It started with a killer conversation.
A captivating new novel published this month by a veteran Long Island reporter was inspired by his real-life interview with the cold-blooded killer of a Suffolk County housewife — who had an eerie connection to the horrific death of famous aviator Charles Lindbergh’s son.
Steve Wick’s debut novel, “The Ruins,” hit the bookshelves on Feb. 4, with the longtime Newsday journalist telling The Post that the idea for the gripping tale of murder and espionage was planted decades ago — when he sat down with Rudolph Hoff, the man convicted in the brutal slaying of Lindenhurst woman Kathryn Ann Damm.
Damm’s mutilated body was found in a field in October 1954 in a case that shocked the small town. The case then went cold for almost three decades until Hoff was arrested in January 1979.
“They said it was the oldest cold case that they knew of in New York state,” Wick said of the investigation.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, now a 73-year-old Cutchogue resident who put nearly eight years of research into his novel, went on to interview Hoff, the violent alcoholic who ragefully killed Damm after meeting her in a local dive bar, the Alcove Bar and Grill.
“He was just a scary man,” he recalled of the towering Hoff, who stood about 6’4 and 240 lbs.
“What he did to this woman in Lindenhurst in 1954 was horrendous. He literally ripped her apart. She bled to death in a field,” he recounted.
Hoff was eventually cuffed after threatening a Nassau County woman decades later, saying, “I’ll do to you what I did to that woman in Lindenhurst,” Wick said.
Even after the high-profile arrest, the former reporter said it looked like the killer would walk free due to weak evidence — until one fateful day toward the end of the trial.
“Another very old woman came in…You could see Hoff look up, and his face just sank. It was his ex-wife,” Wick said of Gurli Hoff, who held the key to put him away for good.
Gurli had witnessed her husband scrubbing blood off his clothes on the notorious 1954 night, and he screamed at her to bring what he had been wearing into their basement and clean it.
“But she saved a bloody belt and put it in a jar and buried it in the backyard,” said Wick. “In the 1980s, a detective talked to her about it and said, ‘Your husband is going to get off if you don’t help us.’
“They went and dug up, and he was convicted,” the author added of Hoff, who died in prison about a decade ago.
But when Wick sat down one-on-one with Hoff post-conviction, it planted an idea in his head that eventually turned into “The Ruins.”
“He, of course, said he didn’t do it. And I said, ‘look, don’t waste my time,’” Wick recalled. “Then he kept bringing up the name Hauptmann,” he continued.
The murderer was referring to Richard Hauptmann, the German-born man executed for the kidnapping and murder of Lindbergh’s infant son, Charles Jr. in New Jersey in 1932.
Lindbergh was the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, and the abduction and slaying of his 20-month-old son was widely called the “Crime of the Century” at the time.
Hoff’s mother was a close friend of Hauptmann’s widow, Anna.
“Hoff wanted to compare himself as being framed like [he felt] Hauptmann was,” the author said.
Wick’s book leans into the Lindbergh mystery after he spoke with a well-versed NJ detective who thinks Hauptmann “couldn’t possibly have done it himself and there had to be at least two other people involved.”
Meanwhile, during the 1930s, Long Island also became notorious for having Nazi and German Bund enclaves — including one in Lindenhurst.
“I thought, ‘Can I fictionalize the murder that took place just around the corner here and tie it into other things?’” said Wick, who mentioned Nazi rallies were held steps from the dive bar by Wellwood Avenue where Hoff met Damm.
Wick also addresses German spies who made landfall in Amagansett during World War II on a saboteur mission and Yaphank’s notorious Camp Siegfried, which was home to devout Hitler fanatics.
“The Long Island Railroad ran a special train from Penn Station to Yaphank just for Bund members. So you’d see trains full of uniformed Nazis,” he said.
“You can’t really believe what you’re looking at.”
