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

the family. It demanded $200,000 in used small bills and threatened death to Bremer if the demand was not met. Bremer himself had been forced to sign the note. His signature was shaky, nothing like his usual graceful penmanship, leading relatives to conclude that he must have been in great distress or in great pain when he signed his name.

Adolph Bremer had contacted the police right after his son was taken. A federal agent who had worked on the Urschel kidnapping immediately flew from Dallas to St. Paul. Other federal agents joined him. Phones at the Bremer home were tapped.

“Please don’t make any move that will endanger Eddie’s safety,” the elder Bremer begged the police publicly.122 The old man made it clear he wanted federal, state, and city lawmen to do virtually nothing while he and family representatives tried to recover Edward.

Hamstrung by the father’s pleas, the police and federal agents agreed to stand down to await further word from the kidnappers. The kidnappers assumed that phone lines to the Bremer home were tapped, so they communicated via written messages. The kidnappers were not fools, after all. More importantly, given the nature of the St. Paul police department, it was likely that information about the investigation was being leaked to the kidnappers or to people in contact with them.

As the kidnappers had instructed, the Bremer family placed an ad in the Minneapolis Tribune, indicating a willingness to cooperate. “We are ready. Alice,” the ad read.

Then, three days after the kidnapping, there was devastating news. The postmaster of Minneapolis, W. C. Robertson, announced the receipt of an anonymous letter addressed to him but meant to be read by “a Federal officer,” according to the writer.

“Very sorry, but Edward Bremer is now resting in peace,” the letter declared. “Was by accident bumped off. Body near Anoka, Minn. Will not be found until after the snow thaws. Contact all off. Please forgive us. All a mistake by one of our gang being drunk.”123

Investigators who conferred with the postmaster concluded that the letter was probably from a crank. But the letter couldn’t be ignored, especially since on the lower left corner, there appeared to be a rough diagram of three roads and a curved line. Did the curved line depict a section of the Mississippi River? Platoons of investigators searched both banks of the river, paying special attention to irregularities in the snow.

Nothing.

Then Joseph B. Keenan, the assistant attorney general spearheading Washington’s drive to combat kidnapping, made an especially tactless remark that deepened the family’s ordeal: “In the Bremer case we may have the misfortune of experiencing another Lindbergh situation.”124

Magee, who had become the intermediary between the kidnappers and the Bremer family, pledged publicly that the family would let the kidnappers have a free hand—if only they would release their victim unharmed.

Edward Bremer had been thoroughly traumatized. The men who’d seized him had pistol-whipped and punched him repeatedly. They had slammed a car door on his legs when he’d tried to break away. He’d been pushed down under the dashboard of the kidnappers’ car for a time as he was driven hundreds of miles.

Somewhat reluctantly and emphasizing that he wouldn’t have been roughed up if he hadn’t resisted, his captors let Bremer clean himself up. Then they put mercurochrome on his wounds. Bandages were applied, some over his cuts, others over his eyes to blindfold him. Cotton was stuffed into his ears.

He was forced to sit on a bed facing the wall in a gloomy room. He was determined to remember as much as he could. He concentrated on the pattern of the wallpaper. He listened to the voices in the house, up to a dozen different ones at one time or another. He heard dogs barking. He heard cars outside occasionally—but no streetcars. So, he reasoned, I’m not way out in the country, but I’m not in the heart of a city either.

Most intriguingly, Bremer heard chimes from a church—not bells, but chimes. Twice a day, they played the “Angelus,” a song he recalled from his youth. He tried to remember all the sounds. He hoped they would be useful if he were freed. And concentrating on something, anything, was a way to keep from going mad with terror.

He wrote a dozen notes to his family, trying to be reassuring. But in a note specifically to his father, he made it clear that captivity was an ordeal, and he asked for quick action to free him.

The kidnappers, in messages accompanying Bremer’s notes, warned that the ransom demand would be raised to $500,000 if the initial $200,000 demand were not paid quickly. In fact, the family was eager to pay up to get Bremer back. Early on, Magee was instructed to take the $200,000 to a hotel in Des Moines, Iowa. He was to travel by bus. Unfortunately, the money was in a bank vault at the time, secured by a time lock, so the bus trip had to be canceled.

Finally, an arrangement was made. Magee would rendezvous at night with one or more of the kidnappers at a point on a road near Zumbrota, Minnesota, a little town fifty miles south of St. Paul. On the designated night, Magee drove for miles into the darkness until he saw blinking headlights and four red lantern-like lights by the road—the signal. He stopped, encountered two men, and gave them two cardboard packages with the money.

The kidnappers had let Bremer know that they were honorable people, in a sense. They told him that a rival gang had offered to “buy” him so they could extort money from the Bremer family. But don’t worry, the kidnappers told Bremer with perverse pride. We’ll keep our word.

On the night of Wednesday, February 7, 1934, Bremer was stuffed into a car in the company of three kidnappers. He dared to hope that his ordeal was ending. By this point, time and distance had lost all meaning for him. After traveling on a paved highway, the car pulled onto a