Wanted! The crime of the century

What exactly is it that turns a crime into "the crime of the century"? In 1932, the darling baby of glamorous aviation hero Charles Lindbergh was kidnapped and later found to have been murdered. A German carpenter was tried, convicted and sentenced to death in the electric chair. But it remained unclear: Had the Lindbergh baby really been killed, and the kidnapper found? Mike Pilewski retells the story (Spotlight 2/2010) that made the world stop and stare.

Today, crimes against children are still the ones that make our collective blood boil. But in this week's exercises, read about a wide variety of very different cases that have captured public attention in the past one hundred years. Practise the passive as we review crimes of the century.

Anne Hodgson

This exercise: Wanted! The crime of the century