The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  They’d spent their honeymoon in sunny Bermuda, unable to go to Europe because of World War II. But Mary didn’t mind. She was with her loving husband.

  Mary raised her head from the pillow. Ad’s bluetick hound was barking. Mary decided she should try to get out of bed. She was visiting the kids later for brunch to celebrate Valentine’s Day at the big house. She slowly arose from her bedroom and entered the kitchen when she heard the side door open from the carport.

  “Ready for some breakfast, dear?” asked Mary. She stopped short as soon as the words came out. Her mind was groggy, and for an instant, she thought Ad was coming in from the barn like he often did on Sunday mornings while the kids were at church. Instead, it was one of the agents stepping inside after a smoke.

  “I’m so sorry,” Mary said.

  “Please, don’t apologize. It was a rough night for everybody.”

  * * *

  At noon, Mary drove over to the big house, where her children were staying with their grandparents. Two agents followed her in their unmarked sedan.

  “Mama!” the kids shouted as she entered the big house. They hadn’t seen their mother since Thursday. One by one, they handed Mary their valentines, some homemade with crayons and glitter, others store bought. They also gave her a box of chocolates and a single rose. Her eyes watered.

  “We have cards for Daddy, too,” said Jim.

  Mary wiped away some determined tears with the back of her hand and stood. “When I get home, I’ll set your cards on the mantel so they’re the first thing your father sees when he gets back, okay?”

  “Good idea.”

  “When is Daddy coming back?” asked Jim.

  Spike elbowed him.

  “Soon, sweetheart, very soon,” said Mary. “I hope.”

  After lunch with Ad’s parents and some other family members who’d dropped by, it was time for Mary to return to the ranch. It was not wise to stay away for long. The kidnappers might attempt to make contact. She hugged her children, who escorted her to the door with her valentines, chocolates, and rose. It was a sad parting.

  Mary had not been home long when there was a knock. An agent, with his hand gripping a pistol strapped to his hip, opened the door. A deputy stood beside a man Mary didn’t recognize.

  “Delivery, ma’am. I was told to extend the store’s apologies. Supposed to be delivered yesterday. Please sign here.”

  Mary stepped outside to sign for it. She entered the house carrying a dozen roses and a small box marked with a Cherry Creek jewelry store label. Agents had checked the delivery on the front steps. They stayed outside.

  Mary read the card on the flowers:

  Happy Valentine’s Day sweetheart! You are and always will be my Valentine.

  Love forever, Ad

  * * *

  On the night of February 17, eight days after the kidnapping, Corbett parked his car in a municipal garbage dump outside Atlantic City, New Jersey. He removed the license plate and stuck it in his travel bag. He then lifted a gasoline can from the trunk and poured its combustible contents across the front and rear seats of the car he’d driven 1,800 miles from Denver without detection. When the gas can was empty, he tossed it inside, lit a match, and ran. The windows of the car exploded, and a plume of black smoke rolled up into the orange-lit sky.

  Corbett scampered for the cover of trees and tall spartina grass, escaping into the darkness, confident he’d erased all evidence inside the vehicle and all connection to him. Within a few minutes, the car would be nothing more than a burned-out hull.

  He was a long way from home, pleased but also frustrated as his $400 car went up in flames leaving him on foot. Only twenty minutes from the famous Atlantic City Boardwalk, he cut through the pines along a path worn in grass-covered sand till he hit asphalt. Soon, Corbett was strolling along the brightly lit beach among throngs of people out on the warmer-than-usual evening. None would have surmised that the tall, thin man had torched his vehicle and was about to head out of town on US Highway 30 with only a few belongings and dwindling funds.

  Before the flames reached their zenith, a man spotted the fiery automobile. The Atlantic City Fire Department arrived at 9:30. Within minutes, the firemen doused the inferno to a smolder. Those on the scene radioed for an inspection team to canvass the burned automobile. Battalion Chief James Evans soon arrived, as did two Atlantic City policemen, Charles Callender and Wilbur Johnson, to inspect the charred automobile.

  “It’s a Mercury four-door sedan,” an officer told the battalion chief. “Early ’50s model, maybe a ’51 or ’52. Pale yellow. No human remains inside.” Though scalded, with only metal framing and cushion springs remaining inside, some of the paint remained visible along the front and rear of the car and its fenders. What was left of a spare tire filled the crumbling trunk.

  The battalion chief wiped away the soot and located the car’s serial number imprinted on the warm Mercury’s body frame. “Write this down,” he said, shining a flashlight. “51 LA 38766 M.”

  Police sent the serial number over the teletype and learned it was registered in the state of Colorado to Walter Osborne. He had no criminal record, but was wanted for questioning in connection with a kidnapping. The Atlantic City police contacted the Newark FBI field office to take possession of the blistered vehicle. A second inspection by the FBI confirmed the car was registered to Walter Osborne, the same man whose fingerprint had been lifted from a paint bucket in a Denver apartment.

  Corbett thought he was being smart in his attempt to erase all evidence from his car, but all he had done was draw attention to his location on the East Coast. He’d even failed to eliminate all the evidence because the FBI still located something extremely valuable. It was as plain as dirt.

  CHAPTER 12

  The Denver Post reported on Friday, February 19, “The Coors family remained in seclusion Thursday while presumed negotiations went on for the release of Adolph Coors III.”

  When reporters asked Sheriff Wermuth how close they were to obtaining Ad’s release, he said with annoyance, “I don’t know anything about the progress of ransom negotiations. I haven’t had any contact with the Coors family since I withdrew my officers a week ago.”

  Mary’s brother, Jim, read the Post article to Mary, who’d quit reading newspapers and watching television news. She only wished negotiations were progressing.

  Mary had heard nothing from the kidnappers. It had been ten days. Ten excruciatingly worrisome days. She’d been told that typically contact is made and the victim released within one to three weeks. There’s still time, but what could have happened? Mary asked herself. The days kept passing without word from Ad or the kidnappers.

  The thick-skinned Bill described the family’s emotional battle in a courtroom months later. “We spent a lot of time mentally and emotionally conditioning ourselves for the worst.”

  Mary’s conditioning, however, had failed dreadfully. Her mind focused on Ad every second of every day. By the end of each day, she was hollowed out and deeply depressed, yet sleep came with difficulty and then only if brought about by sedatives. She paced about, a prisoner in her own house, obsessing about the kidnapping. Her stomach was continually queasy, causing a loss of appetite. Worse, she increasingly found herself with a drink in her hand, needing alcohol and sedatives to make it through each day. She knew if she didn’t hear from the kidnappers soon, Ad had to be dead. The evidence pointed to that conclusion. She didn’t wish to face it, but there was the blood and no trace of Ad anywhere despite teams searching on the ground and in the air.

  Prank calls had disturbed her sleep the night before, sleep that was difficult to attain, especially when awakened in the middle of the night. When sleep did come, she would be tormented by dreams both good and bad. But her tortured nights would not end soon. There’d be more than fifty ransom letters and telephone calls to come (intermingled with cards and letters from well-wishers). All were intercepted and read by the FBI.

  More hoaxes came that day. Rocky
Mountain News received and published a handwritten ransom note from a prankster presumably intended for Ad’s parents:

  If you expect to see your boy alive do exactly like I tell you. Go to the Denver U.S. National Bank and deposit $1 million dollars to Paul A. Loveless and give book to Board of Directors. Then have President make it all into U.S. Savings Bonds with Paul A. Loveless name on each. To prove you have done this Tues nite at six o’clock you and President will meet on TV 9 and you will resight Humpty Dumpty and President will resight Little Bo Peep. President will put bonds in safety boxs at his bank and wear the keys around his neck at all times. You got nothing to loose. You got everything to loose.

  Other fake demands were short like, “Put $50,000 in a suitcase. Wait for contact. Son is O.K. Be smart.” Others were long ramblings. Most contained misspellings. Mary didn’t have to read the letters because the FBI appropriated them at the post office. The FBI knew it already had the genuine ransom note, but still looked out for a follow-up note from the real kidnappers.

  The phone calls were what tortured Mary. Day and night, prank or piggyback kidnappers called. If she was asleep, she was awakened. Friends and family were told not to call, so all calls made to the residence were treated as from the real kidnappers. And Mary had to speak to each one.

  On Saturday, the twentieth, the FBI and the Coors family met with Special Agent Hostetter to receive an update on the investigation and to consider what could be done to encourage the kidnappers to make contact. Comments from everyone bounced about the room.

  “If half a million dollars won’t bring ’em out in the open, I don’t know what the hell will,” said Mr. Coors. “The boy’s dead. Gotta be.”

  “Don’t say that, Father. It’s not the money. It’s the fear of getting caught,” Joe said.

  “Perhaps we should offer a reward,” suggested Bill.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that,” said Hostetter. “It only brings the nuts out of the woodwork, taking up agent time chasing down false leads. We’re not to that point yet. Let’s put that off a while.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Ad’s dead,” said Mary, who stood and walked to the kitchen window as if in a trance.

  Mr. Coors slapped his thigh and nodded in agreement. Bill thought the situation was bleak indeed when his father and Mary agreed on anything. He believed his brother was dead, too. Everybody did. Yet there lingered a sliver of hope. And Mary didn’t really believe her callous remark. She simply was angry and exhausted.

  The sheriff and deputies had already been called off the case to make the kidnappers less wary. Mary wanted to go further. She wanted the FBI agents to go, too.

  “I know it seems bleak, Mrs. Coors,” said Hostetter, “but it’s possible the kidnappers are simply extremely cautious. So why don’t we try this: What if we release a statement to reporters that our agency has withdrawn from the case even though we really haven’t? The kidnappers won’t know the difference. They’re reading the newspapers like everyone else. Would you be okay with that, Mrs. Coors?”

  In actuality, Hostetter was propounding a suggestion merely to appease Mary. Though he hoped he was wrong, he believed Ad was dead, too. No other reason for the blood and the delay made sense. Besides, he now had a suspect, Walter Osborne, who’d left town two weeks earlier, and it was doubtful he was taking Ad on a cross-country tour. But in Mary’s house that day, Hostetter kept those dark notions to himself.

  * * *

  The Denver office of thirty FBI agents covering Wyoming and Colorado fought crime on three fronts as March 1960 neared. Bank robberies, bombings, fugitives, kidnappings, public corruption, espionage, and organized crime required investigating as usual. The unexpected kidnapping of Ad Coors required so many agents that J. Edgar Hoover sent additional men to Denver to handle the investigation. And consuming a great deal of fruitless effort were the extortionists—ransom notes and phone calls demanding money for Ad’s safe return from persons who knew nothing of Ad’s kidnapping other than what was reported in newspapers and on radio and television.

  Letters poured in from all over the country: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Texas, and, of course, Colorado. To the FBI, it didn’t matter the sender’s true intention or how little money was asked. Under the Hobbs Act, it is a federal crime to wrongfully employ the US mail to use fear of physical injury to any person to induce the victim’s consent to give up money.

  To assist the FBI, Mr. Coors, Mary, Bill, and Joe had signed authorizations for any post office receiving suspicious mail addressed to a Coors to be turned over to the FBI for analysis. Every letter mailed and every call made to the Coors family exacting a ransom were investigated. Most were quickly determined fraudulent and investigated as separate cases apart from the Coors kidnapping to gather evidence that would support federal extortion charges.

  An example of the tenacity of the FBI came in the form of an investigation into a ransom note, postmarked at 1:30 p.m. on February 11 in Boulder, Colorado. The letter read:

  The letter inside read:

  TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN:

  WE WANT $8,000 BY

  THE 15TH OF FEB. TAKE IT TO THE INDIAN

  GRILL AT U OF C MEMORIAL CENTER.

  PUT IT IN A BRIEF CASE AND LEAVE IT BY THE CAST DOOR.

  DO NOT TELL THE COPS OR ELSE.

  It didn’t matter that the ransom was a measly $8,000 (about $65,000 today). The letter and envelope were sent to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, and a report was generated and sent to the FBI field office in Denver, detailing: the paper and envelope; they were made by the Western Tablet and Stationery Corporation in St. Joseph, Missouri and could be purchased in the University of Colorado bookstore; the print was uppercase block stenciled with a ruler of a type used by engineering students; owing to the nature of the printing, it was doubtful it could be matched with known handwriting samples; and five latent fingerprints of value were developed and processed through the single fingerprint file without effecting an identification.

  The FBI spoke with the Boulder Police Department, the sheriff of Boulder County, and university security, but none had any suspects in mind, and all believed that whoever sent the note was a student pulling a prank and had no intention of collecting the money, only wanting to watch the drop-off spot simply for a thrill perhaps.

  Agents appeared at the university campus and observed the Indian Grill, the location of its doorways, and its proximity to dormitories, postal drop-offs, and the area by the “cast door” designated as the drop site.

  The agents interviewed the university psychiatrist, administrative staff, and faculty. Most agreed they knew of no suspects and the letter most likely was a student hoax. There were some, however, who identified particular students who’d sent angry or vile letters to faculty or staff in the past and others who were known troublemakers. The agents interviewed them all, even those who’d dropped out of school living as far away as Philadelphia. None turned out to be the mailer of the extortion letter.

  “Youth must have respect for authority,” said one special agent, “and for the victim’s family. What he or she may think is merely a joke is actually impeding our kidnapping investigation, costing the American taxpayers, and worst of all, causing the Coors family more suffering. Our agency believes that the student should go before a federal judge and let him decide what to do with this so-called prankster.”

  The FBI would spend an entire year investigating what by all accounts was a prank letter from a college student asking for $8,000 he had no intention of collecting. The case was finally closed in March 1961.

  Some notes seemed possibly related and were investigated as further contact from the real kidnappers. A note might be received stating, “We are ready to turn your son over,” and provide instructions on delivering the $500,000 asked for in the genuine ransom letter. Upon analysis by the FBI Laboratory, those that contained “some significant similarities” were investigated, but none were ultimately found to have anything to do with Ad’s kidnapping. All were discovered
to be nothing more than extortion letters and treated as separate criminal cases.

  Still, the FBI did have someone they wanted to question, and he was becoming more of a solid suspect: Walter Osborne. There was only one hitch. The FBI couldn’t find him. Not a trace. Agents on the East Coast checked pawnshops and entered bars on snowy and rainy days and nights, but no Osborne. Banks and hospitals were alerted to be on the lookout for him, as were gun shops, optometrists, barbershops, and used car dealers. Since Osborne’s burned Mercury was discovered near major port cities, the FBI feared he may have hopped a merchant ship headed for some faraway port like Singapore or Buenos Aires. Maybe he’d crossed into Canada or south into Mexico or the Caribbean. But while agents kept running into dead ends searching for Osborne, they were about to receive evidence that would break the case wide open.

  * * *

  On Monday the twenty-second, two weeks after Ad’s disappearance, the Coors children returned to school and to their home. Like Mary, they’d been having a terrible time—worried, upset, crying, waiting for word about their father.

  The children were escorted to school by armed guards provided by the Coors plant. While in class and at recess, the guards positioned themselves at all exterior doors and on the playground. It may have seemed to Goldenites that the Coors children were as closely guarded as President Eisenhower. The boys didn’t play sports—no spring baseball. The girls didn’t go out. None would join their father as a kidnap victim, that was for certain.

  * * *

  FBI QUITS COORS CASE FOR TIME TO AID CONTACT, read The Denver Post headline on the same Monday that the Coors children returned to school. Mary released a statement to the press later that afternoon:

  My family and I are anxiously awaiting word of my husband, Ad. I have asked all law enforcement authorities to withdraw from active participation in this case, which they have done. By this action, we are giving assurance that no effort will be made to interfere with attempts to communicate with us. We are ready to pay for my husband’s safe return. I thank the people, the press, television, and radio for the kindness and understanding they have shown during the past several days.