BOSTON -- A new book to be released next week claims famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh was responsible for the death of his infant son in a prank, but let another man be executed rather than admit it.
The new theory is put forward by Gregory Ahlgren and Stephen Monier. Ahlgren is a criminal lawyer in Manchester, N.H., and Monier is the chief of police in Goffstown, N.H.
They allege in the book that Lindbergh allowed German immigrant Bruno Richard Hauptmann to be executed in 1936 for the kidnapping and murder, even though Lindbergh himself was responsible for the death of his son, Charles Jr.
The Boston Globe said Wednesday the authors wanted to 'set the record straight' about the famed case involving the first man to fly alone across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927.
The book, 'The Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax,' is to be released next week by the Branden Press Inc. in Brookline, Mass.
In the book, the authors say that Lindbergh 'in some sort of prank,' placed a ladder at the window of the room where his 20-month-old son was sleeping in the family's New Jersey home on March 1, 1932.
Ahlgren told the Globe that he and Monier believe that 'Lindbergh was carrying the child down the ladder when there was an accident and the child died.' He said Lindbergh then took the dead child to Mount Rose to the area where the body was found 10 weeks later.
Ahlgren said that Lindbergh 'had a history of playing very cruel jokes on people.' He said Lindbergh about two months before the death 'had hidden the child in a closet, presumably to frighten his wife.'
Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote a letter to her mother-in-law saying her first thought when her son disappeared 'was that it was one of Charles' pranks,' Ahlgren said.
The letter was later published in one of Anne Lindbergh's books, 'Hour of Gold, Hour of Lead,' in the mid-1070s.
Ahlgren said one witness at the trial, Ben Lupica, then 17, testified he saw a car come down the road with a ladder inside, and that he could only say the driver was a 'white male.' The prosecutor in the case asked if the driver resembled Hauptmann, but did not ask in what way.
Ahlgren said Lupica was upset that he had not been asked at the trial in what way Hauptmann resembled the driver, and that the only resemblance was that 'he was white.' Ahlgren said that Lupica 'was glad to be able to set the record straight.'
The Globe said Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent who wrote a 1987 book, 'The Lindbergh Case,' discounted the theory as 'very old hat. The Lindbergh case has spawned 100 theories, much like the JFK assassination.'
Fisher said the overwhelming evidence was against Hauptmann, even though Hauptmann continued to maintain his innocence.
