newjerseynewsroom.com

BY STEVE MANAS

RUTGERS TODAY

Eight decades after the crime that transfixed the world, a Rutgers professor has added a thrilling new chapter – evidence that Charles Lindbergh may have been involved in the kidnapping and murder of his son.

Lloyd C. Gardner, professor of history emeritus, points to Lindbergh’s fascination with Social Darwinism and evidence that health problems plaguing his 20-month-old son Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. suggested the child was far from perfect.

Gardner had painstakingly researched the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the “Little Eaglet,” son of the American hero-aviator and his socially prominent wife Anne Morrow Lindbergh. His research included the subsequent arrest, trial, conviction and execution of Bruno Richard Hauptmann for Gardner’s 2004 book The Case that Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping, published by Rutgers University Press.

Now, after almost another decade of research, Gardner has added a dramatic afterward to his work – the theory that Lindbergh, the “Lone Eagle,” was somehow involved with little Charlie’s abduction. The author also believes the child’s death could have resulted from an accident during the kidnapping, which, to this day, is still considered the crime of the century.

“I’ve resisted the theory that Lindbergh was involved,” Gardner says. “The evidence against Hauptmann is quite compelling, but the evidence of his being the sole kidnapper is less compelling. Once you conclude it was conducted by a group or more than one person, the question becomes, why?”

The PBS series Nova interviewed Gardner about his theory for a program to air this winter about the kidnapping that was inspired, in part, by another Lindbergh book.

Gardner notes the abduction took place during an era when criminals, often gang members, routinely kidnapped family members of the rich and famous to supplement their incomes. No one was more famous than Lindbergh. He also refers to speculation that Hauptmann, an otherwise insignificant immigrant carpenter with a criminal record in his native Germany, somehow became obsessed with Lindbergh and wished to knock him from his pedestal.

“Was Hauptmann’s ego such that he had to do this to the Number 1 person in the world?” Gardner asks. “Some psychologists think that, but I don’t find an obsession with Lindbergh. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t involved and that he was sure nothing would happen during the kidnapping.”

More significant is the famous aviator’s fascination with Social Darwinism, which Gardner finds especially noteworthy due to numerous questions raised about his child’s health. Lindbergh adhered to the growing Scandinavian-German notion of the 1930s about the racial superiority of northern Europeans compared to southern Europeans and Asians.

“What we know about Lindbergh’s character,” Gardner says, “is his desire to spread his healthy genes and his belief in the eugenics movement, which goes hand-in-hand with his pro-German feelings before the war. His secret affairs starting in 1957 with three women in Germany, two of them sisters, which led to seven children besides the six he had with his wife, are reminiscent of an experiment.”