NOVA

It is one of the most haunting crimes in American history--

the daring kidnapping and tragic death of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.,

the precious son of America's then-greatest hero.

The kidnapping, the death...

Americans witnessed something truly awful here.

One man, Bruno Richard Hauptmann, was arrested...

You took that money from that shoebox...

...tried, and executed.

But was he really guilty?

Did he have accomplices?

And could the crime have been masterminded by someone

inside the Lindbergh household?

What we do know for sure

is that the baby was put to sleep in that bedroom.

John Douglas, America's leading criminal profiler,

is on the hunt for clues that could solve

this notorious kidnapping.

Did the police... did they ever do a sketch?

They did.

And I've shown this to hundreds of people,

and they all say the same thing-- "That's the guy."

Is there a new suspect in this old case?

And can an amateur sleuth, a forensic pathologist,

a handwriting expert, a veteran archivist

and a master carpenter help John Douglas finally solve

the Crime of the Century?

We owe it to the victims' families to know that the person

who perpetrated this crime didn't get away with it.

Next on NOVA, "Who Killed Lindbergh's Baby?"

== sync, corrected by elderman ==

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80 years ago, this narrow country lane led to the scene

of one of the most perplexing crimes in American history.

And this man wants to solve that crime once and for all.

He's John Douglas-- legendary FBI profiler who pioneered

the use of behavioral analysis for tracking down serial killers

and other dangerous criminals.

Today he has come to this isolated estate

in Hopewell, New Jersey, to try and unravel a mystery

as cold as the grave-- the daring kidnapping

and tragic death of Charles Lindbergh, Jr.,

aged 20 months when he was stolen in 1932.

Wow, that's amazing.

After 80 years it still looks the same.

Douglas has worked thousands of cases

and helped in the prosecution of violent offenders

all over the world.

But this notorious crime still haunts him.

I have been fascinated by this case for years.

There are just too many ered questions

about who did it and how it was pulled off.

What we do know for sure is that the baby

was put to sleep up there in that bedroom

and the rest of the household was awake when he was abducted.

The crime would touch a fear lurking in the heart

of every parent-- that somehow, without warning or reason,

their child would be taken from them, never to return.

And when you can't solve a crime like that,

or come up with satisfactory answers, the case won't go away.

Because with children, it's like we somehow

failed to protect them.

Never before had a child this celebrated and adored

been so shockingly victimized.

For the first time we all realized that any one of us

at any given time can be the victim of a violent crime,

because that's exactly what happened here

to the most famous family in the world.

With his triumphal solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927,

Charles Augustus Lindbergh instantly became a global icon.

Charles Lindbergh was the hero of the world,

not just of the United States.

He seemed to personify the best of an American.

Young, informal.

Very handsome, tall, blue-eyed and a bit shy.

He's irresistible to the world at that moment.

As this 1927 hit song clearly demonstrates.

When Lucky Lindy met heiress Anne Morrow,

he not only taught her how to fly, he married her.

And when the celebrity couple had their first child,

a boy they called Charlie, their charmed lives seemed complete.

But their joy lasts less than two years.

Message that shocked the world comes in on the police teletype.

When the Lindbergh baby is reported missing,

this country is in a state of shock.

There's a sense of disbelief that this extraordinary

royal prince, really, would have been stolen.

The crime was committed by means of a ladder

placed against the house.

With no eyewitnesses and few clues

other than a homemade ladder left by the kidnappers,

the police had a difficult time reconstructing the events

of the crime.

What emerged as facts were these.

Sometime between 8:00 and 10:00 p.m. on Tuesday, March 1, 1932,

one or more individuals came to the house

with a homemade folding ladder that left scrape marks

on the wall to the right of the baby's bedroom window.

The kidnappers apparently climbed the ladder

and entered the room through the unlocked window.

Once inside, they snatched the sleeping baby from his crib.

They may have silenced him or rendered him unconscious,

because no one in the household reported hearing Charlie cry out

or struggle as he was taken from his bedroom and whisked away.

The kidnappers left the ladder by a service road and used a car

to make their getaway.

They had placed a ransom note on the baby's windowsill

demanding $50,000 for his safe return,

and warned Lindbergh there would be trouble

if he involved the police.

The criminals left no fingerprints

or other helpful forensic evidence

to guide the investigation.

So where to begin?

As an investigator, one of the first questions I would ask is,

did they have inside help?

This is the first time the Lindberghs were here

on a Tuesday.

The house was not quite finished, so the family

only came on weekends.

They spent weekdays at Anne's family estate

in Englewood, New Jersey.

But Charlie had a cold, and Anne didn't want him to travel.

So how did the kidnappers even know

they'd be here that night?

John Douglas wants to profile the type of offenders

who could have committed this crime.

Were they organized professionals or lucky amateurs?

One way to answer this question would be to figure out

what they intended to do with Charlie.

It takes too much planning and resources

to care for a toddler.

It's a whole lot easier to pretend the child is alive,

collect the ransom, and be on your way.

And I believe that's what happened here.

At a late night meeting in a Bronx cemetery,

the kidnappers did collect the ransom

and did get away scot-free.

Dr. John Condon, Lindbergh's emissary,

handed over the $50,000 in a wooden box

in exchange for a note telling Lindbergh

where he could find his baby.

But it was all a ruse.

Two weeks later, a truck driver walking in the woods

stumbled upon Charlie's decomposing body,

not five miles from his Hopewell home.

And from the state of the corpse,

it appeared he died the very night of the kidnapping.

An entire nation mourned Charlie's death

as if this child was their very own.

There is a loss of innocence that takes place

as a result of this case.

The kidnapping, the death,

all of it makes Americans confront the fact

that they have witnessed something truly awful here.

The baby had a fractured skull.

And when police found cracks in the ladder,

they theorized the breaking ladder

startled the kidnapper, who dropped the baby by accident.

But John Douglas disagrees with this scenario.

And so does this man.

He's former North Carolina Chief Medical Examiner

John Butts, an expert on suspicious child deaths.

It has been proposed that the injuries

this child suffered were the result of some type of accident.

This is problematic for me, because while it might explain

some of the injuries, it doesn't explain all of them.

On the left side of the child's head

there was a fracture line extending

from the anterior fontanel, the soft spot

in the front top of the head, to back behind the ear.

Now, on the right side of the head he described

a rounded approximately half-inch in diameter defect

behind the right ear.

To me, this second injury, the one on the right side

of the head, is the one that's most intriguing.

Police reports stated that an officer

trying to extricate the baby's remains

accidentally poked a hole in his skull with a stick

and this created the round, impact-like injury

on the right side.

But again, Butts is skeptical.

In my opinion,

an individual pushing or prodding a body with a stick

could not poke a hole through the skull

under virtually any circumstance.

So what caused this injury?

And how did the suffer see

to both sides of the skull?

Butts sees one possible scenario.

And itIt's murder.enta

If he were lying on his left side head down

on a hard surface, and he was then struck

a forceful blow on the right side of the head

by a hammer or pipe, that would compress the head,

and it might do so with sufficient force

that there might be resulting fracture

on the left side as well.

Butts's theory supports Douglas's contention

that the kidnappers killed Charlie intentionally.

And this helps him build a profile