05.19.11
Posted in The War Begins at 10:05 pm by Administrator
Bureaus are breeding grounds for bureaucracy, and Hoover’s was no different. Hoover might be interested in virtually everything his agency did, down to the smallest detail, but he could not do it all himself. He might read virtually every piece of paper passing through the Bureau of Investigation, he might direct its movement, but he could not control it. Paperwork in Hoover’s domain, as in anyone else’s, had a life of its own. In Lewis Taylor’s case, all necessary documentation by the Denver field office was completed by May 13. The application folder was mailed to Washington for further action but instead was simply filed away. A confused Taylor, who had already registered his intent to accept the job of Special Agent, wired Hoover on May 29, “Does failure to hear from you mean that application has not been accepted.” The concerned Director instructed Clyde Tolson to look into the “considerable mix-up,” adding, “I certainly hope there are no other files in the same condition.” Tolson could not determine what happened in Taylor’s case but did revise the internal routing of documents to prevent a completed case from being “filed without action.”
In the meantime, Taylor was ordered to undergo a physical examination. After that, things again moved quickly. The young man passed his physical on June 5, and two days later an appointment letter was prepared. Before the letter could be issued, the Bureau notified New Mexico’s two U.S. Senators. On June 11, Senator Phipps gave his go-ahead, but Senator Waterman put a hold on the appointment until he talked to the Attorney General. Waterman gave his release on the 15th, but by that time it was too late to place Taylor in the next new agent class in Washington. On June 17, therefore, Hoover cancelled Taylor’s appointment.
The disappointed applicant busied himself with practicing law in Clayton, New Mexico while he awaited his next chance. All the early paperwork was not without result. When new funding became available, Taylor was directed to take a new physical examination. He did this on December 21, 1929, and a new letter of appointment was prepared on Christmas Eve. Then the file sat once more, probably inside the Justice Department, until a new job offer was mailed on February 17, 1930. The eager New Mexican telegraphed his positive reply five days later, and on March 3, forty-seven weeks after first expressing interest, Taylor entered the school for Special Agents.
It was the task of Inspector Keith, the Bureau’s training director, to “devote particular attention” to training each new agent. Taylor, like all new agents, was to be “fully instructed in all phases of the Bureau’s work.” Taylor learned well the Bureau’s “Manual of Rules and Regulations” and “Manual of Instructions,” scoring 93 and 100 on the respective tests. Keith described Taylor as “youthful, inexperienced, and inclined to be gossipy.” The kid from the New Mexico sticks impressed Keith “as sort of a small town politician.” Nevertheless, Keith was sure Taylor would “do his best to make good,” making a satisfactory Special Agent, but probably never rising beyond that.
On March 30, 1930, probationary Special Agent Taylor entered on duty in the Chicago field office. Special Agent in Charge E.J. Connelly assigned him to general case work. After thirty days, Taylor was developing as expected. His final (60-day) rating is missing from his file, but at the end of May he graduated to permanent status in the Bureau.
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04.01.11
Posted in The War Begins at 9:51 pm by Administrator
As FBI Assistant Director Harold “Pop” Nathan explained in 1934, the Division of Investigation (later renamed the FBI), “First and foremost… selects its personnel with the greatest care from the best available material.” The applicant’s record and associations should be “rigidly scrutinized” all the way back to his school days. Higher education, agency testing, and hiring interviews ensured that the prospective law enforcement officer possessed the required “resourcefulness, aggressiveness, tact, energy, and the like.”
The hiring of Special Agent Lewis Charles Taylor, the lead agent in Tucson during the first months of the June Robles kidnapping investigation, provides an example of how these requirements of Director J. Edgar Hoover were put into practice not long after he assumed leadership. Taylor was a 24-year-old law student at the University of Colorado at Boulder when he applied for the position of Special Agent on April 9, 1929. At 5’9” and 136 lbs., already thin hair on top of a head one future superior thought too large for his body, he was physically unprepossessing. Taylor also lacked political backing, a strong academic record or the polish that marked Melvin Purvis, an early Hoover favorite. And yet, Taylor impressed people with his intelligence and drive, if not always to a remarkable degree, then enough for them to take notice.
The death of Taylor’s father in 1911, not long after he had moved his family from Illinois to New Mexico, made six-year-old Lewis “the man of the house.” Immediately following high school graduation in the little town of Springer, New Mexico in 1922, he enrolled in the University of Kansas. After just two years of liberal arts studies, in 1924 at the age of 19, he moved on to the university’s law school. At this point, life intruded upon education. For the next five years, he alternated between legal studies at Kansas and Colorado with jobs to pay for school and to help support his mother. Taylor exhibited a willingness to take any job available, from high school mathematics and history teacher to “general helper” in the Kansas City stockyards and even fraternity janitor. To gain experience, he worked without pay as a law clerk. All of these experiences, and others, provided the Bureau’s offices in New York City, Washington D.C., Columbus, Ohio, Kansas City, Missouri, El Paso, and Denver with leads to follow in their “complete and thorough investigation” of Taylor’s suitability for the position.
Seventeen field interviews were written up and compiled in Denver’s summary report. The word “splendid” was applied by interviewees to Taylor’s mind, reputation, character, and family. The applicant was energetic and industrious, did not drink or gamble, and stayed out of trouble. Two dents in his record were offered. A bank cashier who praised Taylor also said that the young man was overdrawn in his account on occasion, probably through failure to keep track of his balance, but not through criminal intent. The postmaster in Springer, New Mexico was alone in thinking Taylor “lacking in energy and industry.” The interviewing agent noted that the postmaster “predicates this opinion upon the fact that it seems that none of the Taylor family have ever amounted to a great deal.”
The applicant was interviewed at Boulder by Special Agent E.P. Allen, who described Taylor as “quiet, unassuming, probably the conscientious, is neat and of good appearance, is slightly immature.” A much more thorough interview was conducted in accordance with the Bureau’s Manual of Rules and Regulations by Inspector J.S. Egan. The inspector rated Taylor’s personal appearance and approach (Taylor’s was “Good”), dress (he was “Neat,” not Flashy, Poor, or Untidy), features (“Ordinary,” rather than Fine, Dissipated, or Course), and physical defects (Taylor had none). The applicant’s conduct during the interview was assessed on the basis of personality, poise (Taylor was thought to be “steady” rather than temperamental or well poised), speech (he was not talkative, reticent, or boastful), assurance (he was self-confident, rather than over-confident), nervousness (Taylor exhibited none), foreign accent (even a slight accent would be noted; Taylor had none), and tact.
Taylor’s “general intelligence” was also rated by Egan. He answered questions “definitely,” rather than vaguely or quickly. He had a good grasp of legal principles but no investigative experience. He exhibited resourcefulness, some “executive ability,” and was “likely to develop.” He could type his reports, but had no stenographic skills. Hoover also wanted to know how many days Taylor had been sick in recent years (very few), his plans for the future (to advance in the law), and his hobbies (Taylor swam).
Overall, the inspector thought Taylor made “an exceptionally good appearance, is above average in intelligence” and was expected to “develop very rapidly into a better than average agent.”
IN PART 2, BUREAUCRACY AND POLITICS INTRUDE UPON THE HIRING PROCESS
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02.07.11
Posted in The War Begins at 6:36 pm by Administrator
To better ensure that crimes got solved and criminals got caught, J. Edgar Hoover demanded that the Bureau’s agents meet and exhibit the highest professional standards. The expected qualities, and they were legion, were listed in a speech given in September, 1934, by Assistant Director Harold Nathan on his boss’s behalf. The “ideal law enforcement officer,” and that certainly meant the Bureau’s special agents, according to Nathan, “should be well educated, because law enforcement is now a profession.” In the FBI, that meant a law or accounting degree. He (and there was no “she” in the ranks of special agents) should also be “truly intelligent. He should possess a mind capable of thinking quickly and effectively along the shortest possible lines to the solution of the most complicated, baffling problems. His thinking should be supplemented by a broad experience with all kinds and classes of humanity.” Hoover also demanded that his men be:
- possess[ed of] that intuitive quality of combined sympathy and imaginative understanding which enables him to live instinctively within the thoughts and feelings of those with whom he comes in contact.
- industrious.
- naturally, instinctively honorable—not only honest in his financial dealings, not only with law-abiding citizens, but honorable with criminals.
- tenaciously, indefatigably persistent… never permit[ting] himself to look upon any case as ultimately unsolved or insoluble.
- just as eager to find evidence which will prove a suspected individual innocent as to establish indisputably the guilt of a person under suspicion.
- accurate.
- emotionally well-balanced…. Resentment, personal dislike, revenge should never affect or sway his official conduct.
- open-minded.
- a good judge of human nature; and… naturally sympathetic.
- optimistic…. He should look upon every case as something new and novel, the raw material of the unknown with which he may build his newest, latest, greatest masterpiece.
- courageous… ready at all times to make the supreme sacrifice.
- ambitious, aggressively ambitious—hoping, demanding the best for himself and his organization; and above all he should be enthusiastic.
The ideal law enforcement organization, according to Nathan, speaking Hoover’s mind, “First and foremost… selects its personnel with the greatest care from the best available material.” The applicant’s record and associations should be “rigidly scrutinized” all the way back to his school days. Higher education, agency testing, and hiring interviews ensured that the prospective law enforcement officer possessed the required “resourcefulness, aggressiveness, tact, energy, and the like.” Training in all facets of the job was necessary, while advancement based on merit and “liberal salaries should be paid.”[1]
The Division of Investigation (DOI), as Hoover’s bureau became on July 1, 1933, fielded nearly 500 agents in mid-1934. Four-fifths were lawyers or accountants, and 116 had multiple university degrees. Fifty were said to speak foreign languages, but Spanish-speaking agents were rare. Most of them were young (their average age was 35) and, after several bloody missteps in the war on bank bandits, nearly all had received training in the use of pistols, rifles, automatic shotguns, and submachine guns. This homogenous army of always well-dressed college grads was stiffened by a few older lawmen possessing the experience to properly lead an investigation while commanding respect from the locals. They were also “no-bullshit Cowboys” who knew which end of a gun to point and were unafraid to pull the trigger first.[2]
[1] Harold Nathan, “The Ideal Law Enforcement Officer and the Ideal Law Enforcement Organization,” Address given to the Pacific Coast Institute of Law and Administration of Justice, September, 1934, 14 Or. L. Rev., 327-338.
[2] The new DOI was created by the merger of the BOI and the Bureau of Prohibition. Hoover, director of both agencies, kept the bureaus separate, so as not to involve his “special agents” in liquor control. New York Times, July 29, 1934, http://historicalgmen.squarespace.com/storage/fbisagentsofjusticearticle.pdf. The reference to “cowboys” comes from Burrough, Public Enemies, 53.
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01.22.11
Posted in The War Begins at 4:55 pm by Administrator
While the Lindbergh Law assigned jurisdiction over kidnapping to the United States Bureau of Investigation (BOI) within the Department of Justice, that authority applied only if the kidnap victim was transported across a state or international border. Unfortunately, the law as originally written failed to provide a practical trigger for BOI intervention in a case. In the absence of some clue dropped by the kidnappers, or the violation of some other federal statute by the suspects, such as the Dyer Act (1919) forbidding interstate transportation of stolen vehicles, the BOI lacked the authority to investigate. In the face of public demand for action, the legal barrier proved no bar to the Bureau’s ambitious and aggressive chief, John Edgar Hoover
Intelligent, well educated, and an efficient organizer of men and resources, Director Hoover was also an unsurpassed bureaucratic politician, with a limitless capacity for work and a boundless interest in filing for future use the secrets of anyone who might prove useful or damaging to him or to the agency he led. Applying all these traits, and his instincts as natural born “hunter of men,” it had taken him just seven years to rise from law clerk in the Justice Department to head of a scandal-ridden bureau in 1924 at the age of 29. [1]
Hoover wasted no time in reshaping the bureau to fit his vision of a thoroughly professional and ostensibly incorruptible federal investigative agency. His administrative and hiring reforms, his reliance on scientific investigation, and other initiatives addressed an array of compatible goals, among them (1) enhancing dramatically the bureau’s ability to solve federal crimes within its jurisdiction, (2) securing support among the public and public office holders for its growth in responsibilities, budget, and reputation, and (3) ensuring his own indispensability to the nation, particularly the President, no matter his political party.
Hoover placed great reliance on science to catch criminals. The BOI’s collection of fingerprint records grew from 800,000 cards in 1924 to more than four million records ten years later. By 1934, over 7,200 participating local enforcement officials and agencies contributed 2,500 files every day. In addition, in late 1932 Hoover began to phase out the ad hoc contracting of crime lab services by creating the BOI’s own Technical Laboratory. This unit studied “problems of ballistics, microphotography, and forensic chemistry and the examination of questioned documents involving analysis of handwriting, erasures and paper textures.” Any evidence uncovered by agents in the field and requiring expert examination was forwarded to the technical laboratory. If the trial of a suspect turned upon expert opinion regarding forensic evidence, a U.S. Attorney might opt to have outside forensic experts weigh in. Any conflicting opinion might sink the government’s case, no matter how convinced Hoover was that his agents had caught their man.[2]
Hoover made great efforts to build cooperation between the bureau and state and local law enforcement agencies and officials, albeit on his terms. Perhaps the most obvious carrot offered was access to the DOI’s fingerprint files. The local agencies that contributed fingerprints received access to the bureau’s monthly bulletin including lists of names, aliases, descriptions, and other information on wanted fugitives.[3] In speeches around the country, to police chiefs, identification experts, and bar associations, Hoover urged local sheriffs, police chiefs, and prosecuting attorneys to cooperate with the Bureau in fighting a crime wave he compared to a “prairie fire” sweeping the nation.[4]
Out in the field, cooperation was easier said than done. In order to secure and maximize cooperation, Bureau agents might remain in the background, at least at first, hiding their involvement from the criminals they hoped to trap. By staying in the shadows, they allowed local lawmen to take the limelight, thus decreasing resentments and increasing amiable cooperation. But secretiveness also enabled any jealous local authorities to more easily ignore their publicly invisible partners. The June Robles kidnapping (1934) offers a case example of the difficulty in establishing and maintaining a true partnership among the multitude of law enforcement bodies supposedly seeking shared goals, in this case the girl’s safe return and the meting out of justice to her captors.
The mass media offered another challenge to the fulfillment of the Bureau’s mission. In the spring of 1934, the public’s fascination with its “Public Enemies,” especially bandits, was at its height. Lurid headlines sold newspapers, whatever the facts. Hollywood films glorifying celebrity criminals sold tickets. They turned bloody exploits into adventure and lives of champagne, room service, and sexy molls into romance. Hoover’s special agents had not yet emerged as popular heroes. [5] In the absence of a well-oiled public relations office, the BOI was sometimes behind the curve, responding to and seeking to counter unfavorable or fiction-laden newspaper headlines rather than generating favorable press. Even more damaging could be the press’s release of any closely guarded information indicating the law was closing in on their suspects. Such leaks might prompt kidnappers to kill their captive and flee. Initially taken unawares when the June Robles kidnapping story broke with a special edition of Tucson’s newspaper, Hoover got a handle on coverage by personally making himself available to wire service and other reporters with large audiences. Feeling the heat from their boss when newspapers carried negative, misleading or sensitive stories, the Special Agents in Charge did their best to guide the press back to controlled accounts casting the government men as doing their job, investigating all leads, with success an inevitable conclusion. If the special agents were not yet demi-gods and idols, kidnappers were certainly cast as the worst of villains, the most vile public enemies. Marked down in the press as “baby snatchers,” even if a child well past toddler stage, the kidnappers could expect little, if any, practical help from citizens, and that, if any, only from their very closest associates.
[1] Books about J. Edgar Hoover and his controversial half-century leadership of the FBI fill shelves, and range from hagiographic to damning. Perhaps the most sympathetic biography is Hoover’s FBI: The Inside Story by Hoover’s Trusted Lieutenant (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1995), by Cartha D. “Deke” DeLoach a senior official during the last decades of the Hoover era. DeLoach successfully, I believe, lays to rest the unsubstantiated claims that Hoover was a cross-dressing homosexual but is less successful in dealing with Hoover’s secret files. Richard Gird Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: The Free Press, 1987), and The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition (Bantam paperback, NY, 1990) expose Hoover’s extreme interest in secret information on politicians and celebrities. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (WW. Norton & Co., NY, 1991; paperback edition 2001) is decidedly unfriendly to the Director. As Publisher’s Weekly put it, “It is hard to imagine another portrait of Hoover that could surpass this one for detail, depth and sheer vitriol.” For Hoover’s particular set of talents and his leadership of the Bureau during the “Public Enemies” era, I have also relied upon Bryan Burrough, Public Enemies (Penguin, NY, 2004; p bed 2009), and Claire Bond Potter, War on Crime: Bandits, G-Men, and the Politics of Mass Culture, Rutgers Univ. Press, NJ, 1998). The phrase “hunter of men” is from Gentry, 69.
[2] John Edgar Hoover, “The Work of the Division of Investigation, United States Department of Justice,” Tenn. L. Rev., XII:3, April 1935, 149-157.
[3] John Edgar Hoover, “The Work of the Division of Investigation, United States Department of Justice,” Tenn. L. Rev., XII:3, April 1935, 149-157.
[4] John Edgar Hoover, “Local Law Enforcement in Relation to National Crime, Address of J. Edgar Hoover… before the Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association of Oklahoma, at Tulsa, Oklahoma, January 13, 1936.”
[5] Warner’s Brothers’ corrective film, “G Men,” starring tough guy James Cagney as an incorruptible federal agent, was a year away from release. “Junior G-Men” had not yet been invented. Hoover personally responded to reporters’ calls about the Kansas City Massacre. See Burrough, Public Enemies, 58; Potter, War on Crime, 136.
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01.04.11
Posted in The War Begins at 6:47 pm by Administrator
By the 1930s, kidnappings in the United States were commonplace, and the crime “had become a profession.” The police chief of St. Louis, the national epicenter of the gangster “snatch racket,” advised Congress that he investigated 282 cases extending into 21 states within the space of a year. Police chiefs in 501 cities reported to Congress in 1931 that 279 kidnappings had taken place, a fraction of the estimated total. Only 69 persons had been convicted, out of the 2,000 persons thought to be involved in the “snatch,” transportation, or sequestration of the victims. Ransoms paid ran from $1,500 to $125,000. Kidnapping had truly “assumed the proportions of big business.” Whatever the numbers, said the Denver police chief, kidnapping was “increasing tremendously… throughout the country.” “Unless something drastic is done,” the Jacksonville chief asserted, “it will be unsafe for any wealthy man to venture about freely.” The police chief might have included a wealthy parent’s children.[i]
In response, in December, 1931, Senator Roscoe C. Patterson and Congressman John J. Cochran of Missouri introduced bills making the interstate transportation of kidnap victims a federal crime. Opponents, including the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, viewed the proposed new federal authority as a usurpation of powers constitutionally delegated to the states. The bills died, but the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh Jr., son of Lucky Lindy, arguably the most famous American in the world, changed everything.[ii] Although there was no gainsaying that the bills resubmitted by the Missourians and ultimately passed by Congress represented an “opening wedge” in the federal encroachment upon traditionally state-level law enforcement, it was equally true that strict adherence to tradition in kidnapping cases was failing the nation miserably. The game changer was a public enraged enough by the Lindbergh crime to demand that Congress do something drastic. They did, on June 17, 1932, passing the Lindbergh Law, which made the interstate or foreign transportation of any person “unlawfully seized, confined, inveigled, decoyed, kidnaped, abducted, or carried away by any means whatsoever and held for ransom or reward” punishable by imprisonment. All confederates in the commission of such a crime were to be subject to punishment under the Act. This law was supplemented in July, 1932, with an act punishing the use of the mail with intent to extort.[iii]
Even with the Lindbergh Law on the books, the criminal’s needs were met often enough that kidnapping remained popular among intelligent and hapless criminals alike as the Depression rolled on. No fewer than twenty-seven “major kidnappings” took place in 1933, more than double the number recorded for any previous year. Ransoms demanded ranged as high as $200,000. By the spring of 1934, “virtually all these cases were still unsolved.”[iv]
For more on the national crisis in the early 1930s, see the books cited below, Sullivan’s The Snatch Racket, Potter’s War on Crime, and Burrough’s Public Enemies, among other works.
[i] Edward Dean Sullivan,
The Snatch Racket, 241-243; Horace L. Bomar, Jr., “The Lindbergh Law,” 1 Law & Contemp. Probs. 435 (1933-1934); Fisher and McGuire, 653-654.
[ii] Bomar, 435-436
[iii] The act was amended in May, 1934, to create the presumption that interstate transportation of the victim had been carried out if the person was not released within seven days of the abduction. Until the law was thus amended, the law was silent on the matter, leaving room for the FBI to become involved in a case much sooner. Fisher and McGuire, 653-655, citing 47 Stat. (1932) as amended, 48 Stat. 781, 18. U.S.C.A. Sec. 408a (Supp. 1934); John Edgar Hoover, “The Work of the Division of Investigation, United States Department of Justice,” Tennessee Law Review 149 (April 1935).
[iv] Burrough, Public Enemies, 14, 194; Potter, War on Crime, 108-109; Arizona Daily Star, April 26, 1934.
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12.11.10
Posted in 1920s at 8:15 pm by Administrator
The kidnapping of Gill Jamieson by Myles Fukunaga is the subject of Chapter V in Edward Dean Sullivan’s The Snatch Racket (Vanguard Press, 1932). Fukunaga’s first ransom note looked like the work of what Sullivan called “a half-mad and flighty individual” [page 75]. He was certainly educated, given to pompous language, a touch of cruel humor, and the melodramatic flourish. The note began,
“The fates have decided so we have been given this privilege in writing you on this important matter. We presume you will be alarmed at first. Nevertheless we hope that you will get over this surprise soon and listen to the writers namely. What is it all about?
“Your son has been kidnapped for ransom!”
The letter included the usual ransom note talking points:
- Keep this a secret;
- Collect the ransom in unmarked bills of specified amounts and denominations;
- Follow my complex instructions for dropping off the ransom; and
- Obey all instructions.
Already by 1928 kidnappers had become wary of the new techniques “scientific investigation” used to trace ransom notes back to their authors. Fukunaga was determined not to allow his message to betray him. Given a choice between writing or typing the note, he judged the pen safer than the keyboard. Sullivan describes [page 84] Fukunaga’s handwriting in a later note as “carefully and erratically altered in each paragraph,” and he probably used the same style from the beginning. Jamieson’s father was to return all ransom notes and he was ordered not to take samples of the writing. Although this command was unenforceable, the kidnapper expressed “no fear.” He felt safe enough in “avoid[ing] the tell-tale typewriter.”
Fukunaga remained free for about three months, issuing occasional messages dripping with cruel references to his bludgeoned victim and misguided notions of intellectual superiority. Ultimately little Gil’s abductor-murderer tripped up by spending ransom bills with serial numbers shared with every merchant in Honolulu. This first break led police to his parents’ home, and to their son’s room, where the lawmen found handwriting that, well, looked like some of the kidnapper’s. Fukunaga was soon spotted, arrested, tried, and convicted. Appeals took some time, and not until November 29, 1929 did he hang.
In the next post, the extent of the snatch racket crime wave in the years immediately before the FBI’s involvement.
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12.04.10
Posted in 1920s at 9:34 pm by Administrator
Racketeers may have been responsible for turning kidnapping into a “snatch racket,” but they were not alone in profiting in the advantages enjoyed by kidnappers. Some revenge-seekers, thrill junkies, and psychopathic killers may have asked for a ransom, but their base motives could put the kidnap victim at greater risk than the prisoners of cautious criminal “businessmen.” In these cases, it seemed, children were especially vulnerable. The infant Blakely Coughlin (abducted in 1920), 5-year-old Giuseppi Verotta (1921), 14-year-old Robert “Bobby” Franks (killed by Leopold and Loeb in 1924), Marion Parker (1927), Grace Budd (1928), and Gill Jamieson (1929) were among the kidnapped children who never returned to their parents. By contrast, five-year-old Jackie Thompson, the first child snatched by an organized gang, was released after payment of $17,000 and an $8,000 note. All of these abductions and murders were front page news throughout America. The public was made aware of the most awful details, such as the dismemberment and disembowelment of the Parker girl.
The kidnap murders of Blakely Coughlin (1920), the son of a wealthy Pennsylvania family and Giuseppi Verotta (1921), the son of an Italian pushcart merchant in New York City, are both briefly described in Ernest K. Alix, Ransom Kidnapping in America 1874-1974 (So. Illinois University Press, 1978), pages 38-43. The Verotta murder, allegedly the first committed because a ransom was not paid, marked a renewal of the “Black Hand” kidnapping wave that took place earlier in the century. Among other reasons, the case is notable for spurring a New York congressman to introduce a bill making the interstate transportation of a kidnapped child a federal crime. The bill died in committee, and it would take an especially notorious crime to prod Congress to act.
The kidnap-murder of Bobby Franks (1924) by Nathan F. Leopold and Richard A. Loeb, the so-called “Crime of the Century,” is the subject of numerous books, as well as dramatic productions on stage, movie houses, and television screens. Among the books currently in print are:
- Higdon, Hal. Leopold and Loeb: The Crime of the Century (University of Illinois Press, 1999; originally published in 1975)
- John Theodore, Evil Summer: Babe Leopold, Dickie Loeb, and the Kidnap-Murder of Bobby Franks (So. Illinois Univ. Press, 2007)
- Baatz, Simon. For the Thrill of It: Leopold, Loeb and the Murder that Shocked Chicago (HarperCollins, 2008).
Also of interest is Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Life Plus 99 Years (1958, reprinted by Greenwood Press, 1974, out of print).
Websites include:
Both sites include contemporary texts, original material, and extensive bibliographies.
One of the lucky ones was Virginia Jo Frazier (1927), returned after the demanded ransom of $3,333 was paid. (See Alix, Ransom Kidnapping, pages 49-50.) Marion Parker (1927) was not so fortunate. Her kidnapping, in fact, resulted in a particularly gruesome murder and mutilation, some of which took place before the killing occurred. William Edward Hickman, only seven years older than his 12-year-old victim, pleaded insanity, but neither the jury (which deliberated just 36 minutes) nor the appellate jurists bought it. Hickman was the first person executed as a result of a ransom kidnapping, according to Alix (Ransom Kidnapping, pages 50-55). He had demanded only $1,500, but never intended to return her alive.
The kidnapping, brutal slaying, untested insanity plea, and lurid press coverage are the subject of considerable attention on the Internet. Perhaps the best place to start, because of its links to numerous other websites, is, of all places, a site devoted to Edgar Rice Burroughs. “Volume 1767” of Bill and Sue-On Hillman’s ERBzine, at http://www.erbzine.com/mag17/1767.html , begins with Burrough’s coverage of the Hickman trial in thirteen columns written in 1928 for the Los Angeles Examiner, but also contains documents, photos, and other memorabilia provided to the Hillman’s by a nephew of Hickman. Other websites include a look at Ayn Rand’s take on Hickman (at http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm ) and lyrics to two variants of The Ballad of Marion Parker (at http://michaelprescott.net/hickman.htm ).
The case is also the subject of Michael Newton’s Stolen Away: The True Story Of California’s Most Shocking Kidnap-Murder (Pocket Books, 2000).
However frightening to society Hickman’s crime was, it was soon overshadowed by the misdeeds of Albert Fish, a sadistic, masochistic, rapist-cannibal-killer of unsurpassed in depravity. He may have killed three victims, or five, fifteen, one hundred, or, by one guess, four hundred. One that Fish certainly killed was ten-year-old Grace Budd of Manhattan, kidnapped in 1928. The crime remained unsolved until five years later, when Fish sent a letter to Grace’s mother, admitting to feasting on the girl. This arrogance led to his arrest, trial, conviction, and execution. No ransom was ever demanded, but the horrific circumstances of the crime were widely published.
The most thorough published account is Harold Schechter’s Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer! (Pocket Books, 1998). Unsurprisingly, it remains a steady seller on Amazon.com more than a decade after its release. Web pages devoted to the flesh-eating Fish include Dead Men Do Tell Tales (http://www.prairieghosts.com/fish.html)
Gill Jamieson (1928) may not have been the last child kidnapped and murdered during the Roaring Twenties, but his abductor-killer, Myles Y. Fukunaga, may have been the last to be executed before the decade was out. Ten-year-old Gill was the son of a Honolulu banker; his killer, nine years older, was a hotel worker who blamed the senior Jamieson for his parent’s eviction from their rented home. After abducting the boy, Fukunaga beat him with a steel chisel and then strangled him to death. Only then did he ask for a $10,000 ransom. The parents paid $4,000 in marked bills to a masked but unwary Fukunaga, who was soon arrested. Shortly after his arrest, Fukunaga reportedly admitted to closely following the crimes of Leopold, Loeb, and Hickman. He was executed in November, 1929.
The Jamieson kidnap-murder has inspired comparatively little interest outside of Hawaii. The briefest of Wikipedia articles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myles_Fukunaga) does have a link to an interesting document, the decision of the US Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissing his appeal. (http://www.loislaw.com/advsrny/doclink.htp?alias=F9CASE&cite=33+F.2d+396).
The high profile kidnappings of the Twenties shared little similarity other than the childhood of the victims. Not all were ransom cases. Not all the kidnappers who demanded ransom even waited to make an exchange before killing their victims. After reportedly closely following the brief criminal “careers” of Leopold, Loeb, and Hickman, Fukunaga apparently determined to kill his captive straight away, “because kidnapping never works unless you do.” Murderous expressions like these, and even more the unthinkable brutality of men like Hickman (Fish was not yet discovered), were guaranteed to put dread into any parent’s heart, no matter how reassuring a kidnapper’s ransom note might be.
Speculation that the missing Italian American child Giuseppi Verotta had been transported from New York to New Jersey had caused a brief flurry of activity to involve the federal government in child kidnap cases. But most notorious child snatch cases during the rest of the decade did not involve interstate transportation. Despite the fact that the abduction of businessmen was on the upswing at this time, crimes that often did involve interstate transportation, the idea of bringing the crime within the federal criminal code remained largely dormant… until the Lindbergh baby disappeared.
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11.24.10
Posted in 1920s at 3:30 pm by Administrator
Kidnapping is an ancient crime, mentioned in the Bible, but for millennia largely associated with war, piracy, and slavery. False imprisonment was recognized as a felony under English common law in the early 13th century but soon fell into the class of “minor felony.” While the United States “without doubt” experienced hundreds of cases before the 1920s, the instances were isolated and ransom was rarely the motive. With rare exception, little attention was paid beyond the place the crime was committed. ( For discussions of the origins and development of kidnapping and kidnapping law, see Hugh A. Fisher and Matthew F. McGuire, “Kidnapping and the So-called Lindbergh Law,” 12 N.Y.U. L.Q. Review 646 (1934-1935); K. A. Aickin, “Kidnapping at Common Law,” 1 Res Judicatae 130 (1935-1938), both at www.Heinonline.org.)
On July 1, 1874, four-year-old Charles Ross, the son of a prominent citizen of Germantown, Pennsylvania, was abducted by two men who had previously given him and his older brother candy. The parents received twenty-three separate ransom notes during the next 130 days, all demanding a ransom of $20,000. A burglar, wounded in the course of his capture, confessed to the kidnapping but died before giving up the location of the boy or his body. The father, Christian Ross, published his account of the affair and spent decades and tens of thousands attempting to find his son or what happened to him. Imposters were plentiful. ( See Fisher and McGuire, 649-650. See also Christian K. Ross, The Father’s Story of Charley Ross the Kidnapped Child, online athttp://www.archive.org/stream/fathersstoryofch00rossrich#page/n9/mode/2up)
Not until 1900 did another child snatching, the abduction of 16-year-old Edward Cudahy, attract national attention. The kidnapper threatened to blind him with acid unless a $25,000 ransom was paid. The boy’s father, a wealthy meat-packer, paid the price and the boy was returned. Pat Crowe was eventually identified as the kidnapper and brought to trial in 1905. Because Nebraska had no kidnapping law, he was tried for robbery. The jury acquitted Crowe, who then traded upon his notoriety on the lecture circuit. He died in a rooming house in 1938.(see Fisher and McGuire, 650; “Cudahy Kidnapping, Nebraska Government Website, http://www.nebraskahistory.org/publish/publicat/timeline/cudahy_kidnapping.htm
What had been a rare and isolated crime having only local effect was transformed during the “Roaring Twenties” into a wave of kidnappings that shocked, outraged, and fascinated the nation. The “Roaring Twenties” in the next post.
Essential to an understanding of ransom kidnappings from the Ross case forward is the academic survey, Ransom Kidnapping in America, 1874-1974: The Creation of a Capital Crime, by Ernest Kahlar Alix (So. Illinois Univ. Press, 1978).
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