By the time Hager showed up at the Coral Court, between 10:30 and 11:00 A.M., Hall had become extremely agitated. An apologetic Hager explained that he had overslept, and asked whether the police were looking for him.
“No, I think it might be the insurance investigators,” Hall replied.
But he was pleased to see Hager, and added that he knew he could count on his new friend. He sent the cabdriver to buy some aspirins, coffee, and fried-egg sandwiches for himself and O’Day.
Hall wanted to put O’Day on a plane to Los Angeles right away with the letter addressed to Patton. After handing her the envelope, he instructed her to mail the letter to Patton immediately upon her arrival. The envelope bore Patton’s name and address—1117 Corley Building, St. Joseph, Missouri. Hall then ordered O’Day to step into the bathroom. Opening the suitcase just enough to insert his hand, he withdrew a wad of cash, counted out $1,000 for her expenses, and gave it to her.
After Hall and O’Day had breakfast, he told Hager to drive O’Day to a cab stand in St. Louis where she could catch a cab to the airport, and then to return to the motel to collect him. When Hager asked why Hall could not just ride along with the two of them, Hall replied, “I’ve got something I want to do.”
As soon as Hager and O’Day were on their way back to the city, she told him, “I’ve got something big to tell you. This guy is loaded with dough. He opened one of the suitcases and there must be a million dollars in it. Don’t tell him I told you ’cause he made me swear I wouldn’t tell you.” Despite Hall’s later insistence that neither she nor anyone else had seen the ransom money, O’Day had caught a glimpse of it. While she was sequestered in the bathroom, pretending to take a bath, Hall had opened one of the suitcases. O’Day, gingerly opening the door just a crack, saw it filled with money. She later confronted him, and he—given his almost total lack of insight into either O’Day’s or Hager’s character—believed her when she promised not to say a word about it. Besides, he figured that she would soon be out of town.
Hager told her to open the envelope and read the letter that Steve, his gullible, free-spending new friend, wanted her to mail from Los Angeles. It read, “Dear Barney, Things are not as good as they seem. I may have to leave the country by ship or plane and when we meet in the future maybe things will be better. Carl.”
Hager remarked that he had noticed the initials CAH and the words “St. Joseph, Missouri” on Steve’s hatband while his hat lay on the bed. O’Day informed Hager that she was not going to Los Angeles, but to St. Joseph to check up on whoever this Barney Patton was, and try to find out what was going on. Hager asked her to send a telegram to him around eleven that night from St. Joseph, in care of Henry Wilson of the Ace Cab Company, letting him know how she was making out.
While Hager and O’Day were gone, Hall took $20,000 from the black suitcase and put it into the briefcase. He observed that the money looked exactly as it had been when he first placed it there, and that it did not look disturbed.
Learning that the man he knew as Steve was actually named Carl set Hager thinking, specifically, about how to get his hands on more of the money that Steve/Carl—a morphine addict, no less—was so freely handing out. When he returned to the Coral Court about forty-five minutes later in the rented Plymouth, a very nervous Hall asked him to put the luggage in the car. He left behind the new suitcase Hager had bought for him, but brought along the briefcase filled with $20,000. Hall asked to drive the car himself, but Hager reminded him that, since Hall had no driver’s license, he, Hager, would have to drive. Hall said that he needed to see a man about a dog, and that he also wanted to go to a hardware store—specifying that it be on Route 66, because he did not know the city and wanted to see the Coral Court when he subsequently drove past it. Hager took him to the nearby Hampton Village shopping area, where a Hardware Mart was located.
Hall also asked Hager if he could borrow his cabbie’s driver’s license, and Hager told him that he had only a chauffeur’s license with his photo on it. Hall then asked Hager to rent an apartment for him for a month.
“This thing would be fine if it wasn’t for this man making the one slip,” he said, trying to explain his unusual circumstances and need for secrecy. “That’s why I’ve got to be like this. You know I trust you and Sandy. You don’t have to worry. I’m going to really set you up but you’ve got to play it cool. I need a place in a nice, quiet, refined neighborhood where I can stay about a month.”
Hall even suggested an excuse to explain why he would be staying in a room rented by Hager—that Hager was a dispatcher for Ace Cab, and that his uncle Steve Strand would be staying with him.
Hall also told Hager, “John, if you have no money, you’re nothing,” and asked for the return of $2,000 of the $2,500 he had given him, and to keep $500 for himself.
But he promised Hager that he would buy him a motel in Florida so that the cabbie would never have to work again, and told him to use the $500 to buy himself a good suit and some shoes—nothing but the best.
He then asked Hager to obtain some bogus identification for him. The cabdriver readily agreed.
Sometime between 1:00 and 1:30 P.M., the two men separated, after agreeing to meet at 4 P.M. at the Pink House. Hall left in the green Plymouth that Hager had rented for him, and Hager caught a cab. On the ride into the city, he wondered if the mysterious errand that his new friend wanted to run was to buy some cartridges for his pistol that O’Day had previously removed. Hager also worried that Hall might steal the car rented in the cabbie’s name. Momentarily, he pondered whether he should even call Dick Gerabeck, an officer he knew who worked with the St. Louis Police Department, to tell him about his unusual customer.
But the savvy ex-con quickly dismissed that idea and asked the driver, Howard Hartman, to take him to a tavern on 7th Street downtown. As he continued to mull things over, Hager gradually became convinced that the man with the initials CAH in his hatband was the kidnapper of Bobby Greenlease, and that his footlocker and suitcase contained nothing less than the ransom money. If the cabbie’s suspicions were correct, that meant there was only one person he could confide in—not a policeman, not the hooker he occasionally pimped for, but small-time gangster Joe Costello, owner of Ace Cab.
Hall drove to the Hardware Mart in Hampton Village. After telling the clerk, a Mrs. William Koenig, that he wanted to look at garbage cans, he spent three or four minutes studying the display, and then ordered two sixteen-gallon cans. He also asked if she had any large plastic bags. She showed him the store’s clothes-dampening bags, measuring about three and a half feet long by one foot wide. Hall asked for four, but the store had only two in stock, which he bought. Appearing to be in a hurry, he also asked for a shovel. Mrs. Koenig showed him a selection, and he chose an ordinary roundnose shovel.
“Well now,” he added, “I could use some kind of a plastic spray to protect something. You know what I mean?”
When she showed him a can of Brasco Plastic Spray, he studied it closely, and said, “Fine, I’ll take it.”
The bill came to $14, and Hall paid it with a $20 bill. He asked Mrs. Koenig to carry the bulky purchases to his car, which she did.
Hall then drove west on Route 66 past the Coral Court, looking for a place to bury the money. He knew that he had to hide it because he was drinking, and that he would not be able to stop—at least not right away. Immediately adjacent to the south side of the motel was a wooded tract of land, approximately twenty-five acres. Also nearby were the ample, partly wooded grounds of Kenrick Seminary, and Resurrection Cemetery, both the property of the Catholic Church. Whether Hall explored either of them is unknown. East of a bridge crossing the Meramec River he saw a road winding around a bluff; but after heading down the road only a short way he became worried that the wheels might get stuck in the muck, and turned back. He recrossed the bridge, took a macadam road, and saw a sign pointing to “Long Beach.” He drove back and forth along this road several times, searching for a suitable place to bury the m
oney, but had no luck. A farm that he passed looked ideal for his purposes, but there were several dogs on the property, and he feared they might attack him. Once he got lost and came out on Highway 30 and had to inquire at a filling station how to get back on Route 66. At least one other road led to a dead end. He never left the Plymouth, except once when he stopped to get rid of the garbage cans and other materials in a deserted clubhouse. The odometer showed that he had put only eighty miles on the rental.
Around noon on Tuesday, October 6, soon after Hager dropped off O’Day, a part-time cabdriver for Ace, Herman J. Dreste, got a call from a dispatcher instructing him to pick up a passenger—O’Day—at the Yankee Grill at the corner of Hampton and Oakland, directly across from Forest Park. She gave him $6 and told him to drive her to the TWA ticket office in downtown St. Louis.
“En route she said she had been on a three-day binge,” Dreste later recalled, “and had been with a jerk in a county motel.” O’Day added that she had been due to be in St. Joseph two days previously, and was scheduled to fly to Los Angeles the next day, when her divorce became final. She also asked Dreste to stop at a store and buy her a bottle of glue because she had a letter that she wanted to seal. Dreste did as she requested.
On the way downtown, though, she asked Dreste if he would drive her to St. Joseph himself, and asked how much the fare might be. “Lady, that’s an awful long trip,” he replied. “I don’t think I can do it.” She then asked him to drive her there in his own car, and they agreed on a $150 price. She gave him $80 to buy her some luggage with, claiming that she had lost her own during her drinking binge. She also led the cabdriver to believe that she had two children, was married to a wealthy farmer who lived in New Jersey, and was eager to divorce him.
He dropped her off at her apartment on North 9th Street and waited. O’Day told her aunt Polly to get dressed. They were going to go shopping. After counting out $200 in $10 denominations on a dresser, she gave the money to Lane. Dreste then took them to a Lane Bryant store in downtown St. Louis. There she bought a dark three-piece suit, some gray checked slacks, a blouse, a corset, and some underwear for herself. At a nearby shoe store, she also picked up several pairs of shoes and six pairs of nylons.
While they were shopping, Dreste drove to the Ace Cab garage, where he turned in his cab and the day’s receipts. He then drove his own 1949 Chevrolet to downtown St. Louis, bought a suitcase and a matching overnight bag for O’Day, and picked up the two women. Back at their apartment, O’Day packed her clothes, tucked a bundle of $10 bills into a small cosmetics case, and announced that all she had left was $500. She gave her aunt a piece of paper with the name Steve Strand printed on it, along with the address “In care of Western Union, Main Office, St. Louis, Missouri,” and on it the message: “Leaving at 2:00 A.M. via TWA, Love, Sandy, 10:00 P.M.” She instructed Lane to be sure to send the telegram to Strand at that address with that exact message at exactly 10 P.M. that night. She told Lane that she was leaving town for two or three days, and not to ask questions, adding that she knew what she was doing and that there was no need for her aunt to worry.
O’Day had no intention of flying to Los Angeles. Once she found out who Steve/Carl really was, she hoped to shake down either him or one of his confederates. She had seen with her own eyes a huge amount of cash, and like Hager, her pimp, she had begun to plot how to get her hands on more of it.
Hager probably had several reasons for suspecting that Hall was hiding something much bigger than fraud. He did not look or act like an executive, banker, or accountant type who might even have the opportunity to embezzle a considerable amount of cash. He was also a drug addict in desperate need of false ID papers. Moreover, according to Hager’s later testimony, the two men also revealed that each had once been an inmate in the same penitentiary. Such a disclosure would only have confirmed Hager’s growing suspicion that the man named Carl, who currently or only recently lived in St. Joseph, was the probable kidnapper of Bobby Greenlease. Certainly, almost everyone in the country had to be wondering who and where such an individual was—the most wanted man in America. The front-page headlines of all three St. Louis newspapers continued to report the latest developments, including a rumor that a ransom was about to be or had recently been made. All the money Hall was throwing around also suggested a man who had recently come into a very large amount of cash—a ransom perhaps.
As a Missouri native, Hager also knew that St. Joseph was only about an hour’s drive from Kansas City, where the kidnapping had taken place. He may even have guessed that the letter Hall wanted O’Day to send to Patton from Los Angeles was designed to throw the police off his scent—a not too difficult surmise. The only other explanation was that he wanted to deceive Patton himself—but the contents of the letter suggested that the two men were friends, not adversaries. The geography, the timing, the two massive trunks presumably packed with money, Hall’s paranoid behavior and request for false ID papers, and perhaps even other clues that Hager managed to pick up—an allusion or reference here and there that the talkative kidnapper might have uttered when he had too much drink—all added up to one thing. Hager had hit the jackpot, and the only way to collect was to confide his suspicions about Hall to his boss and brother ex-convict, Joe Costello.
For Hager’s purposes, he was also glad that O’Day—another drunk—had gone off on a quixotic expedition to confront Barney Patton in St. Joseph. With her out of the way, that was just one fewer thing to worry about. If Steve/Carl’s two trunks were filled with money, what was the point of going across the state to find more money? Why not just steal what was already there, waiting to be taken?
After cabdriver Howard Hartman dropped Hager off on the corner of 7th and Clark downtown, he drove off, and did not see if Hager actually went into the tavern at the corner. Hager later claimed that he did enter the tavern, changed his mind about calling Sergeant Gerabeck, bought a couple of cigars, and walked north on 7th Street, where he hailed a passing Ace Cab driven by Joe Travis. Travis himself would later testify that Hager did not engage his services on 7th Street, but at the Ace Cab lot at 1835 Washington Avenue, quite some distance away. Most likely, Hager met with Costello at the lot and outlined his suspicions about Hall. He also told the mobster that he had been asked to rent an apartment for Hall in “a nice, quiet, refined neighborhood.” Costello then began to formulate a plan to steal some or all of the ransom.
After getting into the Ace cab, Hager told Travis to take him to the Branscombe Apartments in the Central West End. When he learned that no suitable apartment was available, he strolled over to the nearby Town House Hotel, an apartment annex of the Congress Hotel, and rented apartment 324 for Hall in his own name.
But Jean Fletcher, the Town House manager, was later to recall that the man she showed apartment 324 to, around 2:30 P.M., wore a business suit, spoke in a cultivated tone, had pink cheeks, and did not have any missing teeth—unlike Hager, who had several teeth missing, spoke poor English, and was not wearing a suit. The man—possibly Costello, who would have followed Hager to the hotel in his own car—paid $185 in cash in advance for a month’s rent. The apartment consisted of a living room with two couches, a bath, a kitchen, a bedroom, and French doors opening on to a small porch. Fletcher insisted that she was quite positive that the man who rented the room was neither Hager nor Hall.
After going over their plans for getting together later that evening, Hager and Costello went their separate ways. Hager was in a mood to celebrate. He had $500 in his pocket from Steve/Carl, and he had just done his boss a very big favor—and surely he had reason to believe that Costello would take care of him once he got his hands on the ransom money. Hager was never tempted to steal any of the money for himself because he knew that Costello would soon find out about it. As subsequent events were to prove, Hager also knew that any attempt on his part to steal some of the ransom—the second biggest cash prize in U.S. criminal history*—would also lead to his untimely death.
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> *The Greenlease ransom was the second biggest cash haul in U.S. criminal history, including bank or train robberies, ransom demands, and embezzlement and fraud cases. Three years earlier, on January 17, 1950, a gang of thieves led by Anthony Pino stole $2.7 million from the Brinks Building in Boston. It was easily the largest theft in the annals of crime in America. Of that amount, $1.3 million was in cash, and the rest consisted mostly of checks and money orders. All eleven members of the gang were eventually arrested, though only $58,000 was recovered. In 1967, twenty-three-year-old mobster Henry Hill stole $420,000 from the Air France air-cargo terminal in New York’s JFK International Airport.
Hager found Travis idling at a nearby cab stand and asked to be taken to the Jarvis Shoe Store at the corner of Grand and Olive. While Travis waited, Hager bought a pair of shoes. He then directed Travis to take him to Boyd’s, a downtown clothing store. They drove there directly. While Travis waited in the cab, Hager bought a blue Hickey-Freeman suit for $130, a Dobbs hat for $20, and a belt and buckle set for $90. Presumably, given his straitened circumstances, Hager would not have splurged unless Costello had not assured him of more money to come.
In later testimony, Hager declared that it was at this time—around 3:30 P.M., while he waited for his suit to be altered—that he decided to telephone a policeman he knew named Lieutenant Louis A. Shoulders, and tell him about his suspicions regarding Hall. But Costello and Shoulders were old friends, and Hager’s lie was intended only to shield Costello from future police scrutiny.
In Hager’s version of events, he went to the nearby Happy Hollow Liquor Store, got a drink, and called Shoulders, saying that he had a customer who was “hot” and was throwing $20 bills around. They agreed to meet, according to Hager, at the corner of Union and Pershing, where the Town House was located, and Hager would lead the lieutenant to Hall.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 9