The Lindbergh Conspiracies

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TRUE CRIME
WEEKLY SERIES

Veteran reporter Joe Nocera investigates a 94-year-old crime that deserves a second look: the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr.

4 MAY

A new series | Coming Soon

Veteran reporter Joe Nocera investigates a 94-year-old crime that deserves a second look: the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Little Lindy was the infant son of the most famous man in the world at the time, an aviator who had achieved impossible feats. Unsurprisingly, the case was a media sensation in 1932, especially when German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann was tried and executed for the crime. Hauptmann professed his innocence to the end; could he have been telling the truth? Joe embeds with a community of sleuths who think so, believing the authorities convicted the wrong guy and fighting for the DNA to be tested to prove it. This is a series that asks: Was this case America’s first great conspiracy?

1 min
2 DAYS AGO

EP01 | The Broken Window

One night in March 1932, the infant son of aviator Charles Lindbergh is taken from his nursery. A warped window, a ladder, and a ransom note mark the beginning of a case that will grip the world and launch a hundred conspiracy theories. Ninety-four years later, we return to the scene of the crime to ask: What really happened that night?

43 min
BONUS • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

EP02 | The Great Aviator

Charles Lindbergh is not just the father of a kidnapped child—he is the most celebrated man on Earth, and increasingly the one shaping how the investigation unfolds. But behind the heroic image is a more complicated figure: both controlling and naive, and willing to overrule the police entrusted with finding his son. Does Lindbergh’s strange behavior hold any clues to the mystery? Warning: This episode contains a description of suicide.

42 min
BONUS • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

EP03 | Follow The Money

The investigation closes in on a German immigrant carpenter from the Bronx. When a chunk of the ransom money is discovered at his home, investigators think they’ve found a “smoking gun.” But is the evidence as airtight as it seems? Or is it a sign of a wider conspiracy that was never fully exposed?

24 min
BONUS • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

EP04 | The Trial of the Century

If the kidnapping was the Crime of the Century, then the trial that followed was the Trial of the Century. At the center of it all stands the accused—a man who insists on the stand that he is innocent. Nearly a hundred years later, we ask: Could he have been telling the truth?

49 min
BONUS • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

EP05 | Suspect Number 1

In the decades after the trial, a conclusion that once seemed certain begins to collapse. As Charles Lindbergh’s legacy darkens and a postwar America grows more suspicious of official narratives, new theories arise about what really happened—and who really killed the Lindbergh baby.

41 min
BONUS • SUBSCRIBERS ONLY

EP06 | May The Best Conspiracy Win

In the final episode of The Lindbergh Conspiracies, Joe and Poppy revisit the case’s most compelling theories one last time—from Robert Zorn’s claim that a German immigrant named John Knoll was the true mastermind, to Robert Cahill’s methodical argument that Bruno Hauptmann acted alone. They also follow one lawyer’s ongoing legal battle to secure DNA testing on the ransom notes. It’s a fight that could either settle the case once and for all—or add new fuel to the fire. Reading list: * Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead — Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1973) * Scapegoat: The Lonesome Death of Bruno Richard Hauptmann — Anthony Scaduto (1976) * The Airman and the Carpenter — Ludovic Kennedy (1985) * Beneath the Winter Sycamores — Jim Bahm (2000) * The Case That Never Dies — Lloyd C. Gardner (2004) * Cemetery John: The Undiscovered Mastermind of the Lindbergh Kidnapping — Robert Zorn (2012) * Hauptmann’s Ladder — Richard T. Cahill Jr. (2014) * The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh — Candace Fleming (2020) * Little Lindy Is Kidnapped — Thomas Doherty (2020) * The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: The Man Who Got Away — Lise Pearlman (2020) * The Lindbergh Nanny — Mariah Fredericks (2022)

40 min

TRAILER

A new series | Coming Soon

Veteran reporter Joe Nocera investigates a 94-year-old crime that deserves a second look: the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh, Jr. Little Lindy was the infant son of the most famous man in the world at the time, an aviator who had achieved impossible feats. Unsurprisingly, the case was a media sensation in 1932, especially when German immigrant Bruno Hauptmann was tried and executed for the crime. Hauptmann professed his innocence to the end; could he have been telling the truth? Joe embeds with a community of sleuths who think so, believing the authorities convicted the wrong guy and fighting for the DNA to be tested to prove it. This is a series that asks: Was this case America’s first great conspiracy?

4 May

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1 min

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