Betty received a telephone call from her boyfriend Henry "Red" Johnson. Red was to have picked her up at the Englewood Estate for a date that evening. When she had been called out to Hopewell earlier in the day, she had attempted to telephone him to inform him of her sudden unavailability. As he was not at home, she left a message with his roommate. They talked briefly and she explained things directly.
At approximately 8:25 p.m. Charles Lindbergh arrived home. A slave to perfection, Lindbergh prided himself on his meticulous attention to detail and his devotion to accuracy. "Accuracy," he wrote, "means something to me. It's vital to my sense of values. I've learned not to trust people who are inaccurate. Every aviator knows that if mechanics are inaccurate, aircraft crash. If pilots are inaccurate, they get lost sometimes killed. In my profession life itself depends on accuracy."1 Yet he later told the police and others that he had gotten "mixedup" as to the dates of his speaking engagement and so had missed it. When Lindbergh drove up the driveway at 8:25 p.m., he honked the horn and thereby alerted all of the household to his arrival. Despite the fact that he had ostensibly not seen his son since Monday morning, he did not enter the nursery or otherwise check in on him.
Instead, Charles Lindbergh ate in the dining room with Anne, finishing at approximately 9:10 p.m. Afterwards he and Anne went into the living room where they stayed for five to ten minutes. Outside the wind continued to howl. At one point Charles turned to Anne and asked, "Did you hear that?"
He later described the sound as a cracking sound like wooden slats of an orange crate falling off a chair in the kitchen. There is no evidence that Anne ever heard it.
Charles and Anne went upstairs where they talked for about ten minutes. Eventually Charles left to draw a bath while Anne remained in her bedroom reading. Although the bathroom was next to the nursery, he still did not enter or attempt to check on his son.
After his bath, Lindbergh returned to his study located on the first floor along the east wall directly beneath the second floor nursery. Anne remained in her second floor bedroom. Betty Gow was upstairs with Elsie Whately in the latter's bedroom looking at her new dress. Ollie Whately was in the staff sitting room with the Lindbergh's Boston Terrier. A high strung dog, known to bark at the slightest provocation or approach of a stranger, Wahgoosh never barked that night or was otherwise disturbed.
At 10:00 p.m. Betty Gow went to the nursery to bring Charles, Jr. to the bathroom for one final trip that evening. Upon entering, she did not turn on the light for fear of startling him. She instead closed the south window which was as she had left it inside its latched shutters. She then turned on the electric heater to remove the chill from the room and momentarily stood over the heater warming her hands.
Without the electric light on she apparently could not see into the crib clearly for she sensed, rather than saw, that something was amiss. She could not hear his breathing and she feared that something had happened to him; perhaps he had become tangled in his blankets or his clothes had come over his head. What little light filtered through the doorway seemed to show an empty crib, but to be sure she felt all over the bed for him. He was gone.
Anne's room was immediately next door and connected by a passage. Anne had been in her room since leaving the dining room at approximately 9:20 p.m. Betty went in and, finding Anne preparing for bed, asked if she had the child.
Anne indicated that she did not and Betty suggested that perhaps the Colonel had him. Betty then went downstairs where she found the Colonel in his study directly below the nursery.
When asked if he had the baby, Colonel Lindbergh retorted that he did not and he raced upstairs. Entering the nursery from the corridor, he flicked on the electric light as Anne entered from the passageway.
"Do you have our baby?" Anne asked. The crib was empty. The two three inch safety pins were still in place. The undisturbed bed clothes and pillow still bore the indentation where the child had lain.
The Colonel did not respond to the question. Neither did he ask any questions of Betty or Anne nor conduct a search of the room or upstairs labyrinth of rooms for the location of a 20 month old toddler.
"Anne," he simply said in a calm voice, "they have stolen our baby."
Colonel Lindbergh instructed Ollie Whately to telephone the local Hopewell Police and then he went into his bedroom and loaded his rifle. Commanding everyone "don't touch anything", he rushed downstairs and out into the night and disappeared down the driveway.
Recovering from the impact of the Colonel's statement, Betty, Anne and Elsie now began a systematic search of all the rooms and closets in the house. After its fruitless completion they disconsolately assembled in the living room to await the Colonel's return.
Ollie Whately completed his call and then went outside to assist Lindbergh. He found the Colonel in his car and together they drove up and down the dirt road, shining headlights on either side. Finally Lindbergh told Whately to go into town and secure some flashlights while he returned to the house. Whately took Lindbergh's car and drove off towards town.
After reentering the house, Lindbergh returned to the nursery by himself. Upon emerging he stated that there was an envelope on the radiator beneath the closed but unlocked east window to the right of the fireplace. This was the window with the warped shutter which would not latch. The right shutter of this window was open but the left one was shut. Despite the earlier search by Anne, Betty and Elsie, no one else had previously seen this envelope.
Instead of grabbing the envelope and ripping it open to learn of clues concerning the whereabouts of his child or the conditions for his safe return, Colonel Lindbergh calmly commanded that no one touch the envelope.
Colonel Lindbergh then made two telephone calls. The first was to his lawyer in New York City, Colonel Henry Breckinridge. After completing that call, he then telephoned the New Jersey State Police to report that his son had been kidnapped.
Ollie Whately encountered the Hopewell Police officers on the road. As they had flashlights with them he abandoned his quest into town and accompanied them back to the house. Present with Ollie Whately were Hopewell Police Chief Harry Wolfe and Assistant Chief Williamson.
Colonel Lindbergh adopted a pattern of behavior that he was not to relinquish in the coming days and months: he took charge of the investigation. He began by taking Chief Wolfe and Assistant Chief Williamson up to the nursery, showing them the note on the radiator under the window, pointing out clumps of yellow clay leading from the window to the crib, and telling them not to touch anything until a fingerprint expert arrived.
The local police officials were clearly in over their heads and were awed at actually being in the presence of Colonel Charles Lindbergh. They did not question his authority or challenge his commands. This initial mistake would ultimately be replicated by each succeeding level of police and prosecutorial authority throughout the case, and its effects would never be remedied.
Colonel Lindbergh took the two local police officers outside with their flashlights. In the soft mud just to the right of the nursery window with the warped shutters were two holes as if made by a ladder. Leading back from the holes were footprints which led to where the soft ground ended and scrub began.
The Colonel led the other two back along the footprint trail. At the edge of the scrub they found an obviously handmade extension ladder.
The ladder was unlike any other. It came in three sections and was designed so that each subsequent section would fit inside another, wherein it could be fastened by the insertion of a wooden dowel to hold that section in place. The rung slats were more like crosspieces, poorly notched into the side rails. The rungs were also very far apart. Whereas a standard ladder has rungs approximately twelve inches apart, these rungs were nineteen inches apart, making it appear to have been custom built by, and for, a very tall man with long legs. The top rung and adjoining side rail of the bottom section of the ladder had split.
When found, the bottom two sections were still together. The top section lay approximately twelve feet away. Also found in the mud under the window was a threequarter inch Bucks chisel with a wooden handle.