The so-called crime of the century in the United States continues to be talked about a hundred years later.
What if Charles Lindbergh, instead of a hero, was the villain who orchestrated the death of his 20-month-old son?
This is the strange theory, which appeared recently, which has led to a review of the case and even to judicial pressure to accept the request to carry out DNA tests on the evidence.
The dimension of the emotional impact of that tragedy is revealed by the existence of a museum in a small house in New Jersey, about 30 kilometers from where the body of Charles Jr. was found, who disappeared on March 1, 1932 and was found without life ten weeks later. The museum exhibits the mugshot of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, the electric chair in which he was executed in 1936 as the alleged perpetrator of the crime, and the sponge moistened with salt water that was placed on his head as a conductor of the fatal shocks. .
When this event occurred, the aviator Lindbergh was at the peak of world fame. In 1927, aboard the Spirit of St. Louis (a modified Ryan M-2 single-engine aircraft), he completed a feat of 33 hours and 32 minutes to be the first to fly non-stop from one side of the Atlantic to the other, de Long Island near Paris.
A consultation of the newspaper archive reveals the media and social impact, the uncertainty with which Americans experienced the disappearance of Charles Jr., son of the renowned pilot and Ann Morrow Lindbergh, and his subsequent discovery. It was a national issue even though there were no televisions or social networks.
Those in charge of maintaining the aviator’s files attest, as The New York Times emphasizes, that public interest in this case has never ceased to exist, nor has skepticism about the guilt of Hauptmann, a German immigrant who worked as a carpenter and He resided in the Bronx.
Hauptmann always said he didn’t go. A descendant, Cezanne Love, recently provided DNA samples to the New Jersey court so that modern techniques can answer the question of whether an innocent man was executed or, in any case, whether he acted in collaboration with someone. The boy disappeared from the family residence in East Amwell. A wooden ladder, a chisel and a series of notes were left at the crime scene. The Lindberghs publicly offered $50,000 to get their son back. In vain.
The police caught up with Hauptmann in September 1934. They had tracked down a $10 gold certificate that the alleged criminal used at a New York gas station. In the garage of his house they found $13,760, an amount he said he received for safekeeping from a man who died in Germany.
But Hauptmann presented an alibi. There were no footprints, no confession, nor an explanation of how a single man could sneak into the game room located on the second floor of a house where there were five adults and a dog. Six weeks of trial ended with the capital sentence.
Now, a new and horrifying theory maintains that the aviator could have been involved in the death of his son and opens a new judicial route, thus one of the most enduring mysteries in the United States has fully returned to public opinion.
The aviator would have given his son to his friend Alexis Carrel, a scientist and Nobel winner, to use in his experiments. The aviator would be disappointed by the excessive size of his son’s head. And he shared with Carrel a love for eugenics and the possibility of medically perfecting humans. Charles Jr. He could have died in one of those operations. Lise Pearlman, a retired judge, maintains this, based on circumstantial evidence in her book The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No. 1: The Man Who Got Away. That is to say, the bad guy was the one who never created suspicion: the child’s father.
Lise Pearlman presented the case last February at the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. In essence, it must be remembered that Lindbergh admired Hitler, who decorated him, and defended isolationism in World War II. Everything is invented. Before Trump’s “America First” there was Lindbergh’s.
