Lindbergh: The Crime (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Whereas Ludovic Kennedy's account of the Lindbergh kidnapping/murder case (Crime of the Century) strips the drama down to a few key players, Lindbergh: The Crime is just the opposite: it is an explosion of minor characters and a baffling array of subplots. Most Lindbergh books do not describe, for example, the multiple parties who met with Charles Lindbergh and his allies, who were trusted with large sums of money, and made supposed negotiations with kidnappers. Noel Behn ambitiously tries to cram in as many details as he can about the events following the kidnapping, and to a large extent succeeds in convincing readers that an elaborate subterfuge was engineered by the Lindbergh camp. His proposed solution to the mystery is well researched, cogent, and fascinating. Behn's writing style makes for slow reading, though, so Lindbergh: The Crime is best read by someone who is already familiar with the case. The book includes 50 pages of footnotes, bibliography, and index. It was a 1994 finalist for an Edgar Award in fact crime.

From Publishers Weekly

Substituting innuendo for logic, Behn ( Big Stick-up at Brink's! ) proposes to identify the "true" culprits behind the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the infant Charles Lindbergh Jr., crimes for which Bruno Hauptmann was executed in 1936. While most researchers today doubt that Hauptmann acted alone, Behn maintains Hauptmann's total innocence. The author rehashes a theory that first circulated in the 1930s: that the baby was battered to death by his aunt, Elisabeth Morrow, allegedly an imbalanced young woman driven to insanity when famous aviator Charles Lindbergh married her sister Anne instead of her. The aviator, argues Behn, fabricated the kidnapping to protect the Lindbergh and Morrow families from scandal. The chief sources here are a book hastily assembled in 1932 by reporter Laura Vitray after she was fired from her newspaper, and the author's conversations with a nonagenarian lawyer who claims that a Morrow servant implicated Elisabeth. Behn does not, however, point out that the servant in question was himself a suspect. Aspersions on Lindbergh's character constitute the rest of the "evidence." Those with a serious interest in the subject are advised to read Joyce Milton's recent, assiduously researched Loss of Eden .
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: Onyx; First Edition edition (January 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451405897
• ISBN-13: 978-0451405890
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 4.1 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,993,837 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Granddaddy of the 20th Century Cover-Up, November 3, 2000

By	"groomlake7" (New Mexico, USA) - See all my reviews

Anyone who has studied the tousled hair and body language of Charles Lindbergh alongside that of John F. Kennedy will see some similarities, right down to the way they stuck their hands in the pockets of their suitcoats. The hero image of Lucky Lindy and that of the commander of PT-109. Here, Noel Behn makes a well-documented hypothesis that there was a cover-up in the Lindberg kidnapping case. His access to the archives of then New Jersey governor Hoffman, who was discredited by a corruption scandal at the moment he was raising doubts about Hauptmann's guilt (some have gone so far to say he was close to Fritzl Kuhn's "German-American Bund"), adds an additonal modicum of credibility to Behn's offering. When one reads Behn and then looks at what news icon Peter Jennings presented last year in his retrospective on the Lindberg case, Jennings becomes the moral equivalent of Dan Rather getting caught posing as a Mujaheddin rebel on his own news show. Behn suggests that there may have been no kidnapping at all and that Anne Morrow Lindberg's sister is the card in this game of Clue. The motive for the murder, jealousy. The motive for the cover up, the reputation of a young hero, the future of aviation, and the reputation of America's most powerful banking institution. Enter Col. Norman Schwarzkopf, the rigid, commander of the New Jersey State Police and father of our Desert Storm hero "Stormin (but not to Baghdad) Norman". Add Republican lawyer/dealmaker "Wild Bill" Donovan (who would become head of the OSS during World War II) to the mix. And the zealous prosecutor David Wilentz, who had lines open to organized crime and its legit businesses as some say the law firm that bears his name continues to have today. There was no "Grassy Knoll" here. But there was "the cemetery". Best for one to get the details oneself. What sets this work apart from others is that it dares to think outside the box on one of the great "crimes of the century". When examining the film footage of the trial, how dissimilar are the tirades of Wilentz against Hauptmann from those of Nazi Volksrichter Freissler against Colonel Von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb under Hitler's desk in the Wolfschanze? The older sister of Anne Morrow Lindberg was spirited off to the United Kingdom, Behn tells us. There was the marraige of the sister to a British academic type, ensuing mental problems and an early death under strange circumstances. Considering that coming up with new revelations about the Lindberg "kidnapping" is about as difficult as obtaining the latest revelations about the progress of making public the texts of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Behn's work (including his hypothesis)has established the foundation upon which a yonger generation of journalists and investigative reporters can build.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining if flawed, May 26, 2006

By	James D. Talley (Winter Springs, FL USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This was the first book I read about the case-after reading several others I certainly don't support the conclusion-that Elizabeth Morrow "did it" in a fit of rage;nor, due to lack of documentation, will many others. That being said, it is a very entertaining and lively read and serves as a quite good primer for the actual story and sequence of events. It will be noted by students of the case that the scenario shares many of the elements of the hypothesis that I do buy, put forth by Ahlgren & Lemonier in Crime of the Century, that the coverup angle resulted from Lindbergh's role in the killing. Again, entertaining & hopefully will lead readers to further inquiry/investigation

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well research, well written, very interesting reading, October 18, 1999

By A Customer

I found this book to be extremely interesting. Noel Behn did an excellent job keeping my attention. He was able to present an amazing amount of detail while still making it easy to follow.