The positive climax to the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping has stirred echoes of past high-profile cases of child-snatching that put Salt Lake City in the national spotlight. In some of their details, including misidentified perpetrators, allegations of brainwashing and questionable police handling, the cases are eerily similar to the recent events surrounding the Smart abduction.
On Oct. 20, 1951, 13-year-old Evan Richard "Rickey" Henricksen didn't come home from Battle Fatigue Anderson's, a used car lot where he worked part time.
His worried family called then-Mayor Earl J. Glade, said the boy was missing and asked how to make a missing persons report. The mayor referred them to Public Safety Commissioner Ben E. Lingenfelter, who passed them on to Police Chief L.C. Crowther.
In contrast to the Smart case, which triggered a massive search effort, the Henricksens couldn't muster any enthusiasm among those charged with public safety. Police assured the Henricksens that Rickey had run away and that he would be found soon. Six days later, on Oct. 26, 1951, the News, at the request of his parents, printed a brief notice that the lad was missing and requested help in finding him. A picture of the family dog, Peanut, showed the animal reportedly pining for his young master.
Not until Nov. 1 was there any detailed notice in the Deseret News of "Some Notes on the Mysterious Case of a Salt Lake Missing Person." The article said Rickey had opened a bank account the day he didn't come home. He had made an appointment with a bicycle shop earlier in the day. He was a quiet, home-loving boy, happy in his associations with his parents and twin sister. He had never shown any penchant for running away. His grades at Lincoln Junior High School were excellent and he was a faithful church attendee, the story said.
No officer went immediately to the Henricksen home. The parents claimed no radio notice was issued, although police said there was. But when questioned, no officer could actually remember hearing a broadcast. When newspaper reporters asked to hear a taped copy of the broadcast, they were told it was "privileged information" and were denied. When the mother, Irene Henricksen, went directly to police headquarters, pleading for some action, she was told to "go home and forget it . . . it's just another runaway," the Nov. 1 article said.
The Henricksens went to the Salt Lake Tribune and local radio stations to solicit help and were told they couldn't provide any unless authorized by officialdom. When in desperation she called Lingenfelter to beg permission for the media to publicize her case, she was told he was eating dinner and couldn't be disturbed. The Deseret News, "amazed at the notion that any newspaper should be required to get police permission to run any story, printed the account of the lost boy," the article said.
The newspaper took law enforcement officials to task. Whether Rickey was a runaway or a victim of foul play, the family "should have the right of police help in either case," the article said.
In a later statement, printed in full in the Deseret News Jan. 10, 1952, Irene Henricksen said a man she believed to be Lingenfelter hinted in a telephone conversation that the police would be reluctant to cooperate if she went to the media with her concerns.
Headlines explode
Some feeble efforts were made as time passed and the "runaway" didn't return. Concern grew that Rickey might have been killed. Police searched likely spots for a body or a covert grave, including rivers, ponds and canyons in the area. Some possible suspects were identified and half-hearted investigations undertaken. However, not until more than two months after Rickey's disappearance, on Jan. 8, 1952, did the headlines explode. A 24-year-old man, John D. Billett, had been arrested and charged with robbing a bank of $20,000. During questioning, he volunteered the information that he had kidnapped Rickey and was holding him in a house near 1100 East and 1700 South. Ironically, police had tailed Billett several times as a possible suspect. But they quit, they said, because Billett was "too savvy" to fall for surveillance. In her desperate search for her son on the night of his disappearance, Irene Henricksen had talked with Billett at the used car lot, she testified during trial. Billett offered her his sympathy.
During the 79-day interval, the boy had spent most of his time chained to a bed, the News reported. On several occasions, he had been forced to drink whiskey until he passed out. He was occasionally beaten by Billett with his fist or shoes. He was forced to wear a gas mask held by strong rubber bands. The boy also had been psychologically tortured by Billett, who told him at the time of the abduction that he (Billett) was an undercover police officer who was investigating car thefts at the used car lot and that he was arresting Henricksen as a suspect. The boy said he feared that if he attempted to get away, it would be an admission that he had been guilty of stealing cars. Billett convinced him that his parents knew where he was. Several times his captor took him out to eat and drove past his house where he could see his family through the windows.
No allegations of sexual abuse were made, but during a sanity hearing, two local psychiatrists testified that Billett was medically insane. And he had a long history of "bullying" others and carrying out fantasies of being an authority figure, they said.
When the boy had been safely reunited with his family (and enjoying a belated Christmas feast courtesy of Hotel Utah,) the focus turned to the police handling of the case. The day after Irene Henricksen's notarized statement appeared in the News, the paper reported that Mayor Glade had called for a thorough review. "Police Shakeup Hinted for S.L.," a headline said. Glade and city commissioners dug into the details and on Jan. 14, the newspaper announced the upshot in another banner headline: "Chief Crowther Quits Post in Wake of Police Criticism."
Billett claimed mental illness but was ordered to trial. He was sentenced to one year to life in the Utah State Prison.
Held for ransom
Fifteen years earlier, another kidnapping at first appeared to have nothing to do with Utah, but it rated front-page headlines nevertheless. It was an era when several high-profile kidnappings intrigued the nation, most of them involving members of very wealthy families. The abduction and murder of the son of aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh in March 1932 set off a flurry of copy-cat kidnappings that included huge ransom demands.
On May 25, 1935, it happened again, this time in Tacoma, Wash. The Deseret News flashed a banner headline that the 9-year-old son of wealthy lumber magnate J.P. Weyerhaeuser (rumored then to be worth a billion dollars) had not come home from school as expected the previous day and was feared kidnapped.
The next day, a demand for $200,000 in ransom was in a detailed note signed "Egoist and Egoist." Deseret News readers were treated to a full replica of the note. "Just follow the rules. We will get along fine," the brazen note said. "Don't follow them, and it will be sorrowful — for you, not for us." The kidnappers referred to themselves as "educated and intelligent," although their note contained several misspellings. George's name in his own handwriting was scrawled across the envelope as verification.
The distraught parents appealed for the child's safety and the News printed a large picture.
The Weyerhaeusers followed movie-style directions that included messages relayed through newspaper ads and rendezvous points marked with flagged sticks in out-of-the-way places. There were some glitches, and the deadline set by the kidnappers passed, raising fears the boy would be killed.
Finally the boy's uncle, F.R. Titcomb, who had been the official go-between, left $200,000 in his car at a remote backwoods location, as directed, and walked away. When he was about 100 yards from the appointed drop site, he heard a "loud noise" in the bushes and saw a man get in the car and drive away.
On June 1, the kidnappers released George and after walking all night through several miles of muddy woods, he wandered into a farmhouse and soon was back with his joyous family. The boy was not harmed but had spent part of the time in a four-by-four-foot hole in the ground. When investigators found the hole, it was infested with lizards and insects, news reports said.
Utah connections
Early in the saga, local, state and federal law officers in Tacoma had concluded that a "group of Eastern gangsters had engineered the kidnapping," and they didn't hesitate to name Alvin Karpis, then America's "Public Enemy No. 1," and his henchmen, Volney David, Harry Campbell and an unidentified woman as the perpetrators. With the child safe at home, they launched a manhunt that blanketed the Northwest. Deseret News readers followed the play-by-play through daily news stories.
On June 2, however, the story took a strange turn. The News reported that one of the marked $20 ransom bills had been used to purchase a train ticket from Huntington, Ore., to Salt Lake City. There was a mad scramble as the search relocated. Scores of "G-men" descended on the state, the News reported. Salt Lake Police Chief W.L. Payne canceled a trip to Los Angeles and the search was on for a green Cadillac that had been seen in the Brigham City area with two men and a woman who seemed to match the description provided by little George. The numbers of the marked bills had been widely distributed and by June 8, the News was reporting "the biggest manhunt in the history of the state" and the recovery of 30 of the bills in Salt Lake stores. Highways into the state were guarded and businesses were alerted to watch for the marked money.
June 10, several pages of the News detailed the "Greatest Crime Drama in Utah's History." Two Woolworth's clerks, Edythe Morley and Marion Samuel, had spotted one of the marked bills and notified a policeman on duty at the store. Herman Waley (a reporting error, because his name really was Harmon Metz Waley) and his wife, Margaret Waley, were in custody, the stories said. The News ran copyrighted pictures of the pair. The Waleys directed officers to a remote spot in Emigration Canyon, where $90,706 in ransom money wrapped in burlap was buried in a hole. The remnants of some $4,000 Harmon Waley had tried to burn was salvaged and identified as part of the ransom as well.
The couple, married in Salt Lake City a short time before, confessed to the kidnapping. Margaret Waley, just 18, was described by her mother as "a good girl" until her marriage to Waley at age 17 marked a turning point in her life.
A third man implicated in the kidnapping, William Dainard, had split with the Waleys and gone to Montana. He was playing his own cat-and-mouse games with officers there while the Waleys dealt with the law in Utah. Dainard narrowly missed being caught in Butte, Mont., by jumping a couple of fences. He abandoned his car with another $15,155 in ransom money and disappeared temporarily. He was caught in Los Angeles and officers retrieved another $37,374. In all, more than $150,000 of the money was recovered.
On June 19, 1935, a federal grand jury in Tacoma, Wash., returned indictments charging the trio with kidnapping and conspiracy to kidnap. At trial in Seattle, Harmon Waley was sentenced to two concurrent prison terms of 45 years for the kidnapping and two years for conspiracy. He served time in federal prisons on McNeil Island, Wash. and Alcatraz Island, Calif. Margaret Waley, tried the following day, was sentenced to two concurrent 20-year terms in a Midwest prison. After her release she continued to live in the Midwest for a time, then returned to Utah where she and a new husband quietly lived out their lives in the bosom of family and friends.
Dainard, believed to be the brains behind the crime, was sentenced to two 60-year concurrent terms. He was later determined to be insane and confined to a hospital.
George Weyerhaeuser succeeded his father as chairman of the board of the huge family business holdings, according to a report on famous American crime cases available on the Google Internet site.
E-mail: tvanleer@desnews.com