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Speaker 2: Are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers
Speaker 2: in true crime history and the authors that have written
Speaker 2: about him. Gasey Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker BCK. Every week,
Speaker 2: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 2: killers in true crime history True Murder with your host,
Speaker 2: journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 5: Good evening. In nineteen thirty five, nine year old George Werhauser,
Speaker 5: heir to one of the wealthiest families in America, is
Speaker 5: snatched off the streets two blocks from his home. The
Speaker 5: boy is kept, manacled, manacled in a pit, chained to
Speaker 5: a t, and locked in a closet. The purps, a
Speaker 5: career bank robber, a petty thief, and his nineteen year old,
Speaker 5: never been in trouble Mormon wife quickly become the targets
Speaker 5: of the biggest man hunt in Northwest history. The caper
Speaker 5: plays out like a Hollywood thriller, with countless twists and
Speaker 5: improbable developments. Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all, though,
Speaker 5: is how it all ends. Book we're featuring this evening
Speaker 5: is Deep in the Woods, the nineteen thirty five kidnapping
Speaker 5: of nine year old George Waerhauser, heir to America's mightiest
Speaker 5: Timber dynasty. With my special guest, journalist and author Brian Johnston.
Speaker 5: Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for
Speaker 5: this interview. Brian Johnston, how do you do?
Speaker 4: Good to talk with you, Dan, thank.
Speaker 5: You so much for joining me with this incredible story.
Speaker 5: It is just to start before we have this May
Speaker 5: twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five. You talk about in the
Speaker 5: beginning of your book just a little bit about some
Speaker 5: of the stuff that you needed to be able to research,
Speaker 5: be able to do this story the way you did.
Speaker 5: And so you talk about twenty five hundred pages of
Speaker 5: FBI documents, two hundred plus newspaper articles, cran court transcripts,
Speaker 5: parton me, and interviews with George Warehouser himself. So just
Speaker 5: just yeah, that's exactly our audience, a little bit of
Speaker 5: an introduction. Let's get to May twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 5: and tell us what happens. Take us back to where
Speaker 5: this is, Tacoma, Washington. Take us back to that day
Speaker 5: and why George was walking home without say this chauffeur
Speaker 5: that might have been able to pick him up. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about his background, family's background, and
Speaker 5: what happened that day.
Speaker 4: Sure, so the Warehouser family, people in the Northwest are
Speaker 4: very familiar with the Warehouser name the rest of the country,
Speaker 4: I'm not sure, and that was pretty much fine with them.
Speaker 4: George's great grandfather, Frederick Warehouser, to this day is still
Speaker 4: considered about the twelfth richest man in American history. Okay,
Speaker 4: the eleven being Bill Gates. Okay, super wealthy family. They
Speaker 4: were in the timber industry. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 4: the Warehouser's own about four percent of the entire state
Speaker 4: of Washington. Here's a really goofy statistic for you. They
Speaker 4: own about one six hundred and fortieth percent of all
Speaker 4: of America.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, they own a lot. So very wealthy family.
Speaker 4: But the Warehousers always wanted to be a very unassuming family,
Speaker 4: and they didn't like being in the spotlight. You know,
Speaker 4: back when Frederick was, you know, super rich man. This
Speaker 4: is also the time of the Rockefellers and the Carnegies
Speaker 4: and the Astors and vanderb else and he just wanted
Speaker 4: everybody else to have the spotlight. And he just wanted
Speaker 4: to quietly go about his business here in the Pacific Northwest.
Speaker 5: And he did.
Speaker 4: And that's been kind of the hart that's kind of
Speaker 4: the hallmark of the Warehouser family quiet unassuming, and they
Speaker 4: wanted to raise their kids the same way. So George,
Speaker 4: nine year old George, he and his brother would frequently
Speaker 4: walk to school and walk home. Sometimes they'd catch a
Speaker 4: ride with the quote unquote chauffeur who was nothing more
Speaker 4: than the house gardener, who would give him a ride
Speaker 4: now and then. And on this occasion, May twenty fourth,
Speaker 4: George was at school, which is about a half mile
Speaker 4: from home, and he walked down to another school where
Speaker 4: his sister is going to school, and he was supposed
Speaker 4: to meet her there and then their chauffeur would give
Speaker 4: him a ride the rest of the way. Well, he
Speaker 4: got there about fifteen minutes early, after waiting around for
Speaker 4: a few minutes, when was this dumb Why do I
Speaker 4: want to wait here? I'll just walk home. It's you know,
Speaker 4: it's like six blocks. So he starts walking and he's
Speaker 4: about three blocks from home when a car just pulls
Speaker 4: up in this little parking lot that he happened to
Speaker 4: just be in at that moment, nobody else around. Guy
Speaker 4: jumps out of the car asks him a question, Hey kid,
Speaker 4: can you tell me where Stadium Way is? George doesn't
Speaker 4: give it a thought, He says, yeah, sure, and then
Speaker 4: a guy grabs him, throws him in the back seat
Speaker 4: of the car, says keep your mouth shut, nothing's going
Speaker 4: to happen, and drives away. Kidnappers now have George Warehouser kidnapped.
Speaker 5: Now it takes a little bit of time before anyone notices, uh,
Speaker 5: you know, George's parents are out of the town and
Speaker 5: so well they just.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly when.
Speaker 5: When do they notice this missing?
Speaker 4: Well, the chauffeur, after he couldn't find George, he gets
Speaker 4: back home after dropping off his sister and thinks, let's
Speaker 4: kind of pick because George isn't here either, So he
Speaker 4: goes back out driving around for a little while and
Speaker 4: he can't find George either. So it wasn't until you
Speaker 4: know about I would say, an hour or two later
Speaker 4: where they started getting seriously concerned. Then that evening the
Speaker 4: ransom note shows up, and that's when they knew everything
Speaker 4: had gone sideways. By that time, George's dad was back
Speaker 4: in town and George's mom was getting home that evening.
Speaker 4: So yeah, it was like I said about, I think
Speaker 4: about five o'clock at night when they got the ransom
Speaker 4: note in the mail and actually got delivered hand delivered
Speaker 4: to their to their house.
Speaker 5: What did that ransom note contain? It had it had
Speaker 5: the conditions for this ransom, but also a fair amount
Speaker 5: of information for the family to follow exactly.
Speaker 4: Had twenty one demands, the first demand being that the
Speaker 4: kidnappers wanted two hundred thousand dollars in small, unmarked bills. Now,
Speaker 4: just to give sense of how much money that is,
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty five, during the depression, the average income for
Speaker 4: people was fifteen hundred dollars a year, so that ransom
Speaker 4: was the equivalent of one hundred and thirty three years
Speaker 4: worth of the average person salary. All right, the Limberg
Speaker 4: baby kidnapping, which happened only two years earlier, those kidnappers
Speaker 4: originally only asked for fifty thousand dollars. This was four
Speaker 4: times that amount of money. Well, the warehousers were wealthy,
Speaker 4: but they didn't have two hundred grand and small and
Speaker 4: marked bills laying around. And that was the number one demand.
Speaker 4: We want that money in five days or else. Some
Speaker 4: of the other demands were that it will communicate with
Speaker 4: us using personal ads in the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper
Speaker 4: using a code name. The code name Percy many. So
Speaker 4: this way, when the Warehouser family was ready to pay
Speaker 4: the ransom, they would place a person lad in the
Speaker 4: paper saying we're ready or something to that effect, and
Speaker 4: sign it persing in. The kidnappers every day would flip
Speaker 4: through the newspaper and the person lads looking for that
Speaker 4: code word, and then they would know, you know, the
Speaker 4: Warehousers are ready to pay up. Some of the other demands,
Speaker 4: which were ridiculous, were don't tell the police haha, good
Speaker 4: luck with that, and also do not tell the media,
Speaker 4: which also ridiculous. In fact, the ransom note said do
Speaker 4: not alert the newspapers. So what did the newspaper do?
Speaker 4: They posted the ransom note on the front page of
Speaker 4: the newspaper.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, incredible.
Speaker 4: So yeah, And the ransom note was signed, you know,
Speaker 4: basically said, you know, we consider ourselves very smart, We've
Speaker 4: been planning this for years, don't get cute, treat this
Speaker 4: as a business transaction, and signed it egoist. Egoist.
Speaker 5: So a lot for the police contemplate and try to
Speaker 5: derive some clues from this, especially with this Percy mini
Speaker 5: and with this egoist. So at that time, when they're
Speaker 5: still at the beginning of their investigation. You also talk
Speaker 5: about Jay Edgar Hoover and the beginning rebranding, So they
Speaker 5: become the FBI in nineteen thirty five. But you also
Speaker 5: take us meanwhile, You take us to six weeks earlier
Speaker 5: to a person named Margaret Whaley and her husband, Harmon.
Speaker 4: And Bill Mayhon. So those are the kidnappers. I guess
Speaker 4: we should probably qualify them as two and a half kidnappers.
Speaker 4: William may And alias William Daynard was the mastermind of this. Now.
Speaker 4: He was kind of a career bank robber. He'd spent
Speaker 4: a fair amount of time in prison, and he also
Speaker 4: had a way of sweet talking his way out of
Speaker 4: prison too frequently. Harmon Whaley, who he met in prison,
Speaker 4: who was he was kind of a small time criminal,
Speaker 4: and he and William Mayhan had served some time together.
Speaker 4: And then Margaret was Harmon's wife. So Bill Mayhan and
Speaker 4: Harmon just randomly ran across each other out on the
Speaker 4: streets in Salt Lake City about six weeks earlier. So
Speaker 4: Harmon says, hey, Bill, you got to come back to
Speaker 4: my house and have dinner with me and my wife.
Speaker 4: Harmon had met Margaret only six months earlier. Dated for
Speaker 4: a week and then got married. Margaret was nineteen years old,
Speaker 4: never been in trouble in her life, but she was
Speaker 4: raised in the Mormon faith, and she was taught to
Speaker 4: always do exactly as your husband tells you too, And
Speaker 4: that was her undoing through the whole thing. Poor Margaret,
Speaker 4: she was, she was a pawn in this whole thing,
Speaker 4: but she got caught up in it unbeknownst to her.
Speaker 4: So Margaret and Harmon, they're totally captivated by Bill mayhann
Speaker 4: esus talker, good salesperson, and he says, Hey, I'm head
Speaker 4: enough to Spokane, Washington. I've got a job up there.
Speaker 4: He didn't, why don't you guys come with me? Maybe
Speaker 4: I can get harm in a job too. A why
Speaker 4: because at the time, Harmon and Margaret had six bucks
Speaker 4: to their name, and they're like, sure, let's do that.
Speaker 4: So they jump and build Mahon's car and they drive
Speaker 4: up north. He stops along the way at this garage
Speaker 4: and says, hold on for a second, opens a garage.
Speaker 4: There's a second car. Yeah, this is my other car.
Speaker 4: Why don't you guys drive it? And they're like, holy crap,
Speaker 4: this guy's got two cars. During the depression. They think
Speaker 4: their ships come in. So they drive up to Spokane,
Speaker 4: they runt a house together, and you know, they just
Speaker 4: go about their business. So they then they drive back.
Speaker 4: They drive across the state over to western Washington, Seattle,
Speaker 4: Tacoma and a little town called hoke Whim where Harmon
Speaker 4: grew up. And Margaret's under the impression that they're, you know,
Speaker 4: that William's trying to help Harmon get a job and
Speaker 4: help him with his sales as it were. Little does
Speaker 4: she know that they're actually casing banks, looking, you know,
Speaker 4: to rob banks. They drive back across the state, and
Speaker 4: then Margaret totally changes the calculus of everything completely unwittingly.
Speaker 4: She reads an article in the newspaper. It says, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, local millionaire Warehouser dies. Well this was George's grandfather, Okay,
Speaker 4: And she just went, huh, that's really interesting, That's all
Speaker 4: she really said. Bill Mayhan hears that and he sees
Speaker 4: the angle. He's like, huh, local millionaire dies, So maybe
Speaker 4: he leaves a lot of money to his son. Maybe
Speaker 4: his son has kids. Hmm, I see leverage opportunity. So
Speaker 4: Bill Mayhan and Harmon head back west again. They tell
Speaker 4: Margaret again. Now we're going to head back west. We
Speaker 4: got opportunities for sales again a lie. They go back
Speaker 4: and they start looking for They look through the newspaper.
Speaker 4: We see the newspaper. They look through the phone book
Speaker 4: and they find the warehouser's phone number and address. They
Speaker 4: drive down and they start casing the joint and they
Speaker 4: see little George and his brother walk into school and
Speaker 4: the light goes on for Bill Mayhon, and he's like, ah,
Speaker 4: here we go, here's my opportunity. So for about two
Speaker 4: days they're casing, they're tracking the kid, and so that's
Speaker 4: how the whole kidnapping came about. It really was just
Speaker 4: a crime of opportunity. She reads an article in the paper,
Speaker 4: she makes a comment, Bill Mayhon. The light goes on,
Speaker 4: and they follow the kid and they snatch the kid.
Speaker 4: It all came together in like two days.
Speaker 5: You talk about just before this about the state of
Speaker 5: kidnapping at that time nineteen thirty to nineteen thirty two,
Speaker 5: how it was, and you also of course mentioned the
Speaker 5: Limberg case. So there's a new law as a result
Speaker 5: of that kidnapping. Tell us about that law and also
Speaker 5: just how kidnappings were in those years, especially.
Speaker 4: So the Limberg. Yeah, the Limberg kidnapping pretty much changed
Speaker 4: everything because up to that point, criminals back in the twenties,
Speaker 4: when criminals were really popular for a lack of better term,
Speaker 4: you know, al capone guys like that, they would escape
Speaker 4: prosecution for all intents and purposes by simply going across
Speaker 4: state lines. Okay. They would go from you know, from
Speaker 4: one state to the next, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 4: the cops in that state couldn't chase after him. So
Speaker 4: after the Limberg kidnapping, the FBI Jaegerhover said, this is ridiculous.
Speaker 4: We need this to stop, and so he enacts what
Speaker 4: everybody else called the Limberg Law, so that if you
Speaker 4: took somebody across state lines, it becomes a federal offense
Speaker 4: and that the FBI can get involved, okay, And so
Speaker 4: that's how things changed. Kidnapping at that time was really
Speaker 4: really popular. It kind of you know, jumped in with
Speaker 4: bootlegging and you know, all the all these other big
Speaker 4: crimes at the time, and criminals started to come to
Speaker 4: the realization, this is a much safer way of making
Speaker 4: a buck. Grabbed somebody, hold on to him, offer ransom
Speaker 4: demands and just wait for the money to show up,
Speaker 4: and it usually worked, but after the Limberg Law came
Speaker 4: into effect, it didn't work so much anymore. In fact,
Speaker 4: the FBI, I mean, once the Limberg Law kicked in
Speaker 4: and the FBI really got involved in capturing capturing kidnappers,
Speaker 4: kidnappers failed almost every single time. But evidently Bill Mahon
Speaker 4: and Harmon Wiley didn't didn't know the statistics.
Speaker 5: To get back to George being grabbed by this man
Speaker 5: and thrown in a car, what happens next to him?
Speaker 5: And what does George have the the wherewithal to do
Speaker 5: as soon as he is great?
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, So they threw him in the backseat, throw
Speaker 4: a blanket over him, and mentioned, you know, keep your
Speaker 4: mouth shut, don't say anything, You'll be okay, And they
Speaker 4: drove about an hour north to an area outside of
Speaker 4: the Seattle area called Izaquah, now to a forest. Ironically,
Speaker 4: I don't know for a fact that there's a good
Speaker 4: chance that forest was actually owned by the Warehouser family.
Speaker 4: So they they Bill Mahan was hoping to kidnap some
Speaker 4: other guy, you know, weeks or months earlier, and he
Speaker 4: dug a hole out in the forest just for the
Speaker 4: purpose of keeping somebody stashed there. But then he realized
Speaker 4: the person he wanted to kidnap didn't have the money,
Speaker 4: and so he forgot about it. Well, now all of
Speaker 4: a sudden, he's got George Warehouser. That's where he's going
Speaker 4: to keep kids stashed. So this hole in the ground,
Speaker 4: which is basically the size of a grave. It's about
Speaker 4: six feet long and four feet deep, three feet wide,
Speaker 4: with some boards across the bottom. And they put George
Speaker 4: in the hole and they chained him up, and they
Speaker 4: threw some boards over the top and camouflaged it. And
Speaker 4: so George is sitting there for a couple of days,
Speaker 4: you know, and the pitch dark nine years old. And
Speaker 4: after the first day they realized, okay, because like hikers
Speaker 4: happened to be nearby, they discovered we got to move him.
Speaker 4: So they moved him to another hole in the ground
Speaker 4: in another forest. Then after about another day they went, okay,
Speaker 4: this is the things are getting too hot, because now
Speaker 4: it's on the front page everywhere, and it's on the
Speaker 4: radio everywhere. You know, It's literally on the front page
Speaker 4: of every newspaper in America, and the cops are fanning
Speaker 4: out all over the state looking for the rappers. I'm
Speaker 4: looking for George, and so they decided they want to
Speaker 4: take George back to Spokane. Now, during all this, Margaret
Speaker 4: is still oblivious. She has no idea that George has
Speaker 4: been kidnapped. She has no idea that her husband has
Speaker 4: part of because what's going on with this as well?
Speaker 4: So this is a funny thing. Build my hand, goes
Speaker 4: it back and gets Margaret drives her back out into
Speaker 4: the forest and she's like, why are we out here?
Speaker 4: And he goes, wait, I got to get your husband.
Speaker 4: And she's like, what's my husband doing out in the forest.
Speaker 4: So he says, shut up to sit here. He goes
Speaker 4: off in the forest. A few minutes later, her husband
Speaker 4: comes back with a flashlight. He gets in the car
Speaker 4: and says, Margaret, I need you to get on your
Speaker 4: hands and knees on the front seat and cover your
Speaker 4: head and then I'm going to fold the seat over you.
Speaker 4: She's like, what, he says, just shut up and do it. Okay,
Speaker 4: She gets on her hands and knees. He puts the
Speaker 4: seat over her head, and all of a sudden, she
Speaker 4: hears the trunk open and slam. She has no idea
Speaker 4: that George Warehouser had just been put in the trunk
Speaker 4: of the car, so they start driving back across the state.
Speaker 4: Halfway across the state, they stopped to get gas and
Speaker 4: Margaret hears a voice out of the trunk saying, hey, mister,
Speaker 4: can you let me out now? She freaks out, going,
Speaker 4: oh my god. All the puzzle pieces fall into place,
Speaker 4: and she realizes they'd got the kid who's on the
Speaker 4: front page of every paper in America. And then Bill
Speaker 4: Mahon pulls out a gun and says, you're going to
Speaker 4: keep your mouth shut or I kill you. I killed George,
Speaker 4: I kill your husband. So she keeps his mouth shut.
Speaker 4: They drive back to Spokane, where they've got that house.
Speaker 4: They rent a house again, Okay, the same house that
Speaker 4: they were in before. But here's what this is an
Speaker 4: interesting thing that nobody seems to understand why they did this.
Speaker 4: Driving back across the state, they went past Spokane. Spokane
Speaker 4: is really close to the Washington Idaho borders, literally just
Speaker 4: a few miles away. They drove across border into Idaho
Speaker 4: for like a few hours, and then drove back into
Speaker 4: Spokane again. No reason why, but because they did that,
Speaker 4: it officially became a federal offense. They didn't know that
Speaker 4: at the time, or if they did, they weren't saying why.
Speaker 4: So they rent this house from a pastor on a
Speaker 4: local pastor in Spokane, and the pastor had come over
Speaker 4: to the house saying, okay, I want you to take
Speaker 4: good care of my house and.
Speaker 5: Water my lawn.
Speaker 4: And they're like, yes, ma'am, of course, ma'am. Little ass.
Speaker 4: You know the twenty five feet away George Warehouser is
Speaker 4: locked in the closet, and that's where they kept George
Speaker 4: stashed away for the next five days.
Speaker 5: Now, meanwhile, you say that the family's getting this money together,
Speaker 5: they go to the uncles. They don't have any liquid assets.
Speaker 5: But also the press is clamoring for a story, and
Speaker 5: Hoover and the g men I've been told not to
Speaker 5: say anything, so they start speculating, they say, making up
Speaker 5: stuff and printing anything that they can possibly print. They're desperate,
Speaker 5: and there are somebody in the FBI, I guess is
Speaker 5: speaking about the Carpus Gang. Tell us about how the
Speaker 5: Carpus Gang gets to be number one suspects in this.
Speaker 4: Alvin Carpas, Alvin Creepy Carpas, was pretty much the last
Speaker 4: of the big time criminals that hadn't been killed or
Speaker 4: put in prison. Just a year before George had been kidnapped,
Speaker 4: Bonnie and Clyde had been gunned down, and John Dillinger
Speaker 4: had been gunned down and machine gun Kelly I can't
Speaker 4: remember he was shot or if he was put in prison,
Speaker 4: and Babyface Nelson, all these really famous criminals, they'd either
Speaker 4: been shot or they've been put in prison. So Carpus
Speaker 4: he and you've heard of Ma Barker, Okay, the Barker
Speaker 4: Carpus Gang. We're kind of last the big time criminals.
Speaker 4: And Carpus was really famous for doing a couple of
Speaker 4: really big kidnappings just you know, about a year earlier.
Speaker 4: So he was number one suspect. And back in those days,
Speaker 4: the newspapers never used the term allegedly. They just speculated
Speaker 4: and that was that. So they were putting articles out
Speaker 4: there that pretty much just plain simple set. It's clearly
Speaker 4: the Karpus gang. They're the ones that did it. They're guilty,
Speaker 4: they were the judge and jury, and it happened frequently,
Speaker 4: so that's why everybody just thought, oh, it must be
Speaker 4: the Carpus gang.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Now, meanwhile, there is contact by the family with
Speaker 5: this post intelligence or newspaper. So they're doing things abiding
Speaker 5: by these rules, and so they contact them and tell them, listen,
Speaker 5: we're going to be doing this. We're going to try
Speaker 5: to cooperate as much as we can. What happens in
Speaker 5: that regard.
Speaker 4: The kid right, So the family tells the FBI, back off,
Speaker 4: do not do anything until we make the money drop,
Speaker 4: and Hoover and the FBI agree. They said, okay, we'll
Speaker 4: sit back and minor p's and q's until the money
Speaker 4: has been exchanged, and then we jump into jump in
Speaker 4: the FBI mode and the family said okay. So George's
Speaker 4: dad is instructed to go stay at this hotel in
Speaker 4: downtown Seattle, and then the kidnapper, I think it might
Speaker 4: have been a camera for it was a domain. He
Speaker 4: comes up to this guy standing on a street corner
Speaker 4: at Cabby and says, hey, here's an envelope. I want
Speaker 4: you to take it to this hotel and for this name.
Speaker 4: Gives them two bucks. Guy says, sure, no problem. Inside
Speaker 4: there is the next instructions. Okay, So he goes to
Speaker 4: the hotel, hands it off, gives it to George's dad,
Speaker 4: and the instructions say okay, you're ready to make the
Speaker 4: money drip, because we saw in the paper that you
Speaker 4: had said we're ready to go sign Percy Mini. So
Speaker 4: the George's dad, they've got the two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 4: in small, unmarked bills. Now give you a little backstory
Speaker 4: on that. That took a lot of doing to get
Speaker 4: the money. Then on top of it, the FBI had
Speaker 4: to they had to keep a record of every single
Speaker 4: serial number. That's twenty thousand serial numbers for all this money,
Speaker 4: and that took them over four thousand man hours to
Speaker 4: do and they only had five days to pull that off.
Speaker 5: A lot of.
Speaker 4: People, a lot of people were working on this, in fact,
Speaker 4: a full seven percent of the entire FBI. We're in
Speaker 4: Seattle and Tacoma for this case. So they collect all
Speaker 4: of these ransom all these are ransom bill serial numbers,
Speaker 4: and got them, you know, fifty five pages, you know,
Speaker 4: seven columns with fifty numbers per column, and just a
Speaker 4: booklet of these numbers. Okay, So now George's dad has
Speaker 4: got this suitcase full of money, and the letter from
Speaker 4: the kidnapper said you will drive to this location and
Speaker 4: you will go to this abandoned house, and in the
Speaker 4: yard you'll find a little stick of wood with a
Speaker 4: piece of white fabric attached to it like a flag.
Speaker 4: And under that you'll find a tin can, and inside
Speaker 4: the tin can you'll find a note that'll instruct you
Speaker 4: to the next place. So this is playing out like
Speaker 4: a Hollywood movie at this point. Okay, like a Bogie film.
Speaker 4: So his dad drives out there by himself, and he
Speaker 4: goes to this abandoned house and he sees in the
Speaker 4: yard this little stick of wood, and he finds the
Speaker 4: note inside of the tin can, and it says go
Speaker 4: to this next location. So he drives to the next location,
Speaker 4: to another place, another little piece of wood with another flag,
Speaker 4: except there's no tin can and there's no note. He's
Speaker 4: freaking out because the ransombody is due that night or else.
Speaker 4: He's crawling around on his hands and knees in the
Speaker 4: dark with matches and looking for it. After a couple hours,
Speaker 4: he gives up. He heads back to the hotel. The
Speaker 4: next morning, the kidnappers call, pissed off, saying, hey, where's
Speaker 4: our money, And he's like, I tried, the second note
Speaker 4: wasn't there, And they went all right with and give
Speaker 4: you one more chance. So they gave him new instructions.
Speaker 4: So that night he goes to a new location again
Speaker 4: the same same drill, who infant repeat. They find a flag,
Speaker 4: they find the tin can, they find a note, they
Speaker 4: take to another one, et etc. Finally, the last note says,
Speaker 4: park your car, leave the dome light on, leave the
Speaker 4: money in the back seat, start walking back down the road.
Speaker 4: His dad does this. After he's about one hundred yards away,
Speaker 4: he hears a noise behind him, looks back, sees somebody
Speaker 4: jump out of the bushes, jump into the car and
Speaker 4: drive away. Bill Mahon now two hundred thousand dollars. So
Speaker 4: he drives to this abandoned well amount of bandon a
Speaker 4: shack that he had Margaret waiting for him with and
Speaker 4: he brings back the money. And now they'd got the money.
Speaker 4: So then they head back to Spokane and they've got
Speaker 4: two hundred thousand bucks. And now it's time to hand
Speaker 4: over George.
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Speaker 5: about that Bill Mahon and Harmon, but mill Mahon had
Speaker 5: in his possession two hundred thousand dollars and they had
Speaker 5: stipulated they won him in twenties, certain denominations, in twenty
Speaker 5: certain number of twenties, tens and fives. Despite their demands.
Speaker 5: How difficult was it going to be to spend any
Speaker 5: of that money? And what was the plan for Mahon
Speaker 5: and Harmon in regards to that money being spent?
Speaker 4: Well, that's that was again part of their undoing their
Speaker 4: They weren't as smart as they thought they were because
Speaker 4: they said they don't want they want small unmarked bills.
Speaker 4: All right, well, fine, let's see does it have an
Speaker 4: unmarked bill? You don't have to put a mark on it.
Speaker 4: But as long as you've got the serial number, then
Speaker 4: that you know, if the money shows up, that can
Speaker 4: be they can be traced. And I guess they didn't
Speaker 4: really think that far in advance. Again, they weren't the
Speaker 4: sharpest tools in the shed. And as I'll get to
Speaker 4: a little bit down the road here when we're talking
Speaker 4: about this, that was their undoing. Yeah, they that they
Speaker 4: tried to not spend it, but they couldn't. They didn't
Speaker 4: They didn't have money tucked away for spending money for
Speaker 4: like a six month period, which is what they should
Speaker 4: have done. Okay, So they eventually had to spend some
Speaker 4: and that's how the FBI eventually caught up with them.
Speaker 4: Like I said, we'll chat about that here in a
Speaker 4: few minutes.
Speaker 5: Let's let's talk about Margaret herself. Now, in the beginning,
Speaker 5: she's beyond naive to not see certain thing, but at
Speaker 5: some point she is, like you say, she puts it
Speaker 5: together when she hears the boy's voice talking about is
Speaker 5: it time to get out of this trunk hair, mister?
Speaker 5: So she puts it all together. Then she's threatened. So
Speaker 5: she now, no matter how naive she was before, knows
Speaker 5: exactly what's gone on and what she's been a participant in.
Speaker 5: So how does she act now that they have some
Speaker 5: money and tell us about this split and where the
Speaker 5: two perpetrators went after?
Speaker 4: Right, So after they drop off George which is a
Speaker 4: great story. I'll get to here in just a minute.
Speaker 4: But after they drop off George and they kind of
Speaker 4: go their separate ways. Margaret and Harmon go their separate
Speaker 4: way and Domahan goes his separate way. And actually, once
Speaker 4: they go their separate ways, they never see each other again. Period.
Speaker 4: That was the last they ever saw.
Speaker 5: Of each other.
Speaker 4: So Margaret and Harmon got about ninety five thousand dollars
Speaker 4: in Mayhon took like one hundred and five or something
Speaker 4: to that effect. So he says, okay, you and see
Speaker 4: Harmon and Margaret, you guys go to Salt Lake City
Speaker 4: if you want. That's fine because that's where she's from.
Speaker 4: And he says, I'm just going to go my own way.
Speaker 4: So they whipped up this plan where they gave her
Speaker 4: two suitcases. You know, again, Margaret being Margaret, she's not
Speaker 4: very She's very naive, very trusting, and also not very smart.
Speaker 4: So Harmon says, here, takes take this suitcase, and you're
Speaker 4: gonna take the train to Salt Lake City and I'm
Speaker 4: going to join you when I get down, and I'll
Speaker 4: bring the money with me. She doesn't realize that she's
Speaker 4: got that ninety five thousand dollars in a suitcase with her.
Speaker 4: She doesn't realize it. She's sitting there on the train
Speaker 4: with her feet propped up on top of the suitcase.
Speaker 4: What she also doesn't realize is that Harmon is on
Speaker 4: the train and he's spying on her. She thinks that
Speaker 4: he's not coming until the next day, but he actually
Speaker 4: went on the same train to keep an eye on her.
Speaker 4: So she gets down to the Salt Lake City. Harmon
Speaker 4: shows up there the next day and they rent a
Speaker 4: house and they start going about their business. So that's
Speaker 4: and again she's she knows what's happened, she knows what
Speaker 4: they did was wrong, but she was also terrified of
Speaker 4: Bill Mahon and his gun, and so she just went
Speaker 4: along stupidly or naively or just because she was terrified,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm not sure which it was probably a
Speaker 4: little bit of all three. And so yeah, that was
Speaker 4: the fall of Margaret.
Speaker 5: Let's get back to George, because even though the family
Speaker 5: followed the instructions of the kidnappers, they did a little
Speaker 5: change in the procedure at the end. So tell us
Speaker 5: about George. And what was amazing about this story is,
Speaker 5: and we'll talk about this a little bit later about
Speaker 5: the trauma. But right away in the beginning, we're struck
Speaker 5: by how calm George is. He's not screaming or yelling,
Speaker 5: and and it's attributed to you write in the book
Speaker 5: what the kidnappers had said to him, and then the
Speaker 5: treatment by those kidnappers. So how was it that George,
Speaker 5: at nine years old had the wherewithal and the ability
Speaker 5: to be able to handle this. What was his source
Speaker 5: of optimism in his mind?
Speaker 4: Well, I think it was a couple of things. First off,
Speaker 4: they you know, he's nine years old, and he will frequently,
Speaker 4: you know, nine years old will believe what adults will
Speaker 4: tell them. You know, they're very trusting. And they said,
Speaker 4: you know, keep your mouth shut and we won't hurt you,
Speaker 4: all right, So he's going to keep his mouth shut
Speaker 4: so they won't hurt him. And then another thing happened
Speaker 4: Bill Mahan when George was this kid was blindfolded and
Speaker 4: taken off into the forest. At one point they went
Speaker 4: across the stream. George hears the water and he's thinking,
Speaker 4: are they going to toss me in the river? Are
Speaker 4: they going to toss me in the stream whatever and
Speaker 4: drown me? Because they're done with me, and he asked,
Speaker 4: you know Mayhem that, hey, mister, are you going to
Speaker 4: throw me in the river and drown me? And Mayhand said, kid,
Speaker 4: You're worth too much alive. And I think that's when
Speaker 4: George realized, Okay, as long as I keep quiet, I'm
Speaker 4: worth something to them. And so he just kept quiet.
Speaker 4: And Harmon Whaley, you know, Harmon was kind of watched
Speaker 4: watch took care of George for the five days back
Speaker 4: in Spokane while Mayhan mardered or making trips back and forth.
Speaker 4: And according to George, Harmon was okay with him. He
Speaker 4: didn't treat him poorly. He was a reasonable man, is
Speaker 4: what he said. And so, yeah, George, that was the
Speaker 4: reason George hung in there because he trusted that nothing
Speaker 4: was going to happen to him. So now let's talk
Speaker 4: about how George has dropped off, because this is a
Speaker 4: great part of the story. So they're driving back from
Speaker 4: Spokane and driving back, Mayhean and Whaley are discussing where
Speaker 4: are we going to drop off George because they hadn't
Speaker 4: really thought that far in advance. Again, a not the smartest,
Speaker 4: sharpest tools in the shed. So they finally realized, let's
Speaker 4: drop them back off in the forest, near that hole
Speaker 4: in the ground where we kept him a week earlier.
Speaker 4: So they take him up this old timber road and
Speaker 4: they drop them off by this I wouldn't even call
Speaker 4: it a shack. It's just a glorified lean to. And
Speaker 4: they said, okay, George, here's a blanket, here's a dollar.
Speaker 4: We're going to leave you here. Your dad's gonna come
Speaker 4: pick you up. And they drove away. It's midnight, okay,
Speaker 4: and he's they just dropped this nine year old off
Speaker 4: on a timber road and pitch dark out in the
Speaker 4: forest and it's raining. So George is sitting there in
Speaker 4: the rain, in the dark for a couple hours, and
Speaker 4: he finally his dad's not coming. He doesn't know that though,
Speaker 4: because his dad doesn't even know where he's been dropped off.
Speaker 4: He doesn't even know that he has been dropped off.
Speaker 4: So after a while, George goes, this is stupid. I've
Speaker 4: had enough of this, and so he starts walking and
Speaker 4: he walks from miles and he finally comes across this
Speaker 4: old farmer's house. It's about six o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 4: He's drenched and knocks on the door and the farmer
Speaker 4: opens the door and there's this soaking wet kid standing
Speaker 4: on their front porch and he says, Hi, I am
Speaker 4: George Warehouser. Can you take me to my folks? So
Speaker 4: this farmer answers the door, and the kid who's been
Speaker 4: on the front page or every newspaper in America just
Speaker 4: magically appeared on his front porch. Oh my gosh, it's
Speaker 4: George Warehouser. They throw them in their model Tea and
Speaker 4: they take off, taking him back to Tacoma. About halfway
Speaker 4: between Izaquah and Tacoma is called renting. They get about
Speaker 4: as far as renting, and the farmer pulls over, goes
Speaker 4: to a gas station and makes the phone call of
Speaker 4: the Warehousers, because evidently you can just grab a phone
Speaker 4: book and call these really rich people because their numbers
Speaker 4: looking listed. So they called the Warehouser house and the
Speaker 4: FBI had this elaborate phone system set up just for
Speaker 4: this phone call. And the phone system failed, utterly, completely failed.
Speaker 4: The FBI agent that's at the house, here's the phone ring.
Speaker 4: He's supposed to wait for it to ring five times
Speaker 4: or something to that effect. I forget exactly what it was,
Speaker 4: but it rang once and then it was silent, and
Speaker 4: the FBI agent picked it up and he listens in
Speaker 4: the dead silence. There's nothing. The farmer on his end,
Speaker 4: it's his ringing and ringing and ringing, and he let
Speaker 4: it ring for four minutes long, and then nobody's picking
Speaker 4: it up, and finally he gets set up and he
Speaker 4: hangs up the phone. So then he calls the police.
Speaker 4: Now this is where this is really interesting, and it
Speaker 4: depends on who you believe. You either believe the reporter
Speaker 4: or you believe the FBI. So now the reporters have
Speaker 4: been camped out at the Warehouser House for days, waiting
Speaker 4: for their big break. Media circus, all right. In fact,
Speaker 4: the Warehouser House had become like this tourist attraction, cars
Speaker 4: lined up down the road, people stealing flowers out of
Speaker 4: their yard as soon and ears. So the reporters they
Speaker 4: get wind that George has been released, but they don't
Speaker 4: know any particulars. Now, the reporter a guy by the
Speaker 4: name of John Drer. He was a golf reporter for
Speaker 4: the Seattle Times, and he claims that he got a
Speaker 4: tip from his publisher that George had been released in
Speaker 4: uh and like in Zaqua and was driving back in
Speaker 4: a Model T through rent from Renting. Okay, that's what
Speaker 4: he claims. Now here's what the FBI says. The FBI
Speaker 4: claims that the reporter was in the Tacoma police station
Speaker 4: and overheard the phone call between the farmer and the
Speaker 4: police officer, and he went, Okay, the kid is coming
Speaker 4: this way in it. So the reporter gets a cab,
Speaker 4: tells the cabby head for Renton, we're going to try
Speaker 4: to intercept George before the FBI. And so they drive
Speaker 4: down the highway. Now, granted is in nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 4: there's not a lot of cars on the road, and
Speaker 4: sure enough they see it and Modeled T come in
Speaker 4: the other direction and they see George in the front seat.
Speaker 4: So you know, the reporter's like, there he is there,
Speaker 4: he is, go get him. Cabby spins around, drives up,
Speaker 4: pulls alongside him, waving at him like they're trying to
Speaker 4: pull the car over. The Model he pulls over. The
Speaker 4: reporter jumps out of the Model and jumps out of
Speaker 4: the Cabby, runs over, insinuates to the farmer that he's
Speaker 4: with the police when he's not, gives the farmer five
Speaker 4: bucks farmer hands George over. No questions asked to this
Speaker 4: stranger could have been another kidnapper, hands George over. The
Speaker 4: reporter puts George in the back seat of the cab
Speaker 4: below the window level, gets in the back seat on
Speaker 4: the floorboards below the window level, tells the cab you
Speaker 4: drive back to George's house, take your time, go on
Speaker 4: back roads, and then he interviews George for like the
Speaker 4: Biggest Scoop Pulitzer Prize you know, wasn't a winner, but
Speaker 4: it was a nominator fort Pulitzer Prize for thismongous, humongous scoop.
Speaker 4: That's on the front page the next morning. So then
Speaker 4: they get to George's house, George is reunited with his family,
Speaker 4: everybody who is crazy, everybody's all excited, and then becomes
Speaker 4: the greatest man hunt in Northwest history.
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Speaker 5: Plus you talk about this biggest man hunt in Northwest history.
Speaker 5: Part of that is as obviously tracking these bills. So
Speaker 5: as we talked about it was their undoing. It's interesting
Speaker 5: that Margaret spends some of that money and very little
Speaker 5: of it. But again, in this primitive laundering technique, you
Speaker 5: take a twenty dollars bit when you buy something for
Speaker 5: a few cents, twenty five cents, tell us about this undoing.
Speaker 5: And meanwhile, while the authorities are on their trail.
Speaker 4: Correct, So the FBI are just waiting. They're just waiting
Speaker 4: for that first bill to show up because they know
Speaker 4: it's going to happen eventually, and sure enough it does.
Speaker 4: Harmon had used one of the bills to get a
Speaker 4: train ticket, and for whatever reason, the guy who who
Speaker 4: sold him the ticket, he didn't recognize him as a kidnapper.
Speaker 4: He just remembered him, like the hat he was wearing
Speaker 4: or the cody was wearing. From whatever reason, the guy
Speaker 4: happened to remember that, and he remembered that the that
Speaker 4: he bought a train ticket to Salt Lake City. And
Speaker 4: then Margaret, she's got some of the bills and she
Speaker 4: goes to like a store called Cress's Cress and she
Speaker 4: buys some stuff. Then she goes to a Woolworths and
Speaker 4: she decides she's going to buy a a cigarette case
Speaker 4: for her dad for his birthday, a twenty cent cigarette case,
Speaker 4: and she gives them five bucks. Now, back in those days,
Speaker 4: a lot of stores don't do the exchange right there
Speaker 4: at the counter. They take the money and they go
Speaker 4: back to what's called a cash cage where they've got
Speaker 4: a person back there. So they take the five dollar bill.
Speaker 4: They go back to the cash cage. They give the
Speaker 4: five bucks over to that woman and she's got one
Speaker 4: of those booklets that has all the serial members and
Speaker 4: she just, you know, force a habit, flip flip flip,
Speaker 4: flip flip big and go it's one of the bills.
Speaker 4: Oh my gosh, this is a ransom bill. She calls
Speaker 4: the police. In short order, the police arrive and they
Speaker 4: grab Margaret and it doesn't take long for her to crack,
Speaker 4: and it doesn't take long before they nab Harmon as well.
Speaker 4: And there you go. They've got two of the kidnappers
Speaker 4: right there on the spot and they take them off
Speaker 4: to be you know, to be sent before the judge.
Speaker 4: Word gets out that Harmon and Murder had been busted.
Speaker 4: And Bill Mayhan he for whatever reason I think he was,
Speaker 4: he went down to Salt Lake City also, I'm not
Speaker 4: sure exactly why, and he heard that his compatriots have
Speaker 4: been busted, so he high tails it to Butte, Montana.
Speaker 4: The next morning, he's standing on a street corner seven
Speaker 4: o'clock in the morning. He looks across the street and
Speaker 4: there's a police officer and the cop is staring at him,
Speaker 4: and he's staring at the cop and the cop keeps
Speaker 4: staring at him. Well, Bill Mayhan starts getting nervous, thinking, okay,
Speaker 4: he's on to me, and he takes off running. Well,
Speaker 4: the police officer didn't recognize him as a kidnapper because
Speaker 4: he had no idea Bill Mayhan was one of the kidnappers.
Speaker 4: The cop recognized him because he'd arrested Bill Mayhan three
Speaker 4: years earlier, so pure chance, he sees the guy that
Speaker 4: he'd arrested, and now the guy that he'd a rerect
Speaker 4: makes a break for it, so he goes chasing after him.
Speaker 4: Bill Mayhan jumps over the fence of this yard, in
Speaker 4: this yard, and there's a guard dog in the yard,
Speaker 4: all right, and the cop jumps over the fence as well.
Speaker 4: Mayhean has run past the guard dog. So the guard
Speaker 4: dog turns on the cop. The CoP's got to make
Speaker 4: a choice. Okay, shoot the dog and capture the guy
Speaker 4: who running away from him, or not shoot the dog.
Speaker 4: He chooses to not shoot the dog, and as a result,
Speaker 4: Bill Mayhan escapes for another year. So now we get
Speaker 4: to Margaret and Harmon. I'm back taken back to Tacoma
Speaker 4: and they're going before the judge. Harmon guilty, I'm guilty.
Speaker 4: I'm guilty. I'm guilty. Fine, forty five years. They're going
Speaker 4: to Alcatraz. That's it. Margaret guilty, guilty, guilty, But Harmon says,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, she's not guilty. She didn't know anything
Speaker 4: about it. She didn't participate other than going along with it.
Speaker 4: Once you found out about it. But she never even
Speaker 4: saw George, which is true, she never once saw him.
Speaker 4: They'd make sure they'll always keep her, keep her, uh,
Speaker 4: you know, out of sight of George. So the judge says,
Speaker 4: wait a minute, you want to plead guilty, but you
Speaker 4: didn't really participate in the kidnapping. And she's like yes,
Speaker 4: He's like, why would you do that? She's like, I
Speaker 4: can't imagine my life. Well, my husband is in prison,
Speaker 4: me being free. And the judge thinks, you know that's
Speaker 4: this is stupid. No, no, no, no, no no, you are
Speaker 4: going to plead not guilty and it's going to go
Speaker 4: to trial, and that's what he forced her to do.
Speaker 4: And then it became this enormous trial in Seattle. Enormous trial,
Speaker 4: biggest trial in Seattle history at this point, huge, huge, huge, huge,
Speaker 4: and would you like me to chat chat chat about
Speaker 4: that right now? So Margaret, Margaret as her defendant, as
Speaker 4: her public defender, is this really talented lawyer who is
Speaker 4: the former mayor of Seattle, and he was smart enough
Speaker 4: to realize that she's got no prayer, she's got no chance,
Speaker 4: and so he portrays her. This is his defense. He
Speaker 4: portrays her as the stupidest person on the planet, as
Speaker 4: a total moron, a complete idiot who would jump off
Speaker 4: the building if her husband told her to, and he's
Speaker 4: on her side. Okay, And poor Margaret, you know, the
Speaker 4: media are saying things like they're describing her as plane
Speaker 4: and plump. No woman weighed one hundred and twenty pounds,
Speaker 4: you know, but they just basically saw her as a
Speaker 4: figure of pity. And you know, they go through while
Speaker 4: this trial is going on. Meanwhile in the Seattle, at Tacoma,
Speaker 4: all the Puget Sound area, there's a massive timber strike
Speaker 4: going on, and there are riots in the streets, and
Speaker 4: there's tear gas and there's National guardsmen with bayonets and
Speaker 4: people are getting shot and cars are being dynamited. All
Speaker 4: this is playing on in the backdrop of this massive trial. So,
Speaker 4: like I said, this thing's playing out like a movie. Okay.
Speaker 4: And so finally, you know, they the jury, which this
Speaker 4: is interesting too, They list, you know, they describe every
Speaker 4: person on the jury. They describe if as a man,
Speaker 4: if it's a woman, what their name is, what they
Speaker 4: do for a living, and where they live, all right,
Speaker 4: And they even described it as a better looking than
Speaker 4: most jury in the NewsPage. So the jury goes off
Speaker 4: and in short order they come back and they say
Speaker 4: Margaret's guilty, and she's guilty, but not to the same
Speaker 4: degree that Harmon and Bill Mayhon. Arm So she gets
Speaker 4: twenty years in the work farm and she says, I
Speaker 4: count the days till I'll be back, you know, with
Speaker 4: my husband Harmon. Blah blah blah blah. That lasted about
Speaker 4: twelve hours. While she's being taken back East Michigan. On
Speaker 4: the way back, she's like, that jerk. Everything bad that's
Speaker 4: happened to me is because of him. I am swearing
Speaker 4: off men for the rest of my life. The day
Speaker 4: she gets out of prison, she divorced harm So Harmon
Speaker 4: gets forty five years in prison. Bill Mayhon gets sixty
Speaker 4: years in Alcatraz, and they're also there at the same
Speaker 4: time that al Capone is there. And evidently Harmon, who
Speaker 4: was a small time, petty criminal and according to George
Speaker 4: is a very reasonable guy, he became kind of a
Speaker 4: heart and criminal and he got into fistfights with al
Speaker 4: Capone and stuff like that while he was there.
Speaker 5: And they both made it to Alcatraz, and they talk
Speaker 5: about McNeil's Island and I've I've heard about this prison
Speaker 5: and then Alcatraz. They call it the Rocks, And so
Speaker 5: they were, as you say, Harmon turned into a leader
Speaker 5: involved in one of the riots at Alcatraz, correct as well?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, they were both at McNeil Island, which is
Speaker 4: up and imputed Sound in Washington State for like a
Speaker 4: year if even that, before they were sent down to Alcatraz.
Speaker 4: In fact, I think Bill Mayhon he went to like Levenworth,
Speaker 4: and he went to a few prisons before he went
Speaker 4: to Alcatraz, but he spent the vast majority of his
Speaker 4: time at Alcatraz. And I think I think Mayhan served
Speaker 4: twenty five years of his forty before he was released.
Speaker 4: Margaret did, I think fourteen years of her twenty before
Speaker 4: she was released. And I can't remember how many Mayhan served,
Speaker 4: but it was a pretty good chunk.
Speaker 5: Mm hmmm. You had the great opportunity to speak to
Speaker 5: George Warehouser in twenty nineteen. Was he and how did
Speaker 5: you manage to be able to get an interview with
Speaker 5: him and tell us about that?
Speaker 4: Yeah? That was interesting. It was really hard tracking him down,
Speaker 4: as a matter of fact, it took me quite a while,
Speaker 4: but I finally found a phone number and I called
Speaker 4: it and it was a voicemail that they would check
Speaker 4: like once a week, and I left a message saying, Hi, George,
Speaker 4: my name is Brian Jobston, the local author, and I
Speaker 4: would love to be able to chat with you about
Speaker 4: your kidnapping, unless it's a really uncomfortable subject. Because whenever
Speaker 4: I'd read any articles about the Warehouser kidnapping, there would
Speaker 4: be always be some family members saying George doesn't like
Speaker 4: to talk about the kidnapping. So I really didn't expect
Speaker 4: to get anything. So about three days later I got
Speaker 4: a voicemail from George saying, Brian, this is George Warehouser.
Speaker 4: Happy to chat with you. It happened a long time ago,
Speaker 4: not an uncomfortable subject at all. I'm like, holy crap.
Speaker 4: So I call it the back up and he agrees
Speaker 4: to sit down with me. So I prived down to
Speaker 4: his house and they was in a very nice house,
Speaker 4: you know, it's not like a humongous mansion or anything.
Speaker 4: And he's sitting out on the back porch by the
Speaker 4: lake and I start chatting with him and I'm like, George,
Speaker 4: how old are you? Anyway, says Brian, I'll be ninety
Speaker 4: four next week, and I'm like, oh, man, I should
Speaker 4: look so good when I'm ninety four. So we go
Speaker 4: inside the house and he and his daughter sit there
Speaker 4: and we chat for a couple hours, and he's just delightful.
Speaker 4: He still remembered a fair amount of things. He was
Speaker 4: pretty sharp, some things you know, that were hard for
Speaker 4: him to remember. Granted it was eighty five years since
Speaker 4: the kidnapping. But I was asking him things like, you know,
Speaker 4: I was asking him like shorts, I mean, did you
Speaker 4: have any really bad you know, PTSD after this? Did
Speaker 4: you have stress or nightmares? He's like, Nope, none at all, really, nope,
Speaker 4: none at all. Okay, did when you were after you
Speaker 4: were returned, did your parents just bring clamps down on
Speaker 4: you and drive you everywhere and just hover over you. Nope,
Speaker 4: not at all. They wanted me to get back to
Speaker 4: normal life as quickly as possible. They let me walk
Speaker 4: to school again. I'm like, you got to be kidding me.
Speaker 4: So that's the kind of stuff we just chatted about,
Speaker 4: you know, I asked him, I said, now, when you're
Speaker 4: in college, this has got to be the best pickup
Speaker 4: line in history. You gotta talk to girls saying, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm George Warehouser. You probably heard of me. I got
Speaker 4: kidnapped once and he said, nope, nope, never did it once.
Speaker 4: Like this is nuts. I can't believe this. But which
Speaker 4: then takes us. Boy, I'm wondering if I should give
Speaker 4: away the this ending. It's such a remarkable ending, it's
Speaker 4: such an uplifting ending. But I'm I'm wondering. I'm wondering
Speaker 4: aloud now if I should give it away a play
Speaker 4: or not. But it's such a it's such a great story.
Speaker 4: But I guess my my thinking on it is, you know,
Speaker 4: when I want to go see the movie Titanic, I
Speaker 4: knew that the that was going to sink, but I
Speaker 4: still enjoyed the movie anyway.
Speaker 5: Absolutely absolutely should should I give away this great ending
Speaker 5: or not? Well, Brian, you know the thing is to
Speaker 5: back it up, to give it a little bit more
Speaker 5: context to this, to this end incredible ending. Is that
Speaker 5: when Harmon was sentenced, you write that he wrote letters
Speaker 5: to George, So tell us about what he wrote to George,
Speaker 5: what sentiment he expressed in those letters to George, and
Speaker 5: then what happened when Harmon was released from prison?
Speaker 4: So yeah, during the years that Harmon he would write letters,
Speaker 4: very apologetic letters to George. For years he was just
Speaker 4: you know, I'm so sorry about what happened, and you know,
Speaker 4: I really never meant you any harm et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: So he did this numerous times while he was in prison.
Speaker 4: So then twenty five years after the kidnapping, George, by
Speaker 4: this time is, you know, thirty three years old, thirty
Speaker 4: four years old, and he's just a couple of years
Speaker 4: short of becoming the president and CEO of this massive corporation.
Speaker 4: And he gets a phone call and he answers the
Speaker 4: phone and it's Harmon Whaley. He says, Hi, George, this
Speaker 4: is Harmon Whaley. I just got out of prison. I
Speaker 4: could sure use a job. And George hired him. George
Speaker 4: hired his kidnapper.
Speaker 5: Straordinary, It's unbelievable.
Speaker 4: And I said, George, wait, wait, you hired your kidnapper.
Speaker 4: He says, yeah. I think my dad would have thought
Speaker 4: it was nuts. And I went, yeah, why would you
Speaker 4: do that? And he said, well, when I was kidnapped
Speaker 4: and he was looking after me, he was a reasonable man,
Speaker 4: and it had been a long time, and he struck
Speaker 4: me still as a reasonable man, and I simply thought
Speaker 4: he would appreciate it, and I was it. That was
Speaker 4: his reasoning.
Speaker 5: Extraordinary. He also said to you. You asked him his age,
Speaker 5: and he said almost ninety four. And he said and
Speaker 5: he said listen, yes, he said, I'm ninety four. You
Speaker 5: better write fast, because he was talking about your boy.
Speaker 5: You better write fast.
Speaker 4: That's exactly what he said. He said, Brian, how long
Speaker 4: is it going to take you to write this book?
Speaker 4: And I said, I've had to write it and find
Speaker 4: an agent and find a publisher and go to the
Speaker 4: whole rigam role. I said probably two years. And he said, Brian,
Speaker 4: I'm almost ninety four, right fast.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I imagine George is still with us today.
Speaker 4: He is, he is, he's ninety six years old. He's
Speaker 4: doing okay. He's got dementia and the fan, but he's
Speaker 4: still he's still hanging around. He's had a very good
Speaker 4: life and the family is obviously very protective of him
Speaker 4: and still keep a very low profile whenever they can.
Speaker 5: Yes, And it's incredible in your book too, when you
Speaker 5: get George goes to trial and testifies at that trial,
Speaker 5: it's again extraordinary exchanges at this trial.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I always had the pleasure to go through the
Speaker 4: court transcripts, and so you know, in the book there
Speaker 4: are times where there are conversations that I didn't know
Speaker 4: exactly what was being said, but I simply extrapolated based
Speaker 4: on my research and what I knew of the characters
Speaker 4: and what they would talk about and what they would say.
Speaker 4: But in the courtroom, everything in the book, any words,
Speaker 4: any conversations in the courtroom are taken verbatim. Everything you
Speaker 4: see on the printed page is exactly what was said
Speaker 4: in the courtroom.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, it's an extraordinary story and a remarkable book
Speaker 5: that you've written. Deep in the Woods the nineteen thirty
Speaker 5: five kidnapping of nine year old George Warehouser, heir to
Speaker 5: America's mightiest timber dynasty. For those people that might want
Speaker 5: to check out more about this book, do you have
Speaker 5: a Facebook page or website to tell us more about this?
Speaker 4: Well, yeah you can. I mean I've got a I've
Speaker 4: got a website, Brian R. Johnston.
Speaker 5: But you know, but.
Speaker 4: You can, honestly, you can just you know, go to
Speaker 4: Barnes and Noble, got an Amazon, go to any bookstore
Speaker 4: and you'll be able to find it. You can order it,
Speaker 4: you know, pretty much anywhere at this point in time.
Speaker 4: But that's that's your best place to find information that
Speaker 4: you can just type in Deep in the Woods Georgia
Speaker 4: Warehouser and something will come up about it.
Speaker 5: And what's what's the release date for this, Brian?
Speaker 4: It just came out this earlier this week, as a
Speaker 4: matter of fact, actually last week, last Tuesday. It was
Speaker 4: just last Tuesday, so it was the fourteenth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, here we go.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much Brian Johnston for coming on
Speaker 5: and talking about Deep in the Woods nineteen thirty five
Speaker 5: kidnapping of nine year old George Warehouser, hair to America's
Speaker 5: mightiest timber dynasty. It's been an absolute pleasure of Brian.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. You have a great evening.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it very much. Good night,