KIDNAPPED

Hokitika Guardian, 26 August 1933, Page 7

KIDNAPPED

POLICE PUT ON TRAIL

MILLIONAIRE AS DETECTIVE

VANCOUVER, Aiuguai 22

Mr Charles Urachal, the Oklahoma, millionaire and leading oi] magnate, has displayed ingenuity and thought flirt would have flat.ei’ed ar.y writer of thrilling serial scenarios. ■Held by kidnappers, Mr Urschel

puzzled continually for -clues that mdgiht fix the locality of (the secret hiding place. Blindfolded and bound in bed, he never caught a glimpse of the surrounding country, but because the speeding motor-car had carried him for six hours over level roads, he rightly surmised he was somewhere across the Texas plains. j In the prisoner’s tiny bedroom was a 1 clock, which struck hourly, and just', after five b’clock each morning Mr' Urschel heard an aeroplane head, and exactly an hour dailcr one' came from the opposite direction. Daily he listened for their 'noises until © n a ; certain Sunday a storm intervened,, and one aeroplane failed to pass. | The oil man’s friends finally paid 200,000 dollars (about £40.000 at par) j as ransom, and for days following his! release, Mr Urschel studied the air- J mail schedules. f The' position of every aeroplane crossing Texas was .calculated .from pilots’ logs, and it wa r , finally traced that, because of the storm one American Airways pilot made a. detour of 50 miles on the Sunday morning that the oil man missed its. friendly noise, It wa s then a isjm.ple .step to plot out a map showing that the kidnappers’ base mup- ;

be in the lonely hills SO miles north west of the city of Dallas. Police in an aeroplane easily picket out a. deserted farmhouse, with the aic of binoculars, and at daybreak a. dozen officers with Mr Urschel raided the house, capturing three members of a feang, bn whom war, found marked money that had, been paid for the millionaire’s ransom.. One kidnapper proved t.Q be Harvey Dailey, rvvho fired on the police with a machine-gun at the Union • railway station at Kansas City on June 17, in an attempted rescue of the convict, Prank Nash, who was killed along with four officers. .

The kidnappers, armed with machineguns, raided Mr Urschel’s-'boros© in Oklahoma City on Jplv 23. and carried him off, with a friend. The friend was released, with instructions for the payment of the ransom.