KIDNAPPERS' FEATS.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12765, 17 June 1911, Page 11 (Supplement)

KIDNAPPERS' FEATS.

CELEBRITIES WHO HAVE BEEN HELD FOR RANSOM. The extraordinary precautions which ••ire taken whenever Mrs. Winston Churchill's baby is taken out by the nursemaid'for'an airing emphasize the undoubted fact that the business of kidnapping has revived of late. This industry, (says "Tit-Bits"), used to bo exclusively in the hands of gipsies—or nt least so popular prejudice imagined —and its later development seems to be quite independent of nationality or race, especially if the parents of tlip child marked for abduptipn happen to bo millionaires. In fact, enormously ■wealthy Americans are raid to harbour tho intention of constructing their nurseries on the strong-room system, usins; three or four-inch armour-plate, if the danger to their offspring is not quickly abated. CARRIED OFF BY'A PLUMBER, In these later developments, however,_ the- word "kidnapping" is oiten a misnomer. J. D. Rockefeller, for instance, in spite of the fact that his palo lias rill the .pristine smoothness of a babs in arms, is, nevertheless, no chicken. Yet.he has been on the point ol being kidnapped times without number. WlTat would .-thf» brigands of Sicily of Calabria or Bosnia give if they could only induce the Oil King to ■£o prospecting for. new petroleum wells in their part of the world? At what figure would they fix his ransom if they could lay hands on the "richest man in tho world'??. Would it exceed the .•£400,000 which Patrick Crcwe, the leader of .last gang which tried to kidnap him, , confessed to bo the figure at which they t had, somewhat prematurely, assessed the great J. D.? Quite recent.'y. a lawyer of Sharon— not the place where:..the, roses como fiom, but a towi: in the. States—paid a 1 heavy ransom to recover his eight-year-old son ■ from..th*3-'hands of kidnappers, and the receipt had t6 include a promise not to give them in charge. The hoy was. abducted from school, to the tremendous consternation of his parents and rho school authorities.

Presently tJio fathei" received a letter demanding'that £2,000 should be placed in a certain spot in tlie local I-srlv. and then the, hoy would he returned. This sum was actually deposited, hut. as the kidnappers believed that tho police had been. .informed, it wus left undisturbed, the boy wan still missing. Then the lawyer learned t})at his boy had been taken to Cleveland, Ohio, and there he rushed by special train. Acting on instructions, he visited a certain sweet-shop in that oity. and under solemn oaths —which I*.o kept—paid the monc3 T, and returned to his hotel. : In tho course of the evening the boy: turn pel up at the hotel in charge- of a tram-conductor, into whoso care he had been .given by a stranger on tho outskirts of the town. This .sequel "was an anti-climax. The cm pie—a plumber and his wife—named Boyle, who had -abducted the lad, promptly got drunk on the money and boasted of it "in their cups," and were arrested.