t's plausible that Lindbergh was attempting a 'practical joke' and unable to hold onto him while wearing gloves on a cold march evening, dropped his squirming child to his death, letting go of him to keep himself from falling when the step broke. But I don't think that's what happened. I believe it was an actual kidnapping, but I have no idea by whom. It is also plausible that Hauptmann was involved, but I do not think he was.
What's curious is the assistant truck driver, William Allen, who found the child's partly buried body some 45' off the roadway. One must ask, what was he doing there? Was he involved? Was he just taking a leak? Right there?
My grandfather had been a newsreel cameraman for Fox Movietone and was in the courtroom for the entire trial. We had the original onionskin copies of the typed transcript and I remember reading them as a youngster, not aware of their historical importance. My grandfather also filmed Lindy's take-off from Roosevelt Field; footage many of you may have seen. This footage is also historic filmographically for another reason: it was the first to every carry its own sound track.
Jeezus, that maid is fugly!
Undoubtedly, whomever was carrying the child down the ladder dropped him when the ladder brokefer. I doubt Lindbergh could have dismembered his own child. There's not enough presented in the evidence to determine whether some feral animal caused the dismemberment, though that too is possible.
"On May 12, 1932, the body of the kidnapped baby was accidentally found, partly buried, and badly decomposed, about four and a half miles southeast of the Lindbergh home, 45 feet from the highway, near Mount Rose, New Jersey, in Mercer County. The discovery was made by William Allen, an assistant on a truck driven by Orville Wilson. The head was crushed, there was a hole in the skull and some of the body members were missing. The body was positively identified and cremated at Trenton, New Jersey, on May 13, 1932. The Coroner's examination showed that the child had been dead for about two months and that death was caused by a blow on the head."
http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/famous-cases/the-lindbergh-kidnapping
