Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the convicted kidnapper of the son of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh, was executed on April 3, 1936. He was 36.

Hauptmann was born November 26, 1899 in Saxony, Germany. He became a carpenter at age 14, and served in the German army during World War I. Arrested for armed burglary in 1919, he was convicted and served four years. Upon his release, he was arrested again for stealing. He escaped from jail and eventually immigrated to the United States illegally.

He settled in New York, and married a German immigrant, Anna Schoeffler, in 1925. He and his wife went to work as a carpenter and baker, respectively, and by contemporary standards were doing well.

Meantime, in what at the time was deemed the crime of the century, the 21-month-old son of Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped on the night of March 1, 1932 from the Lindbergh’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. A ransom note asking for $50,000 was left in the nursery.

A retired teacher by the name of John F. Condon was selected to deliver the ransom money to a man at a cemetery in the Bronx section of New York City. The ransom was paid, but the promised return of the baby did not occur. The boy’s body was discovered two and a half months later. It was determined that the child had been killed shortly after its abduction.

The serial numbers of the ransom money had been recorded, and two years later, Hauptmann was arrested after he was identified as the man who paid for gas with one of the bills at a Bronx service station. A search of Hauptmann’s house uncovered more than $10,000 of the ransom money.

Hauptmann said he was innocent. But John Condon, who delivered the ransom money, positively identified Hauptmann as the man he gave the money to. A note with Condon’s phone number was found in Hauptmann’s home.

Hauptmann claimed the money belonged to a friend of his who was staying in his home at the time of the Lindbergh kidnapping. He said he was holding the money for Isidore Fisch, who Hauptmann claimed had died since the kidnapping.

In 1934, Congress passed a law, prompted by the Lindbergh kidnapping, which made kidnapping a capital offense.

Hauptmann went to trial in February 1935. He was convicted of the kidnapping death of the Lindbergh baby, and sentenced to die by electrocution.

Hauptmann was electrocuted at the New Jersey State Prison in Trenton, New Jersey on April 3, 1936.