"Anne, they have stolen our baby." (Meachum, 72), are the beginning words to a crime that shocked America. The Lindbergh Kidnapping was the "crime of the century" ("Lindbergh"), in the 1930s. This case took over four years to solve and it brought citizens together like nothing else of its kind had done before.
Charles Lindbergh was an extraordinary pilot, but he had many other projects going on in his early life. An example of one of Lindbergh's aviation projects was in 1928, Lindbergh had his last flight in the Spirit of St. Louis. He flew from Lambert Field to Bolling Field, Washington, D.C. The total time he flew in the Spirit of St. Louis was, 789 hours and 28 minutes ("Connecting"). Charles always had one thing he could come back to, his passion for aviation. One of the many non-aviation projects Lindbergh was a part of, was the Perfusion Pump. Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel created and perfected the Perfusion Pump during the early 1930s. The pump gave doctors, "a way of keeping whole organs alive outside the body, in an artificial environment" ("Connecting"). This made Lindbergh even more famous, and it showed people that you can do more than one thing as your occupation. .
The event that stopped Lindbergh from his projects was the kidnapping of his son, Charles Lindbergh Jr., on March 1, 1932. Charles Jr., was a nearly perfect 20-month-old, who was snatched out of his crib. When New Jersey Police investigated, they found muddy footprints and a broken ladder by the nursery windows. There were no fingerprints and police had almost nothing to work with, except for a ransom note requesting $50,000 (Meachum, 73). By the police not being able to find any evidence, it showed that the kidnapper was intelligent. After the F.B.I took over and 13 ransom notes later, investigators finally had an answer and a suspect. Unfortunately, it was not the answer they were hoping for.