IX

THE WHITLA KIDNAPPING

Abduction is always a puzzling crime. The risks are so great, the punishment, of late years, so severe, and the chances of profit so slight that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary motive on the part of the criminal. It is true that kidnapping is one of the easiest crimes to commit. It is also a fact that it seems to offer a quick and promising way of extorting large sums of money without physical risk. But every offender must know that the chances of success are of the most meager.

A study of past cases shows that child stealing arouses the public as nothing else can, not even murder. This state of general alarm, indignation, and alertness is the first peril of the kidnapper. Again, the problem of getting the ransom from even the most willing victim without exposing the criminal to capture, is a most intricate and unpromising one. It is well known that child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions.

The fact that kidnapping persists in spite of these recognized discouragements probably accounts for the proneness of policemen and citizens to interpret into every abduction case some moving force other than mere hope of gain. Obscurer impulsions and springs of action, whether real or surmised, are often the inner penetralia of child stealing mysteries. So with the famous Whitla case.

At half past nine on the morning of March 18, 1909, a short, stocky man drove up to the East Ward Schoolhouse, in the little steel town of Sharon, in western Pennsylvania, in an old covered buggy and beckoned to Wesley Sloss, the janitor.

“Mr. Whitla wants Willie to come to his office right away,” said the stranger.

It may have been more than irregular for a pupil to be summoned from his classes in this way, but in Sharon no one questioned vagaries having to do with this particular child. Willie Whitla was the eight-year-old son of the chief lawyer of the place, James P. Whitla, who was wealthy and politically influential. The boy was also, and more spectacularly, the nephew by marriage of Frank M. Buhl, the multimillionaire iron master and industrial overlord of the region.

Janitor Sloss bandied no compliments. He hurried inside to Room 2, told the teacher, Mrs. Anna Lewis, that the boy was wanted, helped bundle him into his coat, and led him out to the buggy. The man in the conveyance tucked the boy under the lap robe, muttered his thanks, and drove off in the direction of the town’s center, where the father’s office was situated.

When Willie Whitla failed to appear at home for luncheon at the noon recess, there was no special apprehension. Probably he had gone to a chum’s house and would be along at the close of the afternoon session. His mother was vexed, but not worried.

At four o’clock the postman stopped on the Whitla veranda, blew his whistle, and left a note which had been posted in the town some hours before. It was addressed to the lawyer’s wife in the childish scrawl of the little boy. Its contents, written by another hand, read:

“We have your boy, and no harm will come to him if you comply with our instructions. If you give this letter to the newspapers, or divulge any of its contents, you will never see your boy again. We demand ten thousand dollars in twenty-dollar, ten-dollar, and five-dollar bills. If you attempt to mark the money, or place counterfeit money, you will be sorry. Dead men tell no tales. Neither do dead boys. You may answer at the following addresses:Cleveland Press,Youngstown Vindicator,Indianapolis News, andPittsburgh Dispatchin the personal columns. Answer: 'A. A. Will do as you requested. J. P. W.’”

A few minutes later the whole town was searching, and the alarm had been broadcast by telegraph and telephone. Before nightfall a hundred thousand officers were on the lookout in a thousand cities and towns through the eastern United States.

At four thirty o’clock, when Sharon first heard of the abduction, a boy named Morris was found, who had seen Willie Whitla get out of a buggy at the edge of the town, drop a letter into the mail box, and get back into the vehicle, which was driven away.

This discovery had hardly been made when it was also learned that a stranger had rented a horse and buggy, fitting the description of those used by the kidnapper, in South Sharon early in the morning. At five o’clock, the jaded horse, still hitched to the rented buggy, was found tied to a post in Warren, Ohio, twenty-five miles from Sharon.

The search immediately began in the northern or lake cities and towns of Ohio, the trend of the search running strongly toward Cleveland, where it was believed the abductor or abductors would try the hiding properties of urban crowds.

The Whitla and Buhl families acted with sense and caution. They were sufficiently well informed to know that the police are doubtful agencies for the safe recovery of snatched children. They were rich to the point of embarrassment. Ten thousand dollars meant nothing. The safety and speedy return of the child were the only considerations that could have swayed them. Accordingly, they did not reveal the contents of the note, as I have quoted it. Neither did they confide to the police any other details, or the direction of their intentions. The fact of the kidnapping could, of course, not be concealed, but all else was guarded from official or public intrusion.

On the advice of friends the parents did employ private detectives, but even their advice was disregarded, and Mr. Whitla without delay signified his willingness to capitulate by inserting the dictated notice into all the four mentioned newspapers.

The answer of the abductors came very promptly through the mails, reaching Whitla on the morning of the twentieth, less than forty-eight hours after the boy had been taken.

Again following instructions, Whitla did not communicate to the police the contents of this note or his plans. Instead, he set off quietly for Cleveland, evidently to mislead the public officers, who seemed to take delight in their efforts to seize control of the case. At eight o’clock in the night Whitla left Cleveland, accompanied by one private detective, and went to the neighboring city of Ashtabula. Here the detective was left at the White Hotel, and the father of the missing boy set out to meet the demands of the kidnappers.

They, it appears, had written him that he must go at ten o’clock at night to Flatiron Park, a lonely strip of land on the outskirts of Ashtabula, and there deposit under a certain stone the package of bills. He was told what route to follow, commanded to go alone, and warned not to communicate with the police. Having left the money as commanded, Whitla was to return to the hotel and wait there for the coming of his son, who would be restored as soon as the abductors were safely in possession of the money.

So the father set out in the dark of the night, followed the route given him by the abductors, deposited the money in the park, and returned forthwith to the hotel, reaching it before eleven o’clock. Here he sat with his bodyguard, waiting for the all-desired apparition of his little son. The hours went wearily by, while the father’s nervousness mounted. Finally, at three o’clock in the morning, some local officers appeared and notified the frenzied lawyer that they had been watching the park all night, and that no one had appeared to claim the package of money.

Police interference had ruined the plan.

The local officers naturally assumed that, as the kidnappers were to call for the money in the park, they must be in Ashtabula. They accordingly set out, searched all night, invaded the houses of sleeping citizens, turned the hotels and rooming houses inside out, prowled their way through cars in the railroad yards and boats in the harbor, watched the roads leading in and out of the city, searched the street cars and generally played the devil. But all in vain. There were no suspicious strangers to be found in or about the community.

The following morning the father of the boy visited the mayor and requested that the police cease their activities. He pointed out that there were no clews of definite promise, and the peril in which the child stood ought to command official coöperation instead of dangerous interference. Whitla finally managed to convince the officers that they stood no worse chance of catching the criminals after the recovery of the boy, and the Ashtabula officers were immediately called off.

The disappointed and harried father was forced to return to Sharon in defeat and bring the disappointing news to his prostrated wife. The little steel town had got the definite impression that news of the child had been got, and preparations for the boy’s return had been made. Many citizens were up all night, ready to receive the little wanderer with rockets, bands, and jubilation. Crowds besieged the Whitla home, and policemen had to be kept on guard to turn away a stream of well-meaning friends and curious persons, who would have kept the breaking mother from such little sleep as was possible under the circumstances.

The excitement of the vicinity had by this time spread to all the country. As is always the case, arrests on suspicion were made of the most unlikely persons in the most impossible situations. Men, women, and children were stopped in the streets, dragged from their rooms, questioned, harried, taken to police stations, and even locked into jails for investigation, while the missing boy and his abductors succeeded in eluding completely the large army of pursuers now in the field.

Nothing further was heard from the kidnappers on the twenty-first, and the hearts of the bewildered parents and relatives sank with apprehension, but the morning mail of the twenty-second again contained a note which, properly interpreted, seems to indicate that the business of leaving the money in the park at Ashtabula may have been a test maneuver, to find out whether Whitla would keep the faith and act without the police. This note read:

“A mistake was made at Ashtabula Saturday night. You come to Cleveland on the Erie train leaving Youngstown at 11:10 a. m. Leave the train at Wilson Avenue. Take a car to Wilson and St. Clair. At Dunbar’s drug store you will find a letter addressed to William Williams.“We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt to catch us you will never see your boy again.”

“We will not write you again in this matter. If you attempt to catch us you will never see your boy again.”

This time Whitla decided to be rid of the police. He accordingly had his representatives announce that all activities would cease for the time being, in the hope that the kidnappers would regain their confidence and reopen communications. At the same time he told the Ashtabula police to resume their activities. With these two false leads given out, Whitla slipped away from his home, caught the train, and went straight to Cleveland.

Late that afternoon, having satisfied himself that he had eluded the overzealous officers, Whitla went to Dunbar’s drug store and found the note waiting, as promised. It contained nothing but further directions. He was to proceed to a confectionery conducted by a Mrs. Hendricks at 1386 East Fifty-third Street, deliver the ransom, carefully done into a package, to the woman in charge. He was to tell her the package should be held for Mr. Hayes, who would call.

Whitla went at once to the candy store, turned over the package of ten thousand dollars to Mrs. Hendricks, and was given a note in return. This missive instructed him to go forthwith to the Hollenden Hotel, where he was to wait for his boy. The promise was made that the child would be returned within three hours.

It was about five o’clock when this exchange was made. The tortured father turned and went immediately to the Hollenden, one of the chief hostelries of Cleveland, engaged a room and waited. An hour passed. His anxiety became intolerable. He went down to the lobby and began walking back and forth, in and out of the doors, up and down the walk, back into the hotel, up to his room and back to the office. Several noticed his nervousness and preoccupation, but only a lone newspaper man identified him and kept him under watch.

Seven o’clock came and passed. At half past seven the worn lawyer’s agitation increased to the point of frenzy. He could do no more than retire to a quiet corner of the lobby, huddle himself into a big chair, and sink into the half stupor of exhaustion.

A few minutes before eight o’clock the motorman of a Payne Avenue street car saw a man and a small boy come out of the gloom at a street corner in East Cleveland and motion him to stop. The man put the child aboard and gave the conductor some instructions, paying its fare, and immediately vanished in the darkness. The little boy, wearing a pair of dark goggles and a large yellow cap that was pulled far down over his ears, sat quietly in the back seat and made not a sound.

A few squares further along the line two boys of seventeen or eighteen years boarded the car and were immediately intrigued by the glum little figure. The newcomers, whose names were Edward Mahoney and Thomas W. Ramsey, spoke to the child, vaguely suspicious that this might be the much-sought Willie Whitla. When they asked his name the lad said he was Willie Jones. In response to other questions he told that he was on his way to meet his father at the Hollenden.

The two young men said no more till the hotel was reached. Here they insisted on leaving the car with the boy and at once called a policeman to whom they voiced their suspicions. The officer, the two youths, and the child thus entered the hotel and approached the desk. In response to further interrogation, the little fellow still insisted that he was Jones, but, being deprived of his big cap and goggles and called Willie Whitla, he asked:

“How did you know me? Where is my daddy?”

The gloomy man in the corner chair got one tinkle of the childish voice, ran across the big room, caught up the child and rushed hysterically to his own apartment, where he telephoned at once to the boy’s mother. By the time the attorney could be persuaded to come back down stairs, a crowd was gathered, and the father and child were welcomed with cheers.

The boy shortly gave his father and the police his story. The man who had taken him from school in the buggy had told him that he was being taken out of town to the country at his father’s request, because there was an epidemic of smallpox, and it was feared the doctors would lock him up in a dirty pest house. He had accordingly gone willingly to Cleveland, where he had been taken to what he believed to be a hospital. A man and woman had taken care of him and treated him well. They were Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They had not abused him in any way. In fact, he liked them, except for the fact that they made him hide under the kitchen sink when any one knocked at the door, and they gave him candy which made him sleepy. Mr. Jones himself, the boy said, had put him aboard the street car, paid his fare, instructed him to tell any inquirers that his name was Jones, and warned him to go immediately to the hotel and join his father. The only additional information got from the boy, besides fairly valuable descriptions of the abductors, was to the effect that he had been taken to the “hospital” the night following his abduction and had not left the place till he was led out to be sent to the hotel.

The child returned to Sharon in triumph, was welcomed with music and a salute from the local militia company, displayed before the serenading citizens, and photographed for the American and foreign press.

Meantime the search for the kidnappers was under way. The private detectives in the employ of the Whitlas were immediately withdrawn when the boy was recovered, but the police of Cleveland and other cities plunged in with notable energy. The druggist, with whom the note had been left, and the woman confectioner, who had received the package of ransom money, were immediately questioned. Neither knew that the transaction they had aided was concerned with the Whitla case, and both were frightened and astonished. They could give little information that has not already been indicated. Mrs. Hendricks, the keeper of the candy store, however, was able to particularize the description of the man who had come to her place, left the note for Mr. Whitla, and returned later for the package of money. He was, she said, about thirty years old, with dark hair, a smoothly shaved, but pock-marked face, weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, and seemed to be Irish.

Considering the car line which had brought the boy to the Hollenden Hotel, the point at which he had boarded the car, and the description he gave of the place he termed a hospital, the Cleveland police were certain Willie had been detained in an apartment house somewhere in the southeast quarter of the city, and detectives were accordingly sent to comb that part of the city in quest of a furnished suite in which the kidnappers might still be hiding.

Willie Whitla had returned to his father on Monday night. Tuesday evening, about twenty-two hours after the boy had made his dramatic entry into the Hollenden, the detectives went through a three-story flat building at 2022 Prospect Avenue and found that a couple answering the general descriptions furnished by Willie Whitla and Mrs. Hendricks had rented a furnished apartment there on the night following the kidnapping and had departed only a few hours ahead of the detectives. They had conducted themselves very quietly while in the place, and the woman who had sublet the rooms to them was not even sure there had been a child with them. Willie Whitla afterward identified this place as the scene of his captivity.

The discovery of this apartment might have been less significant for the moment, had the building not been but a few squares from the point at which Willie had been put aboard the street car for his trip to join his father. As it was, the detectives felt they were hot on the trail. Reserves were rushed to that part of town, patrolmen were not relieved at the end of their tours of duty, and the extra men were stationed at the exits from the city, with instructions to stop and question all suspicious persons. The pack was in full cry, but the quarry was by no means in sight.

At this tense and climactic moment of the drama far broader forces than the police were thrown upon the stage. The governor of Pennsylvania signed a proclamation in the course of the afternoon, offering to continue the reward of fifteen thousand dollars which had been posted by the State for the recovery of the boy and the arrest and conviction of his abductors. Since the boy had been returned, the money was to go to those who brought his kidnappers to justice. Accordingly, the people of several States were watching with no perfunctory alertness. High hopes of immediate capture were thus based on more than one consideration; but the night was aging without result.

At a few minutes past nine o’clock a man and woman of the most inconspicuous kind entered the saloon of Patrick O’Reilly on Ontario Street, Cleveland, sat down at a table in the rear room, and ordered drink. The liquor was served, and the man offered a new five-dollar bill in payment. He immediately reordered, telling the proprietor to include the other patrons then in the place. Again he offered a new bill of the same denomination, and once again he commanded that all present accept his hospitality. Both the man and the woman drank rapidly and heavily, quickly showing the effects of the liquor and becoming more and more loquacious, spendthrift and effusive.

There was, of course, nothing extraordinary in such conduct. Men came in often enough who drank heavily, spent freely, and insisted on “buying for the house.” But it was a little unusual for a man to let go of thirty dollars in little more than an hour, and it was still more unusual for a customer to peel off one new five-dollar note after the other.

O’Reilly had been reading the newspapers. He knew that there had been a kidnapping; that there was a reward of fifteen thousand dollars outstanding; that a man and woman were supposed to have held the boy captive in Cleveland, and not too far from the saloon. Also he had read about the package of five, ten, and twenty dollar bills. His brows lifted. O’Reilly waited for an opportune moment and went to his cash drawer. The bills this pair of strangers had given him were all new; that was certain. Perhaps they would prove to be all of the same issue, even of the same series and in consequent numbers. If so——

The saloonkeeper had to move with caution. When his suspect callers had their attention on something else, he slipped the money from the till and moved to the end of the bar near the window, where he was out of their visional range. He laid the bills out on the cigar case, adjusted his glasses, and stared.

In that moment the visitors got up to go. O’Reilly urged them to stay, insisted on supplying them with a free drink, did what he could, without arousing suspicion, to detain them, hoping that an officer would saunter in. At last they could be held no longer. With an exchange of unsteady compliments, they were out of the door and gone into the night, whose shadows had yielded them up an hour before.

O’Reilly noted the direction they took and flew to a telephone. In response to his urgings, Captain Shattuck and Detective Woods were hurried to the place and set out with O’Reilly’s instructions and description. They had no more than moved from the saloon when the rollicking pair was seen returning.

The officers hailed these sinister celebrants with a remark about the weather and the lateness of the hour. Instantly the man took to his heels, with Captain Shattuck in pursuit. As they turned a corner, the officer drew and fired high.

The fleeing man collapsed in a heap, and the policeman ran to him, marveling that his aim had been so unintentionally good. He found, however, that the fugitive had merely stumbled in his sodden attempt at flight.

Both prisoners were taken forthwith to the nearest police station and subjected to questioning. They were inarticulately drunk, or determinedly reticent and pretending. Tiring of the maneuvers and half assured that he was probably face to face with the kidnappers, Captain Shattuck ordered them searched.

At various places in the linings of the woman’s clothing, still in the neat packages in which it had been taken from the bank, were nine thousand, seven hundred and ninety dollars.

The prisoners turned out to be James H. Boyle and Helen McDermott Boyle—he a floating adventurer known to the cities of Pennsylvania and Ohio, she the daughter of respectable Chicago parents, whom she had quit several years before to go venturing on her own account.

From the beginning both the police and the public held the opinion that these two people had not been alone in the kidnapping. When exhaustive investigation failed to reveal the presence of others at any stage of the abduction, flight, hiding and attempted removal in Cleveland, it was concluded that the prisoners had possibly been the sole active agents, but the opinion was retained that some one else must have plotted the crime.

Why had these strangers singled out Sharon, an obscure little town? Why had they chosen Willie Whitla, when there were tens of thousands of boys with wealthier parents and many with even richer relatives? Who had acquainted them with the particularities of the Whitlas’ lives, the probable attitude at the school, the child’s fear of smallpox and pest houses? Was it not obvious that some one close to the family had supplied the information and laid the plans?

James H. Boyle was led into court on the sixth of May, faced with his accusers, and swiftly encircled with the accusing evidence, which was complete and unequivocal. He accepted it without display of emotion and offered no defense. After brief argument the case went to the jury, which reached an affirmative verdict within a few minutes.

Mrs. Boyle was placed on trial immediately afterward and also presented no defense. A verdict was found against her with equal expedition on May 10, and she was remanded for sentence.

On the following day both defendants were called before the court. The judge imposed the life sentence on Boyle and a term of twenty-five years on his wife. A few hours afterward Boyle called the newspaper reporters to his cell in the jail at Mercer and handed them a written statement.

Boyle’s writing went back fourteen years to 1895, when the body of Dan Reeble, Jr., had been found lying on the sidewalk on East Federal Street, Youngstown, Ohio, before the house where Reeble lived. There had been some mysterious circumstances or rumors attached to Reeble’s end.

Boyle did not attempt to explain the death of Reeble, but he said in his statement that he and one Daniel Shay, a Youngstown saloonkeeper, who had died in 1907, had caught Harry Forker, the brother of Mrs. James P. Whitla and uncle of the kidnapped boy, taking a number of letters from the pockets of the dead man, as his body lay on the walk. Boyle recited that not only had he and Shay found Forker in this compromising position, but they had picked up two envelopes overlooked by Forker, in which were found four letters from women, two from a girl in New York State and the other two from a Cleveland woman. The contents were intimate, he said, and they proved beyond peradventure that Forker had been present at Reeble’s death.

Boyle’s statement went on to recite that he had subsequently written Forker, told him about the letters, and suggested that they were for sale. Forker had immediately replied and made various efforts to recover the incriminating missives, but Boyle had held them and continued to extort money from Forker for years, threatening to reveal the letters unless paid.

Finally, in March, 1908, Boyle’s statement went on to recite, a demand for five thousand dollars had been made on Forker, who said he could not raise the money, but would come into an inheritance later and would then pay and recover the dangerous evidence. When Forker failed in this undertaking, fresh threats were made, with the result that Forker suggested the kidnapping of his nephew, the demand for ten thousand dollars’ ransom, and the division of this spoil as a way to get the five thousand dollars Boyle was demanding.

Boyle also recited that Forker had planned the kidnapping and attended to the matter of having the boy taken from the school. He said that some one else had done this work and delivered the child to him, Boyle, in Warren, Ohio, where the exhausted horse was found.

This statement, filling the gap in the motive reasoning as it did, created a turmoil. Forker and Whitla immediately and indignantly denied the accusation and brought to their support a Youngstown police officer, Michael Donnelly, who said he had found the body of Dan Reeble. Donnelly recited that he had been talking to Reeble on the walk before the building in which Reeble resided, early in the morning of June 8, 1895. Reeble had gone upstairs, and Donnelly was walking slowly down the street when he heard a thump and groans behind him. Returning to the spot where he had left Reeble, he found his companion of a few minutes before, dying on the walk.

Donnelly said that Reeble had had the habit of sitting on his window sill, and that the man had apparently fallen out to his death. He swore that neither Forker, Boyle, nor Daniel Shay had been present when Reeble died.

There are, to be sure, some elements which verge upon improbability in this account, but the denials of Forker and Whitla were strongly reinforced by the testimony of Janitor Sloss and the keeper of the livery where the horse and buggy had been hired. Both firmly identified Boyle as the man they had seen and dealt with, thus refuting the latter part of Boyle’s accusative statement.

Mrs. Boyle was released after having served ten years of her long term. Her husband, on the other hand, continued his servitude and died of pneumonia in Riverside Penitentiary on January 23, 1920.

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