The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  The statement was prepared by the Coors publicist at the suggestion of the FBI, but the FBI’s only suspect, Walter Osborne, didn’t read it. He was more than 1,500 miles away.

  * * *

  Stomping snow from his feet, Corbett entered a boardinghouse at 47 Keele Street in Toronto’s west downtown area. He walked upstairs to the second floor and unlocked the door to his room. Once inside, Corbett kept on his coat, gloves, and hat. It was cold, very cold. Though water and electricity were provided as part of his rent, he’d chosen not to connect the gas service. He had the money. He’d recently gotten a decent-paying job as a lab technician on Queens Quay West at the Inner Harbour, a trade he’d learned in prison and in which he’d gained a high level of skill. Yet the gas company required background information and references. He’d given the name Walter Osborne and a phony address and fictitious references to employers, but he couldn’t give a phony address to the gas company. So he lived without gas heat in a city where subzero temperatures in February were common. His only means of warmth were a coat and an electric space heater he kept next to his chair and bed.

  He also no longer owned a television set or an automobile. He kept up with the news with a small transistor radio, used newspapers from a café down the block, and a television sitting behind a local bar counter. Though he’d hocked most of his belongings, he still possessed his Llama 9 mm pistol, which he always kept near.

  But with March approaching, Corbett believed things were looking up. Toronto was nice and quiet. It had recently completed a subway, allowing him to move around the city without an automobile. He’d located a clean room, a good job, and a metropolitan area of almost two million people among whom he could vanish. When he wasn’t working, he took hikes, stopping in parks to read the comics in the local newspaper, laughing at their silliness. He boated on Lake Ontario, took in a hockey game, and even went target shooting on warmer days, as he’d done around Denver. With spring around the corner, he was looking forward to fishing and more target shooting and minor-league baseball. He had no family, no friends, and no female or male companions, but he didn’t mind so much. He’d lived in solitude most of his adult life and preferred it that way.

  “No comment,” one agent told a reporter who’d asked the FBI about its suspect’s lifestyle while running from the law. “I will say it is not a pleasant feeling for a criminal to know that he is the object of a widespread and intensive search. Constant fear of recognition and a necessity for keeping on the move are simply not good for the nerves.”

  Corbett’s nerves were just fine. So confident and comfortable was he that he had not changed his alias of Walter Osborne or his appearance. He’d moved into the boardinghouse on February 21, just days after Ad Coors’s disappearance, and signed the lease under the name Walter Osborne. He’d evaded the FBI and the state and local police without really trying that much. And even if incarcerated, he’d busted out of prison once before, and no one had caught up with him for five years.

  Perhaps Corbett recalled his escape from Chino while holed up in Toronto. Perhaps it gave him solace when his confidence began to ebb, if it ever did. For on August 1, 1955, after lights out at Chino, Corbett tucked his California prison-issue shoes under one arm and released the latch from the steel door that led into the prison laundry. Inside, he tossed dirty linen from a cart and uncovered a pressed shirt and slacks and polished dress shoes. He changed and stuffed his prison garb deep in the cart’s bottom.

  Corbett also may have remembered how he slid through the open ground-floor window with a small bag of belongings. How he crouched in the darkness beside building 7, cloaked from the watchful light cast on the prison yard, and then advanced slowly along the wall that guided him past the prison dairy, mindful to stay clear of the lights.

  At the north fence, he unrolled a soiled rug from the laundry and tossed it over strands of barbed wire along the top of a chain-link fence. Chino had no twisted razor wire, no sentry towers manned with guns, no uniformed men gripping billy clubs. Guards were called supervisors, and the warden was the superintendent, in the considerate nomenclature of the state’s progressive correctional system. Chino was a minimum-security prison—part of California’s recent legislative effort of “moral rehabilitation and restoration to good citizenship.”

  Corbett may have recalled how he climbed the fence and stretched his torso across the rug and how he pulled himself over the fenced perimeter and sprinted into the shadows of thick brush, taking care not to snap branches that might later reveal the path of his departure. Beyond the glow of the prison lights, he reached an open pasture and scampered toward the hills. Dangers lay ahead, like deep ravines, thorns that could rip off a sleeve, and coyotes and mountain lions. Though the night was quiet, Corbett looked back one final time for searchlights or other signs his escape had been detected.

  But Chino was still dark, and the dark was still.

  Ontario, California, lay seven miles away. Growing tired of managing the rocks and furrows, Corbett decided to take his chances on the paved road. He removed his prison shoes and tossed them in a ditch, replacing them with the polished dress shoes that had been dangling around his neck.

  He made his way toward the dimly lit town, continually turning to glance behind him. Once in Ontario, he located the bus station. It was nearing midnight when he stepped inside and canvassed the handful of patrons. No law enforcement. The coast was clear. He slipped into the men’s bathroom, brushed dust and burrs stuck to his clothing, washed his hands and face, wiped his eyeglasses, and combed his brilliantined hair.

  * * *

  “Yeah, that’s him,” a ticket agent told a San Bernardino County deputy, pointing at a photograph of Corbett. “Came in last night. No baggage. Let me see … here it is. Says he caught the 12:20 to Los Angeles.”

  The ticket master was right. By one o’clock, Corbett was sitting near the rear of a darkened bus. Prison officials would be surprised when the sun came up.

  * * *

  “Corbett! Joe Corbett!” broke the morning stillness. A supervisor shouted the name again when Prisoner A-17293 failed to acknowledge his presence. He wasn’t in the infirmary. A quick search of his cell revealed that some of his personal items were gone. When guards went to the laundry to see if he was already at work, a screen missing from an open window told them he’d escaped. A prison-wide alarm rang out. Supervisors mounted horses to scour the vast 2,600 acres surrounding the prison. Superintendent Kenyon J. Scudder telephoned the state police, sheriffs, and police chiefs at nearby Pomona, Ontario, Diamond Bar, and Corona. Others telephoned bus and train stations and taxicab companies. Radio, television, and newspaper offices were alerted, followed by wires of the fugitive’s photo and description:

  White male; 26 years of age; 6' 2,'' 170 pounds; medium build; brown hair; hazel eyes; fair complexion; wears brown horn-rimmed eyeglasses; mole under chin; line scar on right side of abdomen; wears heavy gold ring with plain round red stone; approach with caution.

  Corbett’s scheme had worked. He’d originally been sent to San Quentin, where a breakout was impossible. He knew a transfer to the minimum-security prison at Chino was his only way to escape.

  The fugitive’s sixty-year-old father was in disbelief, later telling a reporter, “My wife and I visited him Sunday. He told me he had hopes he would be paroled shortly and would return to Seattle and go back to school and lead a normal life. The next day, when I got home, I got a call from the warden at Chino that Joe had walked away. We haven’t heard from him since.”

  Reaching Los Angeles, Corbett easily evaporated among five million residents. He sought shelter for a few weeks with the Salvation Army, an “army” of Christian faithful who wished to help the wicked and destitute find repentance and inspiration. Corbett quickly wore out his welcome. He located a hotel in a run-down section of the city that rented by the hour, or for those of more ambitious intentions, the week. Days later, Corbett moved into a rooming house using a fictitious name. Although he needed mo
ney, he wasn’t about to contact anyone, particularly his father, who would attempt to convince his fugitive son to capitulate and, when he didn’t, might notify authorities where they could locate him.

  Holing up in a flophouse, he found work at a factory storehouse, loading and unloading wooden crates. Not long afterward, he moved on and found office work at Adams Rite Manufacturing Company.

  Soon Corbett left Los Angeles and moved into a slightly more respectable boardinghouse in Glendale and worked as a clerk in a hardware company, mailing invoices and filing records. He did his job quietly, refusing to mingle with coworkers until one day he vanished without a word.

  “A fellow con told me about Colorado,” Corbett would tell a reporter many years later. “So when I escaped, I thought, ‘Heck, I’ll go to Denver.’”

  His inmate record card chronicled a new entry: 8-1-1955 ESCAPED. Of 250 escapees from Chino, all but ten had been apprehended, and after five years, Corbett was still one of those ten. If discovered in Toronto, he wouldn’t be returned to Chino. He’d be sent to a California maximum-security prison like San Quentin or Folsom with no parole in sight … or he’d be imprisoned in Colorado for what he did at Turkey Creek, or worse, sent to the gas chamber if Ad was dead.

  Perhaps Corbett didn’t want to remember prison, after all. If caught, there’d be no escape for him a second time.

  * * *

  “This meeting of the board of directors of Adolph Coors Company is hereby called to order,” announced Mr. Coors. He hadn’t spoken those words in years. They’d been reserved for his eldest son and chairman, whose chair now stood empty.

  Mr. Coors sat at the head of a large table inside the boardroom decorated plainly with Coors memorabilia. The lavish décor of mahogany-paneled walls and gilded carvings of many corporate boardrooms wasn’t the Coors style. Like the brothers’ shared office, the walls were lined with gray tiles made at Coors Porcelain, dotted with framed scenes of mountains and beer bottles and cans.

  The elder Coors had first sat as chairman of the board in 1929 after his father jumped to his death from a hotel window. He last sat there in 1952, when he gave up the chairmanship to his eldest son and namesake, Adolph Herman Joseph Coors III. After Ad’s retirement one day, Mr. Coors expected Spike to take over as chairman, and then Spike’s future son, Adolph Herman Joseph Coors V, would do the same. But with each passing day in March 1960, it seemed to the old man that the Coors’ family tradition might at last be broken.

  After a few words about his son Ad, akin to a eulogy, Mr. Coors proceeded to the business at hand. “The president has the floor,” Mr. Coors directed in accord with parliamentary procedure. “Bill?”

  Bill discussed brewery business that included upcoming quarterly revenues, gas line extensions, and the soaring aluminum can business. He passed the floor back and forth to the treasurer and secretary, not once mentioning his missing brother other than to talk about those who’d assumed some of Ad’s duties.

  Though Bill was president of the company and was older than both Ad and Mr. Coors had been when they took over as chairman of the board, Bill would not be chairman for now. Mr. Coors reclaimed the chairmanship to hold Ad’s seat for as long as it took.

  As board members filed from the room after the meeting, Mr. Coors stopped and nodded for Bill and Joe to follow him. They walked into Mr. Coors’s office, where he sat in the only chair. His sons stood.

  “Our distributors are grumbling. Say the costs of cooling their warehouses and buying refrigerated trucks are hurting their bottom lines. And the retailers are mad about having to keep our beer in drink boxes. You sure about this cold filtering, Bill?”

  “To hell with the distributors,” Bill said. “Last I saw, they were making money hand over fist.”

  Mary felt that beer wasn’t the only thing cold at the brewery. It bothered her that Ad’s father and brothers continued working every day as if nothing had happened. She felt the plant should have shut down, at least for one day. They seemed more concerned with making sure Ad’s responsibilities were covered than with the fact that Ad was still missing. But that wasn’t true. That was simply the Coors way. Emotions took a back seat to duty.

  Still, Mary could sense a wall rising, cutting her children off from the company and the rest of the Coors family. While Bill and Joe went to work and came home and talked to their wives, she had become isolated. No one talked with her about the Coors business or her children’s future roles. She and the kids were secluded on their big ranch, miles and minds away from the rest of the family.

  To make matters worse, Mary’s brother, Jim, returned to his law practice in New York after comforting her for two weeks, missing Mary’s birthday on the twenty-eighth of February, which passed almost without notice. Though separated by distance, Jim followed up with the FBI and sheriff’s office regularly and maintained daily contact with Mary.

  She voiced her concern with her brother. “If Ad doesn’t come back, I’m afraid Spike and Jim will lose their rightful places at the brewery. Spike is fourteen, and Jim is only ten years old. By the time they’re out of college or graduate school, somebody else will be running the company, like one of Joe’s sons.”

  Bill’s only son had died at fourteen months from choking on a chicken bone. He and Geraldine had three daughters, Geraldine (Missy), Margaret, and May Louise, but a woman running Coors was out of the question. (Bill would later have a son with his second wife, Phyllis Mahaffey, his former secretary.) Joe hit the jackpot in the male successor department with no daughters and five sons. Joe Jr. was already eighteen years old.

  “You can’t worry about that now,” Jim said. “They’ll have a place in the company. After all, Spike’s name is Adolph Herman Joseph Coors IV.”

  But Mary was worried. She knew Mr. Coors and his dislike for her. If Ad didn’t come back, her children might no longer have a birthright.

  * * *

  An agent in a white starched shirt and black tie strained his neck peering into a large magnifying glass affixed to a long rod. Through the lens, each of the fingerprints on file had their own stories to tell. He and other agents in the latent fingerprint section of the FBI Laboratory in Washington had been at this case for weeks. But this time, the agent withdrew a smaller lens and examined the prints again. He studied the subject print and then the comparison print. Unlike thousands of others checked previously, these two prints matched.

  He stood and hurried down the hallway carrying two sheets of paper into the office of his supervisor.

  “I got a match in the COORNAP case,” said Agent Sebastian Latona.

  Minutes later in Denver, another young agent hurried down another hallway’s polished floor.

  “Come in,” said Special Agent Werner, hearing a knock.

  “Washington says they have a match in the COORNAP case, sir,” said the young agent. He handed the facsimiles to Werner, dressed in his oft-worn dark blue suit.

  Werner read the memorandum dated March 5, setting out the lab’s analysis of the prints. Opening a desk drawer, he removed a small lens from a leather case and placed it atop an opaque page. He scanned the one print and then the other, paying particular attention to the matching points delineated by arrows from the FBI Lab. He raised his head and smiled.

  “He’s the man, isn’t he, sir?” the young agent said and grinned back.

  The suspect revealed by the print comparison made sense now. Werner reached across his desk, opened a small wooden box, and removed a cigar. He pulled out an old lighter from the middle drawer of his desk and lit the cigar, puffing with satisfaction.

  “This son of a bitch may’ve got the jump on us, but it’s a long race, and like every two-bit criminal who thinks he’s got it all figured out, he never will get away, and you know why that is, Agent?”

  The young agent hesitated and then answered, “The FBI, sir?”

  “You’re damn right the FBI. Now get me the district attorney’s office on the line, and let’s catch this no-good son of a bitch.”
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  What the agent in the FBI Lab had discovered was that the print on an application for a Colorado driver’s license and another print affixed to a bucket outside a Denver apartment belonged to Walter Osborne, the man in the apartment who’d left Denver the morning after Ad Coors’s disappearance and whose yellow Mercury was observed burning in Atlantic City. The problem was Walter Osborne seemed to have no family, no past. He was nothing more than a vapor, a mist hanging above Denver that drifted away the morning after Ad Coors’s disappearance.

  This lab report, though, cleared the mist and shone light on his true history. That was the reason the Washington agent hurried the prints to his supervisor. Not only did the prints belong to Walter Osborne, a man with no criminal record and little history, they also matched the alias’s owner—Joseph R. Corbett Jr., convicted murderer and California state prison fugitive A-17293.

  CHAPTER 13

  Joe Corbett was now the strongest suspect, but the FBI believed he might have a confederate. After all, the ransom note did say “kidnapers” (the common spelling in 1960), and Corbett had sometimes been seen with another man in his car.

  Arthur C. Brynaert was a twenty-five-year-old, five-foot-eight, 145-pound, brown-haired man with a shady past. Though young, he’d already amassed an arrest record that included felony warrants for passing bad checks and vagrancy. He’d also deserted his wife and three children just a year earlier and was heavily in debt to several loan companies. But that didn’t interest the FBI.

  The down-on-his-luck Brynaert had ascended to the top of the FBI’s suspect list principally because he’d worked with Corbett each night at Benjamin Moore & Co. In fact, they had been the only two in the entire plant during the night shift. Not only had they been coworkers, they had been drinking buddies, frequently going out after work. But the most interesting fact (among all facts concerning Brynaert set out in the FBI’s investigation report) was that on February 16, 1960, one week after Ad Coors’s disappearance, Brynaert quit his job at Benjamin Moore and went into hiding for three days. Then Brynaert and his new wife and baby caught a 2:45 a.m. Greyhound bus to Omaha, Nebraska. The FBI understandably viewed his movements as suspicious. His car, a 1946 Chevrolet, resembling a Dodge that had been spotted near Ad Coors’s house and Turkey Creek Bridge, had also disappeared.