Books like Lindbergh by Noel Behn

It is known as the crime of the century - the infamous kidnapping and murder of the infant son of Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh in 1932. But nearly six decades after Bruno Richard Hauptmann died in the electric chair, questions that even then troubled many have become more insistent. At the time, no less a figure than New Jersey's governor, Harold Hoffman, gambled away his public reputation in a heroic effort to prove Hauptmann's innocence. Today, more puzzling questions and possibilities have surfaced. Lindbergh: The Crime is a book that gets to the heart of the mystery, a grand piecing together of this tangled and many-faceted case that will startle all with its central revelation. Best-selling author Noel Behn has spent eight years researching and investigating the case. Among the new evidence he has uncovered is the personal account of a confidant to Governor Hoffman who maintained that while Hauptmann awaited execution on death row, employees of the Lindbergh and Morrow households provided the governor with affidavits that established the condemned man's innocence by stating how the child was killed and by whom. The governor was reluctant to go public with the explosive disclosures until he could find additional proof. His efforts to do so were Herculean - and futile. Behn picks up the thread of the governor's investigation. Revisiting old evidence and discovering new details, the author builds a compelling, plausible scenario that puts the child's murderer closer to the Lindbergh household than anyone has heretofore dared to suggest. Behn shows how Lindbergh took charge of and possibly manipulated the investigation from the very start; tells how Lindbergh may have paved theway for extortionists to intercept the ransom payment; demonstrates that if there was a case at all for Hauptmann's involvement, it was only as an extortionist; re-examines the theory that the first ransom note and the next twelve notes were written by different people.

First publish date: 1994