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

victims. The papers also feasted on rumors that Charles “Pretty Boy” Floyd, the gangster with several killings and robberies to his credit, was in the area. Soon, he was reported to be a prime suspect in the abduction of Brooke Hart. There were numerous abandoned silver-mining shafts and deserted cabins around San Jose that would make good hiding places. But searches turned up nothing.

Still, Brooke’s father expressed optimism, noting that his son was strong and athletic.

Then, an apparent breakthrough. On Friday, Brooke’s wallet was found on the guard rail of an oil tanker ship that had serviced the ocean liner Lurline in San Francisco harbor. Had the kidnappers dragged Brooke onto the Lurline, then thrown away his wallet? Or had Brooke himself managed to throw his wallet onto the tanker ship to aid searchers?

By the time the wallet was discovered, the Lurline was sailing overnight from San Francisco to Los Angeles on its way to Hawaii. When the vessel docked in Los Angeles on Saturday morning, the passengers were scrutinized, one by one. Now, investigators were checking a report that two stowaways might have boarded the ship. Were they the kidnappers?

Brooke Hart was not on the Lurline, nor was anyone who seemed a likely kidnapper.

But Brooke’s family was heartened when two letters arrived at the Hart home over the weekend, one from Sacramento, the other from San Jose. Your son is all right, the letters said.

On Monday, November 13, investigators announced that telephone calls to the Hart house would no longer be intercepted. The announcement was meant to encourage the kidnappers to communicate instructions for Brooke’s release. The next morning, federal and state investigators withdrew from the home entirely to further encourage the abductors.

A kidnapper called on Wednesday, November 15. Put $40,000 in a satchel, take the Malibu highway south toward Los Angeles, and look for a guy standing on the running board of a car, a man told Brooke’s father. Give him the money, and he’ll tell you where to find your son.

The call was traced to a nearby garage.* Sheriff William Emig and Police Chief J. N. Black raced there and arrested Thomas Thurmond just as he was hanging up. Thurmond, who was single and twenty-eight, directed the lawmen to a hotel, where they arrested John Holmes, whom Thurmond identified as his partner. Holmes, twenty-nine, was married and had two young children, although his marriage was strained because of his philandering.

Holmes had recently lost his job. Thurmond operated a San Jose gas station with his father. The suspects were interrogated separately for hours on end. When they finally cracked, they told what they had done.

They had become familiar with Brooke Hart’s habits and travel and had talked about seizing him for ransom. Finally, as the young man was leaving a parking lot near the department store on November 9, Thurmond and Holmes were ready to act.

Holmes jumped into Brooke’s car, pointed a pistol, and told him to drive. Thurmond followed in a separate car. Some miles away, Holmes told Brooke to stop. Then Brooke was forced into Thurmond’s car. According to the kidnappers, he tried to hide his fear with a joke, something about it being the first time he had ever been kidnapped.

The kidnappers drove their captive to a point on the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge over San Francisco Bay and stopped.

By now, it was dark. The kidnappers forced Brooke from the car and put a pillowcase over his head. Holmes struck him on the head with a brick. The young man cried out, and Holmes hit him on the head again, rendering him semiconscious.

“They were pretty good blows, and he didn’t give us much trouble after that,” Thurmond recalled.

Then the kidnappers wrapped their victim with baling wire, tied two cement bricks to his body, lifted him over the bridge railing, and dropped him into the bay.

The shock of the cold water revived Brooke, and he called for help. Thurmond fired several shots at the body, and all was quiet.

“We thought it would be easier with him out of the way,” one of the kidnappers explained matter-of-factly, according to a Justice Department official. “We didn’t want to bother with lugging him around the countryside, and we didn’t want to take the chance of his escaping and giving us away. So we just bumped him off.”114

Before binding Hart and throwing him off the bridge, the kidnappers took his wallet. They split the money inside, pocketing $7.50 each. Then they drove to San Francisco, stopped at a speakeasy for drinks, and tried to phone the Hart home. They couldn’t get a good connection, so they drove to the Whitcomb Hotel to use the phone booth there. Then it was back to San Jose.

So how did Brooke Hart’s wallet wind up on the guard rail of the oil tanker? For some reason, Thurmond had kept the wallet. Then he thought it was best to get rid of it, so he decided to take a ferry across San Francisco Bay the night of the kidnapping and drop the wallet overboard. But instead of boarding the ferry, he had an impulse to throw the wallet off a pier. By the freakiest of chances, the wallet landed on the tanker guard rail and stayed there.

Thus, the ugly truth: Brooke Hart had not been kidnapped and slain by “professional” kidnappers from the East but by two unremarkable local men looking for quick and easy money. They could have had it, too, and without harming their captive, since Brooke’s father would have given anything to have his son back.

Was jealousy a motive too? Brooke Hart had been born to privilege. Photographs of him showed a confident young man with wavy hair and an aristocratic bearing. He looked at ease in expensive clothes. He was everything Holmes and Thurmond were not.

On November 26, two duck hunters in a boat discovered Brooke’s body floating in five feet of water half a mile south of the bridge. Alex Hart and his wife, Nettie, who had recently undergone surgery,