Final Reflections on the Lindbergh Case

Avatar Fire and Ash is now streaming on Disney plus. It's the film critics are calling the best Avatar yet. A true epic and completely jawdropping. This is the only pure thing in this world. Return to Pandora on Disney plus. It will be an adventure for the whole family and watch the Oscar winning phenomenon at home. This is sick ar Fire and Ash, now stream runun Disney pllus, rated PG thirteen Right at the start of this series, I call the Lindberg kidnapping the first great American conspiracy And now that we've been through it together, sorting out all the leads, all the anomalies, all the theories I think you can see why You'll also remember what I said in episode one about what I think the consequences of that are Just a little bit of doubt and it spreads like mweed Pull it one cluster and you find another, and another. and another. until you look up and realize the whole foundation has shifted That's what's happened with the Lindberg kidnapping. It started with a missing child and three simple clues. And it grew into a mystery that bothers many people to this day. The theories split as they always do And each one took root in a different direction. There's the inside job theory Maybe it was all about the money Someone in the inner circle who knew the family's routine, knew the house, knew the nursery, and decided to take their cut of the Lindberg fortune by participating in a ransom scheme But at some point, it all went terribly wrong and the child died There's Lindberg Diddit theories. There are two versions of this horrible theory. and one, Lindberg, while pulling a prank in which he hid the baby, accidentally killed the child. Unwilling to take responsibility, he concocted a kidnapping story In the second, more deliberate version, the child was, in the father's cold eugenesis estimation, defective. And would look like a kidnapping was something far more sinister Charles Lindberg Srolling, calculating, the man who had g on to openly admire Nazi Germany was the architect of his son's death The ransom negotiations he stered himself A crime scene he controlled In this version, Lindberg didn't just know how the story ended He wrote it en there are those who believe Little Lindy never died at all. The body in the woods was misidentified, deliberately or otherwise, and that the boy was taken somewhere, raised under another name, and lived out a life he never knew was stolen from him that there are people walking around now who carry Lindberg's lineage This version never dies either. Not we really does which brings us to what is now the unlikeliest theory of all. Though it was once what everyone assumed that a German immigrant, desperate for money, built a ladder, drove to Hopewell alone, got extraordinarily lucky that the family happened to be there that night climbed in through a window and changed history that the baby died accidentally or otherwise that same night that he demanded and received a fifty thousand dollars ransom that the marked bills led back to him He was tried, convicted, and executed And justice, imperfect though it was, was done. Whichever version you choose says something about you It says something about how much you trust authority about how willing you are to live with contradictions and loose ends about how willing you are to say I don't know. Maybe no one will ever know or on the other hand, to say, I don't trust authority Because too many times we've been misled. Too many times we've been lied to I'm willing to think the worst until you can prove otherwise. We called this series Lindberurg conspiracies to point to the double meaning of the word It could be a conspiracy that saw the wrong man executed, a cover up. Or it could be that Charles Lindberg's reputation And how that reputation evolved falls nicely into our age of conspiracy In other words, because Lindberg's extraordinary fame, not to mention his later actions, people believe he must have done something bad Poppy is not in that camp. Joe, there's even a name for what happens in our brains when we encounter cases like this. It's called pattern recognition theory. Basically we as humans need stories to make sense. There's an inbuilt sense of story, even some say five act structure, there's a There's cause and effect. And so when things happen like coincidences or things that don't have an explanation, our brain actually can't compute and we say this story has to make sense. and that's how you get conspiracies. And I don't think it leads to truth. I don't think in the Limberurg case The conspiracies have led us any closer to what really happened I'm Jo Sera, and for the free press, this is the Lindberurg Conspiracies This is our final episode M the best conspiracy win. We've spent a lot of time in this podcast talking to people who believe Charles Lindberg was involved in the death of his son We're now going to turn the floor over to two men who think that Lindberg had nothing whatsoever to do with the kidnapping And yet the two could not be further apart in what they believe happened Let's start with Robert Zorn, who we heard from in episode one. His thesis may be the wildest one of them all The last For fourteen years now I have devoted myself as a writer and researcher of the Lindberg case and of the life of Charles Lindberg. I believe that in the end, I will be the person who has brought Most amount of truth to this story as well as to the life of Charles Lindberg. I'm currently working on a biography of Charles Lindberg to coincide with the hundred year anniversary of his flight to Paris coming up in twenty twenty seven as the only person who has gotten the story of the kidnapping right I am in a unique position to be the first to tell the complete and true story of Charles Lindberg's life. Robert also has a new book publishing this month called The Lindberg Code, which goes into more detail about his theory around the kidnapping As I'm going to show to the world, history got it wrong According to Zorne, the mastermind of the kidnapping of Little Iindy was a man named John Noell, K N O L L Or maybe I should call him cemetery Jon Noell What we have in John Knll is a twenty year old man who came to the US from Germany in nineteen twenty five. when anti German sentiment in America prevailed He was shocked to find himself unwelcome in America the target of discrimination and condescension. Where was the American dream for him and fellow members of the German American community It was a mirage, a phony deal, as he saw it And what was the best way to take revenge on America to attack America's most beloved admired hero Charles Lindberg What better way was there to shatter Lindberg than to kidnap his twenty month old baby? Indeed Well, the whole story started for me when I was a twenty two year old student at the Wharton Graduate School of Business on my spring break. My dad came up and visited me on my vacation. And as I was taking him back to the airport for him to go back to Dallas, he said, Robert, you may think you're an old man's off of his rocker, but I got a story to tell you And my hands tightened on the steering wheel As my father was a very sober minded critical thinker and except in jazz, he never said anything that was nutty at all Zorn's father proceeded to tell him about a German neighbor who lived three doors down from him in the South Bronx in nineteen thirty one when he was just a kid. John No. My father at the age of seven was struck in the eye by an alcoholic who in a fit of alcoholic rage punched him in the eye my dad lost the sight. And as a result, my grandmother would not allow my dad to play stickball or any sports with the kids And so he's the kind of kid who' looking out the window watching all the other kids play stickball and having a great time. Noel took Zan's father under his wing and got him interested in a hobby, stamp collecting. One day invited my dad to go to it Palisades ammusement park in New Jersey My dad had never been out of the state of New York before. He was one of six kids. He had five sisters. And this was the biggest deal in the world. Anyway, they took a series of subway trains from the Bronx to Manhattan and then f across the Hudson River. They went to this park which sat at the top of the Palisades Cliffs in New Jersey How next to the palisades was Englewood where Dwight Marrow and his wife lived and where the Lindbergs usually stayed during the week This is where the plot thickens Spending time in the amusement park, Noel, with Zan's father in tow, met two men who were waiting for him. His younger brother, Walter, whom my father knew, Walter worked in the deli, Waltman's Dellicatessan at seven hundred six West Chester Avenue in the Bronx with John And then a third man that my father had never seen before. All of a sudden the men started talking to one another in German John knew that my father didn't know how to speak German, okay? so he feels comfortable speaking in German in front of my father with his brother Walter and this third guy. My dad picks up that they're talking about some place called Englewood. He also picked up that John is calling this third guy, Bruno. Then John does something very strange. He sends my father home alone. Having never left the Bronx in his life, Zorn's father wasn't really sure how to get back And for my father, this was a bit of, I would say this was a minor childhood trauma that he would never, ever forget Zorn's father never forgot that day in the palisade At this time, my father is the chief economist of the biggest bank in the Southwest, Republic National Bank of Dallas. And he walks into his barers shop at the age of forty seven. Ironically, he had almost no hair. And while he's waiting for his name to be called, he reaches out for a magazine on the stack and picks up a magazine called True. And in that magazine was an article about the Lindberg case. So he's reading about it and he finds out that the Lindbergs, they had been living with Anne Morrow's parents in Anglewood, New Jersey. My father reads a little bit more. and then he's seeing how that there was a mysterious man in two different Bronx cemeteries, Woodlawn Cemetery and St. Raymond's Cemetery And at the first cemetery, Woodlwn, where my father had just buried his own father in August of nineteen sixty three. so he was very familiar with the layout and the surroundings. He started to wonder if the John he knew as a child was that John. Cemetery, John One of the kidnappers. And that's when he asked himself a question One that still hasn't been fully answered How many people were really involved As it turns out, John Knell was still living in Toms River, New Jersey at the time that my father told me the story. my immediate reaction was to go down there and confront him, which is something my dad never would have done, but it's something I would have done. But you know, you're a twenty two year old kid, you think you have all the time in the world And as it turned out, John Nonell died six weeks later So I've been kicking myself ever since about that joe This seems like a pretty thin reed upon which to hang a kidnapping But Zorn feels that the circumstantial evidence backs him up. First, a photo of Noel reveals that he bears a much closer resemblance to Condan's description of cemetery John than does Bruno Hotman. Condan said that the kidnapper had a high forehead Lge ears, a pointed chin, and a fleshy development on his left thumb. That described Noel to a te. even the thumb thing Second, he says Noel's handwriting more closely matches the handwriting on the ransom envelopes than Hopman's Third, when the manhunt for the kidnappers began, Noel left the Bronx and moved to Detroit He also skipped town just before the start of the trial Zorn, needless to say, views these moves as suspicious Fourth, he's consulted several criminologists who have told him that Noel's personality fits with that of a potential kidnapper, or worse a cold blooded killer. Fifth, remember how John Noell got Zorn's dad interested in stamp collecting Both Mary Ellen O'Toull and Dr. Craig Newman, who is one of the world's leading researchers of psychopathic personality, believe that John Noell was embedding clues in my then teenage father to make my father the unwitting archivist of his great crime for history. This was all part of a game that he was playing There are so many things that no one has ever seen and noticed about this case who have studied it. But one of the things he was doing, he was giving my dad Stamp collectibles, including was a stamp that was canceled on the very date of the kidnapping, march first, nineteen thirty two. He gave my dad two Lindberg air mail stamps, including a Lindberurg air mail stamp with what is known as a kill mark cancellation Killmark defaces the stamp obscuring the image. In this case, the image of Lindber This episode is brought to you by Fox One Watch all one hundred and four matches of the FIFA World Cup live in four K for just ninet do ninety nine cents a month. with three days free. Build your own multi view, choose up to three streams, and follow players spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights, and instant replays The FIFA World Cup, streaming live on Fox One, offers a subject to change seefox. com for complete terms and conditions And we're live on match dayay as Doug reaches for a buffuffalo wing Got it! Oh and he's sc for a can of Pepsi too. What a finish There's no doubt about it. It just tastes better Match days deserve Betsy There's one other thing about Zorn you should know He despises the ideas pushed by authors like Lisa Pman who says that Lindberg was involved in his son's kidnapping It has been said that this child was so badly deformed that his father wanted to get rid of him ored they wanted to do an experiment It's absolute garbage So these theories collapse very quickly. I was the first person outside the Lindberg family to be given the honor and privilege of viewing The nineteen thirty one Lindberg home movies Run about fifteen minutes and the major focus of the Hll movies is the baby This baby was a peach And this baby, he lost his life att the age of twenty months and endured a horrible kidnapping and murder This child deserves to be portrayed accurately twenty twelve, Zorn wrote a book laying out his case for Noel being the kidnapper It was called Cemetery John, the undiscovered mastermind of L Lindberurg kidnapping Did it convince me and Poppy? Sorry, Robert, it did not. Though to be fair Publishers weekly said it makes a strong case He gives on his due though It's quite possible that he cracked one part of the mystery. which is that the baby had been put in a burlap sack and was likely lowered down from the window using a pulley system Remember, the ladder was on the right side of the window sill Noel was left handed, so he may have been the one on the ladder, Zan argues He was, in other words Halpman's missing accomplice. There's one other thing I think Zan is completely right about There was nothing physically wrong with Little Lindy. On the stand, Betty Gow testified that he was in perfect health And Anne Lindberg in various letters that she published years later, makes them sound like any normal twenty month old child This is from a letter she wrote to Lindberg's mother three weeks before the kidnapping. C. Jr. is trying to stand on his head and look at me upside down through his legs C. Jr. talks a great deal more. He says everything after you. The baby can wind up your music box by himself. He is more interested in the elephant and says something that sounds like elephant. But he prefers the gray pussy cat with the flat tail to take to bed at night. So much for the theory that Lindberg did it because his son was a cripple of some sort. The other person we spoke to who also believes Lindberg had nothing to do with it was Robert Cahill In earlier episodes, he helped walk us through various aspects of the kidnapping Now it's time for him to give us his view, which is, are you sitting down for this The prosecution got it right I asked him why he decided to write a book about the kidnapping I was going to go to law school and I thought, you know what? this might be a nice little hobby. I'll go down and I'll look at the original documents and find out for myself. twentywenty years later, my book comes out And one of the big reasons for my book was so people wouldn't have to go through all the crap that I did trying to find out what really happen because there's so much evidence and so much documentation on this was called man's ladder by step analysis of the Lindberurg kidnapping put it simply, I believe that he put the ladder up, he climbed up, and he kidnapped a baby, likely put it in a burlap sack. I say that because there was a burlap sack found at the graves site, climbed down. The ladder under both his weight and the weight of the baby broke as in the way I've described before. and unfortunately the child died And I think he panicked and took off and then got rid of the body as quickly as he could some distance away. How could Human have known which window was the babies's? The house was not finished in that there were no curtains on the windows, no drapes. Anybody with a pair of field glasses could have observed the house for the woods earlier in that day. Anne Linberg had taken a walk and she had walked right past the nursery And Betty Gowittt held the child up to see his mother and wave and so forth. Anybody observing that would have been able to see that without difficulty Next question Did Human have an accomplice? There's no evidence to prove that there was an accomplice. Could somebody have been sitting in the car? Sure I can't rle it out but I can't make the conclusion Do the ransom notes point to Hotman's guilt? When you read the letter, it sounds like somebody German naturally and was trying to Wite English The really interesting thing is that the more difficult words were spelled correctly and the easier words were not leading the police to conclude that probably the person who used the German to English to German dictionary to look up more difficult words But other words maybe he felt more comfortable with were misspelled So they concluded right away that the person who wrote this was likely German Do you think Condan could have been involved in the kidnapping? I've found no evidence that shows me that Condan had anything to do it. He was a local busy body. What about the fact that Condan didn't identify Human in the lineup? If you accept what Condon offered in his trial testimony, then there's no doubt. it's H The biggest problem with Condan is why didn't he identify Hauman when he went in for the lineup He says in his book that he knew right away it was. and then he gives a story about, well, I didn't think it was fair N nonsense. It had not to do with him thinking it was fair And this is speculation to some extent, but my reading of it and my conclusion of it has always been I've always thought that Condon did recognize him but didn't just want to say that's the guy and then walk out because then WellK, he'll come back to trial. Where's the glory for him There's also that key clue the chisel As for why he brouought the chisel That's all guesswork. I think it was more likely to force a window if he had to, There goes the idea in my mind of an inside job if you accept that, because The window was not locked, it couldn't lock a particular one And if he knew that, why would he bring the chisel Does he think there's even a possibility But Lindberg was involved in the kidnapping and maybe even the death of his son. The idea that Lindberg did it is asinine. It shows boyad research. Here's the thing. Was Lindberg interested in eugenics Yes And you know what relevance that has on the case? Nada. Nothing I don't have any respect for people who write that Lindberg did it. I just don't Okay. It's like saying Lindberg still believes in Santa Claus. Well, that must mean that Santa Claus came and took the child It's the same illogical jump in logic I don't have any respect for people who write that Lindberg did it. I just don't The clinchter for K Hill is the latter. To him, the ladder proves without a doubt that Human did it. It is an unusual ladder in that it is not the type of ladder you would use for construction However, it is a ladder that is built to be relatively lightweight that collapses in on itself so that it can be carried around relatively easy. and the gaps in the Rungs would be no good for me. I'm only five foot eight, but for help and who was much taller and had long legs, it worked for him. It was cleverly designed Naturally, Poppy and I decided we had to see the ladder for ourselves It's held on display at the New Jersey State Police Museum Although at his trial Huoutman claimed that no decent carpenter would ever build a ladder like that That was clearly not the case I have to say, the two things that strike me is it definitely is a very professionally made leadder. I mean, I get that it's made from scrap wood, but' not I can see how it's got thought behind it. There's bits sectioned out. It's actually quite complicated that it folds into three pieces. It's not just a piece of shit that he tried to claim later That is very true. It's a weirdly complex piece It's a three section wooden ladder buuilt from four different types of wood But it also had a hook at the top that some thought might be used to latch onto the window. A Hubman's trial Prosecutors made much of the fact that a piece of the ladder The infamous Rail sixteen came from Human's attict Cay Hill found that awfully convincing cannot be a rational argument that he wasn't involved because how do you explain that rail sixteen came from his attqu when? And scientifically it clearly does And he told us Halman left the ladder behind for the simplest of reasons when somebody down the ladder and was carrying a sandbag that approximated the weight of the child like a ladder broke in the same location that the actual kidnap ladder did At that point, you know, with a loud crack, you don't know if somebody heard it And so I think at that point, Almin took off There's one thing that could put all of this to rest DNA test of the ransom notes partarticularly The one left on the window ledge that night That could only have been left by the kidnapper The person who's trying to make that happen. is Kurt Perhat, the lawyer who first got interested in the law because of his fascination with Humann's trial He's been embroiled in litigation with the New Jersey State Police Museum trying to force officials to test the DNA So far, he has not succeeded The fight's not over yet. The legal battle has actually been going on since twenty twenty two Before he sued, Kurt tried to persuade the state police to voluntarily do DNA testing on the ransom notes. Those conversations went nowhere DNA testing of the ransom notodes is an idea that had been floating around for quite some time In two thousand three, there was a woman from Florida who asked the state of New Jersey do a DNA analysis of the evidence that went nowhere, the same New Jersey said, no, thank you In the mid two thousands, it came up again. one or two people asked, you know, hey, how come we're not going to do DNA testing of this PBS and NoOVa did a documentary in twenty ten, twenty eleven, where they asked the same thing They were shot down with no answer, no explanation at all J then asked the New Jersey atttorney G general about it during COVID Like most of us, I had a lot of extra time on my hands And I started making calls and looking at things again from a new perspective. I've known the New Jersey atttorney general since twenty sixteen. I'd consider us at least acquaintances, if not friends I reached out to him directly And I thought it, let me just ask him directly, why can't Well, first of all, can I do some DNA testing if I get the right people involved He said let me get back to you manyany, many, many months go by. I don't hear anything back. Hey, just curious. Yeah, no, Kt's not to happen So in september twenty twenty two, he filed his first lawsuit with a researcher named Margaret Suthager as a plaintiff a woman who'd spent a decade volunteering at the very museum she was now suing. Margaret Sudaker is a senior citizen and spent many years volunteering over a decade of her life. helping to inventory and archive the state police files of over two hundred twenty five thousand pieces of paper She spent most Tuesdays there for over ten years Four months later The case got thrown out on a technicality and the appeal failed to Kurt was able to file a new lawsuit in april twenty twenty five. Because three other interested parties reached out to Kirk to be part of a new suit as plaintiffs Kurt's brief ran to two hundred pages That one lost a trial in july twenty twenty five Kurt's appeal is going to be heard sometime in twenty twenty six Poppy has been to one of the court dates, and it's often a large crowd. There's no reason why the times we're living in today, we should not be able to reeamine older cases to see if justice happened in the interest of transparency for the public and for the history books The big part of Kurtz's argument is that in nineteen eighty one, then Governor Brendan Byrn ordered all the Lindberurg evidence to be made available to the public DNA testing didn't become possible until the mid eighties Kurt says that if DNA testing had been around when Byrn signed his order, it surely would have been done Because DNA testing is in the spirit of that order. By the way, Governor Byr personally believed Hotman was involved, but acted with an accomplice The state, meanwhile, has argued that DNA testing would damage the envelopes Kurt told me that's laughable. First of all, there's ten stamps where it's really easy to take a little needle and swipe underneath the stamp. and it's really easy to get under some of this paper, which some of that's not even attached together. it wouldn't even damage or hurt anything. And they just said no. I asked Kurt what he thought DNA testing would show I think it's more likely than not that at least one of those pieces of paper does not have How's DNA are't there Would DNA testing end the conspiracies gave a firm Maybe The argument that people are going to say you're never going to be happy is to me falls on deaf ears because This was one of these things that it's to me the greatest criminal soap opera in US history. There were so many characters in it. There are so many odd things that happened to it And it's frankly a shame that The last probably forty, fifty, sixty years of Americans who didn't live through it don't really know much about it because it's such a fascinating story. So the argument that I would make there is that I think that The only way to get real justice here is to find out Out of these two hundred twenty five thousand pieces of paper, the fifteen or so that might have tangible DNA should be examined, should be tested. And if Houtman's DNA is on those fifteen pieces of paper Great. I think that the that I've known now for twenty plus years that have studied every single facet of this case I think they would be very happy justice happened, that this thing is probably done Here's Nickoespie We're always at a stage where the science now is finally perfect and good Whereas in the past it was hazy and bad, but now, you know, we had fingerprinting and now we have DNA and it's perfect except in the case you know, brought DNA testing and it's absolute superiority anything else and its's infallibility is all built around the fact that like DNA testing, throw it out because it's always taken under bad circumstances. sameame with fingerprints. with the ladder and the floorboards, it is kind of like handwriting analysis and other things, like the same people can look at this and plausibly come to very different conclusions. So You know, we're constantly shifting in and out of the certitude that science will bring and it will project us to a place of pure information and pure justice and all of that. And it always is You know, it's it's just eroding the more we look at it, it's just disappeared. The New Jersey State Police Museum shut off access to all the Lindberurg evidence. Governor Burns executive order It is now reopened to researchers, but by appointment only causes people to become wrapped up in conspiracy theories With Lindberg, a lot of it, no doubt is due to the fact that the official story is so full of gaps But there's also something else going on, something rooted in the American psyche Mariah Fredricks, the author of the Lindberurg Nanny, is another person who thinks Lindberg was not involved She thinks all these Lindberg conspiracies are simply a product of our time Certainly a desire to grapple with the evil side of eugenics, I think, has led people to really want to delve into that side of Windberurg's personality. Yeah know, the reason that I argue against Winberurg being guilty is not because I have any interest in redeeming the reputation of Charles Lindberurg or minimizing or normalizing what he did and said It's because I feel like We're becoming swopy in how we process information that we're given and we're We're not asking ourselves, what is the source Has this been well entered And as we see with recent events in accusing immigrants in Ohio of eating pets, People are becoming quite shameless about the stories that they will just simply put out there as part of the narrative. think It is important to really look at the actual factual evidence and not just say, yes, this does fit into my vision of good and evil and how it works in the world I think the belief in conspiracy theories is an essential way of making sense of a world where horrible things happen. That's Nick Gillespie again. And you know, the big issue of this is with JFK. How could nobody like Lee Harvey Oswald , you know, this grand of everything good about America and everything good about the Cold War and everything positive We can't live with that thought. And so we look for conspiracies to explain what is otherwise obvious tragic or very disturbing and aimless in life. His wife Sarah Siskin has a few thoughts as well Who doesn't hate their dad You know Lindberg terrible dude. We gott to tear him down. It's like the loss of childhood innocence. It's like Perfect Shakespearean drama, the ogre father, you know, who kills his children I think it's you know, it's just it's a manifestation of our own internal damage. So it's like the Oedipus complex on a, you know cosmological level.. I think there's also something about conspiracy theory, particularly in today's world where everybody is a conspiracist. Nobbody believes things just happen. I mean, that's the problem with conspiracy theories, right? At some point you have to call it a day and get on with your life. and the people who don't You know, end up being stuck depending on who they are and where they're from and what they're hiding from. They might get suuck on Lindberg or the Rosenbergs or OJ or JFK So I suppose the time has come for Poppy and I to come clean Poppy lines up with Richard Cale She has come to believe that Hotman was the sole kidnapper Helman had the ransom money and to me that's the only concrete thing you can say. So we know at the very least he was the extortionist. Whether he was the kidnapper is harder to prove, but I do think It's the most likely. And to be really honest It's hard for me to go into any camp that pososits a conspiracy that doesn't have more evidence Poppy has another reason for wanting to believe in Hotman's guilt be honest, I ended up thinking that Bruno Dig it Pause Part of me can sleep easier at night if the right man was executed and I don't believe in the death penalty, but I do think that I hope that it was him And I ultimately think that Kayahill Kind of had an answer for everything Me I came away convinced that there's simply no way one person could have done this by himself The likelihood that someone working in a Lindberurg household was involved is high on my list of possibilities Remember, the investigators assumed that they were looking for a team of kidnappers before they stumbled upon Houtman. Once they had him, The game was this. How quickly could they get him to the electric chair to satisfy the public's thirst for revenge Was Lindberg involved? Given how inexplicable so many of his actions were in the days and weeks after the kidnapping, I don't think it's a crazy notion. Though I must say, the idea that he killed his baby in Dr. Carell's lab is a bridge too far for me. Complex cases aren't just full of evidence. They're full of noise. Red herrings Coincidences, human error Things that look like threads but lead nowhere And the more you dig, the more you disturb the ground looking for the root the more the knot weed spreads. The Lindberg case will never be fully resolved, notot to everyone's satisfaction The doubt that surrounds it is baked into so much of the way we think about American history now And that is unlikely to change Anytime soon Voldenberg Conspiracies was written by me, Joan O'Sira, and Poppy Damon The producer was Poppy Damon. Original music, including the theme song, was composed by Toby Madimu Sound desesigns, scoring, and mixing was by John Scott Our wonderful assistant producers were Bobby Moriarti, Monica Ricks, and Adam Feldman. Full disclosure, I am not a conspiracy theory guy, so I feel like I have to say it's Heelman, but even I will say, I do wonder how he did all of that by himself. Facttcking was by Noah Bernstein I think it was Hotman and Fish and a group, and I think Hotman's the fall guy. The series was commissioned by Kirin Nunan and Alex Chidney. The head of audio and video at the Free press is Janna Kzlsky. I don't have a theory on exactly what happened, but I think Charles Lindberg was involved Additional editorial support came from our team at the Free press, Cara Boyer. I think the mob did it. Franny Block. I think somebody in that house had to be involved. And frankly, I think Lindberg was involved. One of the thoughts I had was his wife had an affair later in their relationship What if she had one before, and maybe Little Lndy wasn't actually Lindberg's baby? Emily Yaffee. I am haunted by the fact that Charles Lindberg, a brave aviator, adored by millions, was a prankster who once played the terrible prank of hiding his baby and pretending it was missing Could Lindberurg have done it again? Only this time it resulted in the tragic death of little Lindy and spawned a cover up. Lucy Bigers. I think Brunard did it and probably got help from someone on the inside. mayaybe the Butler. Catherine Morriset There's a reason people say follow the money. And so I think it's probably Isadore Fish, the man with the money. And Jeff Lubin. Limberg was involved. Studio operations by Avery Block and Kobe Quaino. Our actors were Stephen Gay, Wayne Leagatte, Robert Kemp, Hannah Kent, and Kate Dulsit. Much of our research came from the books we cited throughout. We provide a reading list in the show notes. If you want to hear more, head over to the CBS Postmortem podcast where you can hear me talk about the case and about the making of this show. And one other thing. If you like this podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber to the free press and leaving us a five star review R Byan Reynolds here from MintMobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for fifteen dollars a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities, so do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to MintMobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintMobile dot com slash switch Upfront payment of forty five dollars per three month plan, equivalent to fifteen dollars per month required. intntro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. taxes and fees extra. Feful terms at mintMobile. com