Who Killed the Lindbergh Baby?

Hello all!

I have not blogged since October, but the show last night means I should get back to work!  So here goes.

I have been collecting all my thoughts for eight hours,  and have decided to start writing out impressions of what we learned and what we still need to learn.  This will not be just one but a series of them written today, and probably over the next few days.    I have only watched the show once, but I think it will repay a second and third watching. .  And I want to thank NOVA  at the outset for doing this show -- and doing it so well. It was an important vehicle for launching discussions of the most important aspects of the case.  So let's begin!

"Who Killed the Lindbergh Baby" opens up discussion of the case on several points, and advances our knowledge to a different level. Of course it was not a baby but a toddler, and that makes some difference, but we can go into that later. There can no longer be any question of one perpetrator.  John Douglas saying that was the case might not be enough, but the evidence presented about the handwriting seems to clinch that point.  The interesting thing for those who have a deep interest in the case is that Richard in the NJ State Prison readily agreed that at least some of the writing looked like his.  This was during an interview with Ellis Parker, the local detective who was dismissed from the case early on but persisted in his inquiries (for better or worse, one can debate that).  Richard only had this to say in explanation.  That he had given samples of his handwriting to a person who requested them in some vague way for a job or something.  Before last night that seemed totally ridiculous to me.  But perhaps not.  Perhaps there was some effort, clumsy or purposefully "dumb,"  to write like him.  What did not come out was whether the computer guy checked all the notes against one another?  A very, very important question, if, as he concludes, neither Richard nor Knoll wrote them.  Is that the same thing as saying that neither wrote any of them?  We do not know.  But while we are left with many questions, the program has blown wide open the official narrative that one very "lucky" person carried off the child that night, and that the person was eventually found and convicted.

Next up.  "An inside job."