This past week I received two handwritten letters. One of them from Michelle who I wrote to on Day 58 and the other one from Myra who I will write this week – maybe tomorrow!
Most of the time we think of handwritten letters in a very positive light. They often unfold people’s true feelings of happiness, love and admiration. But not all handwritten letters are so pleasant.
murdermysteries.com
Eighty-three years ago today a crime was committed in Hopewell, NJ that would be dubbed “the crime of the century.” Sometime between 8-10pm on Tuesday, March 1st, 1932, the twenty-month-old son of famed pilot Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped from the family home. The cute dimpled boy with curly blond hair and striking blue eyes vanished out of the Lindbergh’s second story home.
Ransom note:
Dear Sir!
Have 50.000$ redy 25 000$ in 20$ bills 15000$ in 10$ bills and 10000$ in 5$ bills After 2-4 days we will inform you were to deliver
the mony.
We warn you for making
anyding public or for notify the Police The child is in gut care.
Indication for all letters are
Singnature (Symbol to right) and three hohls.
Ransom notes were issued and the Lindberghs paid $50,000 in marked currency. Sadly Little Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. was not returned to his family and was found dead six weeks later on a roadside by a passing truck driver. Police did arrest a man, Bruno Hauptmann, who was convicted and later electrocuted in Trenton State Prison on April 3, 1936.
Charles Lindbergh at the controls of one of the planes that flew American airmail in the first years after the service’s inception. (fiddlersgreen.net)
Most people know Charles Lindberg Sr. for his historic solo nonstop transatlantic flight. But before making history, Lindbergh was a U.S. Mail pilot, carrying handwritten letters in his planes across the midwest. I read that he bailed out twice from his mail plane and parachuted to safety only to land and immediately go to locate the wreckage in order to save the letters that were onboard. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” – Maybe they ought to add plane crashes to that list!