Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...work.* Hunting down and jailing a few crackpots and hoaxers who brutally tried to extort money from the well-off Weinberger parents was the least of the police and FBI chores. The bigger job: a painstaking search of public records for handwriting to compare with that on two ransom notes...
...little to go on: the first ransom note ("I hate to do this . . . I'm in great need. I could ask for more [than $2.000] but I am asking for only what I need") was handwritten in green ink; there were peculiarities in the m's and r's. As one crew of agents set out to track down the supplier of the type of paper that the note was written on, scores of agents started to examine a vast variety of public records. First, they vainly sorted through 75,000 fingerprint cards of people...
...clues: LaMarca's car registration showed that he owned a 1948 Plymouth of the type that youngsters had seen in the vicinity of the Weinberger home on the day of the kidnaping. The kidnaper had left some old auto-seat covers, had instructed the Weinbergers to leave the ransom under them; these covers, the FBI learned, had been manufactured to fit the seats of a 1948 Plymouth. Finally, though not conclusively, the notepaper had been traced to a supplier in the general vicinity...
...raise their birds with loving attention, bet heavily on the pigeons' speed and natural navigation skills, bridle at the very thought of selling their pets for food. Last month, when a rash crook kidnaped half a dozen prizewinners and sent one of his own homers with a ransom note, the whole valley rose in wrath. Pigeon partisans tagged the go-between pigeon with streamers, trailed it by plane back to its loft, and turned the rustler over to the courts...
...Detective Pinnell, whose clumsy handling of the Woodward killing (TIME, Nov. 14, 1955) had earned him little respect among newsmen, could have averted any possible misunderstanding if he had briefed the press and pledged it to secrecy immediately after the crime. Later he jeopardized further attempts to pay the ransom; he blabbed to reporters that the packages left by Weinberger contained little real money. When the kidnaper upped the ransom from $2,000 to $5,000, Pinnell's cops asked most papers and wire services not to print the information, but apparently neglected to call the Times...