TCNJ

36 The College of New Jersey Magazine J ust 13 miles from campus, at a secluded country estate along the old Hopewell–Amwell Road, a baby was stolen from his nursery in the night. It was March 1, 1932, and the kidnapped child was none other than the firstborn son of Charles A. Lindbergh, the famed flyer, and his wife, Anne, a pioneering aviator in her own right. Five years earlier, the young airmail pilot had made the first solo nonstop flight from New York to Paris, a feat that catapulted him from obscurity to international celebrity. Four million people packed a New York ticker-tape parade in his honor; products from doorstops to hood ornaments flashed his likeness; and the frenzied glare of press and public was unrelenting. The young couple escaped to a newly built country house called Highfields on an isolated side of the Sourland Mountain, seeking distance from paparazzi and a place to raise a family in peace. They never had that CHARLES A. LINDBERGH soared to worldwide fame with his historic flight across the Atlantic in 1927, but underneath his boyish pluck bubbled a penchant for cruel pranks and a sympathy with eugenics. Did either play into the crime? ANNE MORROW LINDBERGH, daughter of a prominent political family, flew around the world as copilot to her hero husband. She shared a birthday, June 22, with her first child and was pregnant with her second at the time of the kidnapping. CHARLES A. LINDBERGH JR., the couple's firstborn child, "Charlie," was a curly-headed, 20-month-old when he was snatched from his crib. Only his family knew that a rickets-like condition and other physical imper- fections afflicted their "Little Eaglet." CAST OF CHARACTERS art by Peter Arkle

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