Wrong Side of the Law (8 page)

Sankey looked up Alcorn while he was in Winnipeg on bootlegging business. Inspired by the Lindberg case, he wanted Alcorn to help him kidnap some wealthy Winnipeg citizen and hold him for ransom. Sankey had even made inquiries about renting a house where the victim could be held. Alcorn would have none of it. But he was still unemployed and broke a few weeks later when he received a letter from Sankey inviting him and Youngberg to go to South Dakota and work for him on the farm. Both young men liked that idea. Sankey went to Winnipeg to pick them up and they arrived at his farm on November 11, 1932. Alcorn and Youngberg happily began their work as farmhands, not suspecting that Sankey had other plans for them.

Shortly after Christmas, Sankey told his two workers that he was taking his family to Denver for the winter because Fern couldn’t stand the prairie cold. Alcorn and Youngberg were to look after things while he was away. In fact, Sankey was going to Denver to lay plans and recruit yet another member for the “gang” he was clandestinely assembling.

Carl Pearce of Colorado had served with the American army in the First World War. He had suffered shell shock and had never recovered. Pearce had been in and out of psychiatric hospitals. He had a nervous twitch and his hands often shook. He couldn’t hold down a job. When his wife left him, he began to drink heavily. He associated with bad characters and once spent ninety days in jail for passing bogus cheques. It was through his descent into the underworld that Pearce met Sankey, and then Fern’s sister Ruth Kohler, who had been recently widowed. Carl and Ruth were both lonely, lost souls, and they fell for each other.

Sankey rented a house in Denver and invited Carl and Ruth to stay with him, Fern, and the kids. The house was also home to some of Sankey’s bootlegging friends. It was ideal for Pearce. He had a woman who was willing to look after him and easy access to the booze he needed.

When Sankey visited the farm, he found Alcorn suffering because of a vicious fight he’d had with Youngberg. The big Swede had knocked most of Alcorn’s teeth out. A legitimate farmer might have dismissed both of them, but Sankey wasn’t about to let a little fracas get in the way of his grand plan. Leaving Youngberg to look after the farm, he took Alcorn to Denver for medical attention.

At the house in Denver, Sankey once again brought up the subject of kidnapping. This time Alcorn was receptive. Sankey had made a detailed study of the best prospects. He had finally decided on Charlie Boettcher. They would demand $100,000. Alcorn thought that was too much and suggested $25, 000. They compromised on $60,000. Carl Pearce typed out the ransom letter.

Charles Boettcher II, age thirty-two, belonged to one of the wealthiest families in Colorado. His paternal grandfather, also named Charles, had become rich in the hardware, sugar beet, and cement industries. His father, Claude, had enhanced the Boettcher fortune through shrewd investments. They were an influential and politically powerful family.

Charlie was a good-natured man who liked to party, gamble, tell jokes, and sometimes drink too much. He was also a dedicated baseball fan. He and his beautiful wife, Anna Lou, and little daughter, Ann, lived in Denver’s exclusive Capitol Hill district in an elegant twenty-one-room chateau Claude had built as a wedding present. Charlie had named the house
Les Trois Tours
for its three towers. Charles Lindbergh was one of the many celebrities who visited there. To the Boettchers, the Great Depression was just a passing storm to be weathered. It didn’t interfere with their opulent lifestyle. Then one night the Sankey gang came calling.

On the evening of February 12, 1933, Charlie and Anna Lou’s car pulled into the driveway of
Les Trois Tours
and stopped in front of the garage. When Charlie got out, Verne Sankey’s voice came from the darkness. “Come here, Charlie, and stick up your hands.”

Charlie, who was slightly intoxicated, was startled. Anna Lou, eight months pregnant, told him, “This is a holdup. Don’t resist.”

Then Sankey said, “Do what you’re told, and everything will be all right.”

He handed an envelope to Anna Lou, who was still in the car, and politely said, “Mrs. Boettcher, open that envelope, please.”

She did so, and a smaller envelope fell out. Sankey took back the first envelope and said, “Now open that one.”

As Anna Lou tore open the second envelope and unfolded the note inside, Sankey withdrew. He forced Charlie into a car driven by Alcorn and they sped away. The typed message in Anna Lou’s shaking hands said:

Do not notify the police. If you do, and they start making it hot for us, you will never see ___ alive again. We are holding ___ for Sixty Thousand Dollars. We are asking you to get this money in Ten and Twenty dollar bills and they must be old bills only. When you get the money ready and are willing to pay as above for the safe return of ___, then insert the following add in the Denver Post, personal items …

(Please write, I am ready to return) SIGN (Mabel) …

We will not stand for any stalling thru advise [
sic
] that police may give you. You are smart enough to know what the results will be if you try that. You know what happened to little Charles Lindbergh through his father calling the police. He would be alive today if his father had followed instructions given him. You are to choose one of these to [
sic
] courses. Either insert add and be prepared to pay ransome [
sic
], Or forget it all.

Anna Lou’s first phone call was to Charlie’s father. In spite of the threat in the note, Claude immediately called the police. A patrol car arrived at the scene of the crime within three minutes and was quickly followed by more. Five minutes after Claude’s call, police were swarming through Denver with orders to stop and search any small black sedan — a description that fit thousands of cars. Anna Lou hadn’t seen the licence-plate number.

In fact, Anna Lou could give the police few clues. Sankey had been masked. She could only report that the kidnapper was white, short, and stocky, and had unusually round eyes.

Denver police Chief Albert T. Clark was certain that Charlie had been abducted by professional criminals and announced that he would be safely returned to the bosom of his family within forty-eight hours. Clark’s dragnet scooped up plenty of suspects, including several well-known gangsters. There was no evidence connecting any of them to the kidnapping. The mention of the name “Lindbergh” in the ransom note had investigators wondering if Charlie had been taken by the still-at-large kidnappers of the Lindbergh baby.

The Denver police put
Les Trois Tours
and Claude’s gated mansion under armed guard. Some of the officers even toted machine guns. But their biggest problem was keeping the hordes of newspaper reporters, photographers, and curious gawkers at bay.

Meanwhile, by the evening after his abduction, Charlie was sitting blindfolded and miserable in the basement of the Sankey farmhouse. When the masked men had him in their car, they’d tied his hands and taped his eyes closed, and then put sunglasses on him. He’d endured a ride of over 570 miles of back roads in complete darkness. When the kidnappers had to stop for gas, they told him he’d be okay as long as he behaved himself.

Arthur Youngberg was taken completely by surprise when Sankey and Alcorn arrived at the farm with a man who was obviously a prisoner. When Sankey told him to take care of the “new boarder,” Youngberg replied that they’d better take Charlie back where they found him or they’d all wind up in jail. However, after the smooth-talking Sankey assured Youngberg that they wouldn’t get caught and he’d have a “nice fat share of the proceeds,” Youngberg agreed to go along with the plan. His job was to be Charlie’s keeper.

Charlie’s basement prison was a damp room with a cot, a coal-oil lamp, a table, and a couple of chairs. Youngberg brought his meals, coffee, and cigarettes, but was always careful not to let Charlie see his face. He occasionally gave Charlie a shave. Sometimes Youngberg stood behind the prisoner and took off the blindfold so he could read a magazine. He warned Charlie not to look around if he didn’t want to be “bumped off.” Charlie would talk to his captor about his wife and family, whom he said were surely concerned about his safety.

On February 15, Claude placed the ad in the Denver
Post
, as the ransom note had instructed. The days since his son’s abductions had been confusing. He and Anna Lou had been swamped with phone calls, most of them from cranks looking for money. Sankey himself had added to the confusion when he made Charlie write letters to Claude and Anna Lou, and then delivered them via the Boettchers’ pastor, the Reverend B.D. Dagwell. The letter to Claude admonished him for not following directions, and told him, “Charles is very nerves [
sic
] and frightened. He often asks if we will release him if you pay and I keep telling him we will, but he lives in fear of being bumped off.”

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.