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

some medicine. The next day, he was given a dose of something in a glass of water. Then—praise God!—he was fed cantaloupes and oranges.

But what he craved more than anything was fresh air. He dared to ask if he could be let out for a few minutes. Not too roughly, one of his captors helped him out, led him upstairs, and sat with him on what felt like a sofa. Luer couldn’t tell for sure; he was still blindfolded.

After a precious few minutes, it was back down to his dungeon.

There is a reason for the term usual suspects. When a serious crime is committed, the police in a certain area are apt to focus initially on people who have committed crimes before, even if they have “paid their debt to society,” as the cliché goes. So it made perfect sense for the police around Alton and East St. Louis, Illinois, to poke around in the usual flotsam and jetsam of society to see if they knew anyone who could be linked to the kidnapping of August Luer.

It was no surprise that Percy Michael Fitzgerald, who was thirty-nine in the summer of 1933, came under suspicion early on. His habit was to give his occupation as “paper hanger” whenever he was arrested, which was often. In truth, he didn’t have time to hang paper, since he had been arrested about forty times in the previous two decades. He had been imprisoned for two years and eight months in Tennessee for safecracking and done six months in a Missouri workhouse for petty larceny, a charge that was reduced from a felony count of possessing burglary tools.

For reasons lost to history, criminals and other bottom-feeders around East St. Louis knew Fitzgerald as “the Dice Box Kid,” a fact that was known to police, who suspected, not illogically, that anyone with a nickname like that had to be guilty of more wrongdoing than he had ever answered for.

So a photograph of Fitzgerald was among the two dozen likenesses of known criminals that were shown to Helena Luer right after her husband was taken away. Yes, she said. This looked like one of the men who had come into their home that night. (Nowadays, conscientious police officers show a victim of a crime or a witness numerous photographs in addition to the one they hope will be recognized. That way, investigators prevent accusations by defense lawyers that the identification has been tainted—i.e., that a witness or victim is automatically biased when shown only a photo or sketch that the police hope he or she will recognize. In the 1930s, the police were not bothered by such technicalities.)

In the summer of 1933, there was a finite number of hangouts that were frequented by lowlifes around East St. Louis and Alton. The police knew them all, and they knew which ones Fitzgerald liked. Federal agents and local cops kept tabs on Fitzgerald’s haunts and grew increasingly suspicious when he was not seen in the usual places after Luer was seized.

Half a dozen times, pieces of paper were held in front of him, and August Luer scrawled his signature on each one. He was sure they were messages to his family and others negotiating for his freedom. He remembered what he’d been told: “Your only chance for freedom is to sign your name.”

Luer had counted his days in captivity. On Saturday, his captors pulled him out of the pit and told him they were taking him for a ride—and that he might be released. He dared to hope.

He was back in a car, blindfolded. Long minutes passed. Maybe the minutes became an hour. Two hours? He couldn’t tell. Finally, the car stopped. He heard a train coming. Dear God! Are they going to throw me in front of the train? No, no, that makes no sense. Does it?

They rode on. One of his captors said, “We’ve been riding around in Missouri long enough. We had better get back to Illinois.”

Were they trying to be clever, just saying that to deceive him on their real whereabouts? Did it matter? At long last, the car stopped again. Luer was helped out of the car and onto the roadside. He didn’t know it, but Saturday night had just become Sunday morning.

“You can take the bandage off your eyes, and you’ll see a red-and-blue sign,” one of the captors said. “If you go to that place, you will find a telephone.”

The car drove off. Luer waited cautiously, making sure they were gone for good. Then he removed the bandage that had covered his eyes, saw the sign in the distance, and walked. He went past the waterworks of Collinsville, Illinois, about thirty miles southeast of Alton and twelve miles east of St. Louis. Irrationally, perhaps because his mind was at the breaking point, he was afraid to stop at the waterworks because he thought a night watchman would mistake him for a tramp. In fact, he was unshaven, dirty, and in rumpled, soiled clothes and dust-covered shoes.

Finally, he came to the red-and-blue sign, which advertised a roadhouse. A small band was playing, and several couples were dancing. The moment he entered, the music and dancing stopped. The proprietor offered him a cup of coffee. No thanks, Luer said. “Please,” he said. “Could I telephone my son? My family will be waiting to hear from me.”91

In no time, police officers arrived, along with his sons, to take Luer home.

On the night of Monday, July 17, Fitzgerald turned up at one of his hangouts in Madison, Illinois, a little town near both Alton and East St. Louis, Illinois. Federal agents and a posse of local police arrested him without difficulty. Fitzgerald seemed almost relieved. “I’m right for this job,” he told detectives. “You’ve got me hooked.”92

The entire “job” had been a fiasco. The ransom notes that Luer had been forced to sign had never been delivered. Federal agents said no ransom was paid. It appeared that the kidnappers had simply grown