This week in 1936

“I am glad that my life in a world which has not understood me has ended.”

— Bruno Richard Hauptmann, convicted of kidnapping and murder, electric chair, New Jersey.
Executed April 3, 1936

Hauptmann was executed for “the Crime of the Century,” the abduction and kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr., the toddler son of famed pilot Charles Lindbergh. It was hypothesized that the Lindbergh baby actually died during the abduction, when he was dropped from the ladder used to climb into his nursery. Decades later Hauptmann’s widow maintained her husband’s innocence, calling him “framed from beginning to end.”

Hauptmann’s case was included in the 1992 book “In Spite of Innocence” among almost two dozen cases in which the editors believed “an innocent person was executed.”