Report: Lindberg had secret family

WASHINGTON, Aug. 2 (UPI) -- A report in a German newspaper Sunday said legendary aviator Charles Lindbergh had a secret family, with three children, in that country.

Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper interviewed his supposed German children, now in middle age, who said their mother insisted the relationship be kept quiet while she was alive.

The story said Lindbergh met Brigitte Hesshaimer, a hatmaker in Munich, when he was 55 years old, in 1957. Her daughter, Astrid Bouteuil, said she has more than 100 letters from the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, but knew him as Careu Kent.

In the United States, Lindbergh had six children with his wife, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh.

Lindbergh, who died in 1974, was an intensely private man, according to his biographers. The three who claim to be his children in Germany said he was warm but wasn't the type to take them in his arms.