[2] Anna later sued the State of New Jersey, various former police officers, the Hearst newspapers that had published pre-trial articles insisting on Hauptmann's guilt, and former prosecutor David T. Wilentz.
Bruno Richard Hauptmann was born in Kamenz, a town near Dresden in the Kingdom of Saxony, which was a state of the German Empire.
[6] After the war, Hauptmann and a friend robbed two women wheeling baby carriages they were using to transport food on the road between Wiesa and Nebelschütz.
Landing in New York City in November 1923, the 24-year-old Hauptmann was protected by a member of the established German community and worked as a carpenter.
The $50,000 demanded in a ransom note had been delivered by John F. Condon, but the infant's body was found on May 12 in woods 4 miles (6.4 km) from the family's home.
[13] On September 15, 1934, a bank teller realized that the serial number on a $10 gold certificate deposited by a gas station was on the list of Lindbergh ransom bills.
[14][15] On the bill's margin, the attendant, who found the certificate suspicious, had written the license plate number of the customer's car, which turned out to be Hauptmann's.
[31] However, during the trial, "Condon did identify Hauptmann, although he took a pounding from the defense for his earlier failure to do so",[32] and later claimed that he had "immediately recognized John".
"[32] While waiting in a car nearby, Lindbergh heard the voice of "John" calling to Condon during the ransom drop-off, but never saw him.
Bommersbach noted that in those days, newspapers acted as both "judge and jury", and covered crime in a way that would be considered sensationalistic today.
This led to further investigation, and in 1985, Ludovic Kennedy published The Airman and the Carpenter, in which he argued that Hauptmann had not kidnapped and murdered Lindbergh Jr.
Jim Fisher, a former FBI agent and professor at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania,[38] has written two books on the subject, The Lindbergh Case (1987)[16] and The Ghosts of Hopewell (1999)[39] to address, at least in part, what he calls a "revision movement".
He concluded: Today, the Lindbergh phenomenon is a giant hoax perpetrated by people who are taking advantage of an uninformed and cynical public.
Notwithstanding all of the books, TV programs, and legal suits, Hauptmann is as guilty today as he was in 1932 when he kidnapped and killed the son of Mr and Mrs Charles Lindbergh.
She claimed that the newly discovered documents proved misconduct by the prosecution and the manufacture of evidence by government agents, all of whom were biased against Hauptmann because he happened to be of German ethnicity.
These documents, along with 34,000 pages of FBI files, which, although discovered in 1981, had not been disclosed to the public, represented a windfall of previously undisclosed information.
[42] As a direct result of this new evidence, Anna Hauptmann again amended her civil complaint on July 14, 1986, to clear her late husband's name by continuing to assert that he was "framed from beginning to end" by the police looking for a suspect.
[42] She suggested that the rail of the ladder taken from the attic, where they used to live in 1935, was planted by the police, and that the ransom money was left behind by Isidor Fisch, who was possibly the real kidnapper.
On December 9, 1933, he sailed for Germany, taking with him "$600 to buy Reichsmarks",[43] although Hauptmann testified during the trial that he had in fact given this exact amount to Fisch.
[44][45] In addition to this, "Fisch's German relatives described him as being penniless, and his American associates claimed he left the country owing them sizable debts.