Published in 1907, "The Ransom of Red Chief" was released at a time when the concept of abducting people and holding them for ransom was a relatively new concept in the United States. While O. Henry uses the crime as a comic premise, real-life kidnappings have often resulted in disappearance and death.
The first kidnapping-for-ransom case that received widespread attention in the United States occurred on July 1, 1874, when Bill Mosher and Joe Douglas abducted four-year-old Charley Ross and six-year-old Walter Ross. Pulling up in front of the Ross family's Germantown, Pennsylvania mansion in a buggy, the men coerced the boys to come along with them by promising to buy them firecrackers. The men left Walter at a store and drove away with Charley. In the following days, Walter was returned to the Ross parents by a stranger who had found him. On July 7, the captors sent Christian Ross, the boys' father, a poorly spelled ransom note demanding $20,000 and outlining how to pay them. Despite trying to fulfill their demands, Ross was unable to contact them. Mosher later died during a robbery and Douglas told police that Mosher was the only person who knew where the boy was being held. Charley was never returned to the family.
The Charley Ross case was the most high-profile kidnapping event until 1932, when Charles Lindbergh Jr., the baby son of the famous aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, was kidnapped from his family's New Jersey home. A $50,000 ransom note had been left on the windowsill of the baby's nursery. Police were notified and an investigation began. Although the Lindberghs tried to pay the ransom, the baby was found dead two months later on the side of the road. The highly publicized trial of suspect Bruno Hauptmann in 1935 is considered one of the biggest trials of the century and ended with Hauptmann's conviction and execution by electric chair. In the wake of the case, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act.
