The Kidnap Years: David Stout (best inspirational books TXT) đ
- Author: David Stout
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By the time of the Supreme Court ruling, the suspicions of British authoritiesâthat Factor had faked his âkidnappingâ to avoid extraditionâhad been well publicized, raising serious questions about whether Factor was a man who could be trusted to tell the truth about anything.
But Thomas J. Courtney, the Cook County prosecutor who worked closely with Gilbert, insisted that Factor should be allowed to stay and help bring Touhy and friends to justice.
Washington officials found Courtneyâs arguments persuasive, so Factor was allowed to remain stateside and to testify against Touhy and his codefendants. The first trial didnât go well for the prosecutionâone juror admitted to lying under questioning during the jury-selection process, and another juror tried to get himself excused halfway through the trialâso a mistrial was declared.
Gilbert and Courtney werenât giving up. The defendants were soon put on trial again, and this time, all were found guilty. Immediately, each man was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prisonâa compromise decided upon by the jurors, six of whom wanted to send the defendants to the electric chair.
âThe jury had written âfinisâ to the so-called terrible Touhys,â a Tribune reporter declared.120 The scribe indulged in some cruel sport, noting that Touhy appeared to become ill when the verdict was read, âgagging and coughing, his handkerchief held to his face.â Schaefer was âwhite-faced.â And Kator, âknown as a cold-blooded gunman and killer, managed a last scornful grimaceâ as he was led from the courtroom.
But there was still more fun to be had. A few weeks later, Basil âthe Owlâ Banghart, a âmachine gunner of the Touhy gang,â as the Tribune put it, was tried separately for the Factor kidnapping.121 Convicted on March 13, 1934, âthe Owl,â who it will be recalled was known for his big, slow-moving eyes and his wisdom, was immediately packed off to the penitentiary for ninety-nine years.
The Tribune writer had rich material indeed. Hours before Banghart was found guilty, âforces outside the law had disposed of Charles âIce Wagonâ Connors, another Touhyite who had been identified as one of those involved in the Factor abductionâŠâ
âHis body, bullet-riddled, with his false teeth missing and a penny clutched in one rigid hand, was found beside 107th Street and a half-mile east of Archer Avenue,â the reporter wrote. âIt was the theory of the police that the copper coin had been left by the killers as a sardonic message to indicate that the notoriously stingy Connors had refused to contribute to the defense fund for his erstwhile companions,â the writer explained.
There was such good sport to be had in the ordeal of Touhy and his fellow gangsters! And they were gangsters, if bootleggers and their henchmen qualified as such, though Touhy seems not to have been cut from the same cloth as some of the psychopathic killers of his era.
But from the vantage point of eight decades on, one cannot escape the feeling that something wasnât right about the verdict. Did none of the journalists know of Gilbertâs ties to Touhyâs rivals, the Capone organization? Did it occur to them to spotlight the fact that Factor was untrustworthy? Should they have dug a bit deeper?
The impression persists that Touhy and his gang were convicted, in effect, of being gangsters, that Gilbert and the jurors thought they belonged behind bars, if not for the âkidnappingâ of Factor, then forâŠsomething. Maybe for being Touhyâs rivals.
Anyhow, by early 1934, it seemed that Touhy was confined to obscurity forever. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
BREWER, BANKER, VICTIM
St. Paul, Minnesota
Wednesday, January 17, 1934
As summer morphed into autumn in the Upper Midwest, turning the leaves on the trees into a watercoloristâs delight, there seemed to be no progress in the investigation of the kidnapping of William Hamm or at least none that the public was being told about. And suddenly, too suddenly for those who didnât ski or ice-skate or build snowmen, the trees were bare. It was winter again.
Edward G. Bremer had heard a rumor, which had been circulating among St. Paulâs organized crime figures for months. The rumor was that he was the next likely kidnapping target.
Bremer was a prominent banker in a mob-infested city and an heir to a beer fortune. Inevitably, then, he occasionally did business with mob members or with people who knew mob figures. So it was no surprise Bremer was a target and that a kidnapping that hadnât even happened yet was grist for gossip.
Perhaps it said something about Bremer, or âEddie,â as he was known to relatives and friends, that he finally tired of having a bodyguard. So in November, out of arrogance or courage or both, he had told the bodyguard his services were no longer needed.
He wanted to live a normal life, or as normal a life as a wealthy man like him could live. Bremer was the president and owner of the Commercial State Bank. His father, Adolph, was majority stockholder in the Joseph Schmidt beer company. Adolph Bremer was also a personal friend of President Roosevelt and Minnesota Governor Floyd Olson.
On this cold Wednesday morning, Bremer, thirty-seven, left his eight-year-old daughter, Betty, at the Summit School. Then he started driving to his bank.
A short time later, a milk truck driver saw Bremerâs car stop at an intersection and another car suddenly pull in front of it. The milk truck driver stopped to let some children cross the street. He turned to wave to the schoolchildren. When he turned his eyes to the traffic again, he saw Bremerâs car driving away behind the car that had pulled in front of it.
When Bremerâs car was found abandoned a short time later at the edge of the city, there were bloodstains on the front and rear seat cushions, so much blood that police immediately feared that Bremer was dead or dying.
Soon, a friend of Bremer, a wealthy contractor named Walter Magee, received a ransom note to forward to
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