The men stayed nearby. George could hear them talking. Darkness came.
When George didn’t come home for lunch, his parents were alarmed. When the people at George’s school said they didn’t know where the boy was, the distraught parents called the police. John Jr.’s wife, Helen, George’s mother, was reported to be in a state of near collapse.
That night, a special delivery letter arrived at the Weyerhaeuser home. It demanded $200,000 in unmarked twenty-, ten-, and five-dollar bills for George’s safe return. And no gold certificates, the kidnappers decreed. They were apparently aware that Bruno Hauptmann, convicted only a few months earlier for the kidnapping and slaying of the Lindbergh baby, had been caught after spending a gold certificate from the ransom money.
George’s signature was on the back of the envelope. The kidnappers also specified that an advertisement, signed “Percy Minnie,” be placed in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer to signal that the family would comply with the demands.
On Wednesday, May 29, John Weyerhaeuser got a letter from the kidnappers. Go to the Ambassador Hotel in Seattle, register as “James Paul Jones,” and wait, the letter ordered. And thank God Almighty, enclosed with the letter was a note from George, saying that he was safe.
Weyerhaeuser checked in at the hotel. That night, a cab driver delivered another letter to him. It ordered him to drive out of the city to a certain point on a country road and look for two sticks driven into the ground with a piece of white cloth attached. Weyerhaeuser did as ordered and found the sticks and cloth, along with a message directing him to find another sticks-and-cloth site farther along the road.
Weyerhaeuser did as commanded, but when he got to the second site, there were no further orders. He waited for two hours before going back to the hotel. Was he able to sleep at all that night? We don’t know.
The next morning, Weyerhaeuser got a phone call.
“You didn’t follow instructions last night,” the caller said.
“I did,” Weyerhaeuser said. “There was no other note. I couldn’t—”
Click.
It was Memorial Day. Those millions of Americans whose lives were still normal were celebrating the start of summer. For Weyerhaeuser, it was a day full of fear and frustration. All he could do was wait. And wait.
By this point, Weyerhaeuser was carrying $200,000 in cash. It had been marked, despite the kidnappers’ orders. Gathering the money had been an effort. Of course, the Weyerhaeuser family was worth many times that much. But it was no small feat to amass that much in cash.
Shortly before ten that night, another phone call. The man on the line had a European accent, Weyerhaeuser thought. The man told him to go to an address where he would find a note in a tin can.
But this time, it was decided that Weyerhaeuser would stay home and one of George’s uncles, F. Rodman Titcomb, would try to make the delivery.* Titcomb drove into the country, found the location and the tin can—only to be directed to another site, and still another. He understood the kidnappers’ tactics. They were not just toying with him; they were making it all but impossible for lawmen to pursue them without giving themselves away.
But local and state police had already agreed to stand aside, at least for the time being. So had FBI agents, a small army of whom had gathered in the Seattle-Tacoma area.
Finally on that wearying night, Titcomb was steered to a site on a dirt road off the main highway between Seattle and Tacoma. There, he found a flag and a note. Wait five minutes with the inside light of your car on, the note said. Then go to yet another place on the same road and find a note. He did.
Leave your car engine on and leave the money, he was ordered. Walk back toward Seattle. If the money is all here, your son will soon be back with you.
Titcomb had walked about the length of a football field when he heard sounds behind him. He turned in time to see a man get in the car and drive off with the money. Titcomb walked until he was able to hitch a ride back to Tacoma.
Cowering in the hole in the ground that first night away from home, George Weyerhaeuser thought he heard the two men talking about how the police might fight him. For whatever reason, they pulled him out of the ground, carried him back to the car, and put him in the trunk. In that pitch-black place, he felt the car bump and jostle on the way to—where?
After a while, George was yanked from the trunk and led through more dark woods. Finally, the men stopped and ordered him to wait by a tree. George did, hearing the sounds of shovels plunging into dirt. The men were digging another hole. Finally, he was put into the hole, along with a car seat and two blankets. He heard something being put across the hole (tar paper, it would be revealed later), and George was left alone in the inky darkness. He thought he heard things crawling in the ground.
To the nine-year-old, it seemed forever ago that he had been walking home to lunch. In fact, it was “only” two days after he was taken that the two men (accompanied now by a woman) put him in the car trunk again and drove. George had no way of knowing that they had crossed the state line into Idaho.
In the early morning, the boy was taken out of the trunk and handcuffed to a tree. He could see mountaintops over the trees. He was guarded until night came. He tried not to be afraid. He remembered what the man had said: “You’re worth more to us alive.”
“This looks like a ‘big league’ job,” U.S. Marshal A. J. Chitty said in Seattle.172 “There was talk at first that it was done locally, but
