A Grim New Theory Has Rekindled The Debate Around The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping

In an age when flying is commonplace, even boring to some, it’s perhaps difficult for us to imagine just how much of a feted international celebrity Charles Lindbergh was. Born in 1902 in Detroit, Michigan, Lindbergh had shot to fame in 1927.

So the fact that Lindbergh had suffered this horrible crime gripped and horrified the imaginations of people around the world. But recently one researcher has made a shocking challenge to the accepted narrative of this horrifying incident.

It was Betty Gow, the infant Charles’ nurse, who had first raised the alarm at 10:00 p.m. on March 1, 1932, telling the boy’s parents that he was missing from his bedroom.

There was worse to come. Obviously the Lindberghs and their staff immediately mounted a thorough search of the house. While there was no sign of the child, what they did find was truly shocking.

It was a kidnap: baby Charles had been snatched from the one place on Earth where he should have been safest — his own nursery. Lindbergh ignored the kidnap note’s warning and contacted the police in nearby Hopewell.

The investigators found soil on the nursery floor, a ladder outside, and footprints beneath the room’s window. It was clear that the kidnapper or kidnappers had got in by the nursery window.

Lindbergh’s staff were interrogated, but that led to nothing. Attempts were made to contact the kidnappers via underworld figures, but that too proved fruitless. Then, five days after the kidnap, a second ransom note arrived by mail with a Brooklyn postmark.

As time went by the ransom notes turned to the specific logistics about the handover of the cash in exchange for the return of the infant Charles. By now Dr. John F. Condon, who had volunteered his services, was acting as the negotiator with the kidnappers.

The 13th and final note, handed over in exchange for the money, claimed that Charles would be found on board a boat called Nellie moored near Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. But when police searched for this purported boat, it was nowhere to be found.

On May 12, 1942, a truck driver’s mate called William Allen made a gruesome discovery. He found the half-buried and mutilated body of an infant in an advanced state of decomposition.

The FBI website describes this tragic outcome in stark terms. “The body was positively identified and cremated at Trenton, New Jersey, on May 13, 1932. The Coroner’s examination showed that the child had been dead for about two months.”

During the course of this heartbreaking story, the authorities had been deluged with scores of letters trying to help with the case, none of which had actually moved the investigation forward.

Just a couple of days after the kidnap a Washington, DC resident, Mrs. Evalyn Walsh McLean, had contacted Means. She knew him because he’d previously done some detective work for her husband. For some reason McLean believed Means was the man to rescue the Lindbergh baby.

Means actually told McLean that he knew the identity of the kidnapper and went on to claim that he’d made contact with the perpetrator. Means was so convincing that McLean gave him $100,000 cash.

Means extracted more money from the unfortunate McLean, claiming he needed it for expenses incurred during the negotiations. After some six weeks has passed there was still no sign that Means intended to return the child.

Now the FBI got involved in McLean’s case. The man who’d claimed to be “The Fox” was unmasked as one Norman T. Whitaker, a Washington lawyer. He’d been drummed out of the profession in 1924 for an insurance fraud.

The crimes of Means and Whitaker are a cruel example of the almost hysterical attention that the Lindbergh case garnered. By 1932 most Americans had access to the medium of radio, a source of instant information.

As a 2021 article in Brandeis Magazine put it, “Five years before the kidnapping, Charles Lindbergh flew into the headlines as the first solo pilot to cross the Atlantic nonstop, a feat of bravura that won him public adoration and bottomless media attention.”

Lindbergh, who’d previously regarded his role as a media darling with great reluctance, even released home movie footage of Charles Jr. for use in newsreels. The footage was shown in New York cinemas within a day of the kidnap.

The discovery of Charles Jr.’s battered body did not bring an end to the intense media interest, and of course it wasn’t the end of the story. The FBI were under intense pressure to find the culprit or culprits.

The FBI spent many hours scrutinizing and re-scrutinizing the 13 ransom notes that had been delivered. Experts in handwriting analysis were of the opinion that they’d all been written by the same person.

FBI agents had one ace in the hole that favored them in their hunt for the kidnapper. Part of the ransom, $40,000, had been paid out in gold certificates and the serial numbers had been noted.

Eventually in September 1934 the gold-certificate trail came up trumps. A gas station attendant in Manhattan had been paid with a $10 gold certificate. And something about this scenario had aroused his suspicion.

At last there was a concrete lead. The license plate was quickly traced and it belonged to one Bruno Richard Hauptman of the Bronx in New York. The FBI soon had the property in question staked out.

The clincher for the cops was that Hauptman was found to have a $20 gold certificate on his person with one of the serial numbers from the ransom payment. Then things started to look even worse for the suspect.

In a matter of days Hauptmann was indicted for extortion and not long after he was also charged with the murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr. His trial began in January 1935.

So that was it: case solved, perpetrator apprehended and sentenced. Hauptmann’s lawyers launched a series of appeals against his sentence, but all failed. In April 1936 he was put to death in the electric chair, having proclaimed his innocence to the last.

The conviction of Hauptmann over the Lindbergh kidnapping has continued to be a source of heated controversy ever since he was executed. There are those who are adamant that the circumstantial evidence that convicted Hauptmann was suspect.

This new theory that has yet again put the cat among the pigeons in the debates about this case comes from a woman called Lise Pearlman. She’s a retired Californian judge and in 2020 she published her book on the Lindbergh case, The Lindbergh Kidnapping Suspect No.1: The Man Who Got Away.

Pearlman’s verdict on the case is shocking indeed. According to her, the infant may have been killed by his own father, all-American hero Charles Lindbergh. In her book, Lise wrote, “I take advantage of the distance in time to treat the boy’s father as a potential suspect in his kidnap and murder.”

Writing about the case and Pearlman’s assertion in March 2024 for The New York Times, Tracey Tully pointed out, “It is a theory that other Lindbergh researchers view with deep skepticism”. It’s fair to say that’s putting it rather mildly.

Miss Love told Tully that, “I personally don’t think he did it”. And she went on to reiterate the point that both Hauptmann and his wife both insisted on his innocence. In fact, Anna Hauptmann had provided an alibi for her husband.

So what evidence does Pearlman cite to back her claim that Lindbergh may have killed his own child? She points to the fact that there was no blood at the site where Charles Jr.’s body was discovered. That, she says, indicates that he was killed elsewhere.

Pearlman points out that the infant Charles had an abnormally sized head: it was larger than usual for a child of his age. He was also on medication that’s normally given to children with rickets, a disease that affects the growth of bones.

Lindbergh was frustrated that medical science could offer no hope to his sister-in-law. She had a badly damaged heart, but at this stage open-heart surgery techniques had not yet been developed.

In fact Lindbergh may have been a hero in his day, but modern views of the man have evolved. He was an enthusiastic supporter of the arch-eugenicist of the day, Hitler, and made several visits to Germany.

So, Pearlman’s theory has it, if Lindbergh had no fatherly feelings for his own son, he may have allowed Dr. Carrel to perform medical experiments on the infant. Pearlman supports this belief with evidence from the autopsy on the young Lindbergh.

Pearlman believes that Charles Jr. died during an experimental medical procedure carried out by Carrel. Lindbergh then concealed this by conjuring up an elaborate hoax, the kidnapping of his own dead child.

Speaking of Lindbergh and Carrel, Friedman told The New York Times’ Tully that, “They were complicated, flawed men. But the idea that they would collaborate in an act of infanticide strikes me as malicious garbage.”