The Death of an Heir

by Philip Jett

  The FBI caught up with Brynaert and his new family in Omaha on March 17. Brynaert was at work at the Peter Pan Market when agents interviewed his wife, Frances, at their residence in the Chief Hotel.

  “What kind of car does your husband drive?”

  “He did drive a 1946 four-door Chevrolet that he bought back in January.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “I don’t know. Art said it blew up and wouldn’t run.”

  “When was the last time you saw it?”

  “Let me think back. It would have been on Monday, the fifteenth of February, the day after Valentine’s. He called me the next day and told me it’d blown up on ’im.”

  “Would your husband have loaned it to anyone?”

  “I don’t know if he did, but he would, I think, if somebody needed it.”

  “Did you notice anything unusual about the car the last few times you saw it, like was it muddy, did it have stains on the seats, an unusual odor, anything?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Can you account for your husband’s whereabouts after the fifteenth?”

  “No, ’cause he was hiding out from collectors, especially the Liberty Loan Company that was looking for him. They came by once, so he left home.”

  Brynaert’s wife went on to explain how her husband frequently gambled his Benjamin Moore paycheck away, which caused them to fall behind in their payments to various finance companies. He’d also written two bad checks in February and was behind on the rent. They’d skipped out on their Denver landlord in the middle of the night when they absconded to Omaha.

  “Did your husband ever mention Adolph Coors III or anything about the Coorses?”

  “Just that he thought the Coors man probably had run off with a woman or something like that.”

  The FBI also interviewed Brynaert that March and again in April. He didn’t try to run and was cooperative. His car checked out to be just as his wife had described—no longer running. Most exonerating was that Brynaert was given a lie detector test and passed. So despite the suspicious circumstances, he was no longer considered a suspect but a witness, someone who could tell them all he knew about Corbett and his whereabouts. Brynaert provided plenty of information about Corbett’s habits, his guns, and his talk of pulling a big job. But unfortunately for the FBI, Brynaert had no idea where Corbett might be.

  * * *

  Agents stood around the burned hulk of the yellow ’51 Mercury of Walter Osborne—or more correctly, Joe Corbett Jr.—at a garage in Atlantic City as soil, rock, and paint samples were scraped from the undercarriage and fenders.

  “Careful! Make sure it goes in the bags!” shouted FBI Agent Emanuel Johnson of the Newark field office. “Check under the bumpers, too!”

  Samples were coded and placed in marked cardboard boxes for shipment to the FBI Laboratory in Washington, D.C.

  In Colorado, Agent Doug Williams and other agents scoured the countryside taking what they called “alibi soil samples.” Areas around Denver, Turkey Creek Bridge, Pikes Peak, and the Dakota Hogback near Ad’s house in Morrison were visited, and scoops of soil were collected and placed in marked containers. Another example of the thoroughness of the FBI. A total of 457 samples were collected, plus several others from Atlantic City, along with a cross section of earth and debris attached to the undercarriage of the burned car, and were delivered to the FBI Laboratory. The lab’s initial response: “Please don’t send us any more samples.”

  Soil scientist Richard W. Flach was the chief forensic geologist for the FBI. Flach had assisted establishing the forensic geology unit within the FBI Laboratory years earlier.

  The chemistry and geology sections of the FBI Lab began their tedious work. Color, texture, and mineral deposits were analyzed with microscopes, chemicals, and other modern processes, such as spectrographic analysis, identifying four distinct layers beneath the charred yellow Mercury. The outermost layer consisted of sands, silts, paper fibers, cinders, glass wools, and black slags that generally were rounded and marine, exhibiting the characteristics of that located around Atlantic City. The next layer was embedded with pink feldspar, sharp and fresh, peak granite, the light-gray quartzose sands of the Dakota Hogback and the varicolored sandstones, limes, and clays of the lower and upper levels of Pikes Peak, where Ad possibly had been taken. The next layer contained the usual mineral characteristics indigenous to Morrison and the Coors ranch. The innermost layer was unremarkable, just deposits from the general Rocky Mountain area. Interesting, however, was a sprinkling of yellow paint and asphalt between the Pikes Peak and Atlantic City layers. The yellow paint matched that used by the Colorado Highway Department. The undisturbed particles of asphalt suggested a long highway drive. Little had Corbett known he’d been writing his itinerary on his car’s undercarriage and the FBI geologist in Washington, D.C., was its reader. That chapter must not have been in Corbett’s copy of The FBI Story.

  * * *

  Ten days later, the FBI placed Corbett on its Ten Most Wanted List distributed nationwide and in bordering Mexico and Canada. He was the 127th criminal to make the list. The Ten Most Wanted List changed the game for any criminal on the run, including Corbett, who was designated as FBI No. 605 861 A. His aliases were listed as Walter Osborne, William Chiffins, William Osborn, Charles Osborn, James Barron, and W. William Osborne. Aliases not listed included Michael Dean Brent, Ian Bolme, Michael MacLean, Ian N. McIntosh, and Thomas C. Wainwright.

  When asked by reporters, who’d noticed the recent interest, if Corbett was a suspect in Ad Coors’s kidnapping, FBI agents answered, “No comment.”

  The official crime listed was “unlawful interstate flight to avoid confinement after conviction for murder,” referring to his escape from Chino that California law enforcement had left unsolved nearly five years earlier. The unofficial “crime” not listed was being the only suspect in the Coors kidnapping.

  The first batches of 1.5 million “Wanted by FBI” flyers were immediately posted by law enforcement in post offices, train and bus stations, at YMCAs and Salvation Army mission homes, and in business establishments around the country that Corbett might visit looking for a job or to pawn property.

  J. Edgar Hoover also made a statement:

  Mankind knows no crime as base and vicious as kidnapping. It is an offense all the more savage because it pits brute force against the innocent, the unsuspecting, the helpless.…

  The [Ten Most Wanted] program continues to represent an extremely effective weapon of attack against the criminal element. Since the institution of the program in 1950, a total of 114 criminal fugitives have been apprehended, forty-five as a direct result of information provided by alert citizens who recognize the fugitive from publicity concerning them.…

  Joseph R. Corbett Jr. is now on that list. He is the most wanted man since John Dillinger. Escape is impossible. He will be apprehended.

  After the list’s release, people began spotting Corbett everywhere: Denver, Las Vegas, Reno, Hot Springs, Wichita, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, Texas, California, Mexico, and even Australia. The ubiquitous Corbett was in none of those places. He was discreetly living and working in Toronto.

  The average criminal thinks he can outsmart the FBI, but he is apprehended 178 days after hitting the Ten Most Wanted List, according to Hoover. Corbett had one day behind him. How many would he go?

  “I thought it strange that these teams of FBI agents started coming around all of a sudden since it has been five years since he fled prison in California,” Joe Corbett’s father told a Rocky Mountain News reporter just after the FBI issued its Ten Most Wanted List. “Then the other day the Coors case came up and I knew what it was all about. We haven’t heard from him since the day before his escape from Chino.… I don’t know why he took Walt’s name,” Corbett’s father said of Corbett taking the name of his stepbrother, Walter Osborne Corbett. “Walt is an engineer and he’s ready to leave for Brazil to take a good job, and I hope to God this doesn’t hurt him any.”


  Unlike Joe Corbett Sr., the FBI simply provided a curt “No comment.” Sheriff Wermuth and his undersheriff, Lew Hawley, who’d just called up another search in the surrounding mountains for the missing Ad Coors, also provided no comment, not because the sheriff was uncharacteristically withholding information from the press but because he still knew nothing. The FBI and the Coors family had cut him off long ago. “It’s all news to us,” said Hawley when asked about Joe Corbett Jr. being the principal suspect in the Coors kidnapping case. “But it’s obvious the FBI figures it has something hot.”

  Hawley was correct. Though the FBI wouldn’t say, Corbett was more than a hot suspect. He was the bureau’s only real suspect. His photo had been shown to everyone in the Coors family, but none recognized him. A painstaking search of personnel records at all Coors facilities failed to indicate Corbett, Osborne, or any of his other aliases had been employed. Local 366 membership records were scoured. Nothing. One person, however, did recall seeing Corbett at a Coors facility: the Coors Rifle Range in Golden.

  The following morning, Wednesday, March 30, almost eight weeks after Ad’s disappearance, the FBI finally released word that Corbett was sought in connection with the kidnapping of Ad Coors. Goldenites woke to newspaper headlines that read: ESCAPED KILLER SOUGHT AS TOP COORS SUSPECT; FBI SEEKING FUGITIVE IN COORS CASE; SUSPECT IS UNKNOWN TO COORS FAMILY. Photos of Corbett accompanied the articles. Now citizens had a face. Before, FBI agents had conceded Corbett would be difficult to spot. “He looks like a college professor, speaks like a cultured, educated man, and no one meeting him would associate him with a criminal background,” one FBI agent said. It didn’t matter now. His photo would be everywhere.

  Folks in Golden were relieved to learn the FBI was interested in an escaped convict from California who wasn’t a union man or one of them. People filing into the post office could see the FBI Ten Most Wanted poster. Another was posted in the bus station and one in the train depot. They’d seen the three photos of his face and his fingerprints published in the newspapers, but seeing it posted in public, printed by the US government printing office, made it more ominous.

  Mary had seen the kidnapper’s face for weeks in her dreams and during the quiet of the day. The face was always changing and a bit fuzzy. Like a vapor drifting in the darkness, it would form the shape of a man’s face she didn’t recognize. Other times, it would shine in the sunlight distinctly, always dimming before drawing near. It was only Ad’s face she saw clearly in her nightmares—his eyes, his hair, the strain of a struggle, and she heard his words as he lay in a pool of blood: “I love you, Mary. Tell the kids I love them. Goodbye, sweetheart.”

  Those were only Mary’s dreams and imagination, but holding the newspaper on March 30, she saw the actual face of the suspected kidnapper. It wasn’t what she’d expected. His face was plain, common, nonthreatening. She’d expected more. A rough-looking character, with maybe a beard and a scar and angry eyes. That she could understand. This man had attended college, was a Fulbright Scholar, the paper said, and had been a premed student at Berkeley. How could an intelligent, educated man commit such a brazen, horrific crime? He wasn’t even from Colorado, but Seattle. None of it made sense to her.

  Beneath the headlines and photographs, local newspapers were flush with articles about the release of the black-and-white Most Wanted poster.

  A 31-year-old murderer is being sought for the kidnapping of Adolph (Ad) Coors III, reported the Rocky Mountain News.… The FBI said Corbett fled Denver on Feb. 10—the day after the millionaire Golden brewery firm head disappeared en route to work.… An intensive search of the area by sheriff’s officials and volunteers failed to disclose any trace of the missing man.… Corbett’s yellow Mercury sedan which answers the description of a car seen near the home before Ad Coors’ disappearance was located Feb. 17 by the FBI near Atlantic City, NJ … burned and gutted.

  Despite all the interviews, quoted statements, maps, photos, and prognostications, the information glaringly absent from the sweeping news coverage was what citizens wished to know most: Where was Ad Coors and his kidnapper?

  CHAPTER 14

  With April came an early spring, and life returned to the Colorado mountains and river valleys. Buds bloomed and grass in the foothills began to green. April also delivered Cecily’s seventeenth birthday without her wish being granted. The month of May brought even warmer temperatures, and animals could be seen in the warmth and sunshine. With June came tourists and July brought a celebration of Independence Day (and a new US flag with fifty stars).

  Things in Golden and even at the Coors plant had returned to normal. Everyone had their own lives to lead, and the subject of Ad’s disappearance came up sparingly. But none of those passing months brought any information about the whereabouts of Ad Coors or his suspected kidnapper. All believed Ad to be dead, except possibly Mary, whose hopes now seemed more fantasy than genuine. Still, until authorities presented her with physical evidence that Ad was dead, she could cling to the hope that he might return, no matter how unlikely that possibility.

  The FBI didn’t sit still during the change of seasons. All over the Denver area, agents continued searching for clues. They interviewed landlords, gas station attendants, store clerks, doctors, nurses, dentists, convicts, coworkers, and the library where Corbett checked out textbooks on chemistry, physics, and other technical subjects. They also searched all along the Upper East Coast.

  The world-renowned law enforcement agency had collected, analyzed, and cataloged all forms of evidence during their investigation. Yet with August approaching, there were still loose ends to be tied.

  A mysterious fingerprint lifted by the FBI from inside Ad’s Travelall didn’t match Corbett’s. That troubled the FBI. It troubled the district attorney more. The FBI fingerprinted everyone who might have had contact with the Travelall, including the milkman who’d moved the vehicle, law enforcement, family, friends, and employees who had access to Ad’s car, and of course, compared it to Corbett’s. But none matched. That would have been the strongest evidence connecting Corbett to Ad and to Turkey Creek Bridge on the day of the disappearance. Without it, the FBI had to build a circumstantial case for the district attorney, whose case against Corbett would have to work around the unexplained fingerprint inside the Travelall. Prosecutors knew the defense attorneys would bring up that fingerprint repeatedly as belonging to the “real” killer.

  Yet one link might be established. “That typewriter has to be found,” said Special Agent Werner during a morning briefing of his Denver field agents. “It’s the key to the case. Find that typewriter; it will match up with the ransom note, and that’s direct evidence linking Corbett to the kidnapping.”

  Almost immediately, the FBI had a lead. Agents learned Joe Corbett purchased a Royalite typewriter from May-D&F department store in October 1959. Discovering that fact required painstaking work. The FBI had contacted the Royal McBee Corporation and learned the Royalite portable was sold in Denver at only two locations: May-D&F and Denver Dry Goods Company. Agents requested store managers to sift through hundreds of sales slips at both stores to locate buyers of Royalite portable typewriters.

  Armed with the list of serial numbers, the FBI set out to visit the homes of the Royalite purchasers.

  “Hello. We are searching for a Royalite portable typewriter purchased in Denver since February 1959. Do you have such a typewriter?”

  The agent knew very well the homeowners had purchased the typewriter. He had a copy of the receipt in his suit pocket. He asked only to hear their response. The married couple took the agent into their teenage son’s bedroom, where the typewriter sat on a night table. The agent lifted the typewriter and read the serial number beneath the carriage. He checked off the serial number from his list, made a sample of its typeface, and led the couple into the kitchen.

  “I would like you to look at photographs and tell me if you recognize any of these individuals.” The agent laid four photos side by side on the kitchen
table like tarot cards. One was Corbett’s driver’s license photo. The husband and wife sat and stared at the photographs. “No, we have never seen any of these men.”

  The agent picked up the photos, thanked the couple, and departed, on his way to the next address on the list, where he conducted the same inquiry without success. Eventually, he had one serial number remaining: RL 3663901. The Royalite purchased with cash and carried from the store. He already knew that was the one. The checking of the others had been mere routine procedure. Jerry Davis, a young clerk at the May-D&F department store, had already given the FBI what it needed.

  “I remember the sale well. It’s the only typewriter I’ve ever sold for cash,” said Davis. With an agent present, Davis examined the store’s 1959 typewriter customers’ book and on page 60 identified his own penciled handwriting showing he’d sold a Royalite portable typewriter on October 8, 1959, serial number 3663901 for $66.55 cash-and-carry, to William Chiffins, 1735 Pennsylvania Street, Denver, Colorado.

  “Are you sure that’s the correct name?” asked the agent.

  “Yes. I remember I asked him to spell it.”

  “Can you describe the man who bought the typewriter?”

  “Yes … he was about thirty-five, tall, over six feet, maybe 160 pounds. He wore glasses. They were horn-rimmed. I remember he tried out the display machine before he bought one.”