Yowell did as commanded, and Buppie started to exit the limo also.
“You stay in!” the gunman said, getting behind the wheel and speeding off. He went only a short distance, then turned the limo around and, with the lights off, drove past the Orthwein property. A few hundred yards later, he stopped the limo, pulled the boy out, and led him to a car parked nearby.
“Get in and lie down on the back seat,” the man said. As he drove away, he asked, “Are you Percy Orthwein’s son?”
“Yes.”
“Be quiet or I’ll burn you.”
Burn me?
Yowell ran back to the house and told Buppie’s parents what had happened. Buppie’s mother collapsed in hysteria. A doctor was summoned. Upon learning of the kidnapping, August Busch Sr. grabbed a pistol and drove to the home of his daughter Clara.
As one year was passing into history and another was dawning, there was chaos in the Orthwein home. Friends of the family who heard of the kidnapping abandoned their New Year’s Eve plans and sped to the house in their party finery to offer consolation. Percy Orthwein and Yowell searched Lindbergh Boulevard, quickly finding the abandoned limousine.
The boy’s uncle August Jr., who was thirty-one and known as “Gussie,” brought two bloodhounds to the scene. They sniffed in vain as the chauffeur was driven by August Busch Sr. to St. Louis police headquarters.
Throughout the night, as friends of the Orthwein family came and went and reporters hovered like vultures, there was no word on the fate of Buppie. As the sun rose, radio stations broadcast the news of the kidnapping along with a plea from the boy’s parents: return our son, and you will get a generous award, no questions asked.
The kidnapping stunned the people of St. Louis, where the Busches were social lions.
Percy Orthwein hadn’t slept. He wondered if the dawn of a new day, the new year of 1931, would forever divide his life into Before and After.
It seemed an eternity ago that he and Clara were getting ready for a New Year’s Eve party and Buppie was on his way to dinner with his grandfather.
Orthwein forced himself to think coldly. Surely, Buppie was worth more alive than dead.
Orthwein didn’t know many Negroes. In St. Louis as in so many other communities, they had their own neighborhoods, their own schools, their own churches. No doubt, they loved their children, just as white folks loved theirs. Just because Buppie had been taken by a Negro didn’t mean…
Around noon, the phone rang. Orthwein rushed to answer it. “Hello?”
“As father to father, I want to give you back your boy,” a man said.
The caller was a Negro; Orthwein knew that from his voice, although like most white people in the segregated St. Louis of that era he had virtually no social contact with black people.
“You are worried about your son, and I am worried about mine,” the caller went on, his voice almost breaking. “He is safe.” The caller suggested he and Orthwein meet at once at the St. Louis County sheriff’s office in Clayton.
Orthwein immediately called Harry Troll, a prominent St. Louis attorney who represented the Busch and Orthwein families. Within minutes, Orthwein, Troll, and Gussie Busch were headed to Clayton. When they got to the sheriff’s office, they found only a deputy on duty. The party was bewildered.
Things fell into place minutes later when a black man and a young woman entered. The man was Pearl Abernathy, a real estate dealer well known among black people in St. Louis. He was accompanied by his niece, Elfrida Bobb.
Pearl Abernathy told a sad story. He had a son, Charles, who had followed him into the real estate business. Charles was just twenty-eight. He and his wife had seven children. He worried desperately over how to support his family since his real estate enterprise had gone broke.
A crazy dream began to form in Charles’s mind. He knew that the Busch and Orthwein families would part with some money to get Buppie back. He hadn’t thought out all the details—how much money to demand, how to collect it without getting caught, how to return the boy. But he knew that kidnappings were becoming common. The people pulling them off couldn’t all be smarter than he was…
Pearl Abernathy had grown increasingly worried about his son’s mental state, but he couldn’t babysit him all the time. So on the morning of December 31, when Pearl saw Charles and sensed the deep depression he was in, he gave him $40. It was both a gift, from father to son, and a payoff. Just leave me alone for a while, Charles. I have my own life.
Charles’s wife had been worried too, afraid that her husband was becoming unhinged. When she saw a white boy in her house on New Year’s morning and her husband was gone, she was horrified. So she called Charles’s father, Pearl, and he in turn called the Orthwein home to say he could get the boy back unharmed.
Orthwein and Troll listened to this sad tale, then demanded to know where Buppie was. They were told to wait a little while, then drive to Webster Groves, a suburb just to the west of St. Louis proper, and stop on Bacon Avenue near a nursing home that was a familiar landmark.
Buppie had endured a terrifying night, not sure what was real and what was nightmare. Bound, he had been placed in an easy chair with a blanket over his head. The blanket smelled dirty, and it made his face too warm. Meanwhile, his feet were cold.
He knew that his captor had driven him to a place not far from the Orthwein home, and he knew that the man was black. From the movements of the man, and the way the footsteps never seemed far away, Buppie sensed that he was in a little house. He heard a baby cry, heard a dog barking, heard a cat meowing, heard a
