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

yard foreman and Alice Murphy thought the men’s behavior odd, so much so that Alice Murphy wrote down the license number of the small green car in which they drove away: 4U-13-41. But neither the foreman, who recalled one of the men as a previous customer, nor Alice Murphy thought to mention the encounter to Detective Bornmann and Arthur Koehler. And why would they have? The investigators, guided perhaps by an excess of caution and discretion, had chosen not to tell the people at the lumberyard that they were investigating purchases in connection with the Lindbergh kidnapping.

Looking back on the incident months later, Koehler recalled that his Forest Service badge might have been visible beneath his overcoat. And Detective Bornmann—well, he might have looked like the cop that he was.

Had there been more communication, yard employees might have remarked to the investigators on the nervous departure of the men who had left the plywood behind, might have wondered aloud if the very presence of the investigators had scared the men away. Alice Murphy might have told the investigators that she’d written down the license number of the car.

If that had happened, the Lindbergh case might have been solved months earlier than it was. Reflecting later on that reality, Koehler wrote that the close encounter at the lumberyard “keeps me wondering at the endless repercussions of all men’s acts, that in a Niagara of mysteries pour down upon us unperceived, not understood, each day.”129

Koehler and Bornmann were never able to trace the path of the Douglas fir used in the kidnapper’s ladder. As for the car for which Alice Murphy wrote down the license number, it belonged to a man who lived in the Bronx. His name was Bruno Richard Hauptmann.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

A SORDID DENOUEMENT

St. Louis

February 1934

After almost three years, Dr. Isaac Kelley, St. Louis’s leading ear, nose, and throat specialist, had put his kidnapping ordeal behind him. At least the doctor had a good story to tell.

So, it turned out, did one Adolph Fiedler, a man hard to describe in a few words. He had been a justice of the peace in Maplewood, Missouri, where he distinguished himself by being indicted several times for soliciting bribes, accepting illegal fees, and perjury, among other things. But he was never convicted, a fact that said much about the administration of justice in St. Louis at the time.

By early 1934, Fiedler had money troubles. He ran a “recreation parlor,” consisting of a tavern, restaurant, pool hall, and dance floor, that was barely earning enough to keep food on his table. And Fiedler needed a lot of food, since his weight fluctuated from three hundred pounds or so to more than five hundred pounds.

Fiedler knew he had a story to tell, a story to sell. He recalled that John Rogers, the indefatigable reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, had had a role in the release of Dr. Kelley. So Fiedler contacted the newspaper and promised an exclusive that would make many ears among the city’s elite burn with embarrassment.

Perhaps John Rogers thought he had seen and heard just about everything. He was wrong, as he discovered when balding, blimp-like Adolph Fiedler waddled into the newsroom of the Post-Dispatch and announced that he knew who had pulled off the kidnapping of Isaac Kelley.

The Post-Dispatch offered Fiedler $1,000 to start with, plus $50 a week as sort of a retainer. No reputable news organization would agree to such a story-for-money deal today, but back then, competition among newspapers was intense, and ethics were flexible.

“How do I know who kidnaped Dr. Kelley?”* Fiedler began his fantastic story.130 “Because the men who did the job hung around my place…because I had their confidence, and because I sat in at their conferences and heard the telephone calls that took Dr. Kelley out of his home. The kidnapers knew me and talked freely to me, but I took no part in the job myself.”

Fiedler had no trouble naming the kidnappers. Three were professional criminals who had been slain in a gang fight about a year after the kidnapping, according to Fiedler. They were Tommy “the Rock” Hayes, leader of the Cuckoo Gang of professional criminals, and two of his associates, “Willie G.” Wilbert and Harry “Pretty Boy” Lechler.

Others involved in the Kelley kidnapping were still around, according to Fiedler. He identified them as Felix “Hoosier” McDonald, who was then in prison on an unrelated robbery charge; Bart Davit; Angelo John “the Dago” Rosegrant; Tommy Wilders, associated with a St. Louis gang; and John C. Johnson, “a Negro farmer,” as he was described at the time, on whose Saint Charles County property McDonald and Davit operated a still. It was there, according to Fiedler, that Kelley spent his first night in captivity.

Most intriguingly, according to Fiedler, the inspiration and ringleader of the kidnapping was a woman described in the initial story as “Mrs. N———.” Why her name was not spelled out at first is not clear, but it was soon revealed that she was Nellie Tipton Muench. She was the daughter of the Reverend William Ross Tipton, a prominent Baptist minister in Columbia, Missouri, and the wife of Dr. Ludwig Muench, a well-known physician who was also an accomplished cellist. Dr. and Mrs. Muench lived in the same fashionable neighborhood as Dr. Isaac Kelley and his wife and traveled in some of the same social circles.

There was one other thing: Muench was a sister of Justice Ernest Moss Tipton of the Missouri Supreme Court. So given her family and social status, was it conceivable that she had masterminded a kidnapping, that she was “the high priestess” of the entire enterprise, as Fiedler put it?

Muench ran a dress salon with a clientele that included wealthy and influential men buying gifts for their mistresses. On at least one occasion, she visited the Kelleys’ home to alter a dress she had sold to Isaac Kelley’s wife, Kathleen. While tugging and stitching, Muench asked her if the doctor ever made any professional visits at