THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING SUSPECT NO. 1. Lise Pearlman

instead of “Betty.” Anne enjoyed seeing her mother so delighted by Little Charlie as well. The little boy called his grandmother “Tee” after she had started letting him play with her golf tees.

      Feeling extremely unwell by mid-November, Anne let her mother talk her into sending Little Charlie with Elisabeth to her preschool. Anne soon discovered that her concerns were amply justified. Charlie was only seventeen months old at the time — a full six months younger than any of the other preschoolers. The shy child with his baby curls was instantly viewed as an object of curiosity to the other tots. Bullied by some of the children and intimidated by others, Charlie could not defend himself from having his thick curls pulled, or from getting hit. He cried for the first few days. The school’s psychologist suggested leaving Charlie by himself in a sandbox until he developed social skills. (One would think that an unlikely way to get the toddler acclimated to playmates.) Left alone, he did much better, content to play by himself.

      People across the country again began speculating about Charlie’s health. Rumors recirculated about him being traumatized in utero from “prenatal drumming of airplane motors.” Maybe some parent at Elisabeth’s day care started the rumor he was deaf. Or, perhaps, some staff member at the Morrows’ Englewood mansion. There was also speculation the reason Little Charlie did not interact with other children was because he was mute. No such diagnosis could have been made by the doctor at the Little School who checked all the children’s health once a week. Anyone who regularly interacted with the boy could tell that Charlie had an expanding vocabulary. To his mother and grandmother’s delight, he had also begun to learn to count.

      Meanwhile, at the end of November, Lindbergh stopped in Florida for an airline promotional event on his way back from Panama. Coming home, he got severely delayed navigating through heavy snowstorms and an icy gale, prompting reporters to call the Morrow house with false reports that calamity must have struck. Instead, he had detoured with unannounced stops on his trip north. Lindbergh returned home in the middle of the night three days later than expected. With him he carried the mangled body of a seagull that had gotten stuck in his plane’s propeller. For some bizarre reason, he left the dead bird on the ground outside his and Anne’s bedroom window for several days before it was disposed of.

      Catching up with home life in his absence, Lindbergh reacted angrily to news that his son failed to defend himself at the preschool. Like his own father, he did not want to raise a weakling. In December, Lindbergh built a large wire pen in the yard of the Morrows’ mansion. He then told Betty to dress his son warmly for the winter weather and put him in the pen with one of his toys “to fend for himself.” Charlie sat bewildered by his isolation in the cold outdoors, crying off and on for hours. Betty could not take it any longer. She went to Anne and begged her to bring the boy in. Anne turned to her, with tears in her eyes and replied with resignation, “Betty, there’s nothing we can do.”

      In late December 1931, Anne’s morning sickness became compounded by food poisoning. The family spent that Christmas at the Morrows’ Englewood estate, joined by Lindbergh’s mother from Detroit. Charlie particularly enjoyed his gift from “Tee” — a wooden Noah’s Ark with dozens of animals. The toddler and his father played with it for hours that day. Again, the next day Lindbergh made a game of testing his son’s ability to name all the animals. Charlie was quite good at that, possibly surprising his father with his intellectual development.

      There may have been a medical reason for Lindbergh to engage in that game with his son. If Lindbergh had learned by then that an enlarged head and unclosed fontanel could be signs of hydrocephalus, increased pressure of fluids on Charlie’s brain could begin to cause mental impairment. So, checking on his memory would be a way to test that theory.

      Likely highest on Lindbergh’s list of concerns would have been whether all his children would turn out like Little Charlie. Lindbergh did not consider his firstborn an example of the fittest. Playing on the floor with his young son may also have brought back memories of the joyous days Lindbergh spent playing in the attic when he was three, before the twin horrors of nearly drowning and losing all his toys in the fire that destroyed his home.

      The day after Christmas, Mrs. Morrow heard her grandson howling from the bathroom where he had been playing with his new rubber toys in the tub. Mrs. Morrow started screaming at her son-in-law, “sure that he had been ducking him ‘to test his courage.’” Betty got to the bathroom first. She told Mrs. Morrow that she found “Colonel Lindbergh laughing his head off. He saw that the baby wasn’t hurt, just frightened.” Mrs. Morrow never really trusted Lindbergh afterward.

      Anne heard a different version of the bathroom incident from her husband that she reported to her mother-in-law. Evangeline had given her grandson the bath toys as a Christmas present. Anne told Evangeline that Little Charlie had accidentally slipped in the tub while playing with the new toys. But that did not account for why Lindbergh was found chortling at the child’s misery. Indeed, when interviewed many years later, Betty recalled “there was something about the Colonel — that little bit of sadism.” Neither Betty Gow, nor Mrs. Morrow had reason to know of Lindbergh’s terrifying “sink or swim” lesson at threeand-a-half from his own father.

      The Lindberghs spent New Year’s Eve at their new home with his mother, Betty Gow and the Whateleys. By then Little Charlie was accustomed to “Elthie” as one of his caregivers. It was Betty’s first trip to the isolated property, and she dreaded it. Once the family moved for good, gone would be her daily interaction with a score of other staff. Her new boyfriend would be upset, too. She would be stuck two hours away from him in the middle of nowhere.

      As much as Evangeline Lindbergh enjoyed seeing her only grandson, she refrained from hugging or kissing him, something she remembered months later after it turned out to be the last time Evangeline ever saw him. To Anne, the last months of 1931 would in retrospect feel as if she were on a “swift-flowing stream … rushing headlong to the sheer drop of tragedy.”

      Courtesy of the New Jersey State Police Museum

       Animals from Little Charlie’s Noah’s Ark

       https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Antique-KIDDIE-KAR-Trike-Scooter-Toy-By-H-C-White-Company-U-S-A-Patent-1918-/22347500324

       Antique three-wheeled Kiddie Kar similar to the Kiddie Kar owned by Little Charlie

      10.

      Little Charlie’s Last Days

      AS THE new year began, neighbors thought the celebrated couple had not yet moved into their country estate. Mostly, Elsie and Olly Whateley stayed there alone. To alleviate the boredom, Olly gave unauthorized tours to curious fans of the celebrity newcomer. The Lindberghs still spent weekdays at the Morrows’ mansion in Englewood, but in January 1932, the Lindberghs started staying most weekends at their new home outside Hopewell. They brought Skean with them. Lindbergh called their new home “the farm,” though he had no known plans for cultivating the property. The family came down on Saturday morning and stayed just two nights. The first weekend of February Mrs. Morrow came down to the farmhouse with them. The middle two weekends of February the family stayed in Englewood because of family colds. After weekends at the farmhouse, Lindbergh’s destination on Monday mornings was Manhattan. His wife would separately pack up so Olly Whateley could drive her, Charlie and Skean back to her mother’s estate in Englewood.

      That same month, Lindbergh badgered Anne to accompany him to Los Angeles to an air race show. Though three-months pregnant with her second child, she grudgingly agreed. Her husband told Anne she was self-indulgent for wanting to stay home with her toddler, and the new baby when it came. It bothered him how thrilled Anne was to see her son now mimic everything said to him.

      The little boy was very sure of his likes and dislikes, which he indicated with