NOVA: Who Killed Lindbergh’s Baby?
Airs Wednesday, January 30, 2013 at 9 p.m. on KPBS TV
Monday, January 28, 2013
In the aftermath of his 1927 solo transatlantic flight, Charles Lindbergh became the most famous human being on earth. When he and his wife, Anne, had a son, Charlie, the press dubbed him Little Lindy.
On March 1, 1932, kidnappers snatched Little Lindy from the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. Negotiations stretched out for weeks, but Charlie never returned. His body was discovered not five miles from Hopewell.
Now, in "Who Killed Lindbergh's Baby?," NOVA is reopening one of the most confounding crime mysteries of all time as a team of expert investigators employs state-of-the-art forensic and behavioral science techniques in an effort to determine what really happened to Lindbergh’s baby — and why.
THREE ADVANCES IN FORENSICS
Imagine placing the entire population of Wyoming’s capital city behind bars for crimes they did not commit. Studies estimate that roughly that number of people, or between one and five percent of the two million people in U.S. prisons, have been mistakenly convicted.
One reason for these wrongful convictions is the fallibility of many of the methods currently used in forensic science. Read the entire article by Kate Nussenbaum for NOVA.
STRANDS OF EVIDENCE
You are what you eat, and what you eat ends up in your hair. Scientists in the U.S. and Europe have used this basic idea—and some sophisticated isotopic analysis—to devise a sort of hair-based GPS tracking system. A single strand contains information on your whereabouts over the past few months, a fact that law enforcement agencies are now using to solve crimes. Listen to the story by Ari Daniel Shapiro for NOVA.