JACKSON, N.J. -- Hans Kloppenburg, a defense witness in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping trial who believed fervently in the innocence of the close friend executed for the crime, has died after a brief illness, his family said Wednesday. He was 89.
Kloppenburg was involved almost to his death in efforts to reverse the half-century-old conviction of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in what was labeled as the 'Trial of the Century,' said his daughter, Gladys Morgan.
Kloppenburg, a resident of the Cassville section of Jackson Township, died peacefully in his sleep Tuesday at Community Memorial Hospital in Toms River, where he had been hospitalized with pnuemonia, Morgan said.
Kloppenburg was Hauptmann's best friend. He testified for the defense at Hauptmann's trial for the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh, according to Robert Bryan, a San Francisco lawyer who represents Anna Hauptmann, the widow of Richard Hauptmann.
Hauptmann was arrested after he was determined to have some of the $50,000 in ransom money paid by Lindbergh, the first flier to cross the Atlantic Ocean solo, for the return of his son.
The boy, Charles Lindbergh Jr., had disappeared from the family home in Hopewell, N.J., on March 1, 1932. His corpse was found in May 1932. Hauptmann was executed on April 3, 1936.
Kloppenburg, according to court documents filed by Bryan in one of a series of unsuccessful actions to clear the Hauptmann name, was an alibi witness for the defense. He testified on Feb. 4, 1935, that he was visiting the Hauptmanns at their home on the evening in April 1932 when Hauptmann allegedly collected the ransom money.
He also testified that he was in the Hauptmann home the night of a farewell party for a man named Isidore Fisch and said that Fisch arrived that night with a package that later turned out to contain a portion of the ransom money. Hauptmann took the package without knowing what it was, his defenders maintain.
