Welcome to Daily TWiP, your daily dose of all the holidays and history we couldn’t cram into The Week in Preview.

Today (May 12th) in 1932, truck driver William Allen pulled to the side of the road to answer the call of nature and made a heartbreaking discovery: the body of a toddler, decomposing in a clump of trees. The toddler was identified as Charles Lindbergh Jr., 20-month-old son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, who was kidnapped from his parents’ home in March in hopes of obtaining a ransom.

Due to Charles Lindbergh’s near legendary status, the case attracted an overwhelming amount of attention from the police, the government, the public and the media, with journalist H.L. Mencken calling it the biggest story since the Resurrection. Even Al Capone offered to use his significant mob connections to track down the kidnappers.

Unfortunately, the numerous agencies and individuals involved were not able to secure the child’s safe release. After paying half of the requested $100,000 ransom on April 2nd, Charles Lindbergh was instructed that he would find his son, unharmed and in the care of two women, on a boat called the Nelly at Martha’s Vineyard.

Charles Lindbergh scoured the whole of Martha’s Vineyard in vain. There was no such boat.

In reality, the child’s body was found less than five miles from the family’s home in Hopewell, NJ. The cause of death was determined to be a massive blow to the head.

30 months of investigation led police and the FBI to Bruno Hauptmann, a German immigrant and carpenter with a criminal background, after he spent one of the gold certificates that had been part of the ransom money. He was arrested, interrogated and his apartment searched, where investigators found, among other evidence, more of the ransom money and wood from and design sketches of the ladder that had been used to abduct Charles Lindbergh Jr. from his second floor bedroom.

Hauptmann was convicted of extortion and murder and sentenced to death by electrocution, which was carried out April 3, 1936.

In spite of this resolution to what has been dubbed “The Crime of the Century,” some maintain that the body that was found was not that of the Lindbergh baby and that he is still alive somewhere. To this day, people continue to come forward claiming to be Charles Lindbergh Jr.

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– Teresa Santoski