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It was to Indianapolis that Kidnapper Robinson motored Mrs. Stoll. In an apartment two blocks from the executive mansion of the Governor of Indiana, she was bound, nearly suffocated in a closet. Following directions in the ransom letter left in Louisville, Mrs. Stoll's kin sent $50,000 express to Father Robinson in Nashville. Snatcher Robinson's wife started for Indianapolis with the money, detrained at Terre Haute, unconsciously avoided a taxi proffered by a D. O. I. man in disguise, motored to Indianapolis. Off the trail, Chief Purvis and his men did not catch up with Mrs. Robinson until she and Mrs. Stoll were on their way back to Louisville in company of a preacher-kinsman. By that time, Kidnapper Robinson with the $50,000 had made his getaway, was being pursued all over the southeast U. S.
The best place for a reporter to have covered the Stoll kidnapping would have been the press room of the Department of Justice, 600 mi. from the scene of the crime. Even information from one field man to another is cleared through the central Washington office. The moment Mrs. Stoll was released, the complete, authoritative story on the kidnapping went out from Washington. Attorney General Cummings took on last August as his special assistant one of the ablest and most reliable of Washington correspondents, Henry Suydam, long with the Brooklyn Eagle.
Under Assistant Suydam, the Department of Justice release on the Stoll case made more sense and better reading than any of the reams written by groping newshawks on the Louisville. Nashville, Terre Haute and Indianapolis front.
Kidnapping case in a class by itself is that of Charles Augustus Lindbergh Jr. Credit for the capture of Bruno Richard Hauptmann in that case, however, goes not to the Department of Justice but to the New York City Police Department. Fortnight ago the affairs of the onetime Bronx carpenter turned an important corner when extradition papers were signed by New York's Governor Lehman turning him over to New Jersey.
Hauptmann's counsel precipitated what amounted to a pre-hearing of the murder trial evidence when he obtained a writ of habeas corpus. During hearings on this action in the New York courts, last week Mrs. Hauptmann did her loyal best to alibi her stolid husband for the night of March 1, 1932. She was not very successful. More promising was the testimony of a construction boss on a Manhattan apartment building who said Hauptmann was working for him until 5 p. m. on the fatal day. The crime took place 60 mi. away at Hopewell, N. J. not later than 8:30 p. m. But when other evidence tended to show that Hauptmann did not start work there until March 21, the court refused to stay the extradition longer and four carloads of New Jersey troopers swept Bruno Hauptmann over the Hudson and down to Flemington for the trial of his life.
*On the trail of another desperado last week Chief Purvis led Federal men and policemen to an Ohio farm, saw Charles ("Pretty Boy") Floyd drop mortally wounded (see p. 64).