track. He did indicate, however, that his real hope during the war had been that Hitler and the Russian leader Joseph Stalin would destroy each other and leave the world safe for the preservers of Western civilization. They began to speak on the misuse of power as the greatest threat facing mankind. In a 1945 speech, he said,

history is full of its misuse. There is no better example of the Nazi Germany. Power without moral force to guide it, invariably ends in the destruction of the people who wield it. Power must be backed by morality. yes it fucking should power should be backed by morality uh-huh uh it's good statement but uh he also could have just said the nazis were really really bad as well but didn't after the war lindberg withdrew from public attention he worked as a consultant to the chief of staff of the u.s air force president dwight d eisenhower restored lindberg's commission and appointed him a brigadier

general in the air force in 1954 uh pan-american world airways also hired him as a consultant he advised the airline on its purchase of jet transports and eventually helped design the Boeing 747 jet. In 1953, Lindberg published the Spirit of St. Louis an expanded account of his 1927 transatlantic flight, and that book will win a Pulitzer Prize in 1954.

So now he's pretty much fully restored his image to its heroic pre-late 1930s form for most of the public, and he will hold on to that image until he dies, but only because he was able to keep some big skeletons in the closet. Beginning to 1957,

Linberg engaged in lengthy sexual relationships with three different German women while also remaining married to Anne Morrow. The guy who once complained, as a young man, about womanizing pilots, is now having three affairs simultaneously. He fathered three children with a German hatmaker, Bridget Hesheimer, living in Munich. Then he had two more kids with her fucking sister, Mariette, a painter. Finally, Lindberg also had both a son and a daughter with a woman named Balesca and East Prus. aristocrat who was his private secretary in Europe. The three women, none of whom would ever marry, all managed to keep their affairs a secret even from their children, who during his lifetime, and for almost a decade after his death,

did not know the true identity of their father, per his wishes. They had only known Lindberg by the alias of Kuru Kent, and had seen him only when he briefly visited them about once or twice a year. What the fuck? He had three German mistresses simultaneously, two of which were sisters, fathered seven secret children whom he visited and supported for decades behind his wife's back. And he would father six children

with Anne. Why only German women? That feels very in line with his views on eugenics. He clearly, truly believed in the myth of the superior Aryan race. Maybe wanted to add more Aryans to the world and also just wanted to fuck. In addition to

fucking German women, Lindberg also traveled widely following World War II, developed an interest in the cultures of people in Africa and the Philippines in the late 1960s he spoke out on behalf of the conservation movement. He was an environmentalist. He especially campaigned for the protection of humpback and blue whales, two species of whales in danger of extinction. He opposed the development of supersonic transport planes because he feared their effects might have on the Earth's atmosphere. Then on August 26, 1974, Lindberg

died of cancer in his home on the Hawaiian island of Maui at the age of 72 years old. Today, his remains lie at rest on the serene grounds of the Papa Pulao-O-O-Mau church in beautiful Kippahulu. The limestone coral church was built in 1857, Lindbergh's grave, under the shade of a Java plum tree. Before he died, he sketched a simple design for his grave and coffin. It was only after his death that the children he fathered found out they were his, which is again the way he wanted it. Ten days before he died, Lindberg wrote to each of his European mistresses, imploring them to maintain the utmost secrecy about his illicit activities with them even after his death. What the fuck?

They're just trying to control everything. How fucked up to first deprive these kids of a dad, then deny them knowledge of their now deceased father? Well, after reading a magazine article about Lindbergh in the mid-1980s, Bridget's daughter, Astrid, deduced the truth. She later discovered snapshots in more than 150 love letters between her dad, between, yeah, well, her dad, yeah, Lindbergh and her mom. Love letters written while he was also writing love letters to two other women in. in addition to still running a household with his wife. After Bridget and Ann Lindbergh had both died, Astrid made her findings public.

In 2003, DNA test would confirm that Lindberg had fathered Astrid and her two siblings. So that's how that went. Fucking meat sacks. We are so often so complex and complicated, full of so much good, mixing with so much bad, I guess just like our species overall. And now let's jump back to the kidnapping and look at it again. There are some people who think, despite all the evidence against him, that Bruno Haupman was not the person,

or at least not the only person involved in the Lindbergh kidnapping. Some believe he was innocent. Those maintaining his innocence emphasized that the prosecution's case was largely circumstantial. No one actually saw Bruno climbing to Lindberg's second story window.

No one saw him with the baby. Moreover, some of the evidence that people have come to expect at a criminal trial, crime scene fingerprints, a murder weapon that was never produced. Advocates of Hauptmann's innocence also point to the failure of the prosecutors to provide the defense

with exculpatory evidence, initial FBI report suggested that the kidnapping required two people and police grew up such as the failure of police to measure footprints found near the Lindbergh home. Also, the suicide of Violet Sharp Lindberg's maid has been taken by some

as evidence of her participation in an inside conspiracy. Finally, some people have been impressed by the fact that Hauptmann continued to assert his own innocence all the way to the electric chair. He had turned down a large offer from a Hearst newspaper

reported to the $90,000. for a confession. He refused a last minute offered to commute his sentence, reportedly, from the death penalty to life in prison without parole, from the governor in exchange for a confession. I didn't mention that before because I wanted to reveal it now. That is fascinating. You know, he could have set up his wife to be rich, could have not died in the chair if he would have just admitted it, but he didn't. Doesn't mean he was innocent, though. We've seen so many serial killers who were definitely guilty lie to the bitter end about what they did or didn't do. There are also some who point the fact that Mr. Condon did not originally identify Halpin in the first police lineup. In fact, what Condon said at the police lineup initially was, no, he is not the man. When Condon sat with, quote, Cemetery John on a park bench,

he was able to observe that John had a fleshy lump on his left thumb. Howpman had no such lump. It didn't really bear resemblance to police sketches drawn based specifically on Condon's initial descriptions. This more than anything led Robert Zorn, author of a 2012 book called

Cemetery John, the undiscovered mastermind of the Lindberg kidnapping to conclude that Hauptman did not act alone and that Cemetery John was actually another German immigrant named John Kroll or excuse me, John Knoll. And making a convincing case for Noel's involvement, Zorn notes that photographs of Noel reveal a close physical resemblance to the police sketches and the prominent lump on his left thumb, the near impossibility of a single kidnapper, negotiating the two or three foot gap between the bedroom of the nursery window and the top wrong of the latter. The fact that less than a third of the

ransom money was recovered from Hauptmann's home. The results of modern handwriting analysis software that determined that writing on ransom note envelopes matched Noel's handwriting with a 95% probability and Noel's flight to Germany almost immediately after Hauptmann's arrest and then his return almost immediately after the jury's verdict. Perhaps most damningly, Zorn, notes that Noel, a young immigrant deli worker,

managed to book round-trip passage to Hamburg for both him and his wife, first class, and on a luxury liner. but Noel was never investigated by authorities and he would live as a free man and perhaps living well off his blood money all the way until 1980 still others think that it wasn't Houtman or John Knoll or an outside kidnapper at all

some have as I mentioned when I spoke of Lindberg's alleged penchant for diabolical practical jokes that the you know Charles himself was the culprit Gregory Algren Stephen Monnier again theorized in their book that Lindberg was playing a prank when he dropped his son from the ladder, killing him and then hid the body.

And then there's another theory pointing to the fact that Lindberg was already working with Dr. Correll. This one's fucking insane. In the U.S. at the time of the kidnapping of Lindberg's son, they were working on that perfusion pump.

Carell had created, which enabled living organs to exist outside the body during surgery. And something that Lindberg who wanted to save the life of his wife's older sister who had heart problems offered up his own son

to be a medical guinea pig. as Lindbergh thought his son allegedly was a quote weakling with too big of a head What the fuck They allege that Charles That little Charlie excuse me Died on Corel's operating table

March 8th 1932 Last theory is bonkers But it's out there No yeah yeah go ahead and do what you want You know chop him up Look at that fucking head What am I supposed to do with that head? Charles fucking Lindberg

The kid's weak as shit His fucking head's too big It's embarrassing finally there have been some nut jobs out there over the years who have claimed that they're the Lindberg baby a man named the most famous infamous of these is a man named Lauren Paul Husted but obviously really Charles Lindbergh Jr.

who told a psychiatrist that he was a Lindberg baby in sessions between 1978 and 1980. Apparently Husted suffered from big gaps in his childhood memories and hope the doctor could help him reconstruct his past under hypnosis and in more than 100 sessions Husted developed a complex story that explained his lifelong identity conflict. Almost every detail supported the idea that he was the baby stolen from the world world famous aviators home in 1932. For the first few years of his life, Husted said he was kept

hidden indoors by an ever-changing cast of characters who typically dressed him as a girl and refused to call him by his real name. As an adult, he came to believe that some of the people in these homes he was being passed around to were high-level members of Al Capone Chicago Mob. Oh, totally. Goons were forcing the Lindbergh baby to dress as a girl so that no one would know that he was taken. And why was he taken? Well, Husted never really explains that. He came to believe he eventually received a name Lauren Paul Husted was told that he was a son of an iterant preacher named Don Hustid and his wife Viola.

According to Husted, however, his parents didn't treat him like a son, but rather like a burden. Whenever Don Husted beat him, which was often, he muttered, you're not part of this family. Hmm. Husted claimed he was also the subject of surveillance by men he later came to believe were FBI agents. He also believed that he heard members of the Husted clan and law enforcement officers quietly call him the Lindbergh kit. And when he was a teenager, he said his boss at a restaurant in San Luis Obispo in California took him to a coffee shop so that a group of men who were seated together could look at him from across the room. He overheard his boss talk about how the FBI suspected that Paul was the Lindberg boy. According to Husted, when he asked older, distant relatives about his identity, they told him, that's not for you to know. Okay.

Then there were the FBI agents and police officers who were always monitoring him, monitoring him again, he said. Sometimes they told him that they knew his true identity. They would soon be revealed. Other times, they tried to scare him into silence. The most frightening of these alleged encounters occurred in the mid-60s when, according to Husted, he was slipped a drug at a coffee shop and experienced what sounds like a bad LSD trip. his wife Kay recalled that men who identified themselves as FBI agents flashing their credentials followed Charlie home from the coffee shop told her he would be okay

that makes total sense why not randomly dose the Lindberg baby for fun that sounds like something that would happen you know within the FBI you know after they had the mop take him to I don't know fucking knock Charles down a pig maybe because he was you know too into the Germans or something Kay helped him through a terrifying hallucination months of recovery

fucking months I don't know this sounds like some bullshit months I always hear these whispers about like oh man somebody somebody dropped LSD and then they were just

fucking took a month to recover I've never met one of these people never never met a single one of these people and I know quite a few people who do this I don't know Husta truly believed maybe still does if he's alive

but I don't think he's alive internet has not heard from him in over a decade he'd be in his mid-90s that he is a Lindberg baby a lie detector test proved he really did believe in this other identity the polygraph expert

who examined him and his own request found no deception offered the opinion that Charlie is the son who was kidnapped from the Lindberg family in 1932 but is this nothing but nonsense yes it's nothing but nonsense but Vladimir Kovalik a close friend of the Lindberg's second son John

said that Hustad did resemble the Lindbergs he told an LA Times reporter back in 2004 I saw him walking around us uh no i'm so excuse me i saw him walking towards us from a distance and i immediately thought that's a lindberg it's just not the way he looks which is just like the rest of him it's the way he walks the expression on his face the way that he talks i won't say that a hundred percent he's one of them but the resemblance is there no doubt but but again why why would somebody just

fucking randomly take this fucking kid uh it makes no sense like what is the motive why would anyone want to like raise the lindberg baby and then as an adult keep his identity a secret indefinitely. Why would they not try and get the ransom money? Nothing about this makes any sense to me. I think they got the right guy. Bruno, Richard Halpin. A man may be working with the accomplice. I would buy that. A man who wanted to make a lot of money extorting the most famous man in America, a man with a fucking history of home invasions. You know, Bruno did get that money. You know, he just didn't get to keep it very long, which reminds me of another trial of the century. You know, we covered here before the fucking Menendez brothers,

those 1,800 business dipshits. They got a lot of money. Mom and Dad's money, all of a sudden didn't get to keep it very long. They just got denied parole, by the way. I still think they're guilty as fuck. Fame and crime just don't mix well. O.J. Simpson learned that,

even though he technically got away with murder, but his life was still ruined. Fame and crime do make for titillating entertainment, though. The American public was riveted by the kidnapping and murder of little Charles Lindbergh Jr., so much so that the Lindbergs literally fled the country and bought a tiny island off the coast to France, years later just so they could be left the fuck alone by an obsessed general public. And that's

it. That was the beginning of the modern American obsession with true crime coverage. Not that we weren't obsessed with speculation about crime before. We just didn't have all the media to cover every little detail. And now look at us. Here I am. Still talking about it. Here you are. Still listening. Why? Why are we so fascinating with true crime? I've talked about this before, but it's been a while. According to Patricia Bryan, the Henry P. Brandis distinguished professor of law Amerita University of North Carolina and a true crime author It's escapism and entertainment

It speaks to why people go into haunted houses Or ride a roller coaster There's something about facing danger When it's not real, it's not personal People like to be scared Or like to see the dark recesses of someone's mind Some people would say It helps us prepare for the violence

In our own lives And I think that's about as good an answer as any Maybe those fascinated The Lindberg baby murder you know, they followed the case and how the Lindberg survived this tragedy because it fascinated them in an escapist, thank God this isn't me, at least the problems I face

aren't this dire sense. And also in a, well, if the Lindbergh can survive something this horrific, I guess I can too. And that gives me some comfort sense as well. And now let's hop into the day's takeaways. Time shock. Top five takeaways. Number one on the evening of March 1,

1932, a 20-month-old Charlie Lindberg, the son of famous aviator Charles Lindberg and his wife and Mara Lindberg, was abducted from his home near Hopewell, New Jersey, and Nanny had put him to bed around 7.30 p.m. when she went to check on him around 10, he was gone. Number two, the ransom note found in Charlie's nursery would set off weeks of negotiations back and forth between Lindberg, the kidnapper, and John F. Condon, a retired 72-year-old teacher who lived in the Bronx and offered to be a go-between. Condon would even meet the kidnapper in exchange in article of Charlie's clothing, but the meetings did nothing to get closer to Charlie or the kidnapper.

Number three, at 3.15 p.m. on May 12, 1932, a truck driver named William Allen was relieving himself in the woods when he found the dead body of little Charlie. The child had been dead for months, likely since the night of the kidnapping. Number four, Bruno Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, will be discovered by authorities as the person using the ransom money that the Lindbergs had paid out. Hauptmann would be arrested September 19, 19th, 1934. a year and a half after the kidnapping. Though the evidence against him was overwhelming and the trial became a media spectacle,

there are still some that think Halpman was not the kidnapper, or at the very least, he wasn't working alone, which I would buy that part. Number five, new info on March 2nd, 1932, from his cell in Cook County Jail in Chicago just one day after the kidnapping. Al Scarface Capone offered an award of $10,000 for information

that would lead to the kidnap, excuse me, lead to the capture of the kidnappers or kidnapper and the baby safe return. I know how Mrs. Capone and I would feel if our son were kidnapped and I sympathize with the Lindbergh, said Capone. Compassion, however, not the primary motivation for Capone's offer. The gangster had been in jail for four months, waiting an appeal of his 11-year penitentiary sentence for income tax evasion.

And Capone asked for a temporary release from jail in order to use his influence to search out the abductors. If I were out of jail, I could be of real assistance. I have friends all over the country who could aid and run. running this thing down, Capone told reporters. After police officials ignored his initial offer, Capone made several more pleas over the course of the next two months. He proposed to put up $200,000 bail

and even offered to place his younger brother in jail as a hostage if he could be freed on bond. I love that brother part. I just put Johnny myself. If I don't come back, I'm supposed to, I'll fucking whack him. Guy to fucking whack him. He never done nothing for no one. Why is he mama's favorite?

Why not me? Officials were reasonably skeptical. of the notorious mobster's motives. For years, Capone had successfully alluded prosecution for countless crimes, including bootlaking, gambling, and murder until he was finally charged with tax evasion in 1931. Capone's proposal to save the Lindberg baby would even make its way to the floor of the U.S. Senate,

where ultimately it would be denied. Time suck. Top five takeaways. Trial of the century, the Lindberg baby kidnapping has been sucked. Thank you to the bad magic production. team for helping making time suck once again. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith.

Helping to publish this episode. Design merch for the store at badmagicproductions.com. Thank you to Olivia Lee for her initial research. Thanks to the all seen eyes, moderating the culture the curious private Facebook page, Mod Squad, making sure our Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over on the TimeSuck Suburred and Bad Magic Suburit. And now this week's Time Sucker updates.

your time sucker updates first up action lover crystal sent on an email to bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of action motherfucking park and crystal wrote to my exalted

co-leader first I have to say my buddy Steve okay crane brin she wrote in parenthetical here ha ha say that one got me into the suck and STD I listened to nothing else for 40 hours plus a week for 18 months Oh my gosh, until I was caught up.

I got up to date January 15th, 20204. Haven't started this week's episode, and I got an email in. I almost died at Action Park. My family used to go all the time. I was five. I couldn't swim yet. And I followed my cousin into the deep end. An angel of a woman jumped in to save me, performed CPR and all.

Excuse me. Not for something really funny. I'm sure in your research, you came across the article of a woman getting stuck in the loop water slide. Her name is not mentioned in articles, but I know her because she was my mom's friend. Thanks for all you do The Queen and all of the bad magic peeps Love all the podcast Your comedy three out of five stars

Wouldn't change a thing Forever your cult member Crystal aka Crispy And Steve's last name P.S. is pronounced crane brain Fucking names Crystal Why can't they be spelled phonetically? Thanks for sharing some action park trauma

You literally fucking died there And still appear to think fondly about it Sounds like your mom's friend almost died too I did hear about several people getting stuck in that damn loop Of course they got stuck A place was a fucking death trap But also Truly sounds like it would have been an amazing place to go as a teenager

Thanks for listening and writing in And next up another action lover David Livingston Wrote in with the subject line of Action Park Reading Suckmaster Lord of the Suckverse Apostle of Nimrod It is I Lord Zoltan I'm writing to tell you that for listening to the Action Park

Suck I asked my friend who grew up in New York If he'd ever been his face lit up his smile was wide nodding his head in the positive he told me he went during a 10th grade school field trip told me he went down the alpine slide injured his leg on concrete and had the time of his life you can't make this shit up so i'm asking for a shout-out for eric m truly he is a man of action three out of five stars wouldn't change a thing well uh thank you david uh shout out to eric m you survived dude went all in on the alpine sl and lived to tell about it. Wounded, but lived. And I do wonder how many, like, literally thousands of people have actual scars right now from their days in Action Park.

And now Lucifina worshipper, Rebecca Crane wrote him with the subject line of, I saw Lucifina at a little Wayne show. Hello, Lord of the Suck. It's Friday night. I've had a couple drinks tonight. I'm not much of a writer sober, but Lucifina just replied to my comment on TikTok, and I have to tell you about her.

Picture this last Wednesday. I'm in Cleveland, Ohio, at Blossom Music Center, at the Lil Wayne concert. I'm drunk off the $23 hibiscus margaritas. My fiance was buying me as we're smoking a comically big cone with our neighbors we made friends with, and I'm trying to stay upright on the incline that is the Blossom lawn. We just heard a millie, and my 16-year-old self is levitating into the ether when I hear Lil' Wayne say, welcome to the stage, Lucifina. I'm pulled right back into my 30-year-old body.

Who walks out but literally the person I had dreamed up in my head, lucifina long red hair covered in leather she opened her mouth and the most beautiful unholy scream came out i turned around grab my fiancee and screamed dan commas would love this he doesn't listen to the podcast but did take me to your show in cleveland a couple years ago so he was real he was real confused anyways her song with little wayne it's called tyrant if you want to look it up and if you end up reading this maybe the rest of the cult would want to look her up i commented on her ticot yesterday saying how much i loved her at the show and she replied saying she appreciated it. I was sad to see a lot of the comments for people saying she ruined the show

that she was the part they hated. I just feel like she's not being appreciated by the right people and the cult would love her. Anyways, obligatory. Keep doing what you're doing. Three out of five, all that jazz. Thanks for what you've created here. This might sound weird, but scared of death is my comfort show. I think it's you and Lindsay's easy banter that makes me feel so at ease. You guys remind me of my fiancee a lot and I feel like that means we're doing something right. All the love to you and yours, Becca, P.S. Hail Lucifina. Well, holy shit, Becca. Uh, yeah, you found Lucifina, spelled L-U-C-I-F-E-N-A in this case. Uh, she does have long red hair, dyed red hair, loves to wear tight, revealing leather outfits.

She is curvy as fuck. Very sexy. Good for her. Uh, any chance she heard, uh, that name here years ago. Maybe. Uh, yeah, she's got some pipes to hail Lucifina. Go look her up. And finally, we have Grateful Sack Amanda Hampton, who wrote him with the subject line of shout

out for an angel. This is very cool. hello to our big hot father daddy that is the dan and everyone in the time suck crew i've not done a shout out on the suck before so i hope this made it to the right place i had to stop and sending this shout out for an amazing meat sack i met through the time suck discord my ac unit mcgill's popped in a hundred plus uh fahrenheit temperatures i have a neurological autoimmune disease that affects my heart it rams hard with no lube when i overheat i posted a selfie in discord with a uh f Oh, excuse me, with the fuck-it-friday photo because of it.

In no time at all, this angel of a human commented to message them about it. Turns out they only live about 30-ish minutes from me. That's right up the road in Texas terms. We met up. She gave me an AC unit and beautiful, thick, heavy curtains for free. No strings. She asked for nothing. I wanted to give her something so I crocheted her a hand dragon, thought a shout-out was definitely an order.

I don't know when or if she will hear this, but Ariel, you are an angel of a human, a literal lifesaver you saw a person in distress you did not hesitate this lizard filled this lizard filled marble we call earth is a much better place with you in it all roads lead to the denver airport wake up sheeple and keep on sucking thank you and good on you aerial what an incredibly kind thing to do a nice reminder that there still are people probably a lot of people in the world who do not just think of themselves who go out of their way to help others expecting nothing to return You make me feel proud to be a human aerial And good on you, Amanda, for riding in to give her a shout out

Maybe one day you can pay it forward, help somebody else out Their time in need like you were helped We can all take a little time here and there To make this ride a little more comfortable for our neighbors, right? I've done plenty of shitty things that I've regretted in this life I have never regretted helping somebody else out Even if they burn me later, still glad I did it And I think if I'm lucky enough to have some time to reflect on my demise

Before I turn to dust someday, It's those moments that are going to warm my fading heart Heart. Hail Nimra. Hail Luciferne, everybody. Hope you're able to find some moments to enjoy your ride this week. Next time, suckers, I needed that. We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another bad magic productions podcast. Be sure in rate and review time suck if you have not already. Check out nightmare fuel on the Scared to Death podcast feed. It's perfect for the upcoming spooky season. Don't kidnap any babies this

week, don't hide one in a closet to fuck with your, uh, you know, your wife. It's, it's, it is kind of funny. But don't do it. Just listen to a story about it here while you keep on sucking. The clip monster, feeling pretty sad, feeling dry, wasn't included in this week's episode again. Thought I might show up when Dan was talking about Charles and his German mistress trifecta. So much Deutsch clit. Eichs and Micah, noctem gloofa, ein's deutsche and Schwarzen's.

Bring Mike Zumkoman de Nazi fick. That would have been fun, right? Oh, well. Guess I'll just dittle myself until I'm too tired to stay awake. Halt all ain, till walk, be Hans, earl's musky gut.