The Year of Fear

by Joe Urschel

  “Overhead, overhead,” Bates replied. “Still leaves $188,500 to cut two ways, right?”

  “I’ll take care of Boss from my end and Boss can take care of Armon,” said Kelly.

  “Then I know what Armon will get,” quipped Kathryn. “The experience!”

  The two men took $94,250 each and flipped a coin to see who got to keep the handsome leather Gladstone bag.

  Kathryn brought the levity back down to earth.

  “Who is going to take care of Urschel?”

  Kelly was incredulous. “What do you mean take care of him?”

  “This guy is like a time bomb,” she argued. “If he walks out of here he’ll squawk his head off!”

  “Yeah, I agree,” said Bates. “Let’s get it over with and hit the road.”

  “You must be out of your minds. Look, we just went into business. Let’s not louse ourselves up with a killing we don’t even need.” Kelly was adamant. “What can he possibly say? He hasn’t seen any more of our faces than those idiots back in Oklahoma City, and look at the miserable descriptions they gave. He could never lead anybody back here. He doesn’t even know what state he is in.

  “But buy yourself a murder rap against a guy with this sort of loot, and his family can hire the whole U.S. Marine Corps to come looking for us. The law will keep coming and coming and coming. They’ll never stop.”

  “If you haven’t got the guts, I’ll do it myself,” said Bates.

  “If this were the only job we had set up, I’d say fine,” said Kelly. “But don’t let’s forget those four sitting ducks we’ve got lined up on the pond in Oklahoma City. What about them? Now, what happens if we kill Urschel after his family has laid out the loot? How much do you think those families are going to pay off when they know what happened to Urschel? In order to operate, we’re going to have to let Urschel go,” he declared. “What the hell? It’s just good business.”

  “When the hell did you get so noble?” wondered Kathryn.

  Bates acquiesced. No reason to take any unnecessary chances. He wanted his cut and he wanted to get the hell out.

  They drove out to Armon’s shack and told Urschel it was time to get cleaned up. They were taking him home. They walked him to a bench in the corner and sat him down and told him they wanted him to shave, but to do so without looking around. If they thought he was trying to identify them, or the location, they’d have to kill him. They removed the tape and gauze from his face and red light streamed in through his still-closed eyelids, which he was having trouble opening.

  While he struggled, he began depositing fingerprints on everything within reach: the handle of the straightedge razor they wanted him to use, the water basin, the cracked hand mirror.

  He squinted through his tearing, cloudy eyes at the dirty mirror and tried to run the blade over his beard. He hadn’t shaved in nine days and he couldn’t see what he was doing. He’d end up with a face full of nicks and cuts. He asked if he could keep his whiskers. But they wouldn’t have it. They wanted him looking as inconspicuous as possible. After retaping his eyes closed, they gave him a clean, short-sleeved sport shirt and a straw hat that didn’t fit too well.

  Kelly poked him in the stomach with the barrel of a gun and twisted it maliciously. “Feel that?” he said. “That’s a sawed-off shotgun. Have you ever seen what one of these can do to a man’s face? If you give one bit of information to the cops, neither you, nor your wife, nor any of your kids will ever know when there may not be one of these waiting for you around the next corner or through the next door. And don’t imagine the cops can protect you twenty-four hours a day for the rest of your lives. We’ll get to you eventually. Each one of you.”

  They walked Urschel to the car (he silently counted the steps along the way) and loaded him in. Boss Shannon came by, shook his hand and said he hoped he wouldn’t have any more trouble.

  They put sunglasses over his taped eyes to conceal them and then drove circuitously for about eight hours. Toward the end of the journey, they crossed an old bridge, and the tires thumped along with a distinctive sound. Charley smiled inwardly with amused satisfaction. He knew exactly where they were. They were crossing the Canadian River on the old Purcell-Lexington bridge not far from one of his rural farms, which he used frequently for hunting trips with his buddies.

  When they stopped the car a short time later, he knew he could not be far from Norman, a short twenty miles from Oklahoma City. Kelly then explained the situation to him. He asked Charley if he thought he could get home on his own without revealing his identity to anyone along the way. If so, they would turn him loose untethered. If not, they would chain him to a tree and phone in his location to the cops in the morning.

  Urschel assured them he could find his way home without assistance.

  Kelly gave him back his watch, wallet and ten dollars for cab fare. Then he helped him out of the car, explaining one last time that if he revealed anything about where he’d been held, or what had happened there, or any details of his captivity whatsoever, he and his entire family would be killed.

  That, said Kelly, was a promise. “Wait until we leave to take off that blindfold, and don’t call anyone but the taxicab.”

  Once they were gone, Urschel gingerly peeled the adhesive tape off the raw, blistered skin around his eyelids and stood, covering them with his hands as he tried to adjust to the light streaming in.

  It was raining and he was exhausted from the ordeal and the eight-hour drive that had ended it, but he began marching off toward Norman in the direction his internal compass dictated on stiff legs and an empty stomach.

  When he reached the fringes of the university town, he went into a nearly deserted roadside barbecue, ordered a cup of coffee and asked the guy running the shack to call him a cab. On the way to Oklahoma City, he made small talk with the driver and asked to be dropped off short of his neighborhood. He didn’t want the cabbie to realize who his passenger was and go selling his story to the paper and spooking the kidnappers down South.

  He walked right through the press pool that had reassembled around the house without being recognized or arousing curiosity, in part because he looked so unlike himself: unkempt, poorly dressed and soaking wet. The guard at the front door didn’t even recognize him and shooed him away like some vagrant. He walked around the corner to the back door where, again, he was unrecognizable to the guard. But inside he spotted Arthur Seeligson and called out to him. Arthur let out an exalted yell upon recognizing his friend and business partner, and the house suddenly came alive. Berenice ran into his arms and the two hugged silently as Charley smiled with satisfaction.

  Once the Bureau’s agents found out Urschel was back, they called Jones, and within a few minutes he was at the house. Jones began priming Urschel for details, but Charley begged off. He was exhausted and near collapse. He wanted some sleep before debriefing Jones. But Jones pressed him.

  “Time is the very essence of the successful solution of any kidnapping,” he said. Anything he could learn now would give them a head start. Charley complied, but the man who had endured nine days of captivity never losing his control or his determination was beginning to unravel. He paced back and forth in the room, trying to stay awake. He said he hadn’t slept more than ten hours since his abduction, and then only fitfully.

  “They told me that if I ever told anything they would get me and torture me, would kill and maim members of my family, that they were more powerful than the federal government. But having suffered the torture of the damned, I don’t want anyone to have to go through with that to which I have been subjected. I’ll tell you all I know, only let me make it brief tonight. I am so tired.”

  For the next thirty minutes, he filled Jones in on the various threats that had been made about killing him and his family. He lamented that finding the farm where he’d been held would be like finding a needle in a haystack. Berenice was alarmed at Charley’s condition and his rambling. She’d never seen him like that, and she carped at Jones, finally c
alling a halt to the grilling. Jones acquiesced. Charley agreed to start again first thing in the morning.

  Arthur Seeligson phoned the city desk of The Daily Oklahoman. “Mr. Urschel is home,” he reported. The city editor fired back questions. Is he all right? Was he harmed? Was a ransom paid?

  “Mr. Urschel is home,” he repeated. “That is all we have to say tonight. We will meet the press at 8 o’clock Tuesday morning and give out a statement. I can say nothing more tonight.”

  The desperate editor was insistent. He had a scoop on the biggest story going, but he needed more details to hang on it. What condition is he in? Was he roughed up? How did he get home? Was he alone when he got there?

  Jones wanted no information given out. And he wasn’t happy Seeligson had announced an 8 o’clock press conference. Jones had wanted Urschel all to himself the next morning, and now he’d have to deal with this major interruption.

  “Mr. Urschel is in good health,” said Seeligson into the phone. “Of course, he’s been under a great strain and he is very tired. He is going to bed immediately.”

  “Where was he held?”

  “Mr. Urschel does not know where he was held.”

  “Where was he released?”

  “I can’t say anything about that now. We will have a statement in the morning.”

  “How did he get home?”

  “He was in a rented car,” Seeligson lied.

  “How long was the drive?”

  “About two hours.”

  Jones wanted the call to end. Seeligson was beginning to spill too many details for Jones’s comfort. He desperately wanted him to hang up.

  “Was the ransom paid?”

  “I can’t answer that question now,” replied the exasperated Seeligson. “Please don’t ask me for further details. Your newspaper has been very fair and has cooperated with us throughout. We promised to tell you when Mr. Urschel was returned. That’s all we can say tonight.”

  With that, he hung up. Then he removed the handset from its cradle so the son of a bitch couldn’t ring him back.

  After a good night’s sleep in his own bed, Charley was his old self. He sat down with Jones and his men and went over the scenario for the press conference: what he could say, and how he should say it.

  Keep it short and sweet, Jones advised. He had a lot of questions of his own and he wanted to get to them as soon as possible. There was no percentage in giving the kidnappers any more time than necessary.

  Anything you say to them can blow up on you like a prairie fire. You’ve got to talk to them. You’ve got to give them something. They need to file reports to their demanding editors, who don’t really give a damn about you or your family. They need copy and they need it fast. Faster than their competitors, and now their competitors are carrying microphones and whatever you say will be broadcast into the nation’s living rooms, just like it was a fireside chat from the President. You’ve got to talk. You’ve got to charm them. But most of all you can’t give them anything that will give the kidnappers any clue about what you’ve told us, or even the fact that you have been talking to us.

  Charley was an inveterate newspaper reader, but he was not fond of the press. Their incessant reporting on his maneuvers in the oil business had cost him money. After Tom died, their obsession with his estate and how and where it would be probated was a public embarrassment and a legal annoyance. The speculation over his own wealth once it had been combined with Berenice’s is what he was convinced had drawn the kidnappers’ attention to him in the first place. Tom Slick had hated publicity of any kind, and so did Charley. But now it had come to him and he’d have to deflect it as best he could—lest he bring some new horror down on himself and his family.

  Shortly, it would be showtime. The man who had shunned the spotlight his entire career went upstairs to get suited up and to prepare his performance.

  When he returned, he could not have appeared more unlike the wasted soul who had wondered up to his own front door, unrecognized, the night before.

  He wore a neatly pressed, short-sleeved shirt and tie, casual slacks and black-and-white oxfords. Trim and tall at six feet, he could have been modeling for a fashion magazine except for the fact the skin around his eyes was still a blistered red, making him appear like some oddly colored raccoon.

  The family had invited a select pool of reporters and photographers from the local papers and wire services onto the sunporch where the abduction had occurred—the scene of the crime.

  It turned out to be a perfectly choreographed press conference, with Charles dancing around the questions: “Where did they take you? How many of them were there? What did they tell you? Did you see their faces?”

  He tried to speak in code to the kidnappers.

  “I have not a shred of information which would aid officers; I saw the light of day only twice,” he announced. “I was handcuffed and my eyes taped from the moment I left until they let me out. I think the house they held me in was probably a backwoods bungalow. It seemed to be of three rooms. The two men who took me seemed to alternate in guarding me. They talked very little, although they were friendly.”

  He joked and charmed them.

  “They didn’t like the newspaper pictures,” he quipped. “They said I was a better looking man than the pictures.”

  He and Berenice then posed for some pictures and the whole thing ended as the press corps raced off to file their stories and move their pictures.

  Charles went back inside and sat down with Jones and his agents to begin his second interview, the one in which he would reveal details—every one of the thousands he had catalogued in his memory over the past ten days.

  “It seems to me like searching for a needle in a haystack,” he said at the beginning of the interview.

  “You know,” said Jones, “we found one of those things one time. You can’t tell. We might find another.”

  He began by recounting the events of the night of the kidnapping that twinned up perfectly with Jarrett’s account.

  “We drove on dirt roads most of the time. They told me that I was not to see or hear anything on the trip and that if I did I would never come home, for they would kill me. They had some chains in the car and they informed me that if I made any outcry or demonstration, they were prepared to give me a hypodermic injection, which would put me to sleep for twenty-four hours.”

  After daylight on Sunday morning they drove to a farmhouse to change cars, he said. They continued driving until pulling into another garage. “I asked what time it was, and they said about 2:30 in the afternoon, and that we had driven some 350 miles in a direct line. They kept me in the garage until after dark, then took me into a house. I did not sleep any that night.”

  On Monday morning they read him the headlines describing his kidnapping. They told him that since his family had called in the feds, negotiations would be hard.

  He told of the farm they brought him to; its approximate size, what type and how many animals it contained. He described the distance from the main house to the shack in which he was held. The distance from the driveway to the door. The single step it took to enter.

  He described Boss and Potatoes in almost-affectionate detail. One of his kidnappers, the bigger of the two, was dark complexioned, with hairy arms and hands. On his right ring finger was a gold ring with a large red stone.

  He told them that the well squeaked and the water had a metallic taste. He gave them the approximate size of the shack and described the furniture and where it was placed. He told them where he stuck his fingerprints.

  He said a farm nearby was growing broomcorn. Highly unusual. Perhaps you could spot it from the air. He told them about the local prostitute that he’d heard being discussed and the nickname of the postman who delivered the mail.

  The agents were mesmerized by the scope and detail of the facts he was recounting. Never in their careers had they deposed a witness or victim with this type of memory and recall. They wrote furiously in their notebooks, wi
th little time to break in for a question.

  Then, like a maestro leading up to his crescendo, he announced the most telling detail of all.

  “Every morning at 9:45 a twin engine plane passed over the farm, and every afternoon it returned at 5:45 traveling in the opposite direction.”

  Then he corrected himself. Sunday, it was raining. The plane did not pass over the farm that day.

  They talked for more than six hours. When the interview concluded, Jones looked up at his men and announced that the haystack had just gotten a lot smaller. He began dispatching his agents to follow up on the various leads they had deduced from Urschel’s recounting.

  He sent agents to the U.S. Weather Bureau to see if they could find a county, region or whatever matched the exacting descriptions that Urschel had recounted. He sent others to check the flight records of anything and everything that was flying in the Oklahoma City/Dallas corridor. He sent others to check into the broomcorn lead. Who was anticipating a crop? Who had put seeds in the ground? Who sold broomcorn seed and who did they sell it to? Urschel was certain he had crossed the Purcell-Lexington Bridge coming over the Canadian River on his roughly two-hour journey home. Jones instructed his agents to look south of there.

  Jones sat with Urschel and sketched a map of the farm as close to scale as possible. It seemed almost laughable at the time. A man who had been blinded, starved and terrified trying to draw an aerial view of a farm he’d never seen. But his recall was incredible. Jones only hoped it was accurate.

  (It would turn out that there had been a sympathetic lawman who had visited the farm and knew exactly where it was. Ed Weatherford, the Fort Worth detective who’d been wooed by Kathryn Kelly, had driven down to watch Kelly’s father-in-law’s farm for a few days to satisfy his suspicions that something untoward was going on there. But, other than a beautiful eighteen-cylinder Cadillac parked there briefly, he had seen nothing to engender a call to the Bureau’s agents.)

  The agents that had been dispatched to check out the airline schedules and routes quickly turned up a connection. An American Airways flight log showed that a storm on Sunday had forced a pilot to delay takeoff of his Dallas/Fort Worth/Wichita Falls/Amarillo morning passenger flight for twenty minutes. He had made a wide detour to avoid turbulence. The weather, also bad on his return flight, again dictated he use an alternate course.