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I uncovered dark truths about the Lindbergh baby murder - the wrong man was electrocuted and evidence backing my theory is now piling up
A mock trial has delivered a resounding verdict on the sensational, century-old Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder, boosting campaigners who are trying to prove the wrong man was executed for the crime.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was put to death by electric chair in 1936 for his alleged part in the case while the baby's father Charles Lindbergh - the first pilot to traverse the Atlantic - was never even considered a suspect in the 'trial of the century'.
That was a mistake, says the retired judge who organized Monday's two-hour 'trial' at a Bay Area court. She wrote a book about the alleged injustice, revealing her dark theories about what really happened.
She gained the support of the coalition of lawyers, historians and true crime fanatics who formed the mock jury - they voted 38 to 5 in favor of exonerating Hauptmann and reopening the controversial 1935 case.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, ex-judge Lise Pearlman outlines her hopes that New Jersey will reopen the case. She wants them to examine the new evidence and conduct DNA testing that could provide answers.
Charles Lindbergh Jr, the baby son of the famous aviator, was kidnapped and murdered in 1932. The sensational 'trial of the century' followed
Charles Lindbergh Sr at the controls of his plane Spirit of St Louis, on the first solo non-stop transatlantic flight between New York and Paris
Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr was snatched from his cot aged 20 months on the evening of March 1, 1935, while his father was downstairs in their rural New Jersey mansion.
A handwritten ransom note was found that read: 'BABY SAFE. INSTRUCTIONS LATER. ACT ACCORDINGLY'.
The family paid the ransom of $50,000 but after ten weeks the baby was found dead near a highway four and a half miles away from the Lindbergh home, partially buried and badly decomposed.
After one of the biggest manhunts ever seen in the US, Bruno Richard Hauptmann was arrested when he was found in possession of one of the gold ransom certificates. He claimed he had been given the money by a friend, but he was indicted for murder, convicted and executed by electric chair on April 3, 1936.
He maintained his innocence until the end, and refused to confess even in exchange for a reduction in sentence from death to life in prison.
But in recent years, a growing chorus of legal experts have been pushing for New Jersey to reopen the case and at the very least, test evidence for DNA. Some, such as Pearlman, passionately believe the wrong man was convicted of the crime.
'The purpose of the trial is to call attention to an egregious miscarriage of justice,' she told DailyMail.com.
'We are hoping to get New Jersey to reopen the case, with new evidence that only now can be tested with DNA.
'There’s too much evidence that suggests this case needs to be revisited.'
She went on to explain that while the same case cannot be tried again, there could still be new proceedings.
'There could be a new case against the state brought by the estate of [Hauptmann's] family.
'What a [mock] trial accomplishes is bringing to light oversights in the case with testimony, so that people can come to terms with it.
'It also allows a modern lawyer to take into account the more than 90,000 pages of confidential evidence withheld by the state police during the case - including testimony from three witnesses who offered conflicting accounts of where [Hauptmann] was the day of the kidnapping.
'Today, releasing such evidence would be required,' she said. 'Back then, it wasn't.
'There are many other documents made public offering similar revelations at the request of [Hauptmann's] widow in 1988.
'Yet, here we are 40 years later, still trying to revisit the case.'
Bruno Richard Hauptmann, center, was convicted and executed for the kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh's baby
Ex-judge Lise Pearlman presided over the mock trial for the sensational, century-old Lindbergh baby kidnapping and murder
Pearlman's theory, which she claims is based on more than a decade of forensic investigation, proposes that Lindbergh may have allowed his son to have been used in medical experiments
The jury in the mock trial voted 38 to 5 in favor of exonerating Hauptmann and reopening the controversial 1935 case
A scene from the original trial, when Hauptmann hears he has been found guilty. Judge Trenchard, shown here on the bench, condemned Hauptmann to die in the electric chair
Those documents detail the questionable investigation cops administered at the time - like the alleged wiping of fingerprints from the boy's room left before cops arrived, and after his family realized he was missing.
She explained how within this span, many searched the room and surrounding areas in hopes the tot was still there, before coming up empty-handed.
By the time police arrived and swept for prints, supposedly none were found.
Citing testimony from forensics analysts in the documents who said they too believed the scene was cleaned beforehand, she said: 'All the fingerprints were wiped. How could there have not been any left behind?'
She went on to call the state of New Jersey's excuse for not allowing DNA testing 'palpably absurd.'
'They want to preserve the "integrity of the evidence",' she said.
'But they broke a rung of a ladder cops at the time said Hauptmann used to enter the second-story window of Lindbergh's home.'
She also pointed out that 'every day you wait, evidence can deteriorate,' and claimed officials are likely 'saving face after doubling down in 1977 when questions [about their investigation] first arose.
'There is proof the child did not die as they said, falling out of the windows alleged.
'They also found organs missing and no blood - a telltale sign of surgery.
'There is a lot of compelling evidence.'
Such evidence was finally revisited Monday in Marin County, thanks to Pearlman's calls to take another look at the case.
But she was not alone, organizing the mock trial with famed historian Noah Griffin, who graduated from Harvard Law and also took the time to speak to DailyMail.com about the significance of the day.
He was accused of killing Charles Lindbergh Jr., who was abducted by an intruder from his crib in East Amwell, New Jersey near the town of Hopewell New Jersey in March 1932
Police arrested German immigrant Hauptmann in April 1936. He protested his innocence to the very end
There was a 10-week nationwide search for the baby
He said the case 'doesn't pass the smell test' by 2024 standards, and chided New Jersey officials for allowing such injustices to go unchecked.
'People talk about this case like it just happened yesterday. It was one of the biggest cases of the time.
'Pearlman's claims hold water. They truly do,' he continued, adding 'I'm really sad with the powers that be. With all the advances in DNA. To not right this wrong, they've been
He went on to speak about how he previously orchestrated a mock trial for the case in 1986 in San Francisco, after meeting Hauptmann’s widow, Anna Hauptmann.
She testified in that reenactment, which ended with a similar finding to Monday’s, and resulted in him being sought to help oversee this one.
Now deceased, Hauptmann's widow also testified at her husband’s original trial - one of the view to attest to his innocence.
This time the injustice is even more convincing, Griffin said, crediting Pearlman’s exhaustive forensic research of records, scientific analysis and available evidence,
'They absolutely need to reopen this and test the DNA,' Griffin said after the reenactment ended, two hours after providing a stern opening statement in Courtroom H at the Marin County Courthouse in San Rafael.
'I just don’t think the state of New Jersey wants to be embarrassed,' he added, referencing the state where the true trial was held.
Earlier in the day, as a sort of introduction to the case, he issued some opening remarks that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the original trial - and were somewhat scathing.
As the day kicked off, he told the room filled with formidable figures playing a range of parts: 'Today, the torch has been passed to a new generation of truth seekers,'
'[They are] seeking to uncover whether Bruno Richard Hauptman was wrongly executed for the murder of the Lindbergh baby – a crime he insisted he did not commit.
He went on to thank officials like former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin for sponsoring the 'historic' event, as well as Presiding Judge Mark Talamantes of the Marin County Superior Court, for allowing them to hold the event at the courthouse.
He also expressed gratitude to Judge Sheila Lichtblau, whose court room was used for the day, along with a third judge - Judge Lynn O’Malley Taylor of Marin County.
Not only did she play a part in the proceedings, she presided over them, as others - including her two grandsons and daughter - played an assortment of prosecutors, witnesses, and defenders.
One of her grandsons played Hauptmann, while the other played a witness. Her daughter played the suspect's widow, she said - as she too took the time to tell DailyMail.com why the proceedings, to her, were paramount.
'I read [Pearlman's] book and it was eye-opening,' she said in a phone interview.
'What was and wasn't done in terms of the investigation. how Lindbergh controlled everything.
'It may be true, but hard to believe. We know so much more today.'
She also pointed out how Hauptmann, by trade, was a carpenter - one who likely would have constructed a more stable ladder than the one officers accidentally broke during their original investigation.
'Hauptmann was a carpenter. You think he would have built something better than that.'
She added that today, 'we know so much more about how to investigate crimes, and so much more about discovery.
'People should exchange the evidence they have,' the longtime jurist exclaimed. 'That's how cases get resolved.
As for why the state of New Jersey and its police force are not playing ball, she said she could not 'think of a reason not to let there be a reexamination of DNA to see who was involved.
'Whether it be Lindbergh or anyone else,' she went on. 'There are too many inconsistencies with the case.
'The trial was not a fair trial. This could have been a different result. Unless [the state police] know something we do not. Reputations are important.'
Hauptmann, seen here smiling after his convictions in 1935, was put to death for his part in the case in 1936
This aerial view shows the Lindbergh home with police cars scattered about the estate. The corner window on the second floor of the house to the left, almost underneath the chimney, is the window from which the child was kidnapped
An airplane, brought in to secure pictures about the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, flies over the Lindbergh home as cars belonging to newspaper correspondents and state officials surround the house in Hopewell, N.J., March 3, 1932
Lindbergh - seen here at an America First Committee Meeting six years later - requested that the reporters leave the estate and get their news of developments from John J. Toohey, secretary to Governor Moore of New Jersey
The crib in the nursery of Charles Lindbergh's Hopewell, N.J. home on Dec. 5, 1934 from which the baby Charles Jr. was taken to his death
During the trial, lawyers pointed to a ladder cops at the time which cops said Hauptmann used to enter the second-story window of Lindbegh's Hopewell mansion - and how it was tested and shown to be unable to hold the weight of the suspect and the baby
Where Lindbergh Ransom Money Was Found: The man in the photo is pointing to the spot from which the $15,800 of the Lindbergh ransom money that prosecutors said linked Hauptmann to the kidnaping
Detectives are seen screening every inch of earth at the spot where the body of the murdered baby was found. They were searching for the slug they said may fit a small caliber gun found in Hauptmann's garage
Postcard Mailed to Lindbergh From Auburn, New York, containing the ransom note
The message reads "Baby taken good care of look for instructions Saturday if police get 'to' close, look out. this card appears to have been written by the same person who addressed another to the Lindberghs from Newark the day after the Lindbergh child was kidnapped
As for her grandson, the de facto defendant, he faced off with a jurist playing that part of 1935 defense counsel Edward Reilly, Marin County Deputy District Attorney Sean Kensinger, while reading actual testimony from Hauptmann.
'On the night of March 1, 1932, were you on the grounds of Col. Lindbergh at Hopewell, New Jersey?' the local prosecutor asked, this time acting as a defense lawyer cross-examining his Bronx-born client.
'No,' answered Taylor's relative Ryan Mirdadian Jr., channeling Hauptmann.
'You never saw baby Lindbergh in your life, did you?' the DA went on to ask - to which the man playing Hauptmann replied: 'I never saw it.'
Others produced evidence either not considered or discarded at the original trial - including Marin Deputy Public Defender Patricia Castillo, who played a modern attorney tasked with pointing out the more obvious oversights in the case.
This included a key witness being legally blind - one that said he saw Hauptmann’s car speeding away from the Lindbergh house with the suspect behind the wheel.
Other leads supposedly not followed and pointed out by Castillo were photos of the murdered one-year-old's nursery right after his kidnapping, which showed no footprints on a suitcase under a window the kidnapper supposedly climbed through.
However, those footprints somehow appeared on the suitcase by the time of trial and were used to incriminate Hauptmann within a year.
Castillo also pointed to a ladder cops at the time which cops said Hauptmann used to enter the second-story window of Lindbegh's Hopewell mansion - and how it was tested and shown to be unable to hold the weight of the suspect and the baby.
Moreover, a medical examination showed the child did not die the night he disappeared as officers claimed, and showed signs he might have been chopped into pieces in some bizarre medical experiment.
Pearlman explained to DailyMail.com her theory of how Lindbergh may have allowed his son to be a subject in those alleged undertakings.
'My theory is that the child was operated on,' she said, elaborating on a theory also aired in her book, Suspect No. 1 - The Man Who Got Away.
She speculates that Lindbergh sacrificed his son for scientific experiments that may or may not have not involved the Nazis, citing how the pilot was fascinated by eugenics and had a non-interventionist stance about Jews just before WWII.
'There is a lot of compelling evidence he did,' she said, pointing to a book penned by Lindbergh and Nobel Prize-winning biologist Alexis Carrel in 1938 dubbed 'The Culture of Organs.
In it, the pair detailed operations dealing with organs obtained by unknown means, including ones found missing from the boy's corpse after it was found six weeks later, savaged by mysteriously missing blood.
'We think at the very least that his carotid artery and probably his thyroid were taken out and kept viable for 30 days,' Pearlman told DailyMail.com of how she and others believe the organs were removed surgically, with Lindbergh viewing his son expendable due to his sickliness and litany of physical conditions.
In the book, the pair urged researchers to join their 'forbidden field.'
'We think he died on the operating table,' she said, sharing photos of the baby shortly before he disappeared on March 1, 1932, looking quite a bit older than the earlier photos Lindbergh allowed to be circulated
'And I think Carrel conducted the operation with Lindbergh's permission,' she continued, noting the pilot and French surgeon's shared advocacy for the disproven study of weeding out human deficiencies so they won't be inherited.
Lindbergh, she said, was 'likely present' - claims she said based on more than a decade of forensic investigation that have already gained credence with a number of advocates who have also proposed revisiting the case.
This includes Hauptmann great-great niece and aunt, who recently provided DNA samples to officials to stand up those concerns, and hopefully provide an answer to the long-looming question: Was the crime of the century really just a miscarriage of justice?
'I personally don't think he did it,' Cezanne Love told The New York Times in March of her late great great uncle - adding that if evidence does happen to link him to the case, 'then so be it.'
But, she said, 'I want to uncover the truth.'
Noting how Hauptmann and his widow maintained his innocence until his death, the 58-year-old pointed out another inconsistency that has cast doubt on the case - the fact there were fingerprints left behind at Lindbergh's New Jersey mansion that haven't been analyzed with new-age technology.
As participants pointed out Monday, a wooden ladder, chisel, and the first of more than a dozen ransom notes were also recovered, 10 weeks before the baby was found by chance by a passing truckdriver six weeks later on May 12 in roadside woodlands near Mount Rose.
Partially buried and badly decomposed, his head was crushed, with a hole left in his skull.
Found five feet from the highway, the discovery put an end to massive search, but sparked a new manhunt for whomever responsible.
The boy's dad - five years removed from his glory-winning flight from New York to Paris - was never considered as a suspect.
Pearlman's theory, meanwhile, draws on medical reports, state police files, and writings from both Lindbergh and the biologist she believes with whom he coalesced, and suggests Lindbergh collaborated with Carrel to conduct an experimental operation on the child knowing it would result in his death.
This, Pearlman claims, is simply because he likely may have viewed the tot as sick - with an abnormally large sized head - and therefore expendable.
'Lindbergh might well have felt like Abraham offering the Almighty his son Isaac – not to the Biblical God but to the God of Science with Carrel as the chosen instrument,' she writes in here 2020 tome.
The child's remains were later found by chance by a passing truck driver six weeks after his abduction on May 12 in roadside woodlands near Mount Rose, New Jersey
'The more I looked into Lindbergh, the more my suspicions were raised,' she told DailyMail.com Thursday.
'Lindbergh ordered the body cremated the day it was found, and several experts said [the child's] kidneys were likely surgically removed.
'He was home when it happened. He should have been a suspect,' she added, pointing to how due to his celebrity, investigators allowed him to converse with them about the case, while not treating him as a potential suspect.
'He was an American hero. They even let him sit with the prosecution during the trial. Autopsy reports done on what was left of the remains showed he died seven to 10 weeks before they said he did... He was embarrassed by his son.'
The boy was missing most of his internal organs with no blood - that's not something that typically happens.
Hauptmann, she added, was an unwitting victim, caught by police after using traceable ransom money - which she points out is the only evidence against him, and is also contradicted in the trove of documents.
'A lot of leads weren't followed, fingerprints were wiped, and the prosecutions was in possession of evidence that Hauptmann and his defense were not allowed to see. Eyewitnesses changed their statements,' Pearlman went on.
'All these things were outrageous. I believe Hauptmann's story. The wrong man was executed, and my hope is that Hauptmann will be exonerated eventually.'
The original case, meanwhile, enthralled much of America from the moment Charles Jr was snatched, with his father exceedingly famous for his solo across the Atlantic five years earlier.
The heady mix of celebrity, wealth and an appalling crime against an innocent child proved irresistible, with cops quickly theorizing he was taken by a gang, who used the ladder to access the nursery window on the second floor.
They then handed him down, leaving a ransom note on the radiator for his parents to find, they said - quickly attracting massive amounts of publicity and intrigue.
President Herbert Hoover made a radio appeal for the child's safe return, and Gangster Al Capone even offered his mafia contacts to help track down the kidnappers.
'He was an American hero,' Pearlman said of Lindbergh - seen here with his wife before their flight around the world in 1935. 'They even let him sit with the prosecution during the trial. Autopsy reports done on what was left of the remains showed he died seven to 10 weeks before they said he did... He was embarrassed by his son'
Charles Lindbergh Jr. is seen on his first birthday enjoying cake and a candle
Captain Lindbergh (1904-1974) pictured in 1927 with his aircraft Spirit of St Louis in which he became the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic that same year
William Allen, right, shows where he found the body of Charles Lindbergh Jr on March 1, 1932
However, all those efforts were eventually for naught, when Charles's tiny body was found two months later,
It would be two years before police arrested German immigrant Hauptmann, after he was caught trying to cash in a gold certificate that had formed part of a ransom payment by the child's desperate parents.
Hauptmann was tried for murder and extortion, found guilty and executed by electric chair in April 1936. He protested his innocence to the end - and despite investigators initial belief a gang had taken the child, the case was closed.
This also came despite the fact that Hauptmann insisted to his dying day that a friend gave him the money before dying in Europe - an argument that fell on deaf ears during the original case.
On Monday, Judge Taylor made it clear that today, things would be different.
'If Hauptmann were still alive, I’d say let’s retry this case with people who know what they’re doing,' she said after reading the mock verdict,
'At least take a look at the DNA evidence.'