The Kidnap Years: by David Stout (popular books of all time TXT) 📗

prison for a long stretch, a prospect that probably didn’t scare him. He had been committing crimes since dropping out of school after the sixth grade and had done several stretches behind bars. His misdeeds consisted mostly of robbery and theft.

Maybe he even looked forward to resuming the prison life he was used to. He could be sure of three square meals a day, a routine he had never enjoyed in his life outside.

Arthur Gooch was born on January 4, 1908. His father, James, was a member of the Muscogee-Creek tribe and his mother, Adella, was illiterate. James Gooch died when Arthur was eight, and Adella struggled to earn money as a laundress and pecan picker. Three of her seven children died. Eventually, the household included her widowed brother and his son and two daughters. Arthur became a petty thief early on, sometimes to bring money home to his mother.

Oklahoma may have suffered more than any other state from the Depression and Dust Bowl. The unemployment rate in the state reached twenty-nine percent, wheat prices collapsed, and many people were hungry much of the time.*

By his twenties, Arthur Gooch had married, fathered a son, and split with his wife, who tired of his stealing. But Gooch’s life path had been set. He continued to steal, shuttled in and out of jail, and when he was on the outside, was one of the first suspects the police looked for after a burglary or theft.

And so his life went until he broke out of jail in Holdenville and he and Ambrose Nix took two cops hostage in Paris, Texas, and drove into Oklahoma.

It is likely that Gooch did not understand, at least at first, the implications of crossing a state line. That act made him subject to the federal Lindbergh Law, which had recently been amended to provide for the death penalty if a jury so recommended. But a death sentence was not to be imposed if the kidnapped person or persons were released unharmed.

But one of the kidnapped cops had suffered a cut in the struggle with Gooch’s partner in crime, Ambrose Nix, which under the law made Gooch just as guilty of inflicting that injury.

When Gooch tried to plead guilty to the kidnapping charge, Federal Judge Robert Lee Williams wouldn’t let him.** The judge wanted to be able to impose the death penalty, which required a jury recommendation.

It is impossible to know what influenced the judge and jurors. Few people in our time can appreciate the crushing poverty and everyday hardships endured by Oklahomans of that time. Kidnappings were being committed with dismaying frequency. Arthur Gooch was a fourth-rate citizen who seemed incorrigible, though he was not the kind of monster the drafters of the Lindbergh Law had in mind.

Whatever the reason or reasons, the jury found Gooch guilty of kidnapping—not that there was any factual doubt—and recommended that he be put to death. Judge Williams was happy to oblige.

After pronouncing the sentence, the judge asked Gooch if he had anything to say.

“I think there have been worse crimes than mine, and I don’t see why I should hang,” Gooch said.188

Gooch had a limited intellect, but he had a point. However, Judge Williams, who had earned a reputation for being tough on repeat offenders, responded that other juries had been “cowardly” in declining to recommend the death penalty. He said that it was “no pleasure for me to sentence a man to die but when they roam about the country like a pack of mad dogs, killing and robbing and kidnapping, I am going to do it.”

Governor E. W. Marland of Oklahoma applauded the sentence, expressing the hope that it would help to “exterminate the kidnappers.” President Roosevelt declined to commute the sentence. His attorney general, Homer Cummings, praised the judge for doing his part in the “national battle against crime.”

Gooch’s appeals went nowhere, and he climbed the steps to the gallows on Friday, June 19, 1936. “It’s kind of funny—dying,” he said. “I think I know what it will be like. I’ll be standing there, and all of a sudden everything will be black, then there’ll be a light again. There’s got to be a light again—there’s got to be.”189

Just before the trap door was released, he offered farewell advice to his six-year-old boy: “Don’t get into any trouble, son.”190

Gooch’s hard luck persisted to the end. The executioner was used to throwing the switch on the electric chair, but he was unaccustomed to carrying out hangings, the federal method for executions at the time. He mistimed the trapdoor release, and Gooch slowly strangled, becoming the only kidnapper put to death under the Lindbergh Law who had not killed a victim.***

*I wish to express my gratitude to Leslie Tara Jones, whose 2010 thesis about Arthur Gooch and the Oklahoma of his era, was invaluable to me. Ms. Jones submitted her thesis for a master of arts degree in history from the University of Central Oklahoma.

**Williams helped to write the Constitution for Oklahoma. A Democrat, he was the state’s third governor, serving from 1915 to 1919. He was also the first chief justice of the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He was a federal judge for the Eastern District of Oklahoma from 1919 to 1937, then served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

***In modern times, five people have been executed under federal law for kidnappings in which the victim was killed, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Besides Gooch, they included John Henry Seadlund, executed for kidnapping and murdering Charles Ross.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

TUBBO AND TOUHY (ACT II)

Statesville, Illinois

Friday, October 9, 1942

There was never any doubt that Roger Touhy wasn’t cut out for a law-abiding life, even though he was the son of a policeman. Eight years into a ninety-nine-year sentence for the “kidnapping” of Jake “the Barber” Factor, Touhy knew he wasn’t cut out for life in prison either.

“I never made a good adjustment,” he recalled years later. “I tried to obey the rules and