Wrong Side of the Law Read online

  Claude desperately wanted his son back alive and unharmed. But he was a hard-dealing businessman who wasn’t used to being pushed around. He wasn’t going to pay a cent until he saw Charlie safe and sound. On February 20, Claude had an open letter to the kidnappers published in the Rocky Mountain News:

  I have received many ransom notes, through the mail and otherwise — most of them obviously spurious. Some of the notes received, however, I am convinced, by certain inclosures, among other things, came from the persons who have my son in custody.

  The contents of these notes I have not divulged to the police or the press. The conditions and method of payment of ransom contained in these notes were such that they cannot under any circumstances be carried out. Furthermore, no assurance was given of the safe return of my son when the ransom was paid.…

  Obviously the police, the press, myself and family are each actuated by different motives — the police primarily to apprehend the culprits, the press to print all the news, myself and family to accomplish the safe return of my son. I appreciate and am confident of the sincere motives of both the police and the press, but in this situation I feel that I must and will act independently if the opportunity is presented. Claude K. Boettcher

  Sankey responded to Claude’s letter with one of his own. He accused Claude of trying to set a police trap. He warned him that if instructions weren’t followed, he’d raise the ransom to $100,000. Moreover, if any of the kidnappers should be killed by police while trying to collect, others would “even the score.” The letter had a postscript: “Charles is suffering as we keep his eyes taped all the time and at times he is in a very bad condition.”

  Claude replied on February 21 in a “night extra” of the Denver Post. He said he had received many ransom notes, all of which told him to call off the police and drop the ransom money at some remote location. None of them assured Charlie’s safe return. As Claude’s letter stated:

  It is very obvious that I am powerless to call off the police and under present conditions it would be absolutely impossible for me to go to any designated place alone without being followed by the police and representatives of the press, even if I was willing to do so. Hence, I am powerless to act on the instructions received up to this time.

  The Boettcher kidnapping became international news. England’s London Daily Mirror conducted an exclusive telephone interview with Anna Lou via the transatlantic cable. The beleaguered woman, virtually a prisoner in her own house, and due to deliver almost any minute, was a physical and emotional wreck. She couldn’t sleep and spent the late night-hours doing jigsaw puzzles, which were the rage of the day.

  While Anna Lou fretted and Claude fumed, back in South Dakota, Sankey planned further kidnappings. He sometimes discussed his ideas with Alcorn and in Charlie’s presence. Sankey told Alcorn that the farm was a perfect kidnappers’ lair and would never be found. Charlie heard him say, “Miles make no difference to us. When we want someone, we get them, and when we get them, we will collect.”

  Claude’s patience reached the breaking point on February 23. He issued an ultimatum, insisting that Charlie be released by midnight of the twenty-

  fifth. He personally guaranteed payment of $60,000. Then he angrily told reporters that if Charlie suffered the slightest harm, he’d spend ten times the ransom fee to have the kidnappers brought to justice.

  In a letter that was hand-delivered to Claude, Sankey flatly stated again that he wanted the money first. Claude refused. He wrote, “I feel if I paid that money before I got my boy, I would be signing his death warrant. Men who kidnap will murder.”

  Sankey finally decided that he had to get Charlie out of the farmhouse before any neighbours became suspicious. Local folks had a habit of dropping in unexpectedly. He sent Claude a letter agreeing to his terms. Then he contacted Pearce and made arrangements to move Charlie to the house in Denver in case plans went awry. Pearce had already been kept busy typing Sankey’s handwritten notes and arranging for their delivery to Claude.

  Early on the morning of March 1, Sankey and Alcorn put Charlie in a car, still bound and blindfolded, and drove to Denver. At a secret location they met Pearce, who had a note from Claude promising payment with no police interference once Charlie was released. At 7:45 p.m., the kidnappers let Charlie out of the car and drove away. Charlie peeled the bandages from his eyes and saw that he was on a street about three miles from his home. He went into a drugstore and phoned his father.

  Sankey and Alcorn drove to a place outside the city not far from the arranged site where the ransom was to be dropped off. They watched from a hiding place for a car whose lights had been fixed in a manner that identified it as the money car. The car appeared around 8:30. It stopped on a bridge, and one of the occupants dropped a package into the dry creek bed below. After the car drove away, Sankey waited a while to be sure it wasn’t being followed. Then he climbed down to the creek bed to retrieve the package. Worried that Claude might have double-crossed them with a bundle of old newspapers, he and Alcorn quickly tore the package open. Inside was $60,000 in ten- and twenty-dollar bills. As they congratulated each other on pulling the perfect crime, Sankey and Alcorn were unaware that Secret Service agents had marked all of the bills with indelible ink.

  Charlie’s release made headline news. He gave the Denver Post a detailed account of his harrowing sixteen days of captivity in a dank basement. “Where I was held and by whom I do not know … I am thankful that they treated me as gentlemanly as possible under the circumstances.… Desperadoes? Undoubtedly.”

  When reporters piled onto the doorstep of Claude’s mansion, he chased them away at gunpoint. Then he swore that he would get the men who had kidnapped his son if it took the rest of his life. Now that Charlie was safe, the hunt was on.

  As soon as the Denver police heard that Charlie had been released, they set up roadblocks all around the city. They had been informed of the drop-off location, but a miscue in police communications allowed Sankey and Alcorn to slip through the first line of the dragnet. However, police had in fact been watching the drop-off car and had seen the kidnappers’ car. Now posses were patrolling in and around Denver, trying to intercept it. Twice, they almost caught the fleeing kidnappers. But like gangsters in a James Cagney movie, Sankey and Alcorn roared through the roadblocks with guns blazing. There were no casualties, but Sankey’s car was perforated with bullet holes.

  Travelling by the roughest back roads, and with no lights on, Sankey made it to Greeley, Colorado. It was there that Alcorn, unnerved by the shootouts and certain that Sankey was going to drive them right into the arms of the police, got out of the car, dropped his gun on the street, and ran. After a close call with the Greeley police, Sankey returned to the back roads and eventually arrived at the farm.

  Claude offered a twenty-five-thousand-dollar reward for information leading to the kidnappers’ capture. Police pumped Charlie for every scrap of information he could give them. During the drive to Denver, Charlie had briefly slipped the bandages from his eyes and got a glimpse of the outside. He’d seen the word “Torrington,” the name of a small Wyoming town, on a gas station sign. That detail told police the direction he’d come from. When they worked the time Charlie had spent in the car into the equation, they concluded that the kidnappers’ hideout was somewhere in the Dakotas.

  After fleeing from Sankey, Alcorn spent a few days wandering through Colorado, Wyoming, and Nebraska, travelling by foot, bus and freight train. He checked newspapers, certain of seeing front page stories about Sankey’s arrest. When it was finally clear to Alcorn that Sankey had given the cops the slip, he made his way back to the farm. Sankey, Alcorn and Youngberg all thought they were now in the clear. Back in Denver, however, the lure of Claude’s reward money began to produce results.

  On one of his benders, Pearce had been overheard boasting that he was being paid $2,000 for typing the ransom letters delivered to Claude Boettcher. An informant told the police. On March 5, officers went to Sankey’s Denver h
ouse and picked up Pearce, Fern Sankey, Ruth Kohler, and Ruth’s sixteen-year-old daughter Merelyn for questioning. A search of the house turned up $1,400 in cash and handwritten drafts of the ransom letters.

  Fern, Ruth, and Merelyn denied knowing anything at all about the kidnapping, but Pearce talked. He gave the police the names of Sankey, Alcorn, and Youngberg, as well as the location of the farm in South Dakota. He claimed that Sankey had talked him into typing the ransom letters because he was the only one who knew how to use a typewriter.

  The police were satisfied that Merelyn was innocent of any criminal involvement, but they didn’t believe Fern or Ruth. Realizing that she could face a long prison sentence if she were convicted of being an accomplice, Fern hired a Denver attorney named Ben Laska. He was a high-priced lawyer known for taking on sensational cases.

  While Pearce and the women were still being interrogated in Denver, a trio of officers the press would dub the “Three Georges” headed for the Sankey farm. They were George Carroll, the sheriff of Cheyenne, Wyoming; George Smith, Wyoming’s law enforcement commissioner; and Detective George O’Donnell of the Denver Police Department. Not wishing to alert the suspects with a direct approach, the officers set out by car from the town of Mitchell, Nebraska, about sixty-five miles south of the farm. They were caught in a wicked March blizzard that buried the road in four-foot snow drifts. Forced to abandon their car, they proceeded on snowshoes.

  At the town of O’Neill, Nebraska, the Three Georges boarded a train for Chamberlain, about twenty miles southwest of the farm. There they enlisted deputy sheriff Charles Farnsworth. He called Sheriff Lars Rasmassan of Buffalo County, South Dakota, and asked him to join the posse at Kimball. Rasmassan brought along his deputy, Armour Schlegel. The Three Georges weren’t aware that Deputy Schlegel was a good friend of Verne Sankey. He’d helped build the farmhouse and had even looked after the turkeys.

  Armed with pistols, rifles, and machine guns, the posse set out for the isolated farm on March 6. En route, they stopped at the ranch of Sankey’s nearest neighbour. To their surprise, Arthur Youngberg was there, helping the owners butcher cattle. He quietly submitted to arrest.

  The three Georges expected a gun battle when they reached the farm. Instead, they found the place deserted. The suspects had been tipped off. The officers could only confirm, from information Charlie had provided, that this was indeed the place where he’d been held. On his first night in jail, Youngberg made a failed attempt at suicide by slashing his wrists and throat with a razor blade. Sankey had told him that if he were captured, death would be better than prison.

  Charlie recognized Youngberg’s voice and accent, and fingered him as one of the kidnappers. Youngberg swore that he’d never seen Charlie before in his life. He refused to co-operate with the police. Then he received a telegram from an older brother in Winnipeg, chastising him for being led astray by Sankey and urging him to tell the truth. Moved by his brother’s concern, Youngberg told the police all he knew about the Sankey gang.

  People who knew Verne Sankey were stunned when they saw his name in the newspapers. Even those who had known him as a bootlegger had never for a moment thought he would stoop to kidnapping. The publicity the case was getting was irresistible to J. Edgar Hoover. Even though his bureau had played no part whatsoever in the arrests of Pearce and Youngberg and the discovery of the other kidnappers’ identities, Hoover shamelessly authorized a press release in which he took credit for playing a “vital role” in the Boettcher case. His agents, he said, were hot on the trail of Sankey and Alcorn.

  One week after Charlie’s release, Anna Lou gave birth to a healthy baby girl. The IRS decided that the $60,000 Claude had paid to the kidnappers fell under the category of “gift,” on which Claude was obliged to pay a tax. Neither J. Edgar Hoover nor anyone else in law enforcement knew where Sankey and Alcorn were.

  While Sankey, Alcorn, and Youngberg were still at the farm, Sankey had divided up the loot. The original agreement had been that Sankey would get $30,000, Alcorn $18,000, and Youngberg $12,000. However, Sankey deducted $1,000 each from the other men’s shares. He said $500 was for Pearce and the rest was to cover his own expenses. The three men buried most of the cash at various locations on the farm, keeping just a few thousand for travelling money. When Youngberg was arrested, he knew where the hiding places were, but that was one bit of information he didn’t share with the police. He hoped it would be a trump card he could play in negotiating a deal.

  When Sankey and Alcorn left the farm, they went to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis–St. Paul. After almost being trapped by the police following the money pickup, Sankey had guessed that the bills were probably marked. The Twin Cities were known as “safe” territory for outlaws because corrupt officials protected them from police — for a price. It was a good place to launder hot money. While staying at a first-class Minneapolis hotel, Sankey wrote a letter to Fern, unaware that she was in custody. The Denver police intercepted it. But by that time the news of Youngberg’s arrest was splashed all over newspaper front pages. Sankey and Alcorn immediately fled to Chicago where they took rooms under assumed names.

  Sankey was afraid that Youngberg would lead the police to the buried loot. He had always been a gambler and now decided to take a big risk. He took a train to Council Bluffs, Iowa, where he bought a used car. Travelling by night along back roads with the lights off, he drove to a spot a few miles from the farm. He parked the car and went the rest of the way on foot.

  Police had occupied the farm ever since the first raid, hoping the kidnappers would return. They had searched everywhere for stashed money, but without success. Officers armed with machine guns patrolled the property to keep away would-be treasure hunters and unwelcome newspapermen. Watching from the darkness, Sankey could see policemen inside the well-lit farmhouse.

  Crawling on his hands and knees, Sankey went to a spot where most of his and Alcorn’s money was buried in tin cans. With only a pocket knife, he began digging in the frozen ground. When the knife snapped in two, he continued digging with his bare hands. A police car passed by, forcing Sankey to duck behind a tree. When the officers got out and went into the house, he resumed digging. Sankey at last crept away into the night with $40,000. The next morning the police found the holes, the tin cans, and a broken pocket knife. A few thousand dollars of Youngberg’s share still lay hidden, and Youngberg still hoped that would be enough to help him cut a deal with the police.

  For weeks, the police tried without success to pick up the kidnappers’ trail. Fern, on the advice of Ben Laska, insisted that she knew nothing of her husband’s criminal activities. She played on the prevailing chauvinistic attitude that a wife’s duty was to look after the home and not question where her husband got his money. “Is it any wonder we are surprised when something unusual happens?” she said in wide-eyed innocence to a Denver Post reporter. Then, in April, an arrest in a remote hamlet in Manitoba provided police with a break and gave Fern considerable cause for worry.

  Back on June 30, 1932, twenty-year-old Haskell Bohn, son of a wealthy St. Paul family, had been the victim of an abduction that now looked like a rehearsal for the Boettcher kidnapping. Bohn had just pulled into the garage of his home when two armed men forced him into a car. They taped his eyes shut and drove him to a house where he was kept in the basement. Ransom notes sent to Bohn’s father made frequent references to the Lindbergh kidnapping as a means of scaring him into paying up. The initial demand had been for $35,000. Bohn was released after one week, upon payment of $12,000.

  Police investigating the Bohn kidnapping eventually came up with the name of Ray Robinson. He was a Canadian who was an old railway pal of Sankey and Alcorn. American officials contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who found that Robinson had deposited $10,000 in a Winnipeg bank shortly after the Bohn payoff. The Mounties finally located Robinson in the little community of Rorketon, two hundred miles northwest of Winnipeg. Unable to explain where the money had come from, Robinson confessed to th
e Bohn kidnapping. He said he had pulled the job with Verne Sankey and that they were both drunk when they did it. Moreover, Robinson claimed that Fern was in on the crime. Bohn had been kept blindfolded most of the time that he was a prisoner, but he said that a woman had brought him his meals. He was able to identify a house in Minneapolis as the place where he’d been held. The house had been rented by Verne Sankey.

  Now sought for both the Boettcher and Bohn kidnappings, Verne Sankey was the most hunted fugitive in the United States. He was wanted on a long list of indictments for violations of the Lindbergh Law. J. Edgar Hoover didn’t like the idea of publishing a federal list of “Public Enemies.” He thought it would only serve to feed criminal egos. But his superiors in government disagreed. When the first list was compiled, Verne Sankey’s name was at the top as Public Enemy Number One. Gordon Alcorn’s name was next.

  Sankey kept a low profile in Chicago. To anyone who asked, he was William E. Clark, a successful businessman. Alcorn, going by the alias Walter B. Thomas, met a young divorcée named Angeline “Birdie” Christopherson Paul. They fell in love and were married in May. But any dreams Birdie might have had of wedded bliss were soon shattered.

  When Sankey had returned from his clandestine visit to the farm, he and Alcorn agreed that it wouldn’t be wise to keep large amounts of cash in their apartments. They buried most of the money at an isolated spot outside the city. Alcorn was resentful of the manner in which Sankey had chiselled him out of part of his share, so later he went back and dug up the loot. Then he and his bride quietly moved to a new address.

  Sankey’s gambling habit took him to the racetrack almost daily. Soon he needed cash and was furious when he found the cache had been cleaned out. It didn’t take Sankey long to track Alcorn down. He was on the street outside Alcorn and Birdie’s new apartment building when they approached on the sidewalk. To Birdie’s horror, Sankey pulled a gun and said, “Stick ’em up!”