Hager, according to his later testimony, then said that he returned to Boyd’s, at about 4:10 P.M., and picked up his suit. Travis—a Costello employee whose own testimony may also have been dictated by his boss—drove him to the Lincoln Hotel, where Travis waited while Hager changed into his new clothes. Travis then drove Hager to the Pink House to keep his appointment with Hall, arriving there about 4:45.
But it was Costello who contacted Shoulders, who had gone on duty at 3 P.M. that day. Whether they met in person or only talked on the phone is not known. If there was a face-to-face meeting, Hager was also possibly present. The three men may even have met either at the 7th Street tavern or the Ace Cab lot. Shoulders himself violated departmental regulations by not signing in at his precinct when he went on duty at three, claiming he was on a stakeout—a claim that never could be verified. In any case, all three agreed to a plan—to arrest Hall, to keep Costello out of the picture, to grab some of the money, and to make cabdriver John Oliver Hager look like a hero.
And O’Day, Hager assured Costello, would not be around to cause trouble. She was off on a wild-goose chase to St. Joseph.
Around 4 P.M., Hall returned to the vicinity of the Coral Court and mistakenly entered Angelo’s restaurant, thinking it was the Pink House, where he was to meet up again with Hager. While drinking a bottle of beer, he groused to the woman behind the bar, “Why can’t people keep appointments when they make them?” Ten minutes later, he left, telling the bartender, “If someone comes in asking for Steve, tell him he went home, and he will know what it means.” He returned to the motel, waited another quarter of an hour or so, and headed back to Angelo’s. This time, though, he realized that the Pink House was across the street, went there, and told someone at the bar to direct a man looking for Steve to go to the motel. Back in his room again, Hall waited for Hager to appear.
Hager, spruced up in his new dark blue suit, dark felt hat, white shirt, and blue-and-white tie, finally did show up in a cab at the Pink House around 4:15 and was given Hall’s message. After buying two Dutch Masters cigars, he walked over to the motel and immediately noticed the fresh mud on the tires and fenders of the rented Plymouth. Hall, for his part, was pleased to see that his friend had bought himself a new outfit.
“You really look sharp,” Hall said. “We’re going to get a lot of new clothes. We’ll even be herding a Cadillac before long. Just take it easy.”
Hager handed over the bogus identification that Hall had asked for—a photostat of an Army discharge, a Social Security card, and a medical record, all made out in the name of John J. Byrne, with an address in Kirkwood, a St. Louis suburb. He also told Hall that he had booked a room for him in a nice hotel.
On seeing Hager in his new wardrobe, Hall realized that his own clothes now looked quite soiled by comparison, and he decided to buy himself a new suit as well. The manager of the Pink House told them that several men’s stores in the nearby suburb of Clayton were open that evening. In Clayton, the pair found that the Famous-Barr department store was, in fact, closed, but a passerby informed them that a nearby Boyd’s branch was open. Both men went into the store, and Hall told a salesman he needed a new suit immediately. The salesman informed him that the tailors had a backlog of alterations and could not have a new suit ready for him for several days.
“Do you gamble?” Hall asked the salesman. “I’ll bet ten dollars you can have a suit ready for me in a day or two.”
He gave the salesman $10 and picked out a Hickey Freeman suit for $122. The salesman measured Hall and assured him that the suit would be ready the next day. Hall, who gave his name to the salesman as John Byrne, also purchased a pair of shoes, a Dobbs hat, cuff links, six handkerchiefs, two pairs of socks, a belt, and a tie. While he picked out the shoes, he asked Hager to select six shirts. As they shopped, the store closed. After paying, they started to head back to the Coral Court when Hall remembered that he had asked Hager to rent an apartment for him. Sensing that something might be wrong, he asked him to continue on toward the Coral Court anyway, and drive past. Hager did as instructed, and soon afterward they stopped at the Villanova Inn, a highway restaurant, for a sandwich and a bottle of beer. Hall was unable to eat, but told Hager to find a woman for him that night for about $200 or $300.
Hager excused himself to make a phone call, ostensibly to arrange for a call girl, but probably to keep Costello apprised of his and Hall’s whereabouts. Upon leaving the restaurant, they returned to the Coral Court.
On the way, a nervous Hall said, “When I get hunches, I’d better play them. Something’s wrong, we’ve got to move tonight.”
Then he decided not to move to the Town House, after all, so each man started to carry a piece of luggage up to the motel room. Just as they began transferring the luggage, a car pulled up behind Hager’s Plymouth. Panicking, Hall told Hager to put the two suitcases back in the trunk. Hager, by now equally spooked, hauled them back to the car and locked them in the trunk. After the other car drove away, Hager explained that the occupants were the people who had rented the room below him.
“I got the shakes,” Hall said. “Bad hunch. We’ve got to move tonight.”
They had a drink, and Hall now resolved to move to his new apartment. On the way, they passed through an intersection not far from the apartment where Hall had left Heady, and he remarked, “This looks like the neighborhood where I parked the car I bought.”
Hager replied that he did not know Hall had bought a car. Hall informed him that he had not only bought a car but rented another apartment, but had lost it all—the car, his luggage containing all of his clothes, his identification papers, and his original drug paraphernalia. He again hinted that he might be in trouble with an insurance company. Hager said, “Maybe we can stop and get a paper. Maybe there will be something in there.” Hall replied, “No, because it will be handled privately. It may not be heard of.”
The previous day, Hall had given Hager an envelope addressed to Esther Grant at 4504 Arsenal. The cabdriver almost certainly passed that information along to Costello as well. Since a woman had taken Bobby Greenlease out of school, the fact that Hall had a woman friend—the name presumably a pseudonym—living in a neighborhood known for its boardinghouses was just another piece of the puzzle fitting into place.
Upon arriving at the Town House apartment, they parked at the side entrance. Hall asked an older man standing at the door to get a bellhop, but instead the man himself unloaded the footlocker and black metal suitcase onto a hand truck, and then Raymond Allen, the bellhop, transported both pieces of luggage, as well as the briefcase, on a pushcart from that point on. There was some confusion about which room was Hall’s because many of the rooms were being renovated and had been renumbered. Hall’s room, number 324, had formerly been 303. When Allen mistakenly unlocked the wrong door, he discovered that the apartment was occupied.
“What is this?” Hall asked, irritated. “Where’s the room?”
Allen apologized for the intrusion. He had to make two trips to the desk downstairs, with Hager accompanying him on one such errand, before he finally obtained the proper key. Hager tipped the bellhop a few dollars, and Hall asked him to bring up two bottles of Coca-Cola. Hager, who was due to leave, ostensibly to procure a call girl, replied that he did not want one. Both men looked about the room, and agreed that it was satisfactory. Before Hager departed, Hall asked him how long he would be gone, and Hager replied that he would be back in about a half-hour or so. When the bellboy returned with the bottle of soda, Hager tipped him another $2. He then left, telling Hall that he would rap three times on the door as a signal that he was back, and say, “Steve, this is John.”
The Greenleases may have held out hope that Bobby would be rescued for two reasons. In the previous twenty-one years, the FBI had solved more than 450 kidnapping cases, and had failed to solve only two. Also, kidnapping cases were not usually solved quickly, and in many instances the kidnap victim remained in the hands of abductors for weeks.
On Sunday, October 4, a priest visited the family around noon, remaining about three-quarters of an hour before leaving. The priest returned again on Monday night, around 9:30, and remained until 1:35 in the morning. He returned a third time on Tuesday afternoon; two nuns also appeared at the home that same afternoon to offer comfort.
By October 5, speculation was rife in the newspapers that there would soon be a break in the case. Lending fuel to that rumor was a visit that Arthur Eisenhower, brother of the president, made to the Greenleases. Robert Ledterman had not appeared in his usual role as family spokesman. Asked about Ledterman’s whereabouts, Stewart Johnson replied that he had returned to his own home and was napping. Paul Greenlease confirmed to reporters that Ledterman was sound asleep. Meanwhile, the Chicago American, a Hearst newspaper, announced on its front page that the kidnapping case had been solved and that an announcement would shortly be made simultaneously in Chicago, Washington, and Kansas City. But Chief Brannon and James A. Robey, the FBI’s special agent in charge in Kansas City, firmly stuck to their no-comment guns.
The family slept late on Tuesday, October 6, and at 7:30 A.M. the nurse looking after Mrs. Greenlease arrived. Some reporters had been tipped about the classified advertisement “M: Meet me in Chicago Sunday. G.” that had appeared in the Star; and rumor now, especially given the Chicago American’s apparent scoop, was that Ledterman was in Chicago.
That Tuesday evening, O’Day and Dreste stopped in Columbia, Missouri, where she asked to be taken to a Western Union office, saying she had to send a wire to her lawyer in Los Angeles. They were now en route to St. Joseph on Highway 40, the same highway that Hall and Heady had taken in the early morning hours of the previous day, after picking up the ransom. During the long drive, O’Day—like Hager several hours earlier—tried to collect her thoughts and ponder the fast-moving events of her life in the past twenty-four hours. Her first instinct had been to confront Patton, who was either an embezzler himself, like Hall; or, perhaps, one of the Kansas City kidnappers whose crime was the talk of the nation. As her head cleared and she had time to think, she probably also realized that she had acted precipitately by wanting to go to St. Joseph. Either way, though she had no clear idea of how to proceed, she smelled money, but now her hunch told her to go directly to Kansas City, and to skip St. Joseph. After all, the Greenlease kidnapping had taken place in Kansas City. If Hall was involved, surely she would be able to find out more once she got there. O’Day sent a telegram to her aunt that said: “Hold wire until I contact you. Will advise later. Plans have changed. Don’t worry. Love and kisses. Sandy.” She did not tell Hager about her change of plans.
As Dreste and O’Day approached the junction of U.S. Highway 71 and U.S. Highway 24, she directed him to head into Kansas City. At a highway tavern, they stopped for a drink, and O’Day asked Dreste for the name of the best hotel in town. He suggested the Hotel Muehlebach, but she also asked the barmaid for her opinion, and she suggested the Hotel President. On calling that hotel, O’Day learned that no rooms were available. Dreste then called the Muehlebach and reserved a room for her. O’Day also told him that she preferred to arrive at the hotel in a cab and not in a private car. By now it was about 9 P.M.
Around this time, Dreste mentioned the Greenlease kidnapping, and O’Day, claiming that she was the mother of two, remarked how horrible it would be if something happened to her children. Dreste agreed, commenting that he had a daughter.
They had a drink at another bar. O’Day then went to a cab stand and got into a cab. That was the last Dreste saw of her. As a precaution, though, he put the $150 that O’Day had given to him into an envelope, and mailed it to his wife. At the Muehlebach, O’Day sent another telegram to her aunt: “Everything fine. Don’t worry. Love, Sandy.”
When Hager left Hall in his room at the Town House, he simply walked down to the corner of Union and Pershing to await Shoulders, who arrived at 7:30. He was accompanied by a twenty-five-year-old patrolman, Elmer Dolan. Soon afterward, Hager phoned Hall to ask if everything was all right, and Hall assured him that it was.
Just moments later, around eight, Hall was sitting in the room alone, drinking whiskey. He had also injected a quarter-gram of morphine. When he heard three knocks on the door, he assumed that Hager was delivering the prostitute. The room had a double door that was common in those pre-air-conditioning days—an inner shutter door that allowed ventilation, and a main door opening onto the hallway. Patrolman Dolan gave the message, “Steve, this is John.”
As soon as Hall opened both doors, Shoulders and Dolan rushed in. Dolan, the shorter one, was in a police uniform and held a gun on Hall while the taller Shoulders, wearing a double-breasted blue suit, rummaged around the room.
“What the hell is this?” a startled Hall managed to ask. “What’s this all about?” His immediate thought was, “The jig is up.”
Hall had placed the two pieces of metal luggage in a large closet. Pushed up against the door was the zippered briefcase.
“Be quiet,” Shoulders told him. “When I get ready to tell you, I’ll tell you. You’re under arrest.”
“What the hell for?” Hall asked.
Shoulders ordered him to stop asking questions. After frisking Hall, he removed the keys to his luggage from his breast pocket, and instructed Hall to remove his jacket. Dolan told him to sit on an overstuffed chair. Next to that chair was a telephone table containing Hall’s now-loaded Smith & Wesson. Hall asked for permission to get himself a drink of whiskey, and Dolan told him no. When he asked Dolan what the arrest was all about, Dolan said—quite honestly, in fact—that he did not know.
What Dolan also did not know was that Lieutenant Shoulders, who had commandeered him at the station house on his way out the door because his own partner was off that day, was a shakedown artist who just happened to be an old friend of mobster Joe Costello. Costello and Shoulders had played this game before, though never with such high stakes.
Shoulders went into the closet and unlocked one of the cases. Hall, hearing the lock click open, now repeated aloud what he had suspected just moments before, telling Patrolman Dolan, “I think the jig is up.”
“What do you mean?” Dolan asked.
“I don’t know what I meant,” Hall quickly retorted.
Shoulders said that the police had received a complaint about an unknown man in Hall’s apartment who was carrying a gun. Hall thought it odd that the two policemen had ordered him to sit in the overstuffed chair—the perfect place to hide a gun. For that matter, they had not checked the drawer of the telephone table, or anywhere else, to look for a weapon.
Shoulders picked up the briefcase containing about $20,000 and remarked, “You’ve got a lot of money there, haven’t you?”
“Yes, a little bit,” Hall agreed.
“What do you do?”
“I’m in the liquor business with my brother,” Hall said.
He explained that his brother lived in Illinois, and that, as his forged papers showed, he himself, John J. Byrne, lived in the suburb of Kirkwood.
“I’m going to put the briefcase right back where I found it,” Shoulders pointedly told him. “I want you to notice that.”
“All right,” Hall said.
Shoulders returned it to the exact spot where it had previously lain.
The detective briefly left the apartment—almost certainly to assure Costello, now lurking in the hallway, that the two cases filled with money were still in the closet—and returned moments later. Hall later insisted that, at no time during the ten minutes he was in the room with the two policemen, was anything said about the kidnapping or why he was arrested. Moreover, just prior to their arrival, he had made some notations to himself on an envelope. The calculations represented how many thousands of dollars he had removed from the two suitcases in the closet, and he estimated that he still had between $560,000 and $570,000. On the other side of the envelope, he had jotted down a list of several items of clothing he planned to purchase the following day.
/> When the two policemen accompanied Hall out of the room, they locked the door, leaving the two suitcases and the briefcase behind. Hall was still not entirely sure what was happening. But he did have enough of his wits about him, as the last man to leave the apartment, to notice that the two brass keys to the footlocker were still lying on the dresser. The black key to the smaller suitcase, which Shoulders had taken from him, was missing. Hall was quite positive—both then and later—that neither piece of luggage was taken out of the room at that time.
Shoulders advised Hall that he was going to be taken to a police station through the hotel’s rear stairway so that, if nothing was the matter, he could return without having been embarrassed before the other guests. The ruse was obviously calculated to avoid having anyone witness the arrest. As Dolan led him down the corridor, Hall glanced back and observed Shoulders talking to a very slender man of medium height in the middle of the hallway. The man was wearing a light tan snap-brim hat, and a pair of rust-colored slacks with a matching short jacket gathered at the belt line—a so-called Eisenhower jacket. When Dolan and Hall reached the end of the corridor, they discovered that there was no rear stairway. They rejoined Shoulders. By now, the mysterious third man had disappeared.
Shoulders, Dolan, and Hall then descended another stairway, exited through the back door, and walked around the side of the building. Near the side entrance, Hall observed a parked automobile with the interior light on and a woman with short blond hair sitting inside. The three men walked to the front of the apartment building to an unmarked police car parked on the side of the Congress Hotel. All three sat in front, with Dolan driving, and Hall in the middle. They drove directly to the police station, about ten minutes away.
The two policemen had not put Hall in handcuffs, nor mentioned the kidnapping, and he still did not know why he had been arrested. Shoulders, after all, had merely alluded to someone complaining about a hotel guest with a gun. Dolan, too, had seemed befuddled about why Hall was being arrested. What Hall did know, though, was that he had left behind two pieces of luggage containing nearly $600,000. With a sense of sickening doom, he also realized that Hager, his good pal, had double-crossed him, and that his fantasy world was about to crash and burn.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 10
