Journeys of Jack Tripper

I'm not sure where I'm landing on the whole "Did John Karr kill JonBenet" case. I have, however, recognized an interesting and disturbing characteristic of the depiction of an infamous and long-ago crime.

From the New York Times:

It was not immediately clear when investigators began focusing on Mr. Karr as a potential suspect in a widely talked about case that some commentators had compared to the kidnapping and killing of the Lindbergh baby in 1932.

You've been hearing this a lot, right? That JonBenet was the most famous kidnapping/killing since "the Lindbergh Baby."

Why, 74 years later, are we still using such archaic terminology? THE LINDBERGH BABY HAD A NAME! Its name was, in the parlance of our times, CHARLES JR. Or just "Junior."

I realize the possibility of confusion relating to the name being the same, but that confusion exists every time a Jr. picks up the home phone (or when yours truly visits a gated community where both Sr. and Jr. live, and the gate officer calls the wrong house). Yet "Charles Lindbergh Jr." (technically he was III but in the parlance of their times Junior was exactly that: Charles Jr.) appears... nowhere. It's always "Lindbergh baby."

How many people today know the Lindbergh baby was male? Nobody, unless you've read the fantastic book Crime of the Century (formerly known as The Airman and the Carpenter) by Ludovic Kennedy. It's easily the best book on the trial and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann. The movie starring Stephen Rea and Isabella Rosselini is fantastic as well.

Anyway, my point is this: it's 2006, and yet the media is still neutering poor Charles Lindbergh, Jr. by calling him "the Lindbergh baby." The child was nearly two years old!

Background on the Lindbergh, Jr. kidnapping