Lost Lindbergh Case Papers Turn Up

Police have recovered long-lost papers on the “crime of the century,” in which Bruno Hauptmann was executed in 1936 for the kidnaping and murder of aviator Charles A. Lindbergh’s infant son, authorities said Saturday.

The files were found in the home of then-Gov. Harold G. Hoffman, who borrowed state police papers to conduct his own investigation of the kidnaping, State Police Capt. Joseph Kobus said.

“We conducted, in the 1930s, an investigation into ‘the crime of the century,’ and Hoffman did likewise,” State Police Supt. Clinton Pagano said.

Hoffman, a Republican governor from 1935 to 1938, offered to commute Hauptmann’s term to life in prison if he would confess. Hauptmann refused and went to his death maintaining his innocence.

Hoffman had allegedly become convinced of Hauptmann’s innocence, historians said.

The Lindbergh boy was kidnaped from his Hopewell, N. J., home on March 1, 1932. He was found two months later in a shallow grave, a month after a $50,000 ransom was paid.