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

to react. The kidnappers had carried out their operation without a flaw.

And away they want, the kidnappers and their captive. Bohn had no way of knowing that the note left with the chauffeur demanded $35,000 ransom. He also did not know—and surely would not have cared—that he had just become the first ransom-kidnapping victim since the Lindbergh Law took effect with President Hoover’s signature.

His captors drove for about an hour, then stopped in a building that smelled like a garage. For another three hours, Bohn sat in the car, wondering what his fate would be. Were the men holding him waiting for confederates to arrive? Making plans on the fly? Finally, a man yanked him from the car and steered him, still blindfolded, for what he estimated to be two hundred feet. Then it was into a building—a house, Bohn sensed—and down some steps. Bohn assumed he was in a basement.

He was guided a few feet, then told he could sit. He did, on a bed. He heard the voices of several men, then the voice of a woman. A man said he would get plenty of food and cigarettes and wouldn’t be mistreated if his father cooperated.

Almost immediately after Haskell was seized, the Bohn family began to get letters from the kidnappers. In demanding full cooperation, they alluded darkly to the murder of Charles Lindbergh’s baby. But Gebhard Bohn did not panic. He had the emotional support of his brother, William, who rushed from his home in Los Angeles to St. Paul to aid in negotiations.

The St. Paul police announced that they would not interfere. The stance of the police was not surprising in view of how government and law enforcement functioned—or didn’t—in St. Paul.

Meanwhile, Haskell Bohn was in a twilight world. For much of the daytime in the basement, his eyes were taped shut. But when the tape was being changed, he caught glimpses of the men and the woman who were holding him. He thought he’d be able to identify them if he got the chance.

His jailers kept their promise. He was treated humanely. A woman cooked his meals; the food wasn’t bad. But he wanted to go back to his real life. He wanted to eat food cooked in his own home, wanted to shower and change clothes.

At night, the tape was taken off, so he could stare into the dark before falling asleep. He welcomed the sleep; it brought freedom from the fear and monotony he had endured for…how many days?

On the evening of Wednesday, July 6, his eyes were bandaged and taped shut anew. He was told to stand up. He dared to hope.

Then up the steps, out the door into the night, and he was lying on the floor of a car again. The engine turned over, and the car moved. Bohn welcomed the sensation.

He guessed that an hour went by before the car stopped. He was pulled out of the car, not too roughly, and the tape and bandages were removed. The car sped off, and he was alone.

It was a clear, blue-black night, pleasantly warm. The sky was full of stars. He thought he smelled water, like a lake. But where was he? On a dirt road out in the country. No lights.

He walked. Very soon, his legs were sore from lack of exercise, but he didn’t mind. He was free. After about a half hour, he saw the lights of a farmhouse. He knocked on the door. The farmer, Roy Bell, was surprised to see a well-dressed but disheveled young man who had obviously had a rough time. Happily, Roy Bell’s house had a telephone.

Before police officers came to take him home, Bohn learned that he had been freed near Medicine Lake, several miles west of Minneapolis. Later, he learned that the negotiations over his release had gone smoothly. The kidnappers had settled on a much smaller ransom. Some reports put the amount at $12,000, while others put it as low as $5,000. Perhaps the kidnappers were rank amateurs. Or maybe they were cold professionals, happy to cash in quickly, risking little and moving on to the next opportunity.

In fact, Haskell Bohn and his family had just been victimized by a man who was trying to bring a businesslike approach to kidnapping, a man who would soon be suspected of taking part in the Lindbergh crime. His name was Verne Sankey.

*As will be seen, the issue of the death penalty in the federal law would be argued and reargued over the years.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CRIMINAL AND FAMILY MAN

Verne Sankey lacked the swaggering corpulence and menace of Al Capone or the dashing good looks of the notorious bandit John Dillinger. Indeed, he was a short, bald, rather owlish-looking man. As far as we know, Sankey never killed anyone, although he was not allergic to gun smoke.

He was a family man, a loving husband and father. He was mild-mannered by gangster standards. While not an altogether honest man, he had a personal code of honor. His name may not be widely known in the twenty-first century, yet no history of crime in the 1930s is complete without his story.

Sankey was born in rural Iowa in 1891. When he was a boy, his family moved to Wilmot, South Dakota, where his father took up farming. As was the custom then, the father conscripted his three sons to work on the spread. For a time, Sankey’s two older brothers were content with their fate or at least resigned to it.

But dawn-to-dusk toil in the fields and barn with cows and chickens for company held no appeal for Sankey. He yearned for big money and places to spend it. So he bade farewell to family and farm when he was nineteen and found work on a railroad. He worked hard, becoming an engineer after stints as a watchman and fireman. While life on the rails had its sweat and tedium, Sankey got to see much of the Upper Midwest and stretches of