On this day in 1932, the 20 month old son of Charles Lindbergh, Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in Hopewell, New Jersey. Born on 22 June 1930 in Englewood Bergen, New Jersey. In what came to be referred to as “The Crime of the Century”, the boy was abducted from his family home in East Amwell, New Jersey, near the town of Hopewell, New Jersey, on the evening of 1 March 1932. His body was discovered a short distance from the Lindberghs’ home on 12 May 1932. A medical examination determined that the cause of death was a massive skull fracture. After an investigation that lasted more than two years and was ostensibly run by New Jersey State Police superintendent Colonel Herbert Norman Swarzkopf, the father of the future General H. Norman Swarzkopf, Jr., Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested and charged with the crime. Hauptmann was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair at the New Jersey State Prison on 3 April 1936, at 8:44 in the evening. Hauptmann proclaimed his innocence to the end. Newspaper writer H. L. Mencken called the kidnapping and subsequent trial “the biggest story since the Resurrection”. The crime spurred Congress to pass the Federal Kidnapping Act, commonly called the “Lindbergh Law”, which made transporting a kidnapping victim across state lines a federal crime.
The Final Footprint – Lindbergh was cremated and his cremains were scattered in the Atlantic Ocean.
#RIP #OTD in 1938 Italian poet, playwright, orator, journalist, aristocrat, army officer during World War I, Il Vate, Il Profeta, Gabriele D’Annunzio died of a stroke, at his home in Gardone Riviera, aged 74. Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, Gardone Riviera
| Wilhelmina Cooper | |
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 Wilhelmina photographed by Edgar de Evia |
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On this day in 1980 model and founder of Wilhelmina Models, Wilhelmina Cooper died at age 40 in Grennwich, Connecticut from lung cancer. Born Gertrude Behmenburg on 1 May 1939 in Culemborg, Netherlands. She began modeling with Ford Models and, at the peak of her success, founded Wilhelmina Models, in New York City in 1967. During her career as a model she was on the cover of 255 magazines.
According to her obituary in Time magazine:
During her cover-girl days, Wilhelmina boasted that she was “one of the few high-fashion models built like a woman.” And she was. With her 5 ft. 11 in., 38-24-36 frame, doe eyes, delicate cheekbones and mane of high-piled dark hair, she epitomized the classical, aristocratic look that she helped to make the style standard of the 1950s and ’60s…
In 1965 she married Bruce Cooper, former executive producer of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. In 1967 they founded Wilhelmina Models, which became the other leading model agency alongside Ford Models.
The Final Footprint
Cooper was cremated.
Cooper was portrayed by Faye Dunaway in the 1998 movie Gia, which tells the story of Gia Carangi, a model who was discovered by Cooper and later died of AIDS.
#RIP #OTD in 2013 actress (Ann Romano in One Day at a Time) Bonnie Franklin died from pancreatic cancer at her home in the Los Angeles Area, aged 69. Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles
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