They believe that they can solve the “crime of the century”. But NJ doesn't want it, they say.

East Amwell, New Jersey, 1932. Charles A. Lindbergh, the famous plane, bursts into kindergarten to find his baby missing.

Somewhere in Iraq, 2008. Kurt Perhach, a soldier, hits a curious email to the archivist who is responsible for the evidence from the 76-year case.

Both men had just taken the first step, which they hadn't known yet that she would be a saga that would end up in the news and see her in court.

In Lindbergh's case, it was a witness to prosecution and said against the German immigrant and carpenter, who was arrested for kidnapping and murder of his 20 -month -old son.

With Perhach, it was as a process consultant and argued that the state should be forced to enable DNA tests of evidence from the case.

In his view and the view of others like him, the “crime of the century” was never really solved, and Bruno Richard Hauptmann said the truth – or at least part of it – when he went to his death and protested against his innocence.

“There are still too many questions,” said Perhach. “It is so unlikely that a single person was involved.”

Some even believe that Lindbergh, who would continue to become a sympathizer and the Eugenik lawyer of Nazi, may have had a hand in the kidnapping.

Perhach and his allies insist to test the ransom notes that are kept in the New Jersey State Police Museum in Ewing, where all Lindbergh draft materials take place.

“Unless someone in 1932 had the prophetic foresight to shout water on these stamps and cover flaps in order to seal them,” said Perhach, “is a very high probability that someone is still there.”

The only problem is that the state has decidedly proved to be resistant to the plan. The state police in New Jersey contested Perhach inquiries, fought its legal efforts and completed the archive last spring.

“The most frustrating is that they don't even tell me why,” he said.

New Jersey State Police press spokesman for the telephone said that it was a policy not to comment on litigation. A spokesman for the agency did not immediately answer a follow-up request for comments by email.

Perhach sues the state police and last week before the Supreme Court of Mercer County filed a lawsuit that accuses her of violating the law on open public records by New Jersey.

The complaint submitted in the name of three plaintiffs consists of a 29-page letter and more than 175 pages with exhibits. This includes supporting letters from government agents in retirement, the great-grandson of a former governor of New Jersey, the mayor of captain of the hometown in Germany and a 7-year-old Texan “fascinated by science”.

One of the plaintiffs, Jonathan Hagel, is a historian at the University of Kansas and a high school buddy from Perhach. He signed when he recognized the importance of his friend's crusade.

“In the world we live, it sounds naive, but an engagement for the truth is important,” said Hagel. “There is the potential that historical injustice can be directed here.”

This is not Perhach's first attempt to force the state to resign.

He was fascinated by Lindbergh's kidnapping case as a teenager. After he had returned from active service with the army, he went to the legal faculty and said goodbye to the bar in New Jersey and New York. He also started to take regular trips to the New Jersey State Police Museum.

Like other amateur obsessive, he was allowed to spend hours in Ewing through the archives, which were supervised by what he described as an encouraging eye.

“Before this became combative, all police officers liked us,” he said about the soldiers stationed in the museum. “All police officers wanted to know whose DNA was in these envelopes.”

Things first became “combative” in early 2022 when Perhach formally asked to bring forensic experts to carry out tests. He was told no. After a few months he sued in September.

The case was rejected next January. The court found that the state's law on public records had not allowed a citizen to “march to a museum” and demanded that historical artifacts be submitted “for analysis, change and destruction”.

An appellate court finally confirmed the decision.

As a forensic instrument, DNA tests have been in the United States since 1986. Experts say that the technology has developed so far in sophistication since then that tests with minimal effects on evidence can be carried out.

“It has progressed so much,” said Colleen Fitzpatrick, a forensic genealogist who is involved in Perhach's new case. “A colleague of mine worked on letters from 1865 and got human DNA from them without damaging their integrity.”

Or like Michele Downie, another plaintiff in the new lawsuit and a retired teacher for public school teachers in New Jersey, said: “It is not me and a package of Q-Tips that I have received at CVS. It is people who know how to do that.”

Nevertheless, Perhach now admits that his case was “littered with procedural errors”. His day job is a lawyer of a pharmaceutical company, and he was better familiar with the federal court than the regional court.

“Case number two is much stronger,” he said.

The new lawsuit is also about the fact that the entire Lindbergh archive of the museum, which includes around 225,000 records, is currently not accessible to the public.

In the lawsuit it is claimed that the state police closed the archive shortly after the New York Times Reported on Perhach's appeal and claimed that the museum had created a new “standard operating process”.

When a reporter of NJ Advance Media called the museum on Friday, the archivist Greg Ferrara confirmed that the archive had been closed since April 2024.

“Our research policy is revised and updated,” said Ferrara.

“How long does it take to write a 3- or 4-sided standard operating process?” Perhach asked.

Ferrara – whose predecessor in Iraq corresponded to Perhach, said that he could not offer a timeline to reopen the archive.

For someone in aluminum hut, the opposition of the state against DNA tests could look for a conspiracy. What do you hide from us?

Perhach doesn't buy that. He believes that it is a simple bureaucratic inertia.

“I don't think they benefit from knowing the truth,” he said.

He may be not a conspirator, but he has the inauguration and the righteous conviction of one, according to those who know it.

“One thing I know about Kurt,” said Hagel, “is that he will continue to search for the lever that he has to pull to make this material accessible again.”

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AJ McDougall can be achieved amcdougall@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on X @oldmcdougall.