Did Charles Lindbergh sacrifice his son for science and then stage a monstrous cover-up? The kidnapping and murder of the legendary aviator's child was dubbed the 'crime of the century' – but now this chilling question is being asked

Sometime on the evening of March 1, 1932, 20-month-old Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. kidnapped.

The toddler was snatched from his crib in his nursery on the second floor of the family home in rural New Jersey while his father was downstairs.

A broken ladder was found nearby, along with footprints, tire tracks and, on the windowsill, a handwritten ransom note that read: 'BABY SAFE. INSTRUCTIONS LATER. ACT ACCORDINGLY.”

The kidnapping made world news and was immediately called the 'crime of the century'.

The $50,000 ransom – worth more than £900,000 today – was paid on April 2, as one of the largest manhunts ever swept across the US

Not just because a poor, defenseless baby was stolen. But because the child was the son of Charles Lindbergh, aka the Flying Colonel – a national hero who had completed the first solo, 5,600-mile, non-stop flight from New York to Paris in 1927.

He was 'Lucky Lindy' and was so famous that no one really questioned him about his son's disappearance.

He was certainly not considered a suspect – even when the child's battered body was found six weeks later, less than five miles from his home, by two delivery drivers who had stopped for a break in the woods.

The coroner who examined the corpse determined the cause of death as two severe blows to the head.

Lindbergh Snr helped lead the investigation, which two years later resulted in the conviction of Bruno Hauptmann, a German immigrant, who was still protesting his innocence as he was led to the electric chair on April 3, 1936.

Everyone's heart went out to Lindbergh and his wife Anne.

But was that version of events wrong? Doubts have been raised over the years about Lindbergh and his role in the kidnapping.

According to Lise Pearlman, a retired judge and celebrated author, the whole sad story could be one of the greatest miscarriages of justice ever.

In a powerful interview in the San Francisco Chronicle this week, she offered a different perspective on what could have happened that dark night in March.

Pearlman believes that Lindbergh not only may have had a hand in his son's death, but that he also sacrificed his disappointingly weedy son to the cause of medical science – allowing his friend, Alexis Carrel, the Nobel Prize-winning scientist, to experiment on him . it. He then staged the kidnapping to cover up the child's disappearance.

Lindbergh was apparently disappointed that his firstborn was a “weakling” with an abnormally large head. Perhaps he felt that Charles Jr. could be of more use to medical research than to him and Anne.

“My theory is the child had surgery,” Pearlman said. 'We believe at the very least his carotid artery (artery) and probably his thyroid gland were removed and kept viable for thirty days. We think he died on the operating table.”

There is more. “… I believe Carrel performed the operation with Lindbergh's consent – ​​and Lindbergh was probably present,” she added.

It certainly beggars belief that Lindbergh – a national celebrity – could have committed such a heinous crime.

In 1928, he was Time magazine's first Man of the Year, ushering in a new era of air travel.

He became a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, explorer and environmentalist. He was the American dream personified. But maybe not. Pearlman is so convinced of a cover-up that she demands that authorities in New Jersey release archived evidence that she believes could support her theory.

“Many leads (about the kidnapping) were not followed; About a dozen state witnesses probably committed perjury,” she pointed out. “And the prosecution had 90,000 pages of research that they didn't show to Hauptmann and his defense.”

Could she be right? A closer look at America's tempestuous flyer raises some uncomfortable questions. There were rumors that he had anti-Semitic views and was a Nazi sympathizer. Everything he denied, but the stain lingered.

He was also a liar and serial killer. Together he and Anne had five more children. But Lindbergh fathered seven more – the products of three cases.

None of his illegitimate children knew his identity until after he died in 1974 at the age of 72.

Lindberth was also in control: he kept a record of each child's transgressions and insisted that Anne record every cent of household expenses in a ledger.

But it was his enthusiasm for eugenics – the pseudo-scientific figuring out of weaknesses to improve the genetic quality of the human population – and pioneering organ transplant surgery that made for disturbing reading.

He was obsessed with how living organs could be preserved outside the body long enough to be transplanted. Developing the means to achieve this would have revolutionized medicine in the 1930s – and put him back in the news.

Of course, Pearlman isn't the only one who has pointed the finger at Lindbergh.

In 1993, the book Crime Of The Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax suggested that Lindbergh accidentally killed his son and staged the kidnapping to cover it up.

Today, a growing and impressive group insists that Pearlman's theory is worth exploring, including attorney Barry Scheck, who co-founded the Innocence Project, which aims to overturn wrongful convictions.

Descendants of the culprit, Bruno Hauptmann, also argue that the crucial documents should be made public. A lawsuit has been filed to this effect.

Much of the momentum is due to Pearlman's research. She spent a decade poring over the medical reports on Charles Lindbergh Jr., the police files and papers of both Carrel and Lindbergh, before coming to the monstrous conclusion – in her 2020 book, The Lindbergh Kidnapping, Suspect No.1: The Man Who Got Away – that Charles Sr may have sacrificed his son.

If the theory is true, Hauptmann is of course the second victim. The carpenter was arrested in 1934 after police traced marked banknotes – used to pay the ransom – for a transaction he had made for petrol.

He claimed that a friend gave him the money before he traveled to Europe and died of tuberculosis; that he had fallen victim to anti-German sentiment; and the police had not done their job properly.

The latter certainly seems clear. When Scotland Yard investigators were asked for help, they recommended investigating Charles and Anne's actions but, Pearlman says, these were ignored.

If Charles Sr was involved, he didn't escape completely. His fame ensured that the hysteria surrounding his son's death never disappeared and in 1935 he and Anne fled to Europe for four years.

Who knows what the truth is, and if it will ever be revealed. But the files still exist and if they are released and add grist to Pearlman's macabre theory, it will put a very different spin on the legacy of one of America's greatest heroes.