MUNICH, Germany — When Astrid Bouteuil recalls her childhood in Germany, her fondest memories are of a tall, graying American who swooped into her life, as if from the heavens, once or twice a year.
The one thing the dashing stranger never told Bouteuil was his real name, though she and her two brothers had been told by their mother that he was their father. After his death in 1974, Bouteuil pieced together the mystery: Her father, she says, was Charles A. Lindbergh.
Earlier this month, Bouteuil staked her claim to the Lindbergh legacy, going public with some 150 letters that she says prove the pilot conducted a 17-year love affair with her mother, Brigitte Hesshaimer.
Bouteuil, now 42 and married to a Frenchman, said she was driven to tell this family secret to "liberate" her children.
The Lindbergh family has said nothing publicly about the story. But they are taking it seriously. A lawyer for the family, Patton Hyman, said they had contacted the Hesshaimers and plan an investigation. Bouteuil and her brothers, Dyrk and David, have volunteered to take DNA tests.
Inevitably, some suspect the Hesshaimers want to exploit their story for financial gain. The trouble is, the Hesshaimers' story is going in unpredictable directions. The German news magazine Focus reported this week that in the same years Lindbergh was involved with Brigitte Hesshaimer, he had an affair with her older sister, Marietta, that produced two other children.
Marietta Hesshaimer and her children, who live in Switzerland, have declined to comment. Her niece, Astrid, insists she did not want to drag them into the story.
A. Scott Berg, Lindbergh's biographer, said the letters from Lindbergh presented by Bouteuil seem genuine. His restless travels and lengthy absences from his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, also make it possible that he could have had a secret life in Germany and Switzerland.