KIDNAPPING HOAX

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18900, 30 December 1935, Page 5

KIDNAPPING HOAX

YOUNG MAN CONFESSES STAGE PUBLICITY SCHEME NEW YORK, Dec. 28. Amidst constant alarms of kidnapping, which have become characteristic of America, a sensation was caused to-day by' the confession to agents of the Department of Justice, by Caleb Milnes, fourth scion of one of America’s wealthiest- families, that his alleged abduction last week, attended by much publicity, was only a hoax perpetrated by himself in order to further his stage career. The 23-year-old actor and fiction writer told an amazing story of how he had carefully planned his own disappearance. He prepared notes which caused his grandfather to hurry with 20,000 dollars as ransom money to a rendezvous with kidnappers at Philadelphia. Shortly before he was found, he put a tape round his own eves and mouth and tied himself up.

He inflicted many pin-pricks upon his arms, simulating hypodermic injections, and the appearance of one who had been drugged, and finally was rescued from a. roadside ditch in Pennsylvania, half frozen.

Persistent inquiry by the New' York police and so-called G-men compelled Milne to make a written confession.