The Kidnap Years: Read online

  The glitter and glamour that lucky people partook of in the late 1920s would never touch the lives of Albert and Delia Budd. They knew that, and they did the best they could.

  What kind of parents were they? They were parents who loved their children and took them to church on Sunday. They raised a sturdy son, Eddie, who by the age of eighteen was eager for a good day’s pay for a hard day’s work.

  And until June 3, 1928, they were raising a lovely young girl who, by all appearances, would grow up to be a lovely woman. Albert and Delia Budd, who had never had much, had lost their priceless jewel.

  Then, just days after Grace vanished, came a tiny flicker of hope.

  “I have Grace. She is safe and sound. She is happy in her new home and not at all homesick. I will see to it that Grace has proper schooling. She has been given an Angora cat and a pet canary. She calls the canary Bill…”42

  An Angora cat and a canary named Bill? A ten-year-old girl spirited away but not homesick in her new life? Some detectives thought the letter was from a crank. They were right. Nothing came of the letter, just as nothing came of various messages and phone tips right after Grace vanished.

  Over the next two and a half years, the patience of Detective William King was tested in ways so bizarre, they would have been funny had he not been engaged in a deadly serious investigation. A prison warden in Florida thought one of his recent inmates, an inveterate liar and con man who had once posed as a doctor and recruited young girls to pose as his daughters, might be the man King was looking for. Delia Budd identified the new suspect as the beast who had taken her daughter. That was enough for a grand jury to indict him.

  Then a seemingly better suspect was dragged into the investigation, this one the estranged husband of a bitter wife who claimed in September 1930 that she had seen him in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, with a lovely little girl on June 3, 1928, the very Sunday that Grace Budd had walked out of her parents’ lives.

  But why had she waited so long to come forward? “I was sick at the time,” she explained. “By the time I got better, I had forgotten. Then something made me remember…”

  Delia Budd identified him with the same certainty she had shown with the Florida ex-con. He, too, was indicted and even went to trial—for one day. Then the judge saw that the evidence wasn’t just flimsy. Given Delia Budd’s unreliability, it was virtually nonexistent.

  The judge threw out the case. The indictment against the Florida ex-con was also dismissed. The investigation was back where it had started.

  William King had joined the police force in 1907, left to fight in the Great War, then rejoined the department in 1926. He had been around long enough to see the awful things that people could do to one another. And he had built a reputation as an investigator with bottomless patience, an iron resolve, really. It would be tested as never before, but he would never lose it.

  *It would be a furnace-like summer. On one day alone, July 6, six New Yorkers died from the heat, the New York Times reported.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  ANOTHER DOCTOR TAKEN

  Peoria, Illinois

  Monday, March 14, 1932

  Had the Lindbergh case not been dominating the news that spring, a kidnapping in Peoria, Illinois, might have gotten more attention.

  On this Monday night, Dr. James W. Parker was kidnapped from the driveway at his home in Peoria while he was about to drive to his club. Or perhaps he was seized while he was arriving home from his club. Contemporary news reports differed on that point.

  What is known is that the doctor’s wife, Donna, who was also a physician, got a telephone call late that night from a man who introduced himself as “Double X.” The caller told her that her husband wouldn’t be coming home on this night but that she would hear from him in the morning. His car could be found near a city golf course, Double X said. Donna Parker was warned not to contact the police.

  It is also known that Dr. James W. Parker became an unwilling passenger in his own car after it was commandeered by two men. We can also be sure that Dr. Parker hoped a quick agreement with his captors would bring his early release. But that was not to be; his ordeal would last eighteen days.

  In the first minutes, Parker was taken to a remote location in Peoria where he was blindfolded and transferred to another car—one that had followed the doctor’s own, it would be revealed later. Then it was on to a farmhouse near Manito, in Mason County, about thirty miles from Peoria.

  At the time Donna Parker was talking on the phone to Double X, an alert security guard at the Pere Marquette Hotel in Peoria saw something suspicious. The guard, Edward Ohl, saw a man enter a phone booth in the hotel lobby while another man stood outside as though he was a lookout. The man in the phone booth, it would be learned, was James W. Betson, a former police officer, though that description hardly does justice to his resume. The apparent lookout was Arlo Stoops, who had a brother named Raymond, who had leased the farmhouse that became James Parker’s new quarters.

  Parker was told he would be well treated. He was also told to write letters to relatives and friends saying that his captors wanted $50,000, an enormous sum for the Parkers, who were well off but not wealthy.

  In captivity, Parker was guarded by the Stoops brothers and several other men who took turns watching over him. Days went by, and Parker had no idea how long he would be held.

  As would be revealed later, negotiations were going on. Soon, the abductors reduced their demand to $10,000—a sign that they knew their negotiating position was poor, or that they were panicking, or both.

  The kidnappers were right to be nervous, for the law was in fact closing in.

  On the night of Friday, April 1, the captive was bundled into a car, blindfolded, taken for a lengthy ride, and finally tossed out of the vehicle, unharmed. Almost at once, two men were arrested and charged with being part of the plot. Soon afterward, a third man was arrested.

  Not long after Dr. Parker’s release, it was reported that his wife and other relatives had decided immediately after the kidnapping to seek the help of the Chicago Secret Six, a crime-fighting organization created by prominent businessmen. Officially, it was the Citizens’ Committee for the Prevention and Punishment of Crime. Since it was reputed to have half a dozen members, a reporter dubbed it “the Secret Six.” And so it became in Chicago lore.

  The Secret Six was created in 1930 by a blend of civic pride and self-interest. Robert Isham Randolph, a consulting engineer who was one of the group’s organizers, was president of the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce. He and other prominent business figures were looking forward to the world’s fair to be held in the Windy City in 1933.

  With Chicago’s reputation as a gangland hub well established and with some police officials and rank-and-file cops believed to be corrupt, the businessmen were desperate to avoid further blemishes on the city’s image. The memory of the St. Valentine’s Day massacre of 1929, in which seven gangsters were shot to death in a garage, was still fresh.

  Enter Alexander Jamie, chief investigator for the Prohibition-enforcement unit of the Department of Justice and the brother-in-law of Eliot Ness of “the Untouchables” fame. Jamie became the chief investigator for the Secret Six, which got funding from the group’s wealthy founders.

  A shrewd and seasoned investigator, Jamie knew that information was everything, and he did not flinch at using unconventional methods to obtain it. Thus, the Secret Six opened its own speakeasy in the Chicago suburb of Cicero to eavesdrop on liquor-fueled underworld gossip.

  Right after Dr. Parker was abducted, operatives of the Secret Six, along with the Illinois State Police and Peoria police, zeroed in on the three men who would become the case’s major defendants: Joseph H. Pursifull, James W. Betson, and Claude “Red” Evans. Evans had already done serious prison time and had been jailed yet again, on a safe-cracking charge, days after Dr. Parker was released.

  But Pursifull and Betson were the ones with the truly remarkable backgrounds. Pursifull was a Peoria lawye
r and former candidate for state’s attorney. An ex-Sunday school teacher, he had written a book dispensing advice on love and marriage. As for Betson, he was described in the press as a former detective and Ku Klux Klan leader who had once aspired to be Peoria’s mayor. He was arrested in the campaign headquarters of the notoriously corrupt Lennington “Len” Small, a former Illinois governor who was trying (unsuccessfully, it would turn out) to win that office once again in 1932.

  Eventually, nine men and one woman were implicated in the abduction of James Parker. Besides Pursifull, Betson, and Evans, they included Raymond Stoops; his wife, Bessie; their son, Dean; and Raymond’s brother, Arlo, a Peoria bond salesman. Raymond and Bessie Stoops owned the farmhouse in the hamlet of Banner, fifty miles south of Peoria, where Parker had been held.

  Eight defendants were convicted. Betson, Evans, and two other men considered the leaders of the kidnapping ring got twenty-five years in prison. Other defendants got shorter sentences, including Pursifull, identified as a mere go-between, who got five years. (Bessie Stoops, her son, and a worker on their farm were acquitted.)

  Law enforcement officials in Illinois were pleased that the James Parker kidnapping case was one in which the victim’s family had cooperated fully—unlike, say, the kidnapping of dressmaker Nell Donnelly, in which gangsters were conscripted to act as police officers. The law enforcement people were saying, in effect, “You should trust us more than you trust kidnappers and other criminals.”

  Perhaps the lawmen were thinking of Nell Donnelly, the wealthy dressmaker who had been kidnapped and freed with the help of gangsters while the police remained on the sidelines. Or perhaps they were thinking of the Lindbergh case. Surely, they knew that Lindbergh had reached out to gangsters—to no avail, it appeared.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  HOPE AND HEARTBREAK

  New York City

  Saturday, April 2, 1932

  His time had come. John F. Condon, retired educator, was embarking on the greatest adventure of his life. It was no secret to anyone who knew him that he loved the limelight. Now, he was basking in it, and he might be able to render a great service as well.

  They waited in Condon’s home: Condon himself, Charles Lindbergh, and Lindbergh’s attorney, Henry Breckinridge. Around eight in the evening, the doorbell rang. A note had been left by a cab driver, who walked away into the dark, forever unidentified. The note instructed Condon to go to a greenhouse on East Tremont Avenue and look for a message on a table outside the entrance.

  Lindbergh drove as he and Condon left the house in Al Reich’s car. Reich’s car had been used for the first meeting, and Lindbergh and Condon speculated that the kidnapper might be wary if another vehicle appeared. On the way, Condon glanced over just as Lindbergh’s lapel was open for a moment. The famous flyer was carrying a pistol in a shoulder holster.

  Lindbergh parked not far from the greenhouse. Condon got out, relieved that Lindbergh stayed in the car. He walked to the greenhouse, found the table, and saw the message, held down by a stone. It was too dark for him to read, so he took the message to the car.

  By the dashboard lights, Condon and Lindbergh read the message: “Cross the street and walk to the next corner and follow Whittemore Ave,” it began.* It ordered Condon to come alone and bring the ransom money.

  Lindbergh wanted to accompany Condon, but Condon persuaded him to stay in the car. The two men decided to defy the kidnapper up to a point: Condon would not give the kidnapper the money until after they had met.

  In the cold, Condon walked the route specified by Cemetery John. The path took him along the edge of St. Raymond’s Cemetery. It was very dark, and Condon felt vulnerable. Would the kidnapper be furious that Condon didn’t have the money with him? On the other hand, not having the money might be good, because the kidnapper would have to—

  “Ay, Doctor!” The shout was in a heavily accented voice. It came from the dark, among the tombstones. “Over here! Over here!”

  Condon found himself on a dirt road next to the cemetery with the man inside walking parallel to him. Then the man scaled a small fence and crouched behind a hedge. Condon approached him. Yes, it was Cemetery John. He asked Condon if he had brought the $70,000.

  Condon said the money was in a nearby car with Lindbergh. The exact words that were uttered next are forever unknown, but as Condon told the story, he complained to the kidnapper about the ransom being increased to $70,000 from the original $50,000.

  Whereupon, in Condon’s telling, the kidnapper said, “Well, I suppose that we will be satisfied to take the fifty thousand.”

  Cemetery John agreed to provide a note with directions to find the baby—but only after the money had been handed over. What’s more, the note was not to be read for six hours.

  Condon returned to the car, told Lindbergh what had happened, and got the entire $70,000, just in case the man in the cemetery changed his mind about accepting only $50,000. Crucially, the $50,000 was packed in a wooden box, while the remaining $20,000 was in a separate packet.

  Condon went back to the hedge where he’d last seen Cemetery John and waited in the dark. After thirteen minutes, according to Condon’s watch, John reappeared. Condon handed over the box with the $50,000 and got an envelope in return.

  Then Cemetery John vanished among the graves, and Condon felt a moment of pride that he had saved Lindbergh the $20,000 in the separate packet.

  (The FBI squad assigned by Hoover to keep tabs on the Lindbergh case had learned in advance that a ransom was to be paid on the night of April 2. Though some of its members were eager to follow Condon and stake out the drop site, Hoover had instructed his agents that under no circumstances should they intervene until the child was safely recovered.)43

  In the car, Lindbergh was cautious and resisted the impulse to tear open the envelope. If John had specified that the note inside was not to be read for six hours, then so be it. Lindbergh feared that the kidnappers—if indeed there was more than one—might be watching his every move, even in the dark.

  Lindbergh intended to drive Condon home with the envelope still sealed. But within minutes, the aviator who had seemed to have ice water for blood could wait no longer. So Condon told him to drive to a small house, vacant for the time being, that he owned about a mile from St. Raymond’s Cemetery.

  With privacy guaranteed, they opened the envelope. The note inside lacked the familiar signature symbol the kidnapper had been using, but the handwriting was the same. The note said the child was being cared for by two “innosent” persons on the twenty-eight foot “Boad Nelly” located “between Horseneck Beach and Gay Head near Elizabeth Island.”44 The allusion was apparently to the island of Martha’s Vineyard.

  Somewhat surprisingly, the serial numbers of all the bills in the ransom had been recorded only after Frank J. Wilson, a special agent in the intelligence unit of the Internal Revenue Service, discovered that that little detail had been overlooked. Recording the numbers was no small task in those pre-Xerox days, but it was vital.

  The $50,000 portion of the ransom was in twenties, tens, and fives, with a good portion of the money in gold notes. While still legal tender, gold notes were being withdrawn from circulation. Increasingly, they attracted attention when used for everyday transactions.

  And the Treasury Department had been especially clever with the $20,000 in the separate packet. That money was in the form of four hundred gold certificates of $50 each. The gold fifties were much less common than the twenties, tens, and fives and were sure to attract the attention of clerks or bank tellers and be the easiest to trace should the kidnapper or kidnappers spend them.

  Of course, because Condon had talked Cemetery John out of taking the extra $20,000, the ploy with the gold fifties had been spoiled. It seemed that no one in the know had bothered to tell Condon about it. He learned of it just after the cemetery rendezvous as he boasted to an IRS agent about saving Lindbergh some money.

  Desperate to recover his son, Lindbergh arranged to borrow a seapl
ane from the navy. In the middle of the night, he drove to an airport in Connecticut. He was accompanied by Breckinridge, a man from the IRS, Reich, and Condon. It was agreed that Reich would stay on the ground and drive Lindbergh’s car to an airport on Long Island so he could pick up the searchers when they landed. (Why was Condon along? Perhaps Lindbergh thought an extra set of eyes couldn’t hurt, even the eyes of an old man. Anyhow, Condon had already shown his ability to insinuate himself into just about any situation.)

  By dawn’s early light, Lindbergh took the navy plane into the air. It flew over Cape Cod and circled Martha’s Vineyard, sometimes dipping to within a few feet of fishing boats. After several hours, Lindbergh landed near Cuttyhunk Island and taxied to a dock—where a gaggle of reporters awaited. Lindbergh and his companions pushed their way through the scrum, had lunch, and took off again. They searched until dark, seeing nothing that looked like a twenty-eight-foot boat named Nelly. Lindbergh flew the plane to Long Island, where Reich met them and drove the party to New York City. Then a tired Lindbergh drove to his home.

  The next morning, Lindbergh took off again, this time in a plane of his own and alone. He flew over the water off New England, then as far south as Virginia, looking for a boat named Nelly. He must have been as tired as he’d been while flying across the Atlantic. But this time, there was no prize. He returned to his home without his son or any clue where he might be.

  *Cahill, Robert T. Jr. Hauptmann’s Ladder, a Step-by-Step Analysis of the Lindbergh Kidnapping. (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2014), 77.