The Kidnap Years:

by David Stout

  Despite the kidnappers’ warnings, the O’Connells had notified the Albany police early on. Governor Herbert Lehman pledged “every resource of the state” to recover the young man. But very quickly, the O’Connells let it be known that they didn’t want the police or federal agents in the way, that they wanted to negotiate for Butch’s release.

  Five New York City detectives were sent north to aid their Albany counterparts, stirring speculation that the kidnapping had been carried out by a New York City gang. But another, more plausible theory was that the kidnapping had been conceived and carried out by upstate enemies of the O’Connells, perhaps by beer distributors who had been chased out of Albany and supplanted by the O’Connell family’s beer business.

  Five days after the kidnapping, there were signs that the victim was about to be set free. There were rumors that the family had raised between $75,000 and $100,000 (the original demand of $250,000 was out of the family’s reach), and several automobiles stood ready in the driveway of the home of Solly O’Connell in the Catskills for a possible rendezvous with the kidnappers.

  Deep in a New York Times account of the episode there was this telling passage, which reflected the state of the battle against the crime of kidnapping: “In the meantime state troopers, federal agents and the New York City detectives, keeping out of sight, were carrying on their investigations, each group working independently.”

  Adding to the confusion was a demand from the kidnappers to see a third list of possible go-betweens.

  The press coverage took on a tone that was remarkably cynical and, it seems, properly so. In case any reader had missed earlier allusions, the Times noted that for the most part the agreed-upon intermediaries between the kidnappers and the family “have no social standing except in the Albany underworld.”88

  One of the men on the list, Sylvester Hess, was a celebrant at a party given by gangster Jack “Legs” Diamond just before Diamond was shot to death on December 18, 1931. Diamond had been staying in an Albany rooming house while on trial in Troy, New York, for kidnapping a driver for a rival bootlegger. The party on December 18 was to celebrate Diamond’s acquittal, but the joy lasted only until he was shot to death in the rooming house. Hess was one of those questioned in connection with the hit, though he was never charged. As for who actually killed Diamond, speculation focused on gangster Dutch Schultz, the brothers John and Francis Oley, well-known Albany area thugs (about whom more later), and even members of the Albany police department.**

  Another name on the third list was Manning “Manny” Strewl, described in press accounts as a former bootlegger “whose occupation is hard to classify.”89 Strewl soon established himself as the chief negotiator between the O’Connell family and whoever was holding Butch.

  As the days went by, the collective fear increased. Those who knew Butch personally worried that he might endanger himself by getting combative with his captors. He was, after all, a six-footer and weighed well over two hundred pounds, and he had played football in high school. He was not used to being pushed around.

  Until the night he was taken, that is. As would be revealed later, he had been knocked into semiconsciousness, possibly drugged to further immobilize him, then put into a crate before he was transported to New York City.

  On Friday, July 28, things began to move. The kidnappers had sent word that they would accept $40,000, a relative pittance compared to the original demand. Louis Snyder, a lawyer for Manny Strewl, picked up the money at the O’Connells’ home in the Catskills and drove to New York City, where he had been told that Butch would be found safe.

  On Sunday, July 30, after he had been held captive for twenty-three days, Butch was set free in the Bronx. Snyder and Strewl went to New York where Strewl made several telephone calls and took various taxi rides, as instructed by the kidnappers. He was blindfolded much of the time. After he handed over the money, he was dropped off at his own car, which by prearrangement had been parked at Broadway and 220th Street in the Bronx.

  And there, in Strewl’s car, sat Butch, blindfolded and gagged. Strewl freed the young man from his inconveniences and drove to pick up Snyder, who had been waiting a short distance away. Then it was on to Albany for a joyous family reunion.

  Strewl quickly came under suspicion. He had seemed to wiggle his way all too easily onto the list of intermediaries who might be acceptable to the kidnappers, and then he had been chosen. Also, known samples of his handwriting resembled that in the notes sent to the family by the kidnappers.

  On August 1, District Attorney John T. Delaney made a statement that seems astounding, at least by today’s standards of conduct by prosecutors. Reporters, who knew that Strewl was being interrogated, asked Delaney if Strewl would be charged. “Oh, eventually, I suppose so,” the prosecutor replied. “You can’t act as a go-between in cases like this without being charged with something. But just now he is helping and has been helping… No one has been offered any protection. If they’re in, they’re in.”90

  With his seemingly casual remarks, the prosecutor had made it clear that the border between good citizens and criminals in Albany was easily crossed, if there was in fact a border.

  No one who had followed the case and knew the nature of Albany was surprised when Strewl was indicted on charges of kidnapping. Others who were indicted included the thug brothers John and Francis Oley, an ex-con named Percy “Angel Face” Geary, and several others who were nowhere to be found at first. All were well known to local lawmen.

  Strewl was convicted in a New York State court in March 1934 and sentenced to fifty years in prison. The Oleys and Geary remained at large, but they were not idle.

  On the morning of August 21, 1934, the Oley brothers and Geary were part of a gang that held up an armored car at a Brooklyn ice house, then commandeered a boat to effect their getaway with more than $400,000. Unfortunately, a shotgun was accidentally discharged on the boat, mangling the leg of one robber so badly that he soon died despite the efforts of a shady surgeon who had been summoned to try to save him.

  Francis Oley was eventually tracked to Denver, where he was arrested in 1937. He soon hanged himself in his cell. John Oley and Geary were also captured in 1937. On November 15, 1937, John Oley, Geary, and another prisoner escaped from the Onondaga County Penitentiary in Jamesville, New York, where they had been housed to await transfer to federal prison. They were soon recaptured and sent to that most dreaded of federal prisons, Alcatraz.

  Oley and Strewl served some time on the island in San Francisco Bay and were probably grateful to be transferred to an easier federal prison in Atlanta. Strewl was released in 1958 and Oley the following year. But Geary adjusted so well to prison that he feared a return to the “real world,” whatever that term meant to him. He begged prison officials to let him stay, but they declined. Three days before he was to be turned loose after serving twenty years, Geary ended his life by throwing himself under a moving truck in the Atlanta prison in 1959.

  John J. O’Connell Jr. lived up to the expectations of the clan’s elders, becoming Albany County Democratic chairman in 1940 at the age of thirty. He served until 1946, when he relinquished the post to his uncle, Dan O’Connell, who until his death in 1977 was the real party chieftain in the county, whether he held the formal title or not.

  Butch also became vice president and general manager of the family-owned brewing company, which profited from the O’Connells’ ability to deny liquor licenses to establishments that dared to think about buying beer elsewhere. At least, that was the complaint of the O’Connells’ enemies.

  Butch O’Connell died on September 4, 1954, at the age of forty-four, a year after the death of his father. The strapping former football player had suffered a stroke the week before. He and his wife, Mary, had four children. No one suggested a direct link between his death and the ordeal he had undergone in 1933.

  As for Manny Strewl, his life served as a reminder that no justice is certain this side of heaven. Released from the Atlanta federal priso
n in 1958, he lived another four decades, dying in 1998 at the age of ninety-five.

  The ransom money in the O’Connell kidnapping was never found.

  *The Knickerbocker Press was one of several daily newspapers in Albany during that period. It was merged with another newspaper in 1937, and that combined paper eventually folded.

  **In a sad sequel, Diamond’s widow, Alice, was shot to death in her Brooklyn apartment a week before the kidnapping of Butch O’Connell, probably to ensure that she would be forever silent on what she knew about her husband’s dealings. Unfortunately for her, she had a habit of talking too much when she drank.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  A BANKER WITH A HEART

  Alton, Illinois

  Monday, July 10, 1933

  On the evening of Monday, July 10, 1933, a wealthy banker named August Luer and his wife of fifty-six years, Helena, were spending a quiet evening at home in Alton, Illinois, a small town on the Mississippi River about fifteen miles north of St. Louis.

  The Luers had had a pleasant day, going for a car ride with one of their three grown sons. It was not really late on this Monday night, but the Luers were about to retire. Early to bed, early to rise was their habit. That way of life had served August Luer well in his seventy-seven years. He was president of the Alton Banking and Trust Company. He was also the retired president of a meatpacking company that he had founded.

  Unlike some bankers of that time, August Luer was liked and trusted. While other banks in the region were going under, Luer pledged that his would never fail, that his personal wealth was behind the institution. It was just the message the Depression-weary people of Alton needed.

  Around 9:00 p.m., the bell rang. Two neatly dressed men and a woman in a flowered dress were standing at the front door.

  “We are trying to get in touch with Henry Busse,” one of the men said. “We are strangers here. Can you help us?”

  Luer was happy to invite the trio into his house. He knew Henry Busse, who lived just a few blocks away, and he said he’d be glad to phone him.

  Luer had just lifted the phone receiver from its hook when one of the men and the woman grabbed him. The second man grabbed Luer’s wife, started to choke her, and shoved her into a hallway, where she fainted. Luer struggled in vain as the two men lifted him and carried him out the front door. His bedroom slippers dropped onto the driveway before he was pushed into a car, where yet another man sat in the driver’s seat. The car raced off.

  Helena Luer had revived and run outside, screaming that her husband had been taken. She was terribly worried; her husband was suffering from heart disease and took medication.

  The police immediately speculated that the kidnappers might be from a gang that operated out of East St. Louis, Illinois, about twenty-four miles south of Alton on the Mississippi River.

  August Luer was blindfolded and exhausted when the car finally stopped. He guessed that he had been in the car, lying on the floor, for three hours. He needed to keep his heart rate as low as he could, for he had no medication with him. Panic was a luxury he could not afford.

  Out of the car, he sensed that he was in the country, likely on a farm. The night was so quiet. He was led a short distance before his blindfold was removed. In the dark, he could discern the outlines of a toolshed. The structure was large enough to hold him in relative comfort.

  But when the shed door was pulled open and a flashlight trained on the floor, he saw something that would terrify anyone with any tendency to be claustrophobic. In front of him was a freshly dug hole, roughly two feet square and four feet deep. And at the bottom of the hole was a narrow tunnel that led immediately into a pitch-black cave about seven feet long, three feet wide, and three and a half feet high. The walls and top of the cave were reinforced by wooden planks. The cave floor was dirt.

  August Luer was given a sack filled with straw and feathers. He tried to tamp down the terror rising in his chest. He knew that the tunnel would be his “room” for as long as he was held captive. But he was not afraid just for himself; his wife was also in delicate health. He wondered if she could endure the ordeal of his absence.

  He wondered how long he would be in this dark, awful place. His captors told him he’d be with them for several days as ransom negotiations took place. They told him they would bring him papers to sign. He wouldn’t be able to read them, as he’d be blindfolded, but it didn’t matter.

  “Your only chance for freedom is to sign your name,” one kidnapper told him.

  On the first day, August Luer was given two ham sandwiches. He ate only part of one.

  As time crawled by, he knew that night was becoming day, day was becoming night, night was turning into day, and…

  Sleep came in spurts. He dared to ask for a car seat cushion. One was brought to him. He was given more ham sandwiches. They upset his stomach, so he asked for some medicine. The next day, he was given a dose of something in a glass of water. Then—praise God!—he was fed cantaloupes and oranges.

  But what he craved more than anything was fresh air. He dared to ask if he could be let out for a few minutes. Not too roughly, one of his captors helped him out, led him upstairs, and sat with him on what felt like a sofa. Luer couldn’t tell for sure; he was still blindfolded.

  After a precious few minutes, it was back down to his dungeon.

  There is a reason for the term usual suspects. When a serious crime is committed, the police in a certain area are apt to focus initially on people who have committed crimes before, even if they have “paid their debt to society,” as the cliché goes. So it made perfect sense for the police around Alton and East St. Louis, Illinois, to poke around in the usual flotsam and jetsam of society to see if they knew anyone who could be linked to the kidnapping of August Luer.

  It was no surprise that Percy Michael Fitzgerald, who was thirty-nine in the summer of 1933, came under suspicion early on. His habit was to give his occupation as “paper hanger” whenever he was arrested, which was often. In truth, he didn’t have time to hang paper, since he had been arrested about forty times in the previous two decades. He had been imprisoned for two years and eight months in Tennessee for safecracking and done six months in a Missouri workhouse for petty larceny, a charge that was reduced from a felony count of possessing burglary tools.

  For reasons lost to history, criminals and other bottom-feeders around East St. Louis knew Fitzgerald as “the Dice Box Kid,” a fact that was known to police, who suspected, not illogically, that anyone with a nickname like that had to be guilty of more wrongdoing than he had ever answered for.

  So a photograph of Fitzgerald was among the two dozen likenesses of known criminals that were shown to Helena Luer right after her husband was taken away. Yes, she said. This looked like one of the men who had come into their home that night. (Nowadays, conscientious police officers show a victim of a crime or a witness numerous photographs in addition to the one they hope will be recognized. That way, investigators prevent accusations by defense lawyers that the identification has been tainted—i.e., that a witness or victim is automatically biased when shown only a photo or sketch that the police hope he or she will recognize. In the 1930s, the police were not bothered by such technicalities.)

  In the summer of 1933, there was a finite number of hangouts that were frequented by lowlifes around East St. Louis and Alton. The police knew them all, and they knew which ones Fitzgerald liked. Federal agents and local cops kept tabs on Fitzgerald’s haunts and grew increasingly suspicious when he was not seen in the usual places after Luer was seized.

  Half a dozen times, pieces of paper were held in front of him, and August Luer scrawled his signature on each one. He was sure they were messages to his family and others negotiating for his freedom. He remembered what he’d been told: “Your only chance for freedom is to sign your name.”

  Luer had counted his days in captivity. On Saturday, his captors pulled him out of the pit and told him they were taking him for a ride—and that he might be
released. He dared to hope.

  He was back in a car, blindfolded. Long minutes passed. Maybe the minutes became an hour. Two hours? He couldn’t tell. Finally, the car stopped. He heard a train coming. Dear God! Are they going to throw me in front of the train? No, no, that makes no sense. Does it?

  They rode on. One of his captors said, “We’ve been riding around in Missouri long enough. We had better get back to Illinois.”

  Were they trying to be clever, just saying that to deceive him on their real whereabouts? Did it matter? At long last, the car stopped again. Luer was helped out of the car and onto the roadside. He didn’t know it, but Saturday night had just become Sunday morning.

  “You can take the bandage off your eyes, and you’ll see a red-and-blue sign,” one of the captors said. “If you go to that place, you will find a telephone.”

  The car drove off. Luer waited cautiously, making sure they were gone for good. Then he removed the bandage that had covered his eyes, saw the sign in the distance, and walked. He went past the waterworks of Collinsville, Illinois, about thirty miles southeast of Alton and twelve miles east of St. Louis. Irrationally, perhaps because his mind was at the breaking point, he was afraid to stop at the waterworks because he thought a night watchman would mistake him for a tramp. In fact, he was unshaven, dirty, and in rumpled, soiled clothes and dust-covered shoes.

  Finally, he came to the red-and-blue sign, which advertised a roadhouse. A small band was playing, and several couples were dancing. The moment he entered, the music and dancing stopped. The proprietor offered him a cup of coffee. No thanks, Luer said. “Please,” he said. “Could I telephone my son? My family will be waiting to hear from me.”91