Carolyn Cox - The Snatch Racket: The Kidnapping Epidemic That Terrorized 1930s America

Carolyn Cox throws a fascinating new light on a horrifying crime wave that shook America in the 1930s. While the shocking Lindbergh case has understandably gone down in history, it was just one of a whole series of horrible kidnappings that have until now passed into obscurity. In telling this extraordinary story, Cox combines meticulous scholarly research with the thriller writers fast pace and eye for colorful detail. The result is a terrific read.

Sandra Hempel, author of The Atlas of Disease and The Inheritors Powder

Every crisis creates opportunity for people smart enough to see it and agile enough to grasp it. In this finely wrought narrative Carolyn Cox shows us how J. Edgar Hoover and his nascent Bureau of Investigation launched a war against kidnapping that pit them against both rival bureaucrats and a parade of colorful gangsters from Machine Gun Kelly to Alvin Karpis to Ma Barker and the rest. The struggle captured public imagination at the time and makes for a great read. This is an important story well told.

Kenneth D. Ackerman, author of Young J. Edgar: Hoover and the Red Scare, 19191920

Simply fascinating. A richly detailed, behind-the-scenes autopsy of how the FBI and rival law enforcement agencies demolished the Barker-Karpis gang and other criminals who perpetrated the shocking wave of kidnappings (including the tragic abduction of the Lindbergh baby) that so outraged America in the early 1930s. Best of all, author Carolyn Cox reveals how the war between the G-men and gangsters changed the course of federal criminal law, the power of J. Edgar Hoover, and how the public viewed the Public Enemiesera gangsters like Machine Gun Kelly, Alvin Creepy Karpis, and John Dillinger.

Paul MacCabee, author of John Dillinger Slept Here: A Crooks Tour of Crime and Corruption

Carolyn Cox

Potomac Books

An imprint of the University of Nebraska Press

2021 by Carolyn Cox

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image courtesy the New Jersey State Police.

Author photo Bonnie Johnson Photography.

All rights reserved. Potomac Books is an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cox, Carolyn, 1949 author.

Title: The snatch racket: the kidnapping epidemic that terrorized 1930s America / Carolyn Cox.

Description: [Lincoln, Nebraska]: Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020022808

ISBN 9781640122031 (hardback)

ISBN 9781640124325 (epub)

ISBN 9781640124332 (mobi)

ISBN 9781640124349 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : KidnappingUnited StatesHistory20th century.

Classification: LCC HV 6598 . C 69 2021 | DDC 364.15/4097309033dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020022808

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

For Sam

Give them what they want. For Gods sake dont go to the police.

Those were the words, in his sons handwriting, that persuaded Gerson Cass to drive through the dark streets of Detroits west side, stand on the corner of Chicago Boulevard and Lawton Street, and hand a package containing $4,000 in $20 bills to a stranger who walked by and whispered the word eight.

As the man walked away with the package, another stranger stepped from the shadows, pointed his gun at the man, and ordered him to freeze. He ran instead, as three other detectives, tipped off by an informant, opened fire. Cass watched in despair as Joseph Legs Laman, his only link to his sons kidnappers, went down with a police bullet in his spine. Two hundred $20 bills spilled onto the ground.

Gerson Cass was a wealthy Detroit real estate developer and friend of Henry Ford. Three days before delivering the money to Laman, he had answered the telephone at his home at 4:00 a.m. The voice on the other end said the dreaded words, We have your son. It would cost $25,000 to get him back. Twenty-three-year-old David Cass worked for his father. He also gambled heavily, which brought him into contact with the wrong kinds of people. A pitiful note from David convinced Gerson he had no choice but to do as the kidnappers demanded. Dear Dad, wrote David. The boys got me. They are touching me and I am sick. Give them what they want. For Gods sake dont go to the police. Gerson bargained the ransom down to $4,000 (about $60,000 in 2020).

The hospital doctors misled Laman into believing he wouldnt survive his wounds; the detectives sat at his bedside for weeks. They were finally rewarded for their patience when he gave them the names of seven members of his kidnap gang, including those hiding David. The police arrested them, though not before they had panicked, murdered David, and dumped his body into the Flint River. Laman survived after all and went to prison for extortion. The police pronounced his kidnap gang smashed to bits.

At twenty-eight, Legs Laman, known for his long legs and fleet feet, was the leader of a gang of young thugs, mostly Irish, who specialized in kidnapping bootleggers, gamblers, and other well-to-do lawbreakers in Prohibition-era Detroit. In their previous lives they had been pickpockets, rumrunners, armed robbers, and murderers. While the Laman Gang was hardly the only kidnap gang in the Motor City, it was one of the first to use kidnapping as something other than a nasty way to punish underworld enemies. They envisioned the snatch racket as a lucrative, stand-alone business of snatching vulnerable men or family members with access to money.

They were right about the money: the ordinary bootlegger or gamblereven many law-abiding husbands stepping out on their wiveswould readily pay $5,000 or even $25,000 (between $75,000 and $375,000 in 2020) for his life. They were also right that the shady characters and rich men with dark secrets they had in their sights (they called them wiseguys) wouldnt want to report their kidnappings to the police or cooperate with them in catching their kidnappers.

No matter how lucrative it might be, though, there had always been a particular stench about kidnapping for ransommost criminals drew the line at kidnapping. That was why the snatch racket seemed like such a good opportunity to Laman and the criminals he met in prison. Five of them managed to get released on parole around the same time in May 1928, and they all headed for Detroit to launch their business. In little over a year, the gang had twenty members and claimed credit for kidnapping thirty wiseguys and collecting more than half a million dollars in ransom money (almost $7.5 million in 2020)without a single arrest or conviction. Then it all began to unravel with the ill-fated snatch of the blue-blooded gambler David Cass.

The secret to the Laman Gangs remarkable success was their reliance on what came to be known as the System. They divided every kidnapping job into the same basic tasks and assigned specific individuals to each one. The finger man identified a potential target and investigated to make sure he could pay the ransom in cash. (The gang learned the hard way that promissory notes never worked out.) The finger man also observed the target (the package) going about his daily routines to help plan the when, where, and how of the snatch.

At least two, and no more than four, masked pickup men abducted the package, ideally when he was driving or walking alone, and either hijacked his car or forced him at gunpoint into theirs. As soon as they could manage it without being seen, they strapped goggles with adhesive-taped lenses over his eyes, bound his hands, shoved him face down onto the floorboards, and started out for the hideout where they planned to keep him until they collected the ransom (the castle).