by David Stout
Finally came the moment he had yearned for. One of the kidnappers approached him and said, not unkindly, “Kid, you’re going home.”
It was cold and wet, very early on the morning of Saturday, June 1, when three kidnappers put him in a car and drove. It was pitch-black, and while George didn’t know it, he was near Issaquah, a little city east of Seattle and northeast of Tacoma when the car stopped and he was let out. He was given two dirty blankets and a dollar bill, stuffed into a pocket.
“Your pa will pick you up,” a kidnapper said just before the car sped off.
But how will he find me? George wondered. Instead of waiting, he walked. And walked. It would be determined later that he walked some six miles in the cold and rain before coming to a farmhouse. He knocked on the door, and Louis Bonifas, a chicken rancher with ten children, opened the door.
“I’m the little boy who was kidnapped,” George said.
Bonifas’s wife, Willena, sat George down and gave him breakfast and dry socks and shoes. Then her husband put George into his Model T Ford and headed toward Tacoma. As daylight was breaking, he found a gas station, called the Tacoma police, and said he was taking the boy home.
Then a reporter insinuated himself into the events in a way that would be hard to conceive today. John Dreher, a veteran reporter for the Seattle Times, got wind that George had been freed and was on his way to Tacoma. So Dreher commandeered a taxi in the hope of intercepting the car bringing him home. Dreher figured there wouldn’t be many cars on the road so early on a Saturday morning, and he was right.
Dreher saw Bonifas’s car with a little boy inside, flagged the car down, and somehow convinced Bonifas to turn George over to him. Dreher either presented himself as a police officer or at least did not discourage the misperception that he was a cop. So on the way to the Weyerhaeuser home in the taxi, Dreher got an exclusive interview with the nine-year-old kidnap victim.
“Tacoma Boy Free, $200,000 Is Paid: He Names Karpis.”174
That was the lead headline in the New York Times of June 2, 1935. On the inside page where the article was continued, there were photographs of Karpis and Harry Campbell, who had escaped with Karpis in the Atlantic City shootout the previous January 20.
But did it really make sense that Karpis (perhaps accompanied by Campbell) had driven across the country to pull off what they surely knew would be another sensational kidnapping, one that would put hundreds of federal and local lawmen on their trail? Not really.
The car belonging to F. Rodman Titcomb, George’s uncle, was soon found abandoned in the Chinatown section of Seattle. Very quickly, money from the ransom began to turn up. A twenty-dollar bill turned up in Huntington, Oregon, where a train station agent recalled that a man had used the bill to buy a ticket to Salt Lake City. Another twenty turned up in Spokane, where it had been used to buy a postal money order. By June 7, a score of twenty-dollar bills from the ransom had turned up in Salt Lake City. So the FBI and local police were sure the kidnappers were from the region, not adventurous Easterners who had come west to strike gold.
At the FBI’s urging, Salt Lake City police stationed undercover officers in the cashier’s cages of downtown department stores. They didn’t have to wait long. On Saturday, June 8, a young woman appeared at the cashier’s cage with a five-dollar bill to pay for a twenty-cent purchase. The bill was identified at once as being from the ransom, and the woman was arrested. Another bill from the ransom was found in her purse.
Her name was Margaret Waley. She was just nineteen and had been living in Salt Lake City for only a few days. She was a newlywed. The police staked out her residence, and soon her new husband, Harmon Waley, twenty-four, showed up. He, too, had ransom bills on his person—and he had a story to tell.
In 1930, Waley was doing six months for vagrancy in the Idaho State Penitentiary. There, he met William Dainard, who was serving twenty years for bank robbery. Somehow, he obtained a pardon and was turned loose in mid-1933. He knocked around the Northwest, drifting to Salt Lake City, where he met his future wife and married her after a three-day courtship. They eked out an existence as Waley dabbled in burglary and robbery.
Fatefully, Waley happened to run into Dainard in Salt Lake City, and they decided to relocate to Spokane, where they rented a house. In mid-May, Margaret saw a newspaper obituary for John Philip Weyerhaeuser Sr., which described the family’s vast holdings. So the kidnapping idea was born. They rented an apartment in Seattle and waited for a chance to grab a member of the Weyerhaeuser family. They got their chance when young George took a shortcut on his way home from school.
The Waleys gave signed confessions to the FBI. Upon learning that they had been nabbed, Dainard took off for Butte, Montana, where he was spotted by a cop who thought he looked suspicious loitering near a car with Utah plates. As the cop approached, Dainard vaulted an alley fence and disappeared. Inside the car was a suitcase with some $15,000 in ransom money.
Back in Salt Lake City, the Waleys told the FBI where they had buried their share of the ransom: in a canyon several miles outside the city. Agents found some $90,000 in a sack wrapped in oilcloth.
The law moved with remarkable dispatch. Officials elected to try the Waleys in federal court on kidnapping, conspiracy, and extortion charges. Perhaps hoping for mercy, Harmon Waley pleaded guilty to kidnapping and conspiracy and was sentenced to forty-five years. Off he went, in July 1935, to Alcatraz.
Margaret Waley, despite having signed a confession, went to trial. She was convicted of kidnapping and conspiracy and sentenced to twenty years. But where was William Dainard?
Early in 1936, Federal Reserve notes with altered serial numbers began to appear on the West Coast. The FBI lab determined that the notes were part of the ransom. On Wednesday, May 6, employees of two San Francisco banks reported that a man had exchanged altered bills for clean ones. They noticed the man’s car and wrote down the license plate number. The vehicle was registered to one Bert E. Cole, who was living in a hotel—across the street from the Federal Building, of all places. Early the next morning, FBI agents located the vehicle, disabled it, and waited. Around noon, “Bert Cole,” better known as William Dainard, appeared and checked under the hood when his car would not start. Thus preoccupied, he was an easy arrest. Just over $7,000 in ransom money was found in his pockets and $30,000 in the hotel where he’d been staying.
The fight had gone out of William Dainard. He declined to be represented by a court-appointed lawyer and pleaded guilty at once to kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap. He was sentenced to sixty years in prison, a short part of which was spent at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, and in a mental hospital in Missouri. Then it was off to Alcatraz.
The final suspect in the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, one Edward Fliss, was tracked down and arrested in San Francisco in October. He pleaded guilty to being an accessory—his main job had been to launder the ransom money—and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
About $157,000 in ransom money was recovered, the rest having been spent or lost. But the return of the money to the Weyerhaeuser family did not end the story.**
George’s father, John P. Weyerhaeuser Jr., gave Louis Bonifas a lifetime job in a Washington State lumber mill owned by his company. He also gave Bonifas a monetary reward, big enough so the chicken rancher with ten children could buy several acres of land and build a house.
The Weyerhaeuser case gave Hoover a happy ending and good reason to be proud. The FBI laboratory, created under Hoover, had traced the ransom notes, contributing greatly to the solution of the case.
Hoover was in dire need of an ego boost in 1936. American Agent, an autobiography by ex-FBI man Melvin Purvis, whom Hoover had driven into exile, was a bestseller, no doubt to Hoover’s chagrin. (Two years later, Hoover’s own ghostwritten literary effort, Persons in Hiding, was a flop, critically and commercially. “It is time that Mr. Hoover gave his ghost some fresh material,” a New York Times review said. “This book is washed over and dimmed by bana
lities.”175)
Margaret Waley was released from prison in 1948 after serving two-thirds of her sentence. Divorced from Harmon Waley, she remarried and settled in Salt Lake City. She died in 1989 at the age of seventy-four.
Harmon Waley wrote to the Weyerhaeuser family several times while in prison. He apologized for his crime and asked if he could have a job with the company when he got out. He was released in 1963 after serving twenty-eight years. In an act of great kindness, the Weyerhaeusers did give him a job at one of their Oregon mills. Waley died in Salem, Oregon, in 1984 at the age of seventy-three.
William Dainard was eventually granted parole and died in Great Falls, Montana, in 1992 at the age of ninety.
Edward Fliss served most of his ten-year sentence. He was released in 1946 and disappeared into anonymity.
George Weyerhaeuser’s father, John Philip Weyerhaeuser Jr., died of leukemia in 1956 at the age of fifty-six.
And George Hunt Weyerhaeuser, whose kidnapping captivated the nation, graduated from Yale, rose through the ranks of his family’s company, becoming chief executive. At the time of this writing, he is ninety-three years old.
*Some later accounts say that George’s father drove into the country to effect delivery. But reports at the time, including direct quotes from Titcomb, make it all but certain that he undertook the mission.
**In reconstructing the Weyerhaeuser case, I relied on contemporary accounts in the New York Times and the Seattle Times.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
DEVIL AT THE DOOR
Tacoma, Washington
Saturday, December 27, 1936
The glow of Christmas still filled the home of Dr. William W. Mattson and his wife, Hazel. They were away at a holiday party, sure that their children were safe in their house. How could they not be? Dr. Mattson was one of Tacoma’s best known surgeons, and the family lived in an exclusive neighborhood overlooking Commencement Bay.
It was shortly before 9:00 p.m. and the Mattson children—William Jr., sixteen; Muriel, fourteen; and Charles, ten—were enjoying root beer and popcorn in the sun porch that adjoined the living room. With them was Muriel’s friend Virginia Chatsfield, fifteen, from Seattle.
William Mattson and his wife had decorated three large pine trees for the season. The trees stood where their lights lit up the porch and living room. There were decorations in the windows too. The Christmas lights bathed the spacious lawn outside.
All in all, it was the kind of evening that creates memories for a lifetime, of home and hearth and childhood friendships. Then everything changed, suddenly and forever.
Someone knocked loudly on the French doors that led onto a terrace at the back of the house. Charles went to investigate, then ran back to the others, saying that he had seen a man wearing a mask standing in the courtyard.
The pounding on the door resumed. The man muttered gibberish, but the children could tell he wanted to come inside. Then he smashed some glass panes, reached in to unlatch the door, and stepped in. It was impossible to reconstruct exactly what the intruder did and said, since the only witnesses were terrified children, but in their collective recollection this is about how things unfolded:
“Don’t you kids try to start anything, because I have a bullet-proof vest on,” the intruder said. Then he said something that seemed to make no sense: “I’ve put a lot of money into this house and I want to get some of it back.”176
William Jr. told the intruder it was not his parents’ habit to keep large sums in the house. The man searched William’s pockets, finding nothing. Then he looked at Charles. “I want you to come with me right away. You’re worth money.” The invader dropped a piece of paper on the floor, grabbed Charles by the arm, dragged him through the rear door, and warned the other children not to call the police, or he would come back and kill them. Then he was gone with his young captive.
William Jr. called the police, who were at the house within minutes, then called his parents. The kidnapper’s mask had slipped partly off, and the children were able to describe him: dark hair, brown eyes, unshaven. He was about five feet seven and of medium build, maybe thirty-five to forty, wearing a dark-blue jacket and dark work trousers. Charles was wearing blue knickers, a gray sweater, and slippers.
Investigators discounted the possibility that the kidnapper had come and gone by boat, as the night of the abduction coincided with one of the lowest tides of the year.
The piece of paper left by the kidnapper was a ransom note, folded and appearing to have been carried in a pocket for some time. It demanded $28,000 in various denominations and in old bills. The family was instructed to place an ad in the Seattle Times (“Mabel—Please give us your address”) to signal a willingness to cooperate. If the ad were not placed, the ransom demand would double, then double again, the note warned. “Dont fail & I wontt. The boy is safe. Tim.”177
The note had been typed in an ink of unusual color, perhaps from a child’s typewriter. How had the kidnapper (kidnappers?) arrived at the figure of $28,000? And why was the note not addressed specifically to the Mattson family? Perhaps, detectives theorized, the kidnapper had carried it in a pocket until he zeroed in on a target. There were several well-to-do families among the Mattsons’ neighbors.
Hoover immediately sent nine agents to Tacoma to assist local police on the theory that the Lindbergh Law had been violated. Within a week, some forty more agents would be dispatched to Tacoma, led by FBI assistant director Harold Nathan.
The kidnapping was, of course, a sensational crime, made more so by the disgraceful behavior of newspaper reporters and photographers, newsreel cameramen, and radio reporters. Members of the Mattson family were followed, making it impossible for Mattson to deal directly with whoever had taken his son. Every new tidbit of “news,” true or otherwise, was printed and broadcast.
Meanwhile, the police and FBI agents were staying more or less on the sidelines, giving Mattson every chance to negotiate privately with the kidnappers.
The situation became more chaotic. Other messages were sent to the Mattson home, apparently from people hoping to insinuate themselves into the negotiations and hijack the ransom money. On Tuesday, December 29, a special delivery letter arrived at the home. It declared that anyone could deliver the ransom money, once arrangements were made, as long as the courier was alone and driving a Ford. The letter was signed “Tim.”
The Mattson family ran more newspaper ads, trying to convey the message that the way was clear for a deal and that lawmen were standing down, pending safe return of Charles.
Again, Mattson went public with a plea to the news media, practically begging reporters and photographers to stop following him and stop reporting supposedly “inside” information.
The first week of 1937 brought cold and snow to the Puget Sound region. Members of the Mattson family were sick with worry, as Charles had not been wearing outdoor clothing when he was spirited away.
Most alarmingly, Mattson had been in direct contact, by phone and letter, with the kidnapper but had found his responses increasingly confusing and contradictory. What in God’s name did he have to do to get his son back? The only man who could answer Mattson’s questions seemed nearly incoherent.
On Sunday, January 10, and Monday, January 11, the Mattsons ran one last ad in the Seattle Times, asking for specific instructions—and proof that Charles was still alive.
Around 9:00 p.m. on Sunday, Gordon Morrow thought his bulldog, Nick, was acting mighty strange. The beast was running from door to door, barking all the while, as if eager to get out of the house and explore—what? But Nick was not the only dog who seemed excited. Other canines belonging to the farm families in the vicinity were also baying.
Sorry, Nick, it’s no night to be outdoors, Gordon thought. The nineteen-year-old thought he might go rabbit hunting the next day near his home in Snohomish County, several miles from Seattle. But for now, indoors was the place to be.
The next morning, snow covered the fields and woods near the Mor
row house, but Gordon was still in the mood for hunting rabbits. Near a side road about a half mile west of the Pacific Highway, he saw a naked, doll-like form in the snow. Coming closer, Gordon saw that the form was the body of a young boy—the Mattson boy, he thought at once. He ran home to tell his father, Charles Morrow, then ran a half mile to a gas station to phone the Snohomish County sheriff’s office.
A family friend and a relative identified the body as that of Charles. The boy had been treated cruelly, as evidenced by bruises and marks on his wrists indicating he had been tightly bound. He had been killed by blows to the head, possibly with a metal pipe. Grease marks, abrasions, and dirt on the skin indicated that his body had been in the trunk of a car.
Subfreezing temperatures made it impossible to determine a time of death. The boy could have been killed shortly after he was taken but probably no later than four days before the body was discovered, coroners concluded.
President Roosevelt issued a statement on January 12 declaring that the slaying “has shocked the nation” and was “renewed evidence of the need of sustained effort in dealing with the criminal menace.”178
Hoover sent a large floral arrangement to the funeral service, held on Thursday, January 14. He pledged that his agency would use “all the resources at our command to apprehend and bring to justice the kidnapper and slayer of the Mattson boy.”179
In a gesture of truly amazing grace, Dr. Mattson thanked members of the news media for finally heeding his pleas and leaving him alone while there was still hope for his son. But the Tacoma Chamber of Commerce was unforgiving, issuing a statement condemning newsmen for their behavior in taking advantage of the tragedy.
Investigators were optimistic at first. Whoever left the body in the field had left footprints, and his car had left tire marks in the snow. But those clues led to nothing.