The Lindbergh Child


By Rick Geary (NBM/Comics Lit)
ISBN: 978-1-56163-530-6

Combining his unique talents for laconic prose, incisive observation and detailed cartooning with his obvious passion for the darker side of modern history, Rick Geary turns his forensic eye to the last hundred years or so as his ‘Treasury of Victorian Murder’ series of graphic novels examines the landmark global sensation that was the Lindbergh Kidnapping.

Charles Lindbergh became the most famous man in the world when he crossed the Atlantic in the monoplane Spirit of St. Louis in May 1927. Six years later his son Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. was kidnapped from the family home at Hopewell, New Jersey. The boy disappeared on the night of February 29th 1932.

An intense and hysterical search went on for months as a number of bogus kidnappers, chancers, grifters and intermediaries tried to cash in before the toddler’s decomposed body was discovered in desolate woodlands on Thursday 12th May. The three-year old had been dead for months, possibly even dying on the night he was taken…

What followed was one of the most appalling catalogues of police misconduct, legal malfeasance and sordid exploitation (from conmen trying to profit from tragedy) in modern annals as over the next few years a suspect was caught, convicted and executed in such slapdash fashion that as late as 1981 and 1986 the conviction was appealed and a large number of individuals have claimed over the decades to actually be the real junior Lindbergh.

Geary presents the facts and the theories with chilling precision and captivating clarity, presenting one of crime’s greatest unsolved mysteries with a force and power that Oliver Stone would envy. This first volume in ‘A Treasury of XXth Century Murder’ is every bit as compelling as his Victorian forays and a brilliant example of how graphic narrative can be so much more than simple fantasy and entertainment.
© 2008 Rick Geary. All Rights Reserved.