Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 41, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 March 1909 — Kidnaped Whitla Boy Recovered at Cleveland. [ARTICLE]

Kidnaped Whitla Boy Recovered at Cleveland.

The country has been greatly excited for the past few days over the kidnaping at Sharon, Pa., last Thursday morning of Willie Whitla, son of a prosperous lawyer. The kidnapers went to the school house and called the janitor, telling him that Willie was wanted at once by his father. The teacher, excused the boy and the men, two in number, took him in a buggy to Warren, Pa., and then into a street car. The parents did not learn of the affair until the boy did not return home at noon. They inquired of the teacher and found that he had been called out on pretense of being taken to his father. At 2 o’clock that afternoon the parents received a letter stating that the boy had been kidnaped and was being held for SIO,OOO ransom. Negotiations were entered into and the police and detectives set a trap to catch the kidnapers, but it failed. Other letters were sent to Whitla and it was evident that the kidnapers did not propose to be entrapped.

Whitla was more than anxious to comply with the demand, and the restoration of his son was dearer to him than anything else. He was ready to pay the money and when a proposition came from the kidnapers for him to meet their representative a woman, alone in Cleveland, he prevailed on the detective to let him alone. He went to Cleveland and it is supposed met the woman and paid the money. The kidnapers kept faith with him and sent the little boy, who is 8 years of age, to the hotel where his father was stopping in Cleveland. The boy was placed on a street, car in the suburbs some place, and given transportation. On the car two t young men who had seen the boy’s picture recognized him and went with him to the hotel. The father was there waiting for him. Detectives are now working on the case and if captured the kidnapers will get the limit for the crime. The little boy’s own story of his treatment will be interesting and is here published: Willie Whitla’s own story of his experience with the kidnapers was told to his father and newspaper men at Cleveland Monday night. "Papa," said the little boy in a tone of childish'prattle, “I have been buggy riding, been on cars and in a nice big white house that looked like a hospital. I have been treated nice and had lots of good things to eat. "One man, tall, with a black mustache, came to the schoolhouse Thursday and told my teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that you wanted me at your office. I went out to a buggy with him. I got in and then we rode away. On the way downtown he asked me to address a letter to you. I did this and then dropped it into a mail box. He was awfully kind.

“We went from Sharon to Warren. Wo bad the nicest trip. The man, who was the same one who brought me to the car line tonight, was nice to me. He tucked the robe about my legs and made me comfortable. It was a nice ride and I enjoyed it. Gee! he was good. “When we got to a place the man said was Warren the man left the buggy in the road. Then we got on what I think was an electric car. I don’t just remember what it was, but

it was something like a street car. I don’t know what became of the horse and buggy. I was sleepy when he got on the car and I slept much of the way to the place where we were going. “When we got to a town that .the man called Newcastle they took me to a big building and turned me over to a woman. She was good to me. The hospital, or whatever the building was, was a clean place. There was a man there who I think was a doctor. He looked like a doctor, because he had whiskers—short, gray whiskers. “The people in the hospital told me that I must do just what they told me to do. If I did not obey them they said they would take me to a place called the pesthouse, where folks that have smallpox have to go. It was not a clean or pretty place to go, they told me. I would have been good anyhow, but when I thought there was any chance of having to go to the pesthouse I did not do a thing that I shouldn’t have done. I walked the chalk just like a good boy, papa, like you’ve told me to do. “On Saturday night I was taken away from the hospital and I think we went to a town called Ashtabula. We traveled in a buggy and on foot. Early in the morning we went back to the hospital, I heard one of the men say: ‘There will be nothing doing tonight, I guess.’ - “I might have been right here in Cleveland, though, papa, for some of the town that I saw tonight on the car looked like the place we went to Saturday night. “They told me all along that I was just taking a little vacation. I was not going to be hurt, they told me. So I just acted nice and had a good time playing around the hospital. I knew I would get back home all right and just supposed ‘Mr. Jones’ was one of my friends who was treating me nice because you wanted him to treat me that way, papa dear.”