Word: knetzer
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...Chicago Herald-American remember fondly The Front Page, written by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, onetime colleagues, and still never pass up an opportunity to play cops & robbers. Six weeks ago, Managing Editor Harry Reutlinger saw his chance again when a used-car dealer named Robert L. Knetzer,charged with swindling customers out of about $1,500,000 (TIME, Oct. 25, 1948), escaped from a Springfield, Ill. jail. Reutlinger called in his star crime reporter, Leroy ("Buddy") McHugh, and gave him the kind of assignment that Herald-American staffers often get but seldom succeed in: find Knetzer, badly wanted...
...hungered for an automobile and couldn't get one, Robert L. Knetzer was the man to see. At the famine's wartime worst and later, when the new models appeared, townsfolk of Edwardsville, Il11. (pop. 8,100) noticed that strapping Bob Knetzer was a miracle man at finding cars for people with cash. What's more, he sold them at list price, and delivered them in 30 to 90 days. All he demanded was a deposit of at least $1,000. Cadillacs and Chevrolets were his specialties...
News of Bob Knetzer's magic formula spread quickly beyond Southern Illinois' coal and farm country. St. Louis and Springfield gangsters, who would rather go without a rod than a Cadillac, scurried with cash in hand to Bob's classy showroom, across the street from Edwardsville's courthouse. Orders came from as far away as California and South America. Cash poured in, cars rolled out and Bob, at 37, was rich...
Last week the bubble burst. Prodded by St. Louis' crusading newspapers and the complaints of competing dealers, the state's attorney began poking around Bob's empire. What he found was this: Knetzer lost money on every car he delivered, made his money from the suckers, who got nothing. From his huge backlog of cash deposits, Knetzer bought cars at dealers' auctions for $2,500, sold them for $1,750. Thus he could make good on enough deliveries to keep more customers-and more cash-coming. Cars were scarce, suckers were plentiful and after all, when...