October 16, 2025 • 53 mins
Young George Weyerhaeuser was snatched off the street back when kidnapping the child of a wealthy family seemed to be all the rage. Neither horrific nor violent nor ending in tragedy, this kidnapping is an offbeat adventure with a heartwarming ending.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zenie Quick, Quick, quick, get over there.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
You know it's ridiculous, I do Ted Danson.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh yeah, he's pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
No, but this isn't about like any of the obvious
things what we're all thinking of, what the birthday for
older No, this goes back when he was eleven. If
you don't know about that, look it up. But when
he was eleven, Uh, he was a little street criminal apparently,
really not real stream criminal. Yeah he was. He lived
in like northern Arizona, like Flagstaff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, you know like that.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, they's like up in like the high desert, but
the pines. It looks like a lot like around Tahoe. Sure.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Right, So he's up there, and uh, apparently he and
his friends were kind of hooligan ish, and so they
chopped down all these billboards around Flagstaff, Arizona. Yeah, his
father was the one to put their crime spree to
end by putting the pieces together. You know how he
got caught. His father was the director of the Museum
of Northern Arizona. And that's the only one of the
(00:59):
billboards they and cut down. Tad's like Ted dancing there
you go.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh, Ted, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Please?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Forgetting to fill the cans? I don't know. This is
(01:40):
Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
You damn right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Do you like Wes Anderson film?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I do. I really enjoy the most recent one. I
didn't like it's weird. I like the beginning. I liked Rushmore,
I like Bye Bob a Rocket, and then I went
through like a spot. I was like, I don't know,
but something that they're getting too repetitive. And then I
really liked The Phoenician Scheme.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's a great movie. I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I'm a huge fan Oficio del Toro, so it was
kind of an easy list for me.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, I think my al timer
is The Royal Tenant Bone.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I like that one, left that one too.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I really liked The French Dispatch was a good one,
and Darjeeling Limited.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, not so much that some ones that I really.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Liked, but yeah, the Phoenician.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Scheme in the Hotel was the Grand That one didn't
do it for me, and I like Ray Kingdom.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
I didn't really get into The Life A Life Aquatic
and that one for me, but bits and pieces of
those films, but they didn't like the first ones like
they all held me, including the Royal Tenement.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I was like, I think that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It goes beyond. Like his whole visual aesthetic is what
people kind of always reference with him.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
That's when it got too known.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I was super visually appealing, you know, I love it,
But there's like a darkness and a sadness about his
work that I love, yeah, completely, and mainly because it's
always tempered with really incredible humanity and vulnerability, and so
it means that there's some light in there. And he
works with the absolute best actors. Benicio del Toro totally,
(03:19):
so you.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Can get past that diorama scene quality. I know you do,
but I'm saying it's becomes so self aware that it's like,
now he's got to reinfuse it with life.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, fee about.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The Benichio Deltor did a great job of reinfusing it
with life. And then also the actors who played the daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I don't know her name, yeah, yeah, everyone, he goes,
They're incredible. I found this crime right and at.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
First Wes Anderson doing no.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But at first I thought maybe it wasn't something we
should talk about. Oh really, it seems kind of dark.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
At first, okay, but you're going to put the light in.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
As I read about it, I was overwhelmed by a
feeling that I was reading a Wes Anderson script. Really,
you have no idea. I could almost hear the Kinks
playing somewhere, like I knew it. Seriously, this is a
one hundred percent Wes Anderson joint. I want him to
make this into a film and pay me a finder's fee.
Like I can't, I can't express, like, Okay, who's who's
(04:15):
Benicio del Toro going to play in this? Seren? I
do not know Willia Wilson brother be involved? Bro? I
love that. Can we get Francis McDormand on this. It's
all very exciting. I'm very excited. So cue the harpsichord
music as I tell you about.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
This boy please.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
His name was George Hunt Walker Warehouser. He was born
July eighth, nineteen twenty six, in Seattle, Washington, to Helen
and John Philip Warehouser Junior. Is that Warehouser's last name
ring a bell?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
It does W.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
E y E R h A E U S E.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
R It totally does.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It looks like Weaherhauser. It's a timber company.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Let's say it's the paper company on the side of
the boxes.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Exactly. You've seen that green tree looking logo. So they
own currently more than twelve million acres of timberland in
the US, but not timberland the producer, and another fourteen
million in Canada.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Okay that's where.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
In twenty twenty four, their revenue was over seven billion
dollars and their total assets ran more than sixteen billion.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
It's a lot of toilet paper, so much toilet paper. So,
Young George, do you think they're the lobby that keeps
us from having bidets in America? Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
You know what, I never even thought of that, but
it's probably.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I always like to imagine that. I like that big fightersides.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The George right. He's the great grandson of company co
founder Frederick Warehouser. In May of nineteen thirty five, George,
Young George, his grandpa, John P. Warehouser Senior, died and
then cut to the family standing somberly around a grave
in the drizzly Pacific Northwest, all of them wearing like
neat vintage fashion and an early stone song play Can
(06:00):
you See It? George is only eight? And it was
a big deal, the death of John P. Warehouser Senior.
It was front page news in the Tacoma News Tribune,
headline screaming lumber leader passes built timber Empire. Exclamation points erin.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
A lumber leader instead of lumber baron.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Lumber leader passes built timber Empire. John Philip Warehauser, power
in Timberfield dies of pneumonia. John Phillips Warehouser Senior, seventy six,
one of Tacoma's outstanding citizens and one of the nation's
best known lumbermen, died at his home here early this morning.
He was stricken Monday with pneumonia. Despite the world prominence
(06:40):
of the huge timber company and its affiliated concerns, the
active direction of which he yielded but a short time ago,
mister Warehauser might rightfully be said to have been one
of the least personally known of Tacoma's citizens. He was
modest and retiring and preferred to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
Few pictures of him maybe found, and little personal biographical
(07:03):
data is available. Despite the quiet but nonetheless influential part
he played in Tacoma's civic and industrial life for nearly
quarter of a century.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He just wanted to be known for his good wood.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, yes, sorry, I wanted to be known for the goodwood.
But doesn't that sounds like something that you would see in.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was very Wes Anderson, Yes, know about him.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Next to the obituary on the front page is a
collage of photos of newly minted leaders of the Shriners
of the Pacific Northwest in their fezzes, adding to the
whole like Wes Anderson of it all.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Oh, I love that's the frame just off off.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah. So the obituary went on to tell the story
of John Senior's life, and it provided all the details
of his life story starting in childhood. The business boon,
the success listed his survivors, and as the intro paragraph says,
this guy was hugely influential and a titan of industry.
Was super low key quiet money. That o bit was
the first a lot of people we're hearing about the
(08:00):
Warehouser family. Really yeah, I mean they knew the name,
but they didn't know the people. So one of those
who learned from that oh bit was Margaret Fulinka. She's pretty, meek, blonde,
married to a guy named Harmon Whaley, and Harmon is tall,
good looking, twenty four years old. A Washington State boy
through and through, but he was also a bit of trouble.
(08:24):
He'd done time here and there starting when he was seventeen.
He was a knock about young crimer with a pretty
dame on his arm.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Do we know anything about it? He ran kind of
like like country and cowboys. He more like a lumberman,
like a young like Oh no.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
No no, he was just like a little petty criminal.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, so urban kid, Urban kid, I got you.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
One of the times that he was locked up, he
made a pal, a fellow by the name of William
Mayhan and he also William, went by the names William
Daynard and Swede Davis Sweet Dan sweed Day Willie Mayhem No, no, no,
no no. So he was in for bank robbery. He
had five bank jobs on his record, including a one
(09:03):
hundred thousand dollars bank robbery in Idaho.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Check out pretty boy Floyd or Swede Davis.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
April nineteen thirty five, Harmon and Margaret. They're living in
Salt Lake City and one day he ran into his
old jail pol William Hey. Then in mid May, Hey,
how are you hey? Mid May? Margaret, she kind of
she chances upon the obituary for John Senior, so she
shared it with the boys, and then all three of
(09:28):
them headed to Washington State. And they knew they saw
in the ohbit that John Senior was seriously wealthy, and
that he had a young grandson, and there'd been a
number of high profile kidnappings.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Ah, they were inspired, we can get in on that game.
How hard is it to grab a kid?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Right? So they get there immediately start tailing young George.
They surveilled him as he went to school, they watched
him as he came back home again. They took notes,
They drank from a thermos probably. They set up their
operations base in Seattle.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You can see the Wes Anderson shot of the thermiss.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Of the thermists. Yeah, and so the guys they would
head out to Tacoma every morning. Margaret would stay behind
at the Seattle apartment. This stakeout went on for days,
and then one day there was a stroke of luck
at eleven forty five on a Friday morning, May twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty five, to exact, as told many years later
in Sports Illustrated, it is a long story as to
(10:25):
why quote Miss Berg of Lowell Grammar School dismissed her
fifth grade class for lunch, and George ran down the
hill into the headlines. When last scene as he went
out of sight, he was wearing a sweater, brown corduroy trousers,
and tennis shoes. He was described as follows quote smiling,
(10:45):
handsome face with no distinguishing marks, average height, dark curly hair,
brown eyes. His teacher added, an alert, obedient, and brilliant pupil. Now,
normally the Warehouser kids didn't walk home.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I was surprised by that.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, they took their lunches at home, but they were
driven to and from the school by the family chauffeur.
That yeah, so George, he would generally walk from his
school to his sister and school in order for them
to get picked up together. But on that day, George
got out fifteen minutes early, and he didn't feel like waiting.
He decided to walk. There's a spirited boy, a clever lad. Sure,
(11:21):
he was also full of imagination and energy. And as
he headed home, he practiced broad jumping. It's like his
dream was to become a track star. And so there
he was like bounding down the street, cutting across the
grounds of the Tacoma Lawn Tennis Club, leaping and racing
and then sprinting up a flight of steps to reach
the next street. And it's like wool short pants, yes peak,
(11:44):
eight year old boy behavior, totally total jump. He's in
his own movie and he's loving it. And so he
reached Burrow Street and as he went across the street,
he walked in front of a car that was parked
under a tree at Tan nineteen twenty seven Buick. Inside
were Harmon and William him. The one in the passenger
seat got out and he asked George for directions to
(12:04):
Stadium Way. Now George knew the way and he was
about to help the guy when the guy grabbed him
by the arm and threw in the back seat to
the car. Then he covered him with a blanket and
the car peeled away from the curb. And I want
to pause for a second, where the details a little
different and the boy a little different. There's no way
I would tell this story as a ridiculous crime. Yes,
(12:24):
child kidnapping is horrendous, but this is different. You have
to trust me on this. I am a sensitive gal.
You know I wouldn't traumatize anyone, So don't get prematurely upset.
It adds to the experience to visualize this as a
Wes Anderson movie.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I'm there.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So when I say that he was tossed in the
back seat and they threw a blanket over him, I
like to imagine him like sitting ramrod straight with a
wool blanket draped over him, like an oatmeal gray colored ghost.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, Back to George. So he's this super smart kid.
He's smart beyond his ears. He's mature for his age,
he's observant, and there's this great there's this great picture
of him and his quote chums on the front page
of the Tacoma Daily Ledger, and George legit looks crafty
and wise like, not childlike, but still youthful.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
You can see in his eyes.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, and one of his buddies already looks world weary
and has like a furrowed brow, but not George, she's
got to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I love those little kids look world weary. So just
look like dumb as a stone.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
He looks like thirty eight, No, George. And that's the
hallmark of a Wes Anderson film. A kid who's got
it all figured out, who's imaginative and resilient and very
dry and ry. George. So as he's thrown into the
backseat of the car, he clocked the guy in the
driver's seat, took note of everything about him. And the
(13:49):
men drove around for more than an hour, whispering to
each other, and George took mental notes of what they
were saying, picked up on keywords, tried to estimate where
they were based on the turns they were taking. Like
I don't know if he went on sneakers of like
getting you know, counting the geese that he hears and
all that. But oh god, I love that movie. Had
to take a sneakers moment. But so he's keeping track
(14:12):
of everything. Then the car stopped and one of the
men reached into the back and took the blanket off
of George, and he blinks at him. They'd put hoods
over their heads. Silly, George thought, because he'd seen them
when they grabbed him, here they said, and shoved a
blank envelope and a pencil at him. They told him
to write his name, so George gave him a side
eye complied. They took the envelope from him, and then
(14:33):
they got out of the car. They blindfolded George, and
then one of them scooped him up and carried him
like a dozen or so steps, and George heard the
sound of rushing water, So he's like, okay, we're waiting
across the stream. Are they going to just push me in?
Is that what this is? He didn't know, but he
was clocking all the possibilities and like ready for anything. Yeah, Oh,
he's amazing. So they get across the stream, set George down,
(14:56):
hold his hand, he's still blindfolded, and then they walk
for what George would later estimate was like half to
three quarters of a mile, and he could feel bushes
and like tree branches brushing his arms, and he knew
the ground was uneven and not paved. All of this
he's just like taking mental note of So finally they stopped.
They sat George down on a log, and they took
(15:17):
off his blindfold and in front of him was a
hole in the ground three feet wide six feet long,
covered with tin. It had like braced posts on it
lined with boards. So they chained his right wrist and
leg lowered him into the hole, and then put a
board over the top. Again, trust me on this.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well, it doesn't sound like like a grave, you know.
That's good. Sounds like something of boy scouts might make.
They need shelter in the winter exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So the guys they take her in guarding him. George
just sits silently listening thinking. He never panics full time,
never panics, never cries, never panics. One of the guys
left to go drop off the envelope that they had
George right as name on. It was a part of
the ransom notes. So when he returned, he lifted the lid,
pulled George out of the hole, and then all three
(16:07):
of them sat together on the log and had a picnic.
Wes Anderson sandwiches, cookies, hard boiled eggs. When they're done,
they put George back in handcuffs, lowered him back into
the hole, and this time they gave him two blankets
and a lantern to keep.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Him warm, and maybe a comic book.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This is a Wes Anderson scene for the ages. So
now what what about the Warehouser family? What you tell me? Okay,
so this is what do they have to when this
is going on. They realized that George was missing, obviously
all over for him, then called the cops, and then
the ransom letter arrived. It was addressed to whom it
(16:47):
made concern.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
The family.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Here it was signed egoist likest egoist and on the
back was George's signature, and they wanted two hundred thousand
dollars in unmarked twenty ten and five dollar bills in
exchange for George. That's like four point seven million dollars.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
So according to the letters for a kid, Yeah, they
had these. They are like, you have five days to
get the cash together, and when you have the money,
you have to put an ad in the Seattle Post
Intelligencer Classified section and it has to say, quote, we
are ready, and then you have to sign it Percy Mini.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
What do your egoist from? Percy Mini? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
No, just say we are Percy Mini, Percy Minnie. Yeah,
let's take a break when we come back. The ransom
plan zaren Way by George Warehouser eight years old, snatched
(18:02):
off the street. Family gets a ransom notes.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Stuck in a hole in the earth.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Eating a picnic. The note was like a siren call
to the FBI. They descended on Tacoma. So when the
family gathered up the money, FBI agents compiled the serial
numbers of the bills and those were sent to FBI
headquarters in Washington, DC. They made ten pages of numbers,
and they got ready as soon as the money was
going to go out, they were going to send it
(18:28):
to post offices, banks, hotels, railway stations, anywhere that bills
are used. Now we're at May twenty fifth, nineteen thirty five,
the Warehouser family. They ran two ads in the Seattle
Post Intelligencer. The first read quote, expect to be ready
come Monday, answer, Percy Minie. And then the second ad read,
(18:51):
due to publicity beyond our control, please indicate another method
of reaching you. Hurry, Percy Minie.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Smart. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So then meanwhile, Harmon and William they go back to
the car and put George in the trunk this time,
and they cruised around for like an hour by George's estimates,
and when they stopped, they they got George out walked
him into the woods and they made him wait by
a tree while they dug another hole, so he just
has to stand there. Then they put a seat from
(19:21):
the car and some blankets in and told George to
get in.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
A seat from the car, the backseat, I'm guessing, and
so this you can stretch out on this.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, we want you to be comfortable. It must have
been a long time digging. They cuff him again, and
then they cover the hole with tar paper.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
When they're cuffing him, children's wrists are small, so like,
what are they using to coffin? They could handcuffs?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Who knows? Who knows? So he spent the night there
with the bugs and the critters and his true grit.
And the next evening comes along Harmon and William. They
read the paper, they see the ads. They took George
from the hole. They put him in the trunk a
different car. This one was William's car, and they drove
all night across the state to Spokane, three hundred miles east.
(20:07):
Now keep in mind that cars then didn't have the
suspension system.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Oh yeah, you're getting bounced around, and it's.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
An even rougher ride in the trunk, right, George though
he's a trooper again, never cries, never panic.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Also the exhaust.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, So they get close to the Idaho Washington state line,
they stop the car. They take George out and chain
him to a tree while the two of them go
to Spokane and George just waited. And then they came
back hours later and they had this huge you need
a biscuit shipping carton there's a brand you need a biscuit,
(20:41):
so like a wooden crate. Basically it says you need
a biscuit on the side. They put George in the
box and took him to the apartment.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
They put him in the biscuit box.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
They put him in the biscuit box. George later said,
I was just glad to get out of that hole
in the ground. I slept most of the time. I
had blankets and it was worm back there. Amazing. So
at the apartment, Harmon and William and now Margaret, they
put George in this small room. There was a mattress,
two chairs, and a small white table, and they locked
(21:10):
him in there and then Harmon slept on a mattress
outside the door. William got the car headed for Seattle
on his way to go pick up the ransom.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I can so see the wes Anders Yes, especially.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The whole process for this is so dramatic and Wes
Anderson esqud. So Margaret sent a letter to George's dad
telling him to register at the Ambassador Hotel in Seattle
under the name John Paul Jones. Led Zeppelin complete and
they're like, wait there for a phone call. So I
(21:45):
can completely see the scene where the actresses is dictating
these directions. Back at the apartment, Harmon and George, they're
getting along swimmingly. Harmon would let George out of the room,
which was basically like a large closet, but he would
only do it if one was around, and Harmon would
wear the hood over his head the whole time. But
to keep them occupied, Harmon would play the ukulele while
(22:08):
George sat quietly in a chair and listen.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Playing like twenty so on hoo on, and like.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Everyone told George, you know you're going to be home soon,
so he didn't think it was worth it to craft
an escape plan. Okay, He's like, that's foolish and make
him mad exactly, and they hurt me, just waited out,
so may twenty.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Other stuff together they've got all these plans.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
They got a ukulele. May twenty eighth, nineteen thirty five,
George's dad ran an ad in the paper, quote, we
are ready, Percy Minnie.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
It's m I N N I E yeah, like many
of the moo.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah. So at seven pm the same day he registered
at the Ambassador Hotel in Seattle under the name John
Paul Jones. Then exactly he gets another note delivered by
a cab driver, and it contains the following and structions.
Step one, drive to Reinier Valley with the money. Step two,
(23:05):
look for a steak with a white flag on the
right hand side of South Renton Avenue. Step three, look
in the tin can under the flag. Step four, drive
straight ahead seven hundred feet to another white cloth and park.
Step five leave the engine running and parking lights on.
Oh yeah, So George's dad did just what he's told like.
(23:27):
He drove to the spot, found two sticks stuck in
the ground with a piece of white cloth on him.
In the can, there was a message. It told him
to go to another stick with a piece of cloth
on it further down the road for the next set
of directions. George's dad gets to the second marker. There's
no message there, so he hung out there for two hours,
but then he gave up and went back to the hotel. Okay, Zarin,
(23:49):
close your eyes what I want you to picture it.
It's May thirtieth, nineteen thirty five, eleven thirty am. You
are John Philip Warehouser Junior, and your son George has
(24:10):
been kidnapped. You tried to follow the first instructions to
get your boy back, but the kidnappers had somehow botched
the second part of the drop off details. So you're
now back at your hotel room under the name John
Paul Jones, waiting on how you can save your son.
The phone rings through to your penthouse room. Hello, you say, ah, yes,
(24:31):
it's a guy doing a very bad, vaguely European accent.
It's all over the place, mister Weyerhauser. Why don't she
follow my instructions? You tell him that there weren't any
instructions at the second marker. Oh, you tell him you
would have followed the directions if there had been any
(24:53):
to follow. Ah, yes, I see wheh heal is what
you do? Now? Drive with the money to one one
zero five East Madison Street and look for a tin
can directly inside the gait that will contain frozer instructions.
You run down to the lobby. You're chauffeur idling at
(25:15):
the curb out front. You tell them to get out
and let you drive. He obliges. You tear out and
race to eleven oh five East Madison Street. You get there,
see the tin can inside the gate and read the note.
It tells you to drive to the Halfway House on
Highway ninety nine near Angle Lake. You know the place.
It's a restaurant with a steep pitched roof, opened a
couple of years ago. Off you go, speeding down highways
(25:37):
until you reach the restaurant. Outside, you see a tin
can marked with a white flag. It directs you to
another location. Off you go again. You get to yet
another location from there, ripping down forest roads. Then you
get to what will be the final can. You pull
the instructions out and read them. Step one, park the
car and place the bag with a two hundred thousand
(25:59):
dollars ransom on the front seat. Step two, leave the
vehicle with the engine running. Step three, dome the light
and leave the driver's door open. Step four walk down
the road toward the highway. If the money is in order,
George will be released within thirty hours. You do exactly
as directed. You get everything set up in the car
(26:20):
and you start walking. You know George's level headed, he's
like his grandpa. You have a real connection to him too, though,
so you know in your bones that he's okay and
will remain that way. You take a deep breath and
you walk on. About one hundred yards away from the car,
you hear a loud noise coming from the bushes. You
turn and see a man jump out and run to
(26:41):
the car. He gets in and screeches away a cloud
of dustin's waking. There goes your car and two hundred
thousand dollars. You start walking out toward Highway ninety nine
to summer, ride back to Tacoma and wait for your
boy to be returned to you. Now, wow, Margaret, and
that there all right? So Margaret, William, they were actually
(27:02):
parked nearby during the drop off, and it was William
who jumped in the car. He drove it to a
little shack that he'd rented on the outskirts of Seattle,
and when he got there he hid the money and
he left George's dad's car in like a random neighborhood
At three point thirty in the morning on June first,
nineteen thirty five, George was released on the Issoqua Hobart
(27:24):
Road near Issaqua with two blankets and a dollar and
it was raining.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Are you kidding me, George? They were so much meaner
to children before, like the seventies or whatever, Like you
get back to the thirties, it's just like they're basically
treated like animals.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
But that like very pristine Wes Anderson scene of him,
like the car off and he has a single dollar
and two blankets and it's raining and he's just staring
straight ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
People treated children often, even when they liked them, as
like we can make more.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Oh yeah, they're tough, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Not it's fun to make them anyway.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So George walked for six miles until he reached a farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
They left him six miles from a farmhouse.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, so, And it's like this shingled house in the
forest on a little hill middle of nowhere. It was
early morning. The farmer and his family were getting ready
for the day, and George knocked primly on the door
and waited and then missus John Boniface, the wife of
a stump farmer. What so, a stump farmer is someone
when they clear cut the land, then he goes in
(28:31):
and breaks up the stumps and removes them, which is
like backbreaking.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Oh it's possible.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Work.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Removing stumps is the most arduous and irritating, frustrating work
you've ever done. You can see where you go go
to chemical warfare with stumps and like let's get some
change and attractor or whatever else.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
That's his job. He's a stump farmer.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I thought he was actually though, like farming something in
the stumps, like mushrooms or something.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
No, he's just like backbreaking work. That's so. The farmer's
wife looks out into the drizzly dawn, sees the boy.
He says, I'm George Warehouser. Like that's that's the first
thing he says. She ushered him in recent headlines, totally
got him dry socks shoes, then instructed him to sit
(29:13):
at the table with her four kids and have some breakfast.
And then mister and missus Boniface they stayed measured in calm,
and the kids eight and mister Boniface then got dressed
to drive the boy back home. So soon enough, George
and the farmer are on the road. At six point
thirty in the morning, mister Boniface pulled into a gas
station in Renton. He asked the attendant to call the
(29:34):
Warehouser residence, but no one answered. So the next call
was to the Tacoma Police, and he told him what
had happened, that he had George. He'd shown up at
the doorstep and he's look, I'm driving him home right now.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, yeah, I'm a stall farmer.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I'll bring him in. And the cops are like, that's fantastic.
So now, somehow a sports writer from the Seattle Times,
this guy Johnny Dreer, who was in Tacoma to cup
or the kidnapping, he got a tip that George had
been freed. And I don't know if that came from
the cops or the gas station attendant, but it had
to be one of those.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Assume the cops, because you know, yeah, a lot of
reporters know that you can slip some money or like,
you know, right, whiskey or cigars.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Sure, so he flagged down a taxi. The reporter flags
down a taxi, tells the driver head for renting. There's
no one on the road. So when they saw this
old model t Ford like farmer looking truck, like about
eighteen miles outside of Tacoma head their way down the road, yeah,
they had. He had the cab driver block it, pull
across traffic and block it. And he didn't say so explicitly,
(30:37):
but he intimated to the farmer that he was a
police officer. And he flashed a five dollar bill which
would have been a kid to like one hundred dollar
bill today, and convinced the farmer to hand George over. Yeah,
this right, So the writer shoved George into the taxi
and told the driver to take back roads in order
to avoid the cops. He wanted to get back to
(30:58):
Tacoma undetected. And the reporter told George to lie down
on the back seat and then he sat in the Footwell, so.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
He's been rekidnapped, just a soft kid.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Then he begins to interview him, okay, and he later
described George's chipper after eight days and chains either in
a hole or like some closet somewhere George's chipper, and
George apparently thought it was funny that Drer was a
reporter and not a cop. Like he thought the whole
thing was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Yeah, he's got a rare perspective on life.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, Dreyer was like beside himself with adrenaline, like he's
all charged, scoot the story. He's going to be the
one to triumphantly return with George. And he's like, oh,
give us a kiss, he tells him and like taps
his cheek and George's like, okay because it's his cheek. Yeah.
Weird details, very odd. So seven forty five am, George
walks through his front door. He is home.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Oh, he takes him back to his house, Take him
to his house.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
George's dad is over the moon. And so like the
reporter stood around waiting to be acknowledged, was totally ignored,
not even to thank you. The farmer was a different story.
So JP Warehouser Junior gave the farmer, according to the
Warehouser Family Museum, quote, lifetime employment in a Warehouser Timber
Company mill and a monetary reward sufficient enough to purchase
(32:15):
several acres of land and build a new house. Do yeah,
because I'm sure that George was like, look this reporter,
he's a card. But whatever, he gets nothing but the
farmer exactly. And so, since the kidnapping was at this
point national news, the news of his safe return was
like all over the papers, in the radio. And a
(32:36):
lot of that was due to the fact that a
reporter and not the cops had picked him up from
the farmer. Well just because like the cops would have
been able to keep the story taking down. But it
was just immediate all and speculation everything.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
And it's just a wild story this too.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah, exactly. And so George much later told his family
that quote, the worst trauma came from being encircled by reporters,
cameras and questions and microphones as a little boy, trying
to face that kind of media presence was really difficult,
I'm beta.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Especially when it was new, Like it wasn't like an
adulation that we now have where people like cameras, they
like the attention, because back then, it's like, what is
going on right right? Snap? Flashball? Flashball?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Flash ball, let's stop here to celebrate George's return. Okay,
and when we come back, we're going to talk justice. Zaren, Elizabeth,
(33:45):
Darren George's home, George. So, with George returned safely to
his family. Law enforcement kicked into high gear. The New
York Times described it as quote the greatest manhunt in
the history of the Northwest. Really, I don't know what
kind of tracks they have those, but okay, I'll take it.
They hadn't already started their investigation because they didn't want
(34:08):
to do anything that would freak out the kidnappers and
endangered George. But now they're in action. So remember the
serial number list, right, they sent those out. Those immediately
went out.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
They're ready for on that list June second. That's quick.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
One day they got a hit. A twenty dollars ransom
bill popped up in Huntington, Oregon. An agent at the
train station there said a man use the bill to
buy a ticket on the ten ten PM train to
Salt Lake City. Then two days later, another twenty dollars
ransom bill was used to buy a money order at
a post office in Spokane, and then by June seventh,
(34:46):
more than twenty ransom bills had been traced to various
stores in Salt Lake City. It's like a bunch of
ten dollars bills had been passed at a Cresses and
a Woolworths ten cent store, and they were used by
a young lady who was buying food food, and you know. Yeah,
So the FBI set the Salt Lake City cops in
(35:06):
undercover to the cashier's cage of every variety store in
downtown Salt Lake City to screen the bills for the
random serial numbers. So, on June eighth, nineteen thirty five,
just a day after the Woolworth's purchases, a cashier at
a Woolworth told the detective station there that a woman
had tried to pay with one of the ransom bills.
She was using a five dollars bill for a twenty
(35:29):
cent purchase. Now, remember a fiver is like a honey.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Now, yeah, she's trying to basically break the bills.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, So the detective took the woman, the one that
we know as Margaret Whaley, wife of Harmon Whaley, to
the FBI's Salt Lake City field office, and at the
field office, agents searched her bag and they found another
ransom bill. And when they asked her name, she told
them it was missus Margaret von Metz. Yeah, none of
her met none of her stories added up. She gave
(35:56):
them a Salt Lake City address. But then the agents
looked into it in the place an they've been rented
three days prior, but now they had the address, so
they're like, let's do a steak out, guys, what the
heck they've got coope, I want to meet this mister Von.
That's that's right. Off they go. So soon enough they
have that guy in custody and he had the name
mets m Etz tattooed across the back.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Of one hand really like knuckle tat.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Like the back of his hand. Oh like yeah, which
in nineteen thirty five was really hardcore.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Like nowadays, all sorts of people have tattoos that used
to be considered job killers, like hands, neck face. Everybody's
running around looking, as I like to say, like a
desk in a detention hall at an underperforming high school. Exactly,
everybody's a notepad. My day, you got a tramp stamp
and you liked it, sarn.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
But back then it was only like sailors in like
hardcore jailhouse.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Tests, like exactly, you're in like the Barker gang, right right,
So anyway, the Feds brought him in. The couple is
identified as none other than Harmon Mets Wayy. So Harmon
this whole time, has this mets tattoo on his hand,
twenty four and his wife Margaret el Dora Thulen, aged
nineteen from Salt Lake City, the dim wit stars of
(37:10):
our show. She went home, always go home, They always
go home from When the FBI searched the apartment, they
found thirty seven hundred dollars in the stove, partially burned. Yeah,
so the FBI lab in Washington, they confirmed that the
bills were part of the ransom money. And at first
Harmon said he didn't know nothing about nothing. George, who where?
(37:30):
How's her?
Speaker 4 (37:30):
What?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Never heard of him?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
But when the agents patted him down, they found two
of the ransom bills in his pants pocket. So he
finally copped to the kidnapping, and he was sure to
tell the fans that William dannerd alias Bill Mayhon alias
Sweet Davis had done the job with him. Margaret confessed
to and Harmon was like, no, she's making that up.
(37:52):
She didn't know anything about the kidnapped. He's chivalrous, So Harmon,
he told the cops that he and William were going
to split the cash fifty fifty, but William pulled a
fast one and took an extra five k. What did
Harmon use the money for other than the Woolsworth runs?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah? What did he Well, he bought a.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Ford Roadster and registered it to one Herman von Metz Okay,
and the rest of the cash he stashed under some bushes.
How much ninety grand Wow, just stuck it all under
some bushes. So they're like, where where are the bushes?
Harmed hopefully in jars, Harmon, where are the bushes?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Harmon?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
He was like fine, and he writes this down and
they take it. They go out June eleventh, nineteen, picked
it all up.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
They got it, they found it all.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
They found it all. They're moving quickly.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
So then Harmon, why didn't they just go to Canada?
I mean, like, come on, kids, Harmon.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
He shared some important information with the Feds. He was
scheduled to meet up with William at Margaret's parents' house,
and the agents they're like, that's great. When is this
supposed to happen? Oh, five minutes off they go. They're like,
we're going to go intercept William. So they get to
the house and Margaret's grandpa opens the door and tells
him that a man came to the house asking for
(39:07):
the Whaleyes Margaret Harmon. The grandpa said that he told
him that the Whaleyes had been there earlier to pick
up their luggage, but that they went back to Salt
Lake City and got arrested, and the man shouted, quote,
my god, did they get everything they had? And then
he ran back to his car and peeled out. So
the FBI labs they're working overtime on all this evidence.
(39:28):
They positively id everyone's fingerprints at the shack where they
divided up the loot. Harmon's fingerprints were found on those
instruction cans left for George's dad William's in the wind.
So he ran initially to Butte, Montana, which maybe was
not the best place because one day after he arrived,
a cop who had arrested him for bank robbery back
(39:50):
in nineteen twenty seven saw him and went in for
an arrest. So he essentially ran home to Yeah he'd
seen it, but the cop had seen the bolos so
but he slipped the Butte cops and they found that
he had purchased a brand new Ford V eight sedan
back then. Ell yeah, that's and in it a suitcase
that had fifteen thousand dollars in it, oh buddy, all
(40:13):
of it ransom cash. So William he hid in like
the wilds of Idaho and Washington for weeks.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
There's plenty of those.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
He was like on foot tracking. Then he made his
way to California somehow. June nineteenth, nineteen thirty five, the
federal grand jury in Tacoma indicted Harmon and Margaret Whaley
and William dannerd for violating the Federal Kidnapping Act, conspiracy,
and extortion. So Harmon he pleaded guilty. Two days later,
(40:40):
he got sentenced to serve forty five years on the
kidnapping charge and then two more years on conspiring to kidnap.
After that, so they shipped him off to the Federal
pan on McNeil Island, Washington, and then later he got
transferred to Alcatraz.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
I was about to say they intended to Alcatraz.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
They sent him to the rock. So Margaret, she wanted
to plead guilty to kidnapping charges, but her public defender
was like, no, don't do that.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Please come on.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
He said that there was quote nothing in the indictment
that could convict her. So the judge like, then, I'm like,
this doesn't sit right with me. The judge thought it
would be best if she stood trial and pleaded not guilty. Like,
why is his opinion in this whatever? Judge was like, yeah,
that's a good idea, plead not guilty. Okay. So she
goes to trial July ninth, nineteen thirty five. This is
(41:26):
moving fast, seriously, and it lasted only five days. Her
attorney called only one witness, Margaret, what is.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
It, then, judge? A little sweet honor.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I don't know, but she according to historylink dot org,
the free online encyclopedia of Washington State History, Quote claimed
that she had no knowledge of the kidnapping until the
day after it occurred, but she willingly testified about traveling
on a road that passed through Blanchard and Spirit Lake,
Idaho and back to Spokane, Washington, as well as assisting
(41:56):
William Daynard in renting hideouts and acquiring the rants money.
Margaret said she went along with a scheme because she
was raised in the Mormon Church and a basic precept
of the faith is absolute obedience to your husband. She
also claimed that Dannerd threatened to kill her, Harmon and
the boy unless she cooperated fully.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
This is next to godliness. As far as I was
concerned child. I mean, come on, who in the Bible
has not kidnapped a child?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Well, it's in there. So after closing arguments, the judge
instructed the jury that quote, while religious beliefs were not
a justification for committing criminal acts, compulsion through threats of
bodily harm might be a valid excuse.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
So they deliberated for five hours and forty four minutes.
They came back and they found Margaret guilty of both charges.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Oh she got I thought she was again.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
No, she got sentenced to twenty years in prison for
the kidnapping and twenty years for conspiracy, and they had
to be served concurrently at the Federal Detention Farm in Milan, Michigan.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Okay, I think you got twenty essentially, what about William?
What about William?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Elizabeth question? In early nineteen thirty six, ransom bills started
popping up again, oh six months later. But it wasn't
because the numbers matched the list that was circulated. It
was because the serial numbers had been doctored, and then
when they were analyzed, the FBI lab was able to
pull the original serial numbers and buy gum Those were
ransom bills. So May sixth, nineteen thirty six, almost a
(43:28):
year beforehand, clerks at two different banks in Los Angeles
reported that a man had exchanged altered bills at their institutions.
They'd gotten his driver's license number and it came back
to Bert E. Cole, and so agents combed the neighborhood
of the address on the driver's license looking for clues.
They found a Ford that had also been registered to
(43:49):
this Bert character. And so, you know what this calls
for stakeouts were staking it out. But first they tinkered
with the engine. So then soon enough this guy comes out.
Dude comes out, tries to drive off in the car,
but it won't start, and he gets out and he
pops the hood and then the agents just descend.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
It was like the signal uh huh.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
He was arrested. He didn't resist. According to the FBI
itself quote, when questioned, Dannard admitted his participation in the kidnapping.
At the time of his arrest, agents recovered thirty seven
three hundred and seventy four forty seven cents in ransom
money in bills that Danard admitted he had received in
exchange for ransom money. Special agents also recovered fourteen thousand
(44:31):
dollars in one hundred dollars bills that Dannard had buried
in Utah. In addition, various dies and other paraphernalia used
to change serial numbers on paper currency were found in
the garage of his Los Angeles, California home.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
That's some real g man stuff, though, like early thirty
men energy, you know, like changing with the car, waiting
for the signal who he is because he tries to
fix the car when the engine does a work. Then
they go and they find the dies used to adjust
the numbers of the.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Dollars, wearing highway pleaded pants the whole time. So William,
oh yeah, they got the shellac. William gets extradited to
Washington to stand trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced
to two concurrent sixty year prison terms for kidnapping and
conspiring to kidnap. In their investigations, the FBI uncovered a
(45:19):
guy who was helping William wash the ransom money. This
dude named Edward Fliss. Fliss, he's your Wes Anderson name. Seriously,
they picked him up at the Devil.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Never met a person named Fliss in your life? Have
you even sad you're out.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
There, leave a talkback, Edward Fliss. They picked him up
at the Delmar Hotel in San Francisco, Francis. Yeah, he
went peacefully, copp to everything. They sent him up to Washington.
He was indicted for assisting in the in the disposition
of ransom money. He pleaded guilty. He got sentenced to
ten years and had to pay a five thousand dollars fine.
(45:52):
While he was in prison, Harmon wrote to George and
George wrote back, and it was wow. And it was
the sixties. By the time Harmon got out of prison,
he'd been at that point, he was in Leavenworth in Kansas.
Oh damn yeah, And like secretly, without Harmon knowing, George
got him a job there so he could get on
(46:14):
his feet. And when he was asked why he would
do such a thing, George told of all people's sports
illustrated quote. Why did I do it? He asked, looking annoyed.
I went through all sorts of sensations when I was kidnapped,
from fear and concern to the point where I felt
sorry for him. This eight year old boy has pity
(46:34):
on them on his kidnapper, he feels.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
And at least, you know, safe and comfortable enough to
feel bad for the people who are taking him. And
he's like, what could I do to help them? What
can I do so they don't go around taking.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
More because I feel bad? This is what this guy
thinks his options. Yeah, and this kid has this confidence
in life because at what he has no insecurities whatsoever. Anyway,
So George married his wife, Wendy in nineteen forty eight.
She also came from a tim family. They had six
kids together. George was CEO of the Warehouser Company from
(47:05):
nineteen sixty six to nineteen ninety one and was board
chair until nineteen ninety nine. He died in twenty twenty
two at the age of ninety five, and of his kidnapping,
he said, quote, a young boy is a pretty adaptable organism.
He can adjust himself to conditions in a way no
adult could. It didn't affect me personally as much as
(47:26):
anyone looking back on it might think.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Interesting, is it so, Zaren?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
What's her ridiculous? Takeaway?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
The Pacific Northwest fascinates me and the characters that are there,
And he very much fits in what I'm learning about.
And obviously this is very nineteen thirties, early twentieth century specific,
but yet it fits the Pacific Northwest vibe. It's very
similar to like Maine and like the Flip though, you know,
like without the religiosity. Instead it's like this outdoorsy kind
(47:55):
of self sufficiency kind of like it's a very interesting
bid that I'm learning about the Pacific Northwest. But this
eight year old boy being the like the most adult
character out of everybody in this story is wild.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That they're all foolish, but he him keeps the level
head the whole.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Time exactly, never loses his head, doesn't like you know,
fear for anything, pays attention to all he needs to
to hopefully, you know, both survive and then be able
to you know, as I assume, free himself or save himself.
At some point, like he realizes they're going to make
some mistake.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I'm going to need to know where I am right
and that and the information he was able to give
the FEDS was was a gold mine. Yeah, he gave
them so much. And it's like you think too though
at that time, like you were saying kids are different,
you know, like we treated kids differently and.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
What we expected of them, what their experiences were the adults.
They had to deal with a lot of the not
just like oh, everyone was drinking more, but I mean
you had a lot of like war ravaged men, you know,
and then and then generations of that dating back to
the various wars of the time, either immigrant wars people
survived wars of it and then came here and immigrated here,
or else Americans who'd gone through the various you know,
(49:05):
the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One.
You had a lot of guys who were shaped by violence. Yeah,
and so there was a lot of violence these children expected,
like getting doffed on the top of the head by a.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Streamer mentioning something to me the other day about the
last Like in all of the films and TV shows
you watch, like where you see it peter out of
kids playing in like an abandoned lot.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, playing like an alley with like broken glass or
like a tire on fire.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, when that switches over that we don't see kids
doing that.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
It's basically like the end of the seventies of nineteen
eighty was the movie I was talking about The Hunter
with Steve McQueen. Yeah, that's the last movie I can
think of where you see kids doing that, like most
of the twentieth century stuff of like we're just throwing
rocks at a dog. You're like, what, that's your game?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Totally totally Yeah, So like a child's life experience in
those days was far different. We're better and for worse.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
What's a ridiculous take away, Elizabeth?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
This needs to be Anders. There's just so many like
the picnic on the log, the ukulele scene, him getting
left in the ring, him knocking on the door of
the farmhouse like it.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Also, I mean, I don't think now, but a young
Gus van Sant film also.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, well he could also Cohen Brothers.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Coen Brothers, Yeah, Jim Jarmish, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So I'm just I'm looking for this as a movie
and I want to finders be someone's got to pay
me for.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Even Sophia Coppola could kill this one. Maybe you like
with the whole wealthy people. She's usually good with wealthy people.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Uh, I need to talk back after all that, so Dave, talkback, please?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Oh my god, I want.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Y'all. This.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
Cynthia from West Virginia just letting you know I'm watching
this Korean cooking show I love called Chef My Fridge
and one of the chefs is using an ingredient of
canned cockles from the Principality of Sealand so what we
(51:22):
got Celand cockles in there?
Speaker 5 (51:26):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Wait, what they're exporting cockles?
Speaker 3 (51:30):
I didn't something about that. I may have the story
on Ceiland.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I know I did Ceiland, but I don't remember if
I said they were harvesting cockles. I kind of feel
like maybe they were either way. But they're like ten
and now on a show like Chef My Fridge, it's
like pit my ride Chef Fridge. Like, I heard you
like grapes. What about if I put grapes on grapes?
I have to watch this. Thank you for everything in that.
That was a good one. That's it for today. You
(51:58):
can find us online at Ridiculous Crime, and we're also
at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram, and
we're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and always leave a
talkback on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
(52:20):
is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
edited by Tacoma Paper Tycoon Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger
as Judith. Research is by Devilish sports reporter Marissa Brown.
The theme song is by Nosey La Bank Clerks Thomas
Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre.
(52:43):
Executive producers are Eagle Eyed Seattlefield Office special agents Ben
Bowlen and Noel Brown. Dis Crime Say It One More
Times Crime.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:03):
Zenie Quick, Quick, quick, get over there.
Speaker 3 (00:06):
You know it's ridiculous, I do Ted Danson.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Oh yeah, he's pretty ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (00:10):
No, but this isn't about like any of the obvious
things what we're all thinking of, what the birthday for
older No, this goes back when he was eleven. If
you don't know about that, look it up. But when
he was eleven, Uh, he was a little street criminal apparently,
really not real stream criminal. Yeah he was. He lived
in like northern Arizona, like Flagstaff.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Okay, you know like that.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Yeah, they's like up in like the high desert, but
the pines. It looks like a lot like around Tahoe. Sure.
Speaker 4 (00:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (00:37):
Right, So he's up there, and uh, apparently he and
his friends were kind of hooligan ish, and so they
chopped down all these billboards around Flagstaff, Arizona. Yeah, his
father was the one to put their crime spree to
end by putting the pieces together. You know how he
got caught. His father was the director of the Museum
of Northern Arizona. And that's the only one of the
(00:59):
billboards they and cut down. Tad's like Ted dancing there
you go.
Speaker 2 (01:10):
Oh, Ted, that's ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (01:12):
Right.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Do you want to know what else is ridiculous?
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Please?
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Forgetting to fill the cans? I don't know. This is
(01:40):
Ridiculous Crime A podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and
one hundred percent ridiculous.
Speaker 3 (01:51):
You damn right.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
Do you like Wes Anderson film?
Speaker 3 (01:54):
I do. I really enjoy the most recent one. I
didn't like it's weird. I like the beginning. I liked Rushmore,
I like Bye Bob a Rocket, and then I went
through like a spot. I was like, I don't know,
but something that they're getting too repetitive. And then I
really liked The Phoenician Scheme.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
That's a great movie. I'm a huge fan.
Speaker 3 (02:10):
I'm a huge fan Oficio del Toro, so it was
kind of an easy list for me.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Yeah, like, I mean, yeah, I think my al timer
is The Royal Tenant Bone.
Speaker 3 (02:18):
Yeah, I like that one, left that one too.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
I really liked The French Dispatch was a good one,
and Darjeeling Limited.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yeah, not so much that some ones that I really.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Liked, but yeah, the Phoenician.
Speaker 3 (02:28):
Scheme in the Hotel was the Grand That one didn't
do it for me, and I like Ray Kingdom.
Speaker 5 (02:36):
I didn't really get into The Life A Life Aquatic
and that one for me, but bits and pieces of
those films, but they didn't like the first ones like
they all held me, including the Royal Tenement.
Speaker 3 (02:48):
I was like, I think that.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
It goes beyond. Like his whole visual aesthetic is what
people kind of always reference with him.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
That's when it got too known.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
I was super visually appealing, you know, I love it,
But there's like a darkness and a sadness about his
work that I love, yeah, completely, and mainly because it's
always tempered with really incredible humanity and vulnerability, and so
it means that there's some light in there. And he
works with the absolute best actors. Benicio del Toro totally,
(03:19):
so you.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Can get past that diorama scene quality. I know you do,
but I'm saying it's becomes so self aware that it's like,
now he's got to reinfuse it with life.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, fee about.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
The Benichio Deltor did a great job of reinfusing it
with life. And then also the actors who played the daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
I don't know her name, yeah, yeah, everyone, he goes,
They're incredible. I found this crime right and at.
Speaker 3 (03:43):
First Wes Anderson doing no.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
But at first I thought maybe it wasn't something we
should talk about. Oh really, it seems kind of dark.
Speaker 3 (03:50):
At first, okay, but you're going to put the light in.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
As I read about it, I was overwhelmed by a
feeling that I was reading a Wes Anderson script. Really,
you have no idea. I could almost hear the Kinks
playing somewhere, like I knew it. Seriously, this is a
one hundred percent Wes Anderson joint. I want him to
make this into a film and pay me a finder's fee.
Like I can't, I can't express, like, Okay, who's who's
(04:15):
Benicio del Toro going to play in this? Seren? I
do not know Willia Wilson brother be involved? Bro? I
love that. Can we get Francis McDormand on this. It's
all very exciting. I'm very excited. So cue the harpsichord
music as I tell you about.
Speaker 3 (04:34):
This boy please.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
His name was George Hunt Walker Warehouser. He was born
July eighth, nineteen twenty six, in Seattle, Washington, to Helen
and John Philip Warehouser Junior. Is that Warehouser's last name
ring a bell?
Speaker 3 (04:49):
It does W.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
E y E R h A E U S E.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
R It totally does.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
It looks like Weaherhauser. It's a timber company.
Speaker 3 (04:57):
Let's say it's the paper company on the side of
the boxes.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Exactly. You've seen that green tree looking logo. So they
own currently more than twelve million acres of timberland in
the US, but not timberland the producer, and another fourteen
million in Canada.
Speaker 3 (05:13):
Okay that's where.
Speaker 4 (05:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
In twenty twenty four, their revenue was over seven billion
dollars and their total assets ran more than sixteen billion.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
It's a lot of toilet paper, so much toilet paper. So,
Young George, do you think they're the lobby that keeps
us from having bidets in America? Oh?
Speaker 2 (05:29):
You know what, I never even thought of that, but
it's probably.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
I always like to imagine that. I like that big fightersides.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
The George right. He's the great grandson of company co
founder Frederick Warehouser. In May of nineteen thirty five, George,
Young George, his grandpa, John P. Warehouser Senior, died and
then cut to the family standing somberly around a grave
in the drizzly Pacific Northwest, all of them wearing like
neat vintage fashion and an early stone song play Can
(06:00):
you See It? George is only eight? And it was
a big deal, the death of John P. Warehouser Senior.
It was front page news in the Tacoma News Tribune,
headline screaming lumber leader passes built timber Empire. Exclamation points erin.
Speaker 3 (06:17):
A lumber leader instead of lumber baron.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Lumber leader passes built timber Empire. John Philip Warehauser, power
in Timberfield dies of pneumonia. John Phillips Warehouser Senior, seventy six,
one of Tacoma's outstanding citizens and one of the nation's
best known lumbermen, died at his home here early this morning.
He was stricken Monday with pneumonia. Despite the world prominence
(06:40):
of the huge timber company and its affiliated concerns, the
active direction of which he yielded but a short time ago,
mister Warehauser might rightfully be said to have been one
of the least personally known of Tacoma's citizens. He was
modest and retiring and preferred to remain as inconspicuous as possible.
Few pictures of him maybe found, and little personal biographical
(07:03):
data is available. Despite the quiet but nonetheless influential part
he played in Tacoma's civic and industrial life for nearly
quarter of a century.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
He just wanted to be known for his good wood.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
Yeah, yes, sorry, I wanted to be known for the goodwood.
But doesn't that sounds like something that you would see in.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
It was very Wes Anderson, Yes, know about him.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Next to the obituary on the front page is a
collage of photos of newly minted leaders of the Shriners
of the Pacific Northwest in their fezzes, adding to the
whole like Wes Anderson of it all.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Oh, I love that's the frame just off off.
Speaker 2 (07:39):
Yeah. So the obituary went on to tell the story
of John Senior's life, and it provided all the details
of his life story starting in childhood. The business boon,
the success listed his survivors, and as the intro paragraph says,
this guy was hugely influential and a titan of industry.
Was super low key quiet money. That o bit was
the first a lot of people we're hearing about the
(08:00):
Warehouser family. Really yeah, I mean they knew the name,
but they didn't know the people. So one of those
who learned from that oh bit was Margaret Fulinka. She's pretty, meek, blonde,
married to a guy named Harmon Whaley, and Harmon is tall,
good looking, twenty four years old. A Washington State boy
through and through, but he was also a bit of trouble.
(08:24):
He'd done time here and there starting when he was seventeen.
He was a knock about young crimer with a pretty
dame on his arm.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
Do we know anything about it? He ran kind of
like like country and cowboys. He more like a lumberman,
like a young like Oh no.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
No no, he was just like a little petty criminal.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
Okay, so urban kid, Urban kid, I got you.
Speaker 5 (08:42):
So.
Speaker 2 (08:42):
One of the times that he was locked up, he
made a pal, a fellow by the name of William
Mayhan and he also William, went by the names William
Daynard and Swede Davis Sweet Dan sweed Day Willie Mayhem No, no, no,
no no. So he was in for bank robbery. He
had five bank jobs on his record, including a one
(09:03):
hundred thousand dollars bank robbery in Idaho.
Speaker 3 (09:05):
Check out pretty boy Floyd or Swede Davis.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
April nineteen thirty five, Harmon and Margaret. They're living in
Salt Lake City and one day he ran into his
old jail pol William Hey. Then in mid May, Hey,
how are you hey? Mid May? Margaret, she kind of
she chances upon the obituary for John Senior, so she
shared it with the boys, and then all three of
(09:28):
them headed to Washington State. And they knew they saw
in the ohbit that John Senior was seriously wealthy, and
that he had a young grandson, and there'd been a
number of high profile kidnappings.
Speaker 3 (09:40):
Ah, they were inspired, we can get in on that game.
How hard is it to grab a kid?
Speaker 2 (09:45):
Right? So they get there immediately start tailing young George.
They surveilled him as he went to school, they watched
him as he came back home again. They took notes,
They drank from a thermos probably. They set up their
operations base in Seattle.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
You can see the Wes Anderson shot of the thermiss.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Of the thermists. Yeah, and so the guys they would
head out to Tacoma every morning. Margaret would stay behind
at the Seattle apartment. This stakeout went on for days,
and then one day there was a stroke of luck
at eleven forty five on a Friday morning, May twenty fourth,
nineteen thirty five, to exact, as told many years later
in Sports Illustrated, it is a long story as to
(10:25):
why quote Miss Berg of Lowell Grammar School dismissed her
fifth grade class for lunch, and George ran down the
hill into the headlines. When last scene as he went
out of sight, he was wearing a sweater, brown corduroy trousers,
and tennis shoes. He was described as follows quote smiling,
(10:45):
handsome face with no distinguishing marks, average height, dark curly hair,
brown eyes. His teacher added, an alert, obedient, and brilliant pupil. Now,
normally the Warehouser kids didn't walk home.
Speaker 3 (10:59):
I was surprised by that.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
Yeah, they took their lunches at home, but they were
driven to and from the school by the family chauffeur.
That yeah, so George, he would generally walk from his
school to his sister and school in order for them
to get picked up together. But on that day, George
got out fifteen minutes early, and he didn't feel like waiting.
He decided to walk. There's a spirited boy, a clever lad. Sure,
(11:21):
he was also full of imagination and energy. And as
he headed home, he practiced broad jumping. It's like his
dream was to become a track star. And so there
he was like bounding down the street, cutting across the
grounds of the Tacoma Lawn Tennis Club, leaping and racing
and then sprinting up a flight of steps to reach
the next street. And it's like wool short pants, yes peak,
(11:44):
eight year old boy behavior, totally total jump. He's in
his own movie and he's loving it. And so he
reached Burrow Street and as he went across the street,
he walked in front of a car that was parked
under a tree at Tan nineteen twenty seven Buick. Inside
were Harmon and William him. The one in the passenger
seat got out and he asked George for directions to
(12:04):
Stadium Way. Now George knew the way and he was
about to help the guy when the guy grabbed him
by the arm and threw in the back seat to
the car. Then he covered him with a blanket and
the car peeled away from the curb. And I want
to pause for a second, where the details a little
different and the boy a little different. There's no way
I would tell this story as a ridiculous crime. Yes,
(12:24):
child kidnapping is horrendous, but this is different. You have
to trust me on this. I am a sensitive gal.
You know I wouldn't traumatize anyone, So don't get prematurely upset.
It adds to the experience to visualize this as a
Wes Anderson movie.
Speaker 3 (12:41):
I'm there.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
So when I say that he was tossed in the
back seat and they threw a blanket over him, I
like to imagine him like sitting ramrod straight with a
wool blanket draped over him, like an oatmeal gray colored ghost.
Speaker 4 (12:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:53):
Yeah, Back to George. So he's this super smart kid.
He's smart beyond his ears. He's mature for his age,
he's observant, and there's this great there's this great picture
of him and his quote chums on the front page
of the Tacoma Daily Ledger, and George legit looks crafty
and wise like, not childlike, but still youthful.
Speaker 3 (13:14):
You can see in his eyes.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, and one of his buddies already looks world weary
and has like a furrowed brow, but not George, she's
got to figure it out.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
I love those little kids look world weary. So just
look like dumb as a stone.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
He looks like thirty eight, No, George. And that's the
hallmark of a Wes Anderson film. A kid who's got
it all figured out, who's imaginative and resilient and very
dry and ry. George. So as he's thrown into the
backseat of the car, he clocked the guy in the
driver's seat, took note of everything about him. And the
(13:49):
men drove around for more than an hour, whispering to
each other, and George took mental notes of what they
were saying, picked up on keywords, tried to estimate where
they were based on the turns they were taking. Like
I don't know if he went on sneakers of like
getting you know, counting the geese that he hears and
all that. But oh god, I love that movie. Had
to take a sneakers moment. But so he's keeping track
(14:12):
of everything. Then the car stopped and one of the
men reached into the back and took the blanket off
of George, and he blinks at him. They'd put hoods
over their heads. Silly, George thought, because he'd seen them
when they grabbed him, here they said, and shoved a
blank envelope and a pencil at him. They told him
to write his name, so George gave him a side
eye complied. They took the envelope from him, and then
(14:33):
they got out of the car. They blindfolded George, and
then one of them scooped him up and carried him
like a dozen or so steps, and George heard the
sound of rushing water, So he's like, okay, we're waiting
across the stream. Are they going to just push me in?
Is that what this is? He didn't know, but he
was clocking all the possibilities and like ready for anything. Yeah, Oh,
he's amazing. So they get across the stream, set George down,
(14:56):
hold his hand, he's still blindfolded, and then they walk
for what George would later estimate was like half to
three quarters of a mile, and he could feel bushes
and like tree branches brushing his arms, and he knew
the ground was uneven and not paved. All of this
he's just like taking mental note of So finally they stopped.
They sat George down on a log, and they took
(15:17):
off his blindfold and in front of him was a
hole in the ground three feet wide six feet long,
covered with tin. It had like braced posts on it
lined with boards. So they chained his right wrist and
leg lowered him into the hole, and then put a
board over the top. Again, trust me on this.
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well, it doesn't sound like like a grave, you know.
That's good. Sounds like something of boy scouts might make.
They need shelter in the winter exactly.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
So the guys they take her in guarding him. George
just sits silently listening thinking. He never panics full time,
never panics, never cries, never panics. One of the guys
left to go drop off the envelope that they had
George right as name on. It was a part of
the ransom notes. So when he returned, he lifted the lid,
pulled George out of the hole, and then all three
(16:07):
of them sat together on the log and had a picnic.
Wes Anderson sandwiches, cookies, hard boiled eggs. When they're done,
they put George back in handcuffs, lowered him back into
the hole, and this time they gave him two blankets
and a lantern to keep.
Speaker 3 (16:22):
Him warm, and maybe a comic book.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
This is a Wes Anderson scene for the ages. So
now what what about the Warehouser family? What you tell me? Okay,
so this is what do they have to when this
is going on. They realized that George was missing, obviously
all over for him, then called the cops, and then
the ransom letter arrived. It was addressed to whom it
(16:47):
made concern.
Speaker 3 (16:49):
The family.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Here it was signed egoist likest egoist and on the
back was George's signature, and they wanted two hundred thousand
dollars in unmarked twenty ten and five dollar bills in
exchange for George. That's like four point seven million dollars.
Speaker 3 (17:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:08):
So according to the letters for a kid, Yeah, they
had these. They are like, you have five days to
get the cash together, and when you have the money,
you have to put an ad in the Seattle Post
Intelligencer Classified section and it has to say, quote, we
are ready, and then you have to sign it Percy Mini.
Speaker 3 (17:27):
What do your egoist from? Percy Mini? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (17:30):
No, just say we are Percy Mini, Percy Minnie. Yeah,
let's take a break when we come back. The ransom
plan zaren Way by George Warehouser eight years old, snatched
(18:02):
off the street. Family gets a ransom notes.
Speaker 3 (18:05):
Stuck in a hole in the earth.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Eating a picnic. The note was like a siren call
to the FBI. They descended on Tacoma. So when the
family gathered up the money, FBI agents compiled the serial
numbers of the bills and those were sent to FBI
headquarters in Washington, DC. They made ten pages of numbers,
and they got ready as soon as the money was
going to go out, they were going to send it
(18:28):
to post offices, banks, hotels, railway stations, anywhere that bills
are used. Now we're at May twenty fifth, nineteen thirty five,
the Warehouser family. They ran two ads in the Seattle
Post Intelligencer. The first read quote, expect to be ready
come Monday, answer, Percy Minie. And then the second ad read,
(18:51):
due to publicity beyond our control, please indicate another method
of reaching you. Hurry, Percy Minie.
Speaker 3 (18:59):
Smart. Right.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So then meanwhile, Harmon and William they go back to
the car and put George in the trunk this time,
and they cruised around for like an hour by George's estimates,
and when they stopped, they they got George out walked
him into the woods and they made him wait by
a tree while they dug another hole, so he just
has to stand there. Then they put a seat from
(19:21):
the car and some blankets in and told George to
get in.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
A seat from the car, the backseat, I'm guessing, and
so this you can stretch out on this.
Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, we want you to be comfortable. It must have
been a long time digging. They cuff him again, and
then they cover the hole with tar paper.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
When they're cuffing him, children's wrists are small, so like,
what are they using to coffin? They could handcuffs?
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Who knows? Who knows? So he spent the night there
with the bugs and the critters and his true grit.
And the next evening comes along Harmon and William. They
read the paper, they see the ads. They took George
from the hole. They put him in the trunk a
different car. This one was William's car, and they drove
all night across the state to Spokane, three hundred miles east.
(20:07):
Now keep in mind that cars then didn't have the
suspension system.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Oh yeah, you're getting bounced around, and it's.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
An even rougher ride in the trunk, right, George though
he's a trooper again, never cries, never panic.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Also the exhaust.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
Yeah, So they get close to the Idaho Washington state line,
they stop the car. They take George out and chain
him to a tree while the two of them go
to Spokane and George just waited. And then they came
back hours later and they had this huge you need
a biscuit shipping carton there's a brand you need a biscuit,
(20:41):
so like a wooden crate. Basically it says you need
a biscuit on the side. They put George in the
box and took him to the apartment.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
They put him in the biscuit box.
Speaker 2 (20:50):
They put him in the biscuit box. George later said,
I was just glad to get out of that hole
in the ground. I slept most of the time. I
had blankets and it was worm back there. Amazing. So
at the apartment, Harmon and William and now Margaret, they
put George in this small room. There was a mattress,
two chairs, and a small white table, and they locked
(21:10):
him in there and then Harmon slept on a mattress
outside the door. William got the car headed for Seattle
on his way to go pick up the ransom.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
I can so see the wes Anders Yes, especially.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
The whole process for this is so dramatic and Wes
Anderson esqud. So Margaret sent a letter to George's dad
telling him to register at the Ambassador Hotel in Seattle
under the name John Paul Jones. Led Zeppelin complete and
they're like, wait there for a phone call. So I
(21:45):
can completely see the scene where the actresses is dictating
these directions. Back at the apartment, Harmon and George, they're
getting along swimmingly. Harmon would let George out of the room,
which was basically like a large closet, but he would
only do it if one was around, and Harmon would
wear the hood over his head the whole time. But
to keep them occupied, Harmon would play the ukulele while
(22:08):
George sat quietly in a chair and listen.
Speaker 3 (22:11):
Playing like twenty so on hoo on, and like.
Speaker 2 (22:17):
Everyone told George, you know you're going to be home soon,
so he didn't think it was worth it to craft
an escape plan. Okay, He's like, that's foolish and make
him mad exactly, and they hurt me, just waited out,
so may twenty.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Other stuff together they've got all these plans.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
They got a ukulele. May twenty eighth, nineteen thirty five,
George's dad ran an ad in the paper, quote, we
are ready, Percy Minnie.
Speaker 3 (22:39):
It's m I N N I E yeah, like many
of the moo.
Speaker 2 (22:42):
Yeah. So at seven pm the same day he registered
at the Ambassador Hotel in Seattle under the name John
Paul Jones. Then exactly he gets another note delivered by
a cab driver, and it contains the following and structions.
Step one, drive to Reinier Valley with the money. Step two,
(23:05):
look for a steak with a white flag on the
right hand side of South Renton Avenue. Step three, look
in the tin can under the flag. Step four, drive
straight ahead seven hundred feet to another white cloth and park.
Step five leave the engine running and parking lights on.
Oh yeah, So George's dad did just what he's told like.
(23:27):
He drove to the spot, found two sticks stuck in
the ground with a piece of white cloth on him.
In the can, there was a message. It told him
to go to another stick with a piece of cloth
on it further down the road for the next set
of directions. George's dad gets to the second marker. There's
no message there, so he hung out there for two hours,
but then he gave up and went back to the hotel. Okay, Zarin,
(23:49):
close your eyes what I want you to picture it.
It's May thirtieth, nineteen thirty five, eleven thirty am. You
are John Philip Warehouser Junior, and your son George has
(24:10):
been kidnapped. You tried to follow the first instructions to
get your boy back, but the kidnappers had somehow botched
the second part of the drop off details. So you're
now back at your hotel room under the name John
Paul Jones, waiting on how you can save your son.
The phone rings through to your penthouse room. Hello, you say, ah, yes,
(24:31):
it's a guy doing a very bad, vaguely European accent.
It's all over the place, mister Weyerhauser. Why don't she
follow my instructions? You tell him that there weren't any
instructions at the second marker. Oh, you tell him you
would have followed the directions if there had been any
(24:53):
to follow. Ah, yes, I see wheh heal is what
you do? Now? Drive with the money to one one
zero five East Madison Street and look for a tin
can directly inside the gait that will contain frozer instructions.
You run down to the lobby. You're chauffeur idling at
(25:15):
the curb out front. You tell them to get out
and let you drive. He obliges. You tear out and
race to eleven oh five East Madison Street. You get there,
see the tin can inside the gate and read the note.
It tells you to drive to the Halfway House on
Highway ninety nine near Angle Lake. You know the place.
It's a restaurant with a steep pitched roof, opened a
couple of years ago. Off you go, speeding down highways
(25:37):
until you reach the restaurant. Outside, you see a tin
can marked with a white flag. It directs you to
another location. Off you go again. You get to yet
another location from there, ripping down forest roads. Then you
get to what will be the final can. You pull
the instructions out and read them. Step one, park the
car and place the bag with a two hundred thousand
(25:59):
dollars ransom on the front seat. Step two, leave the
vehicle with the engine running. Step three, dome the light
and leave the driver's door open. Step four walk down
the road toward the highway. If the money is in order,
George will be released within thirty hours. You do exactly
as directed. You get everything set up in the car
(26:20):
and you start walking. You know George's level headed, he's
like his grandpa. You have a real connection to him too, though,
so you know in your bones that he's okay and
will remain that way. You take a deep breath and
you walk on. About one hundred yards away from the car,
you hear a loud noise coming from the bushes. You
turn and see a man jump out and run to
(26:41):
the car. He gets in and screeches away a cloud
of dustin's waking. There goes your car and two hundred
thousand dollars. You start walking out toward Highway ninety nine
to summer, ride back to Tacoma and wait for your
boy to be returned to you. Now, wow, Margaret, and
that there all right? So Margaret, William, they were actually
(27:02):
parked nearby during the drop off, and it was William
who jumped in the car. He drove it to a
little shack that he'd rented on the outskirts of Seattle,
and when he got there he hid the money and
he left George's dad's car in like a random neighborhood
At three point thirty in the morning on June first,
nineteen thirty five, George was released on the Issoqua Hobart
(27:24):
Road near Issaqua with two blankets and a dollar and
it was raining.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
Are you kidding me, George? They were so much meaner
to children before, like the seventies or whatever, Like you
get back to the thirties, it's just like they're basically
treated like animals.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
But that like very pristine Wes Anderson scene of him,
like the car off and he has a single dollar
and two blankets and it's raining and he's just staring
straight ahead.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
People treated children often, even when they liked them, as
like we can make more.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Oh yeah, they're tough, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Not it's fun to make them anyway.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
So George walked for six miles until he reached a farmhouse.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
They left him six miles from a farmhouse.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, so, And it's like this shingled house in the
forest on a little hill middle of nowhere. It was
early morning. The farmer and his family were getting ready
for the day, and George knocked primly on the door
and waited and then missus John Boniface, the wife of
a stump farmer. What so, a stump farmer is someone
when they clear cut the land, then he goes in
(28:31):
and breaks up the stumps and removes them, which is
like backbreaking.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
Oh it's possible.
Speaker 2 (28:36):
Work.
Speaker 3 (28:36):
Removing stumps is the most arduous and irritating, frustrating work
you've ever done. You can see where you go go
to chemical warfare with stumps and like let's get some
change and attractor or whatever else.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
That's his job. He's a stump farmer.
Speaker 3 (28:48):
I thought he was actually though, like farming something in
the stumps, like mushrooms or something.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
No, he's just like backbreaking work. That's so. The farmer's
wife looks out into the drizzly dawn, sees the boy.
He says, I'm George Warehouser. Like that's that's the first
thing he says. She ushered him in recent headlines, totally
got him dry socks shoes, then instructed him to sit
(29:13):
at the table with her four kids and have some breakfast.
And then mister and missus Boniface they stayed measured in calm,
and the kids eight and mister Boniface then got dressed
to drive the boy back home. So soon enough, George
and the farmer are on the road. At six point
thirty in the morning, mister Boniface pulled into a gas
station in Renton. He asked the attendant to call the
(29:34):
Warehouser residence, but no one answered. So the next call
was to the Tacoma Police, and he told him what
had happened, that he had George. He'd shown up at
the doorstep and he's look, I'm driving him home right now.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
Yeah, yeah, I'm a stall farmer.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I'll bring him in. And the cops are like, that's fantastic.
So now, somehow a sports writer from the Seattle Times,
this guy Johnny Dreer, who was in Tacoma to cup
or the kidnapping, he got a tip that George had
been freed. And I don't know if that came from
the cops or the gas station attendant, but it had
to be one of those.
Speaker 3 (30:08):
Assume the cops, because you know, yeah, a lot of
reporters know that you can slip some money or like,
you know, right, whiskey or cigars.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Sure, so he flagged down a taxi. The reporter flags
down a taxi, tells the driver head for renting. There's
no one on the road. So when they saw this
old model t Ford like farmer looking truck, like about
eighteen miles outside of Tacoma head their way down the road, yeah,
they had. He had the cab driver block it, pull
across traffic and block it. And he didn't say so explicitly,
(30:37):
but he intimated to the farmer that he was a
police officer. And he flashed a five dollar bill which
would have been a kid to like one hundred dollar
bill today, and convinced the farmer to hand George over. Yeah,
this right, So the writer shoved George into the taxi
and told the driver to take back roads in order
to avoid the cops. He wanted to get back to
(30:58):
Tacoma undetected. And the reporter told George to lie down
on the back seat and then he sat in the Footwell, so.
Speaker 3 (31:05):
He's been rekidnapped, just a soft kid.
Speaker 2 (31:08):
Then he begins to interview him, okay, and he later
described George's chipper after eight days and chains either in
a hole or like some closet somewhere George's chipper, and
George apparently thought it was funny that Drer was a
reporter and not a cop. Like he thought the whole
thing was hysterical.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Yeah, he's got a rare perspective on life.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
Yeah, Dreyer was like beside himself with adrenaline, like he's
all charged, scoot the story. He's going to be the
one to triumphantly return with George. And he's like, oh,
give us a kiss, he tells him and like taps
his cheek and George's like, okay because it's his cheek. Yeah.
Weird details, very odd. So seven forty five am, George
walks through his front door. He is home.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Oh, he takes him back to his house, Take him
to his house.
Speaker 2 (31:51):
George's dad is over the moon. And so like the
reporter stood around waiting to be acknowledged, was totally ignored,
not even to thank you. The farmer was a different story.
So JP Warehouser Junior gave the farmer, according to the
Warehouser Family Museum, quote, lifetime employment in a Warehouser Timber
Company mill and a monetary reward sufficient enough to purchase
(32:15):
several acres of land and build a new house. Do yeah,
because I'm sure that George was like, look this reporter,
he's a card. But whatever, he gets nothing but the
farmer exactly. And so, since the kidnapping was at this
point national news, the news of his safe return was
like all over the papers, in the radio. And a
(32:36):
lot of that was due to the fact that a
reporter and not the cops had picked him up from
the farmer. Well just because like the cops would have
been able to keep the story taking down. But it
was just immediate all and speculation everything.
Speaker 3 (32:50):
And it's just a wild story this too.
Speaker 2 (32:53):
Yeah, exactly. And so George much later told his family
that quote, the worst trauma came from being encircled by reporters,
cameras and questions and microphones as a little boy, trying
to face that kind of media presence was really difficult,
I'm beta.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Especially when it was new, Like it wasn't like an
adulation that we now have where people like cameras, they
like the attention, because back then, it's like, what is
going on right right? Snap? Flashball? Flashball?
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Flash ball, let's stop here to celebrate George's return. Okay,
and when we come back, we're going to talk justice. Zaren, Elizabeth,
(33:45):
Darren George's home, George. So, with George returned safely to
his family. Law enforcement kicked into high gear. The New
York Times described it as quote the greatest manhunt in
the history of the Northwest. Really, I don't know what
kind of tracks they have those, but okay, I'll take it.
They hadn't already started their investigation because they didn't want
(34:08):
to do anything that would freak out the kidnappers and
endangered George. But now they're in action. So remember the
serial number list, right, they sent those out. Those immediately
went out.
Speaker 3 (34:18):
They're ready for on that list June second. That's quick.
Speaker 2 (34:23):
One day they got a hit. A twenty dollars ransom
bill popped up in Huntington, Oregon. An agent at the
train station there said a man use the bill to
buy a ticket on the ten ten PM train to
Salt Lake City. Then two days later, another twenty dollars
ransom bill was used to buy a money order at
a post office in Spokane, and then by June seventh,
(34:46):
more than twenty ransom bills had been traced to various
stores in Salt Lake City. It's like a bunch of
ten dollars bills had been passed at a Cresses and
a Woolworths ten cent store, and they were used by
a young lady who was buying food food, and you know. Yeah,
So the FBI set the Salt Lake City cops in
(35:06):
undercover to the cashier's cage of every variety store in
downtown Salt Lake City to screen the bills for the
random serial numbers. So, on June eighth, nineteen thirty five,
just a day after the Woolworth's purchases, a cashier at
a Woolworth told the detective station there that a woman
had tried to pay with one of the ransom bills.
She was using a five dollars bill for a twenty
(35:29):
cent purchase. Now, remember a fiver is like a honey.
Speaker 3 (35:32):
Now, yeah, she's trying to basically break the bills.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Yeah, So the detective took the woman, the one that
we know as Margaret Whaley, wife of Harmon Whaley, to
the FBI's Salt Lake City field office, and at the
field office, agents searched her bag and they found another
ransom bill. And when they asked her name, she told
them it was missus Margaret von Metz. Yeah, none of
her met none of her stories added up. She gave
(35:56):
them a Salt Lake City address. But then the agents
looked into it in the place an they've been rented
three days prior, but now they had the address, so
they're like, let's do a steak out, guys, what the
heck they've got coope, I want to meet this mister Von.
That's that's right. Off they go. So soon enough they
have that guy in custody and he had the name
mets m Etz tattooed across the back.
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Of one hand really like knuckle tat.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Like the back of his hand. Oh like yeah, which
in nineteen thirty five was really hardcore.
Speaker 3 (36:26):
Yes, that's right.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Like nowadays, all sorts of people have tattoos that used
to be considered job killers, like hands, neck face. Everybody's
running around looking, as I like to say, like a
desk in a detention hall at an underperforming high school. Exactly,
everybody's a notepad. My day, you got a tramp stamp
and you liked it, sarn.
Speaker 3 (36:44):
But back then it was only like sailors in like
hardcore jailhouse.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Tests, like exactly, you're in like the Barker gang, right right,
So anyway, the Feds brought him in. The couple is
identified as none other than Harmon Mets Wayy. So Harmon
this whole time, has this mets tattoo on his hand,
twenty four and his wife Margaret el Dora Thulen, aged
nineteen from Salt Lake City, the dim wit stars of
(37:10):
our show. She went home, always go home, They always
go home from When the FBI searched the apartment, they
found thirty seven hundred dollars in the stove, partially burned. Yeah,
so the FBI lab in Washington, they confirmed that the
bills were part of the ransom money. And at first
Harmon said he didn't know nothing about nothing. George, who where?
(37:30):
How's her?
Speaker 4 (37:30):
What?
Speaker 3 (37:31):
Never heard of him?
Speaker 2 (37:32):
But when the agents patted him down, they found two
of the ransom bills in his pants pocket. So he
finally copped to the kidnapping, and he was sure to
tell the fans that William dannerd alias Bill Mayhon alias
Sweet Davis had done the job with him. Margaret confessed
to and Harmon was like, no, she's making that up.
(37:52):
She didn't know anything about the kidnapped. He's chivalrous, So Harmon,
he told the cops that he and William were going
to split the cash fifty fifty, but William pulled a
fast one and took an extra five k. What did
Harmon use the money for other than the Woolsworth runs?
Speaker 3 (38:08):
Yeah? What did he Well, he bought a.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
Ford Roadster and registered it to one Herman von Metz Okay,
and the rest of the cash he stashed under some bushes.
How much ninety grand Wow, just stuck it all under
some bushes. So they're like, where where are the bushes?
Harmed hopefully in jars, Harmon, where are the bushes?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
Harmon?
Speaker 2 (38:30):
He was like fine, and he writes this down and
they take it. They go out June eleventh, nineteen, picked
it all up.
Speaker 3 (38:37):
They got it, they found it all.
Speaker 2 (38:39):
They found it all. They're moving quickly.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
So then Harmon, why didn't they just go to Canada?
I mean, like, come on, kids, Harmon.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
He shared some important information with the Feds. He was
scheduled to meet up with William at Margaret's parents' house,
and the agents they're like, that's great. When is this
supposed to happen? Oh, five minutes off they go. They're like,
we're going to go intercept William. So they get to
the house and Margaret's grandpa opens the door and tells
him that a man came to the house asking for
(39:07):
the Whaleyes Margaret Harmon. The grandpa said that he told
him that the Whaleyes had been there earlier to pick
up their luggage, but that they went back to Salt
Lake City and got arrested, and the man shouted, quote,
my god, did they get everything they had? And then
he ran back to his car and peeled out. So
the FBI labs they're working overtime on all this evidence.
(39:28):
They positively id everyone's fingerprints at the shack where they
divided up the loot. Harmon's fingerprints were found on those
instruction cans left for George's dad William's in the wind.
So he ran initially to Butte, Montana, which maybe was
not the best place because one day after he arrived,
a cop who had arrested him for bank robbery back
(39:50):
in nineteen twenty seven saw him and went in for
an arrest. So he essentially ran home to Yeah he'd
seen it, but the cop had seen the bolos so
but he slipped the Butte cops and they found that
he had purchased a brand new Ford V eight sedan
back then. Ell yeah, that's and in it a suitcase
that had fifteen thousand dollars in it, oh buddy, all
(40:13):
of it ransom cash. So William he hid in like
the wilds of Idaho and Washington for weeks.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
There's plenty of those.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
He was like on foot tracking. Then he made his
way to California somehow. June nineteenth, nineteen thirty five, the
federal grand jury in Tacoma indicted Harmon and Margaret Whaley
and William dannerd for violating the Federal Kidnapping Act, conspiracy,
and extortion. So Harmon he pleaded guilty. Two days later,
(40:40):
he got sentenced to serve forty five years on the
kidnapping charge and then two more years on conspiring to kidnap.
After that, so they shipped him off to the Federal
pan on McNeil Island, Washington, and then later he got
transferred to Alcatraz.
Speaker 3 (40:53):
I was about to say they intended to Alcatraz.
Speaker 2 (40:55):
They sent him to the rock. So Margaret, she wanted
to plead guilty to kidnapping charges, but her public defender
was like, no, don't do that.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Please come on.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
He said that there was quote nothing in the indictment
that could convict her. So the judge like, then, I'm like,
this doesn't sit right with me. The judge thought it
would be best if she stood trial and pleaded not guilty. Like,
why is his opinion in this whatever? Judge was like, yeah,
that's a good idea, plead not guilty. Okay. So she
goes to trial July ninth, nineteen thirty five. This is
(41:26):
moving fast, seriously, and it lasted only five days. Her
attorney called only one witness, Margaret, what is.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
It, then, judge? A little sweet honor.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
I don't know, but she according to historylink dot org,
the free online encyclopedia of Washington State History, Quote claimed
that she had no knowledge of the kidnapping until the
day after it occurred, but she willingly testified about traveling
on a road that passed through Blanchard and Spirit Lake,
Idaho and back to Spokane, Washington, as well as assisting
(41:56):
William Daynard in renting hideouts and acquiring the rants money.
Margaret said she went along with a scheme because she
was raised in the Mormon Church and a basic precept
of the faith is absolute obedience to your husband. She
also claimed that Dannerd threatened to kill her, Harmon and
the boy unless she cooperated fully.
Speaker 3 (42:16):
This is next to godliness. As far as I was
concerned child. I mean, come on, who in the Bible
has not kidnapped a child?
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Well, it's in there. So after closing arguments, the judge
instructed the jury that quote, while religious beliefs were not
a justification for committing criminal acts, compulsion through threats of
bodily harm might be a valid excuse.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
So they deliberated for five hours and forty four minutes.
They came back and they found Margaret guilty of both charges.
Speaker 3 (42:46):
Oh she got I thought she was again.
Speaker 2 (42:48):
No, she got sentenced to twenty years in prison for
the kidnapping and twenty years for conspiracy, and they had
to be served concurrently at the Federal Detention Farm in Milan, Michigan.
Speaker 3 (43:00):
Okay, I think you got twenty essentially, what about William?
What about William?
Speaker 2 (43:04):
Elizabeth question? In early nineteen thirty six, ransom bills started
popping up again, oh six months later. But it wasn't
because the numbers matched the list that was circulated. It
was because the serial numbers had been doctored, and then
when they were analyzed, the FBI lab was able to
pull the original serial numbers and buy gum Those were
ransom bills. So May sixth, nineteen thirty six, almost a
(43:28):
year beforehand, clerks at two different banks in Los Angeles
reported that a man had exchanged altered bills at their institutions.
They'd gotten his driver's license number and it came back
to Bert E. Cole, and so agents combed the neighborhood
of the address on the driver's license looking for clues.
They found a Ford that had also been registered to
(43:49):
this Bert character. And so, you know what this calls
for stakeouts were staking it out. But first they tinkered
with the engine. So then soon enough this guy comes out.
Dude comes out, tries to drive off in the car,
but it won't start, and he gets out and he
pops the hood and then the agents just descend.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
It was like the signal uh huh.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
He was arrested. He didn't resist. According to the FBI
itself quote, when questioned, Dannard admitted his participation in the kidnapping.
At the time of his arrest, agents recovered thirty seven
three hundred and seventy four forty seven cents in ransom
money in bills that Danard admitted he had received in
exchange for ransom money. Special agents also recovered fourteen thousand
(44:31):
dollars in one hundred dollars bills that Dannard had buried
in Utah. In addition, various dies and other paraphernalia used
to change serial numbers on paper currency were found in
the garage of his Los Angeles, California home.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
That's some real g man stuff, though, like early thirty
men energy, you know, like changing with the car, waiting
for the signal who he is because he tries to
fix the car when the engine does a work. Then
they go and they find the dies used to adjust
the numbers of the.
Speaker 2 (44:58):
Dollars, wearing highway pleaded pants the whole time. So William,
oh yeah, they got the shellac. William gets extradited to
Washington to stand trial. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced
to two concurrent sixty year prison terms for kidnapping and
conspiring to kidnap. In their investigations, the FBI uncovered a
(45:19):
guy who was helping William wash the ransom money. This
dude named Edward Fliss. Fliss, he's your Wes Anderson name. Seriously,
they picked him up at the Devil.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
Never met a person named Fliss in your life? Have
you even sad you're out.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
There, leave a talkback, Edward Fliss. They picked him up
at the Delmar Hotel in San Francisco, Francis. Yeah, he
went peacefully, copp to everything. They sent him up to Washington.
He was indicted for assisting in the in the disposition
of ransom money. He pleaded guilty. He got sentenced to
ten years and had to pay a five thousand dollars fine.
(45:52):
While he was in prison, Harmon wrote to George and
George wrote back, and it was wow. And it was
the sixties. By the time Harmon got out of prison,
he'd been at that point, he was in Leavenworth in Kansas.
Oh damn yeah, And like secretly, without Harmon knowing, George
got him a job there so he could get on
(46:14):
his feet. And when he was asked why he would
do such a thing, George told of all people's sports
illustrated quote. Why did I do it? He asked, looking annoyed.
I went through all sorts of sensations when I was kidnapped,
from fear and concern to the point where I felt
sorry for him. This eight year old boy has pity
(46:34):
on them on his kidnapper, he feels.
Speaker 3 (46:36):
And at least, you know, safe and comfortable enough to
feel bad for the people who are taking him. And
he's like, what could I do to help them? What
can I do so they don't go around taking.
Speaker 2 (46:44):
More because I feel bad? This is what this guy
thinks his options. Yeah, and this kid has this confidence
in life because at what he has no insecurities whatsoever. Anyway,
So George married his wife, Wendy in nineteen forty eight.
She also came from a tim family. They had six
kids together. George was CEO of the Warehouser Company from
(47:05):
nineteen sixty six to nineteen ninety one and was board
chair until nineteen ninety nine. He died in twenty twenty
two at the age of ninety five, and of his kidnapping,
he said, quote, a young boy is a pretty adaptable organism.
He can adjust himself to conditions in a way no
adult could. It didn't affect me personally as much as
(47:26):
anyone looking back on it might think.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
Interesting, is it so, Zaren?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
What's her ridiculous? Takeaway?
Speaker 3 (47:32):
The Pacific Northwest fascinates me and the characters that are there,
And he very much fits in what I'm learning about.
And obviously this is very nineteen thirties, early twentieth century specific,
but yet it fits the Pacific Northwest vibe. It's very
similar to like Maine and like the Flip though, you know,
like without the religiosity. Instead it's like this outdoorsy kind
(47:55):
of self sufficiency kind of like it's a very interesting
bid that I'm learning about the Pacific Northwest. But this
eight year old boy being the like the most adult
character out of everybody in this story is wild.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
That they're all foolish, but he him keeps the level
head the whole.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Time exactly, never loses his head, doesn't like you know,
fear for anything, pays attention to all he needs to
to hopefully, you know, both survive and then be able
to you know, as I assume, free himself or save himself.
At some point, like he realizes they're going to make
some mistake.
Speaker 2 (48:28):
I'm going to need to know where I am right
and that and the information he was able to give
the FEDS was was a gold mine. Yeah, he gave
them so much. And it's like you think too though
at that time, like you were saying kids are different,
you know, like we treated kids differently and.
Speaker 3 (48:44):
What we expected of them, what their experiences were the adults.
They had to deal with a lot of the not
just like oh, everyone was drinking more, but I mean
you had a lot of like war ravaged men, you know,
and then and then generations of that dating back to
the various wars of the time, either immigrant wars people
survived wars of it and then came here and immigrated here,
or else Americans who'd gone through the various you know,
(49:05):
the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World War One.
You had a lot of guys who were shaped by violence. Yeah,
and so there was a lot of violence these children expected,
like getting doffed on the top of the head by a.
Speaker 2 (49:16):
Streamer mentioning something to me the other day about the
last Like in all of the films and TV shows
you watch, like where you see it peter out of
kids playing in like an abandoned lot.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, playing like an alley with like broken glass or
like a tire on fire.
Speaker 2 (49:33):
Yeah, when that switches over that we don't see kids
doing that.
Speaker 3 (49:36):
It's basically like the end of the seventies of nineteen
eighty was the movie I was talking about The Hunter
with Steve McQueen. Yeah, that's the last movie I can
think of where you see kids doing that, like most
of the twentieth century stuff of like we're just throwing
rocks at a dog. You're like, what, that's your game?
Speaker 2 (49:51):
Totally totally Yeah, So like a child's life experience in
those days was far different. We're better and for worse.
Speaker 3 (49:59):
What's a ridiculous take away, Elizabeth?
Speaker 2 (50:01):
This needs to be Anders. There's just so many like
the picnic on the log, the ukulele scene, him getting
left in the ring, him knocking on the door of
the farmhouse like it.
Speaker 3 (50:14):
Also, I mean, I don't think now, but a young
Gus van Sant film also.
Speaker 2 (50:18):
Yeah, well he could also Cohen Brothers.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Coen Brothers, Yeah, Jim Jarmish, Oh yeah.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
So I'm just I'm looking for this as a movie
and I want to finders be someone's got to pay
me for.
Speaker 3 (50:29):
Even Sophia Coppola could kill this one. Maybe you like
with the whole wealthy people. She's usually good with wealthy people.
Speaker 2 (50:39):
Uh, I need to talk back after all that, so Dave, talkback, please?
Speaker 3 (50:48):
Oh my god, I want.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Y'all. This.
Speaker 4 (51:00):
Cynthia from West Virginia just letting you know I'm watching
this Korean cooking show I love called Chef My Fridge
and one of the chefs is using an ingredient of
canned cockles from the Principality of Sealand so what we
(51:22):
got Celand cockles in there?
Speaker 5 (51:26):
Wow?
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Wait, what they're exporting cockles?
Speaker 3 (51:30):
I didn't something about that. I may have the story
on Ceiland.
Speaker 2 (51:35):
I know I did Ceiland, but I don't remember if
I said they were harvesting cockles. I kind of feel
like maybe they were either way. But they're like ten
and now on a show like Chef My Fridge, it's
like pit my ride Chef Fridge. Like, I heard you
like grapes. What about if I put grapes on grapes?
I have to watch this. Thank you for everything in that.
That was a good one. That's it for today. You
(51:58):
can find us online at Ridiculous Crime, and we're also
at Ridiculous Crime on both Blue Sky and Instagram, and
we're on YouTube at Ridiculous Crime Pod. Email us at
ridiculous Crime at gmail dot com, and always leave a
talkback on the free iHeart app reach out. Ridiculous Crime
(52:20):
is hosted by Elizabeth Dutton and Zaren Burnett, produced and
edited by Tacoma Paper Tycoon Dave Cousten, starring Annals Rutger
as Judith. Research is by Devilish sports reporter Marissa Brown.
The theme song is by Nosey La Bank Clerks Thomas
Lee and Travis Dutton. Post wardrobe is provided by Botany
five hundred. Guest hair and makeup by Sparkleshot and Mister Andre.
(52:43):
Executive producers are Eagle Eyed Seattlefield Office special agents Ben
Bowlen and Noel Brown. Dis Crime Say It One More
Times Crime.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Ridiculous Crime is a production of iHeartRadio. Four more podcasts
from iHeartRadio. Visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Hosts And Creators
Zaron Burnett
Elizabeth Dutton
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