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

of a family with friends in the highest of places, he was no longer a minor-league kidnapper. Plus, he had traded gunfire with cops. If he were cornered again, the cops might exercise their own swift justice.

A small army of cops and sheriff’s deputies was inching toward Sankey’s ranch. “Inching” was the right word: a fierce blizzard had swept into the Dakota plains, forcing Sankey’s hunters to abandon cars and make their way to the ranch on snowshoes as they navigated drifts up to four feet high.

On the night of March 6, the exhausted lawmen approached the area of Sankey’s spread. To their pleasant surprise, they found Youngberg at the farm of one of Sankey’s neighbors, where he was helping to butcher a steer. He surrendered meekly.

But there was no one at Sankey’s ranch. Sankey and Alcorn had not felt as safe there as Youngberg had, so after burying some of the ransom money on the spread, they had persuaded Sankey’s brother to drive them to the Twin Cities area. Sankey and Alcorn had outrun the blizzard and the law.

The FBI men whom Hoover had sent to Denver were not invited to join the party that stormed Sankey’s ranch and arrested Youngberg. Nor were they involved in Denver arrests in connection with the case. But having boasted falsely, shamelessly, of the “vital role” the FBI had played, Hoover decided to exaggerate even more.

“The bureau’s reputation of ‘always getting its man,’ regardless of obstacles, began to be demonstrated Wednesday in the countrywide manhunt now underway for the two other suspects, Verne Sankey and Gordon Elkhorn,” a bureau press release boasted.55 The comical misspelling of Alcorn’s name was repeated in some news accounts. But the mistake was minor compared to the absurd assertion that the FBI had a reputation of “always getting its man.”

Hoover had shown that he was willing, sometimes eager, to claim credit that rightly belonged to local law enforcement. And shrewd cynic that he was, he understood that many journalists of the day were far too willing to believe people in power.

Arthur Youngberg slashed his throat and wrists in jail in what may have been only a half-hearted suicide attempt. In any event, he survived. Soon, he was taken by train to Denver, where Charlie Boettcher identified him as one of his jailers. His ordeal still fresh in his mind, Charlie lunged at Youngberg and had to be pulled off him.

On March 9, police announced the discovery of Sankey’s car in the creek bed near the ranch. Brought to the ranch, Charlie identified the basement as his place of detention.

By this time, Youngberg was telling all he knew about the Boettcher kidnapping. Sankey and Alcorn had made their way to Chicago, where they hid out separately. For some two weeks, lawmen stationed themselves at the Sankey ranch, hoping Sankey and Alcorn might return. They waited in vain.

One is tempted to feel some compassion for Verne Sankey, husband and father. His wife was in jail, and there was scant hope they could ever be together again, scant hope that there would ever again be a Sankey family. Perhaps, in his heart of hearts, he wished he had kept working on the railroads. Maybe he wondered what might have happened if he had become a truly legitimate businessman when his bootlegging and rum-running days were over.

And gambler that he was, he must have realized he had overplayed his hand by kidnapping Charlie Boettcher. Yet no one ever accused Sankey of lacking nerve. Would he dare to try his luck again?

CHAPTER TWENTY

A BREWER IS TAKEN

St. Paul, Minnesota

Thursday, June 15, 1933

William Hamm Jr. was one of the wealthiest men in St. Paul. He was president of the Hamm Brewing Company, founded by his grandfather Theodore Hamm, a German immigrant, in 1865. When Theodore Hamm died in 1903, his son William assumed control. And when William died in 1931, his son, William Jr., took charge.

Not unlike the Anheuser and Busch families in St. Louis, the Hamm family was part of city society’s top tier, its members closely identified with St. Paul’s growth and civic life.

And like the Anheuser-Busch company in St. Louis, the Hamm company had survived Prohibition by selling soft drinks and food products. With the end of the “noble experiment,” the Hamm brewery was poised to prosper mightily, as it had invested in new equipment and repairs to help Americans quench their collective thirst.

Every weekday afternoon at 12:45, William Hamm Jr. walked the short distance from the brewery to his twenty-room redbrick mansion to have lunch. At thirty-nine and still a bachelor, Hamm might not have needed such a big house, but he was used to living large.

This Thursday, June 15, found the Upper Midwest in the grip of a heat wave. The temperature was in the high nineties, freakishly hot for Minnesota. Hamm was on his way home for lunch when a black sedan carrying three men pulled up beside him.

“You’re Mr. Hamm, aren’t you?” one of the men said as he engaged the brewer in a vigorous handshake.

Before Hamm could answer or even ponder why the car had stopped next to him, the men had alighted, seized and blindfolded him with a white hood, and shoved him into the car, forcing him to lie on the rear floor.

The brewery manager, William Dunn, was puzzled when Hamm didn’t return from lunch. Then he got a phone call. “We have kidnapped Mr. Hamm,” a voice said. “You will hear from us later.”

Hamm had caught only a glimpse of the kidnappers, but he thought he recognized Verne Sankey from wanted posters.

He felt something sticking in his ribs; he assumed it was a gun. Hamm guessed they had gone about thirty miles when the car stopped. He heard the engine of another car, heard men in that car talking to the men who had seized him.

His blindfold was pulled off. Several pieces of paper were waved in front of his face, then placed on the car floor. A pen