Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 4, DeMotte, Jasper County, 8 June 1933 — Kidnaping Is Mostly Work of Racketeers [ARTICLE]

Kidnaping Is Mostly Work of Racketeers

"Amateurs” Usually Display a Lack of Skill. New York.--A new light may have been thrown on kidnaping in the United States the other day when the police closed in on the men involved in the abduction of little Margaret McMath of Horwichport, Mass., and found, instead of a group of desperate gangsters, two Cape Cod merchants, says the New York Times. The fact that the Buck brothers were not gangsters does not disprove the frequently made assertion that there are organized bands in the United States who specialize in this particularly vicious and cowardly type of crime. There is plenty of evidence that kidnaping groups do exist. But the McMath case suggests that many kidnapings are attempted or carried out by men who may be described as amateurs. Began With Racketeers. The history of organized kidnaping, as investigators have pieced it together, is that it began with the abduction of racketeers, gangsters, gamblers and others not on good terms with the law by fellow denizens of the underworld. The victims in such cases were rarely in a position to appeal to the police. So far as can be ascertained, and the theory is borne out by the records, organized kidnapers prefer to deal with adults, probably because a kidnaped adult can be bargained with directly and because popular indignation does not reach quite so high a pitch. When they invade the normal, law-

abiding world they deal in large figures. The kidnapers of Charles Rosenthal, a young New York broker, in August, 1931, asked for and got $50,000 ransom. They also got, without asking, 60 years in prison when the four of them were captured and convicted. Sixty thousand dollars is reported to have been paid for the release of Claude Boettcher, son of a wealthy Denver man, kidnaped last March. John Factor of Chicago, sometimes known as “Jake the Barber,” is said to have paid $100,000 for the release of his young son, Jerome, though it must be added that Factor refused to confirm this statement. One hundred thousand dollars was demanded of Michael H. Katz of Kansas City, $150,000 of Dr. Isaac D. Kelly of St. Louis, $75,000 of Mrs. Nell Donnelly of Kansas Ctty, $50,000 of Benjamin Bower, a Denver baker. Risky Enterprise. Nevertheless, kidnaping is a risky and uncertain enterprise, particularly since “Whiskers,” as the United States government is said to be called in the underworld, entered the field in opposition. Until last year it was difficult for the federal officials to make a case against kidnapers, even when the United States mails had been used or victims had been carried across state lines. Two statutes, passed by congress in June and July, 1932, remedied this situation. One of them imposes a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a fine of $5,000 for the use of the mails to convey threats to injure, to kidnap, to accuse of crime, or to demand ransom or reward for the return of an abducted person. The second provides for cases in which a kidnaped person has been carried across a state, territorial or international boundary of the United States; the judge, on conviction, may impose any penalty up to life imprisonment. This is said to be the only federal statute in which such discretion is allowed.