THE LINDBERGH KIDNAPPING SUSPECT NO. 1. Lise Pearlman

was toggling the switch for his own amusement to observe their frightened reaction.

      When everyone else had gone back to bed, Aida went to check on her daughter and then stopped by the nursery. She adjusted the blanket and tucked the rabbit back in the crook of Charlie’s arm. He looked quite peaceful. The next morning Anne realized that Charlie had slept better that night. Perhaps the medicine had helped. Elsie took him from his crib around 7 a.m., changed and dressed him. The whole group had breakfast in the dining room together, including Charlie. He fed himself his cereal and toast and got down from his chair to go ask Elsie for more. When he returned, he chased Wahgoosh around the table while the adults finished their own breakfast.

      After breakfast, Lindbergh and Henry Breckinridge disappeared for a private talk in the library. Anne got her son’s coat and hat, and she and Aida took him outside to play on the patio and get some sun. At some point Aida’s son Oren arrived from Princeton, where he was an undergraduate. Oren had spent many weekends with the Lindberghs at their rental home in Mount Rose and had been to the farmhouse outside Hopewell before.

      For a good hour Charlie entertained himself poking a stick in the dirt and running up and down. He still had a runny nose and started to fuss. They went in to let him have his lunch in the nursery. Like his father, a cold did not affect his appetite. When he was ready for his nap, Lindbergh came up and adroitly administered the nose drops. Again, the little boy seemed to have no trouble sleeping.

      Later in the afternoon, the women took Charlie outside again with Wahgoosh, but his cold started to make him miserable. Back inside, Alva sat with him on the floor to play marbles. Lindbergh came by and chided the women for “fussing too much” about Charlie. He told Anne to take him back upstairs and leave him by himself in the nursery. Soon, the boy seemed too quiet. When Aida went to check on him, she found that Charlie had gotten out of the nursery into the bathroom all by himself. Apparently, none of the adults realized how dangerous it was to leave a toddler unattended — six adults and a teenager in the house, and Charlie could have accidentally drowned by falling headfirst into the toilet.

      Anne, Alva and Aida then joined Charlie in the nursery and held up different miniature wooden animals from Noah’s ark. He correctly named all of them — lion, tiger, giraffe, bear. Later, he got fussy again and Anne cuddled her son and sang to him. Her new favorite was the jazz song “All of Me.” Aida noticed how exhausting it had been for the three women to keep up all day with the energetic boy. For Anne, that last weekend with Charlie would be a cherished memory she replayed over and over in her mind in an attempt to replace the horrific images that chilled her to the core after his death.

      That Sunday afternoon, Aida noted that their host seemed restless. From time to time, he busied himself with various odd jobs around the house. Then he and Henry went out walking the grounds late in the day huddled in further private conversation. When they returned, the two men again holed up in the library with the door shut. Henry told her that he and Lindbergh were reading. That was not likely true. Later that spring, Aida shared with Lindbergh’s mother something Henry had told her about his private discussions with Lindbergh the weekend before Charlie disappeared. Henry told Aida that Lindbergh had confided that he hated to leave Anne alone at the isolated farmhouse: “He worried that the baby might be kidnapped.” (That sudden concern for Anne’s and the baby’s security at their isolated new home apparently was not relayed to Anne; nor, as far as is known, did Lindbergh ever tell the police he harbored that fear just two days before the kidnapping. The police might have wondered why he encouraged his wife to stay at the unguarded farmhouse Monday and Tuesday nights instead of returning to her mother’s fortress in Englewood.)

      At six, Anne and Aida went up to the nursery to get Charlie ready for his bath. The little boy was quite out of sorts but managed to eat the cereal and applesauce and drink the milk Elsie brought him. Anne had just put him in the crib when Charlie recognized his father’s footsteps on the stairs. He greeted his father with: “Hi! Hi! Hi!” It made the women laugh. Then Charlie hid under his covers to encourage the adults to yell “Boo” so he would pop his head out again.

      Anne loved how bold and playful her son was. Aida held his head still while Anne gave Charlie nose drops for his lingering cold. Unlike when his father administered the medicine, the little boy wriggled so much the effort was mostly unsuccessful. He then snuggled under the covers with his stuffed rabbit and went right to sleep. Shortly after the adults ate dinner, the Lindberghs drove Aida, Henry and Alva to catch an evening train at Princeton Junction back to Manhattan. Oren went back to Princeton. Meanwhile, Anne sent Olly Whateley to the store for some Milk of Magnesia for Charlie, which Anne thought might make him feel better.

      If Lindbergh did harbor any fears of kidnapping, it did not stop him from leaving as usual on Monday morning without even looking in on his son. Lindbergh called Anne at the farmhouse later that day to ask that Anne stay there one more night even though he would not be returning. He did not tell Anne or Olly Whateley to take any extra precautions. Without a guarded entrance to the estate, except for an excitable terrier, security was negligible. The opposite was true of the fortress-like mansion at Englewood. With any reason for concern, Anne would surely have asked Whateley to drive them back to Englewood rather than stay at the ungated farmhouse without her husband or Skean. If worried about potential kidnappers, Lindbergh should have requested her to return that night to Englewood.

      On that Monday, February 29, 1932, Little Charlie stayed inside from the wet weather as his cold got worse. He remained mostly with his mother. During the day, Anne went out for a couple of walks and left her son with Elsie Whateley. With her husband gone that night, Anne kept the doors open from the master bedroom to the master bath and nursery. She checked on her son several times.

      The following morning Anne saw that Charlie remained congested. Lindbergh called to suggest that, for their son’s sake, Anne should again stay at the farmhouse. He apparently made no mention of any fear of kidnappers. Lindbergh told his wife he would drive home from work to arrive in time for dinner. He gave Anne additional specific instructions regarding the baby’s care, including another dose of medicine. Sleep-deprived and under the weather herself, Anne called the Morrow mansion in mid-morning and asked to have Betty come to the farmhouse to help with Charlie. The Morrows’ butler answered the telephone and gave the message for Betty to parlor maid Violet Sharp. Sharp would later fall under police suspicion as a possible accomplice in the toddler’s kidnapping. Betty arrived around 2 p.m. in a gusty wind and heavy rain.

      Anne spent most of the afternoon with her son in the living room, reading and singing to him. She went out for a short walk after Betty arrived and stood under the nursery window at one point and tossed pebbles up against the glass to attract the nanny’s attention. Betty brought Little Charlie to the window to wave at his mother. About 5:30 p.m. the toddler went looking for Betty in the kitchen. She took the little boy upstairs to his nursery, read to him and gave him some cereal at about 6 p.m., his normal dinner time.

      Anne joined them in the nursery at 6:15 p.m. after her toddler had eaten. Little Charlie was still recovering from his cold. She and Betty made sure all three nursery windows were closed. They shuttered two of them, but the bolt on the pair of shutters on the east-facing window to the right of the fireplace would not lock even when both women yanked on the shutters together. It was a problem that her mother had observed on their last visit to the farmhouse the first weekend of February. Anne mentioned to Betty that the shutters would need to be fixed. They then gave the toddler nose drops and his medicine precisely as his father had instructed. Charlie disliked the medicine and spit some of it up. Somehow, they had not mastered Lindbergh’s technique of getting his son to take his medicine without fuss or spillage. Betty got him another set of night clothes to change into.

      Because he had a “croupy cough” Anne suggested that the toddler’s chest be rubbed with Vick’s VapoRub ointment as Mrs. Whateley had done for him on Monday. They wrapped a flannel bandage around Charlie’s chest to keep the ointment from rubbing off on his new T-shirt and sleeper, but then decided he might not be warm enough. Betty remembered she had a flannel remnant of an old slip in her sewing pile. Anne left to fetch a needle and thread from Mrs. Whateley. When she returned, she played with her son while Betty cut the flannel and ran it through her sewing machine to make Charlie another undershirt. The nanny sewed the shoulder seam on only one