WASHINGTON, USA — It was a kidnapping that captured headlines across the country. Now, a Seattle author is documenting the harrowing tale of survival in a new book.
The book takes the reader back to 1935 when nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser was taken off the street in broad daylight three blocks from his Tacoma home.
"In May of 1935, 9-year-old George Weyerhaeuser is walking home from school. and he's snatched right off the street list of three blocks from his house," author Bryan Johnston said.
School was released early that day in Tacoma and George was supposed to meet his sister at Annie Wright Seminary, but decided to walk home instead. That's where things went terribly wrong.
"Back in the 30s, kidnapping was becoming very popular with the criminal set, and so rich families had to be concerned about something like this," Johnston said.
Not long after, the Weyerhaeusers contacted the police after the first ransom letter arrived in the mail.
The kidnappers demanded $200,000 and the letter was signed by George as proof it was legitimate. They also told the family to take out an advertisement in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when the money was ready for them.
"They told the family, the family would communicate with the kidnappers using personal ads in the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper, and they would use a code name: Percy Minnie," Johnston said.
Watch below or click here for a full interview with the author:
William Dainard, Harmon Waley and his wife Margaret were the masterminds behind the kidnapping. It all started in Spokane, when Margaret read the obituary of George's well-known grandfather.
"Maybe the son of the person died gets inheritance. Maybe they've got kids. Hmm. So he sees the angle," Johnston explained.
To avoid detection, the kidnappers transported George all over the state. He was chained up and put in a hole in the ground in Enumclaw, and then brought all the way to Eastern Washington.
"They got him there at the house in Spokane and they kept them locked in a closet for five days," Johnston said
George was held captive for seven days total and five of them were spent in Spokane.
"So here's a picture taken when George was held here in the closet, and so this is from the paper [the] Spokesman-Review June 16, 1935," said Brian Hoerner, who currently lives in the house where George was held.
Brian and his wife Jean have lived in the home with the notorious past for about 30 years.
"I went down to the library, and I was looking for old newspapers from that, that time period and I had to look at microphones," Hoerner said.
The Hoerner home has been renovated a couple times since the 1930s, but the inside of the closet is the same, you can even seem some possible evidence that George was once there.
"A lot of walls in the closet are loose, it's like the plaster has come loose from the lath as the almost someone had been in here banging on the wall. So they're just we didn't know this. At first, we just found that this is kind of strange."
A previous owner suggested they put their home on a reality show called "If Walls Could Talk." They didn't go through with it, but now it's not uncommon for them to occasionally see their home in the spotlight.
"I saw this book at Costco. And I was just kind of thumbing through it, and I found our house in here. And it's like, oh, no, and here's like, the green bin in the front of the house. And we're thinking, Okay, we probably need to do a better job with our curb appeal," Hoerner described.
The Hoerners have raised their family in this home. They don't find it odd to live in a place with quite the history, in fact they like the idea of preserving a piece of the story.
"I think also that it had a happy ending. So maybe if it had a had a sad, you know, maybe we'd have a different perspective on all of this, but but it did seem to have a good ending," he said.
For such a heinous crime, more than eight decades later, George doesn't feel like it had a major impact on his life. Some kidnappings don't have a happy ending.
"I consider it to be a novelty and a dangerous occupation to be involved in but it had a wrap-up that was all's well that ends well," George Weyerhaeuser told Johnston.
While researching the story, Johnston combed through 2,500 pages of FBI documents and more than 200 newspaper articles.
Johnston is releasing a new book titled, "Deep In The Woods" documenting what the New York Times called "the greatest manhunt in the history of the Northwest."
