Hartford — Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon announced late Thursday that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, intend to repay with interest all "private individuals" from their 1976 personal bankruptcy.

In a statement, McMahon said the decision was prompted by The Day's disclosure this week of their recently discovered bankruptcy records.

The records, located at a national archives storage facility in Massachusetts, showed the McMahons facing $955,805 in claims from 26 creditors. The court docket showed a discharge of debt in 1977, with the case concluding in 1982 with a reported $1,265 payment to creditors and a court-appointed trustee.

It was unclear from the files whether the McMahons paid more than $1,265 to creditors, although Linda McMahon has for years insisted that they repaid the Internal Revenue Service.

McMahon, now a Greenwich millionaire and former WWE executive, said the first copy of the records she had seen since the proceedings was that which The Day provided her campaign on Tuesday.

"Over the past two days, Vince and I have begun attempts to locate and reach out to all the individuals on the creditor list. It is our intention to reimburse all private individual creditors that can be reached," McMahon said in the release. "We feel it is the right thing to do to pay them in full, including an adjustment for inflation at four times the initial amount as shown on the list of creditors."

Chris Murphy, her opponent in the Senate race, was not impressed by the gesture.

"The McMahons had the ability to pay these debts a long time ago," Murphy's spokesman, Ben Marter, said in a statement. "It's a shame that it took 36 years and mounting political pressure for Linda McMahon to finally pay some, but apparently not all, of her debts.

"The timing of her newfound goodwill reeks of political expediency but unfortunately, McMahon is only raising more questions about her financial dealings. Voters deserve to know who she still owes, how she plans to pay them back, how much, and why she only now decided to make right on her debts."

McMahon campaign's claimed earlier in the week that the couple repaid more than half of all they owed their 1970s creditors.

j.reindl@theday.com