LUMBER KING'S SON KIDNAPPED

Horowhenua Chronicle, 27 May 1935, Page 5

LUMBER KING'S SON KIDNAPPED

; BIG RANSOM DEMANDED. THREAT OP DEATH IF POLICE INTERVENE. (By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright) Received Sunday, 7 p.m. WASHINGTON, May 25. A message from Tacoma, Washington, states that George Weyerhaeuser, the nine-year-old scion of a wealthy lumber family, was kidnapped yesterday and is being held for ransom variously reported at between fifty and two hundred thousand dollars. The family is maintaining strict secrecy about any negotiations they might enter, but meanwhile the city and State police under the Director of Federal agents are conducting a widespread search. The lad left school at noon for lunch at home. No one has seen him since. To-day a large white cloth was hung from the window of the Weyerhaeuser mansion which could be seen for miles. As the house is on an elevation overlooking Pugct sound it is assumed this is a signal to the kidnappers that the family is ready to pay the ransom. It is reported that the ransom note was written in a woman's hand and' threatened the death of the child if the police were notified. The Weyerhaeuser family is immensely wealthy. The kidnapped "child's great grandfather, Frederick Weyerhaeuser, was the son of a German immigrant and started in the lumber industry as a dollar-a-day sawmill worker in Minnesota in 1852. He gradually accumulated timber lauds from Ohio to the Pacific coast and even into Alaska. His son John Philip died a fortnight ago, leaving the control of most of the fortune to John Philip junior, the boy's father. The family is said to control 94 corporations in the lumber milling and allied industries to the value of almost a billion dollars. It owns two million acres of timber and a vast amount of other property.