Maggie was eight years old in 1932 when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped, and she considers herself the world’s leading expert on that subject, as well as on the disappearance of Susan Althorp. From the time I was little, she had talked to me about the Lindbergh kidnapping, pointing out that Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the baby’s mother, was raised in Englewood, not a mile from our home, and that Anne’s father, Dwight Morrow, had been ambassador to Mexico. Susan Althorp was also raised in Englewood, and her father had been ambassador to Belgium. To Maggie, the parallels were obvious-and scary.

The Lindbergh baby kidnapping was one of the most sensational crimes of the twentieth century. The golden child of the golden couple, and all the unanswered questions. How did Bruno Hauptmann learn that the Lindberghs had decided to stay in their new country home that evening because the baby had a cold, rather than return to the Morrow estate as initially planned? How did Hauptmann know exactly where to place the ladder to reach the open window of the baby’s room? Maggie was always seeing similarities between the two cases. “The Lindbergh baby’s body was found by accident,” she would point out to me. “It was terrible, but at least it meant that the family didn’t spend the rest of their lives wondering if he was growing up somewhere with someone who might be harming him. Susan Althorp’s mother has to wake up every morning wondering if this is the day the phone will ring and it will be her daughter. I know that’s the way I would feel if my child was missing. At least if her body had been found, Mrs. Althorp could visit her grave.”