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

for Jerome’s freedom, but his father was supposedly telling close friends that he had tricked the kidnappers into freeing the young man for no ransom at all.

Later, there would be speculation that the “kidnapping” of Factor’s son was a phony drama, meant to scare off the British, who might appear to be heartless by trying to extradite the father of a kidnapping victim.

As Friday night melted into Saturday and June yielded to July, Factor was plucked from his car while returning from a party he had given at a roadhouse just west of the Chicago suburb of Evanston. Those traveling with him, including his second wife, Rella, told police the kidnappers meant business: there were nine of them altogether, traveling in two cars and armed with shotguns and machine guns.

This time, it was Jerome Factor who was ensconced in a suite at the Morrison Hotel, trying to orchestrate the release of his father. And Jerome seemed to be using the tactics his father had relied upon, as the New York Times observed, “There were noted around the corridors several mysterious characters, recognized as hoodlums who, presumably, were endeavoring to make contact with the kidnappers.”79

Perhaps not surprisingly, some lawmen in Chicago speculated right away that Verne Sankey, the family man, kidnapper and robber, and his bunch were responsible for grabbing Factor. Sankey was such a logical suspect. But he had nothing to do with the kidnapping of John Factor—if indeed there had even been a kidnapping.

Shortly before midnight on Wednesday, July 12, 1933, a street cop in La Grange, Illinois, a Chicago suburb, was walking his beat when an unshaven man in a rumpled white suit approached him. “I’m Jake Factor,” the man said. “Please notify my wife I’m safe.”80

Factor said he had just been tossed out of a car by his kidnappers, who had kept a hood over his head until the moment of his release. The cop took him to the La Grange police station, just a few blocks away, where Factor threw himself onto a cot.

No, he said, he didn’t know how much ransom had been paid for his freedom, didn’t know if any money at all had changed hands.

Some newspapermen were more certain. Without saying where the information had come from, the New York Times reported on July 13 that the kidnappers had accepted “anywhere between $75,000 and $200,000.”

Wait, cancel that! On July 14, when Factor was “shaved and refreshed by alcohol rubdowns and a night’s rest,” as the Times put it, he changed his story.81 He said a down payment of $50,000 had been conveyed to the kidnappers, with the promise that another $150,000 would be forthcoming. In return for the full amount, the kidnappers had pledged not to harm Jerome or Factor’s seven-year-old son, Alvin.

Factor said he had been blindfolded for much of his captivity and that he had been kept in an upstairs bedroom of a house during the negotiations.

But the British authorities had never believed a bit of Factor’s story. Well before Factor turned up in La Grange, the British lawyer leading the extradition campaign, Franklin Overmyer, asserted that the entire “kidnapping” was a hoax, as the Times dutifully noted at the end of its July 13 article.82

The very next day, however, there was a new theory, as the Times reported at the bottom of its article on July 14. “Convinced that the Touhy gang kidnapped Factor, police began a round-up of as many members of the gang as possible.”83

To many Americans, the name Touhy was probably not as familiar as, say, Dillinger or Capone. But people in and around Chicago knew the name well.

*As did Jack’s half brother, Max Factor, who was a Hollywood makeup man and founded a cosmetics empire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

ROGER “THE TERRIBLE”

Chicago

Summer 1933

No question about it: Roger “the Terrible” Touhy was an ideal suspect for just about any crime. He was a tough, shrewd Chicago bootlegger who was acquainted with loan sharks, gamblers, and various musclemen for hire. Remarkably, he had never been afraid to stand up to Al Capone, with whom he had a symbiotic relationship for a while.

Not quite thirty-five years old in the summer of 1933, Touhy had survived a childhood best described as short. He was the youngest of five sons of James Touhy, a Chicago policeman, and his wife, Mary, who died in a house fire when Roger was ten.

James struggled to raise his sons and two daughters, but he seems to have been overwhelmed. One son was shot dead by a Chicago policeman in 1917 while attempting a robbery. Another son was killed a decade later, reportedly by gunmen in Al Capone’s gang, and another son was shot dead two years after that, again presumably by Capone men.

After dropping out of school in the eighth grade, Roger Touhy had several unglamorous but honest jobs. He served in the navy during the Great War. After the war, he married. He and a brother started a trucking company. By this time, Prohibition was in effect. Much of the cargo in the Touhy trucks consisted of beer and liquor. By the late 1920s, Touhy had broadened his business interests to gambling and slot machines, which he installed in many Chicago-area saloons.

Capone was buying hundreds of barrels of beer each week from Touhy. It was high-quality beer, made in a brewery run by Touhy and his associates and shipped in wooden barrels also made by Touhy and his men.

The Touhy gang was rumored to number as many as eighty men. So it seemed reasonable when Daniel Gilbert, the chief investigator for the Cook County (Chicago) state’s attorney’s office, announced that the Touhy gang was most likely responsible for the kidnapping of both John Factor and William Hamm.

As it happened, Touhy and several associates were then in Elkhorn, Wisconsin, recuperating from injuries they’d suffered when their car hit a telephone pole.

Melvin Purvis, the head of the Chicago FBI office, took his cue from Gilbert, ordering several FBI agents to accompany Gilbert to Wisconsin to bring