nothing coming to him. How could this be? He had paid the premiums, faithfully, for years. Yes, but he now found out that those premiums had not been turned in to the company. George Conniff was left without a dime to compensate for the house that had been destroyed by fire.
Broke, their house in ashes, George and Alma took up residence in an apartment in Newport, and he accepted the night marshal’s job—for one year only. At the same time, he worked furiously to build a new home, a log cabin, to replace the one gutted by fire. In the hours before his shift as night marshal, Conniff and his son cut logs and notched them together, the foundation of the place in which he hoped to live out his remaining, and better, years.
On Saturday night, as George Conniff walked to inspect the Newport Creamery, the cabin was half-built, and the marshal had given notice that he would be off the job within two weeks. It seemed as if his luck was starting to change. A few days earlier, he had received some wonderful news: the Washington State Supreme Court had ruled against the insurance company for failing to compensate Conniff for his fire loss. It ordered the company to pay the family $1,000.
O N THEIR WAY NORTH in Detective Clyde Ralstin’s REO Flying Cloud, the boys from Mother’s Kitchen talked about their own dreams. Women, of course. Clyde had his eye on one of the waitressesat Mother’s—a real looker, he said. Her name was Dorothy. Hunting was another favorite subject. Ralstin and Burch were plotting their next trip to the cabin they shared on the Montana border. They knew the creamery heists could not go on for long—for one thing, they were running out of places to rob. Their ambition was to get out of the petty stuff and move on to something big. The pay of a Spokane police detective, Ralstin said, was pitiful. He’d been on the force seven years, had risen from patrolman to motorcycle cop to sergeant to detective, and still he made only forty-two dollars a week—an insult. “I don’t know why I even put up with it,” he would say.
It was bad enough that he wasn’t being paid what he thought he was worth; now Ralstin had to deal with hostile politicians and prosecutors. The year had begun with a city council investigation of police graft. They didn’t find anything on Clyde; he was too well insulated by his personal stockpile of other men’s secrets, the politicians and lawyers and police captains whose liquor came from the bootleggers who counted Detective Ralstin as a close friend. But the constant corruption probes were a headache. Clyde was tired of it all; he wanted a windfall.
Logan, the veteran con, had his own sketch of the big time. Everybody in the joint had a plan; mostly it was just talk, word stuffings to fill a day. But finally, in 1935, somebody had pulled it off: a con’s dream had come true. Big time was the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, a crime that was hatched in Spokane. A pair of low-level cons, William “Swede” Dainard and Harmon Waley, and Harmon’s bride, Margaret, were killing time in a Spokane apartment when Margaret read something in the newspaper about the Weyerhaeusers. The family, one of the wealthiest in the nation, had millions of acres of private timberland in the Northwest and enough money to fill bathtubs with twenty-dollar bills. The cons drove to Tacoma, where the family lived in regal splendor among the small circle of timber barons. In the light of mid-afternoon, Harmon and the Swede kidnapped nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser while he was on his way home from school. They took the boy to logged-over stump lands east of Seattle, blindfolded him, and dumped him into a deep pit, three feet wide and sixfeet long, covered with tin. A ransom note was mailed to Philip Weyerhaeuser, the father. Though he tried to keep it secret, word of the kidnapping leaked out; after flashing around the country, it became one of the biggest stories of the year. George spent several days in the
Broke, their house in ashes, George and Alma took up residence in an apartment in Newport, and he accepted the night marshal’s job—for one year only. At the same time, he worked furiously to build a new home, a log cabin, to replace the one gutted by fire. In the hours before his shift as night marshal, Conniff and his son cut logs and notched them together, the foundation of the place in which he hoped to live out his remaining, and better, years.
On Saturday night, as George Conniff walked to inspect the Newport Creamery, the cabin was half-built, and the marshal had given notice that he would be off the job within two weeks. It seemed as if his luck was starting to change. A few days earlier, he had received some wonderful news: the Washington State Supreme Court had ruled against the insurance company for failing to compensate Conniff for his fire loss. It ordered the company to pay the family $1,000.
O N THEIR WAY NORTH in Detective Clyde Ralstin’s REO Flying Cloud, the boys from Mother’s Kitchen talked about their own dreams. Women, of course. Clyde had his eye on one of the waitressesat Mother’s—a real looker, he said. Her name was Dorothy. Hunting was another favorite subject. Ralstin and Burch were plotting their next trip to the cabin they shared on the Montana border. They knew the creamery heists could not go on for long—for one thing, they were running out of places to rob. Their ambition was to get out of the petty stuff and move on to something big. The pay of a Spokane police detective, Ralstin said, was pitiful. He’d been on the force seven years, had risen from patrolman to motorcycle cop to sergeant to detective, and still he made only forty-two dollars a week—an insult. “I don’t know why I even put up with it,” he would say.
It was bad enough that he wasn’t being paid what he thought he was worth; now Ralstin had to deal with hostile politicians and prosecutors. The year had begun with a city council investigation of police graft. They didn’t find anything on Clyde; he was too well insulated by his personal stockpile of other men’s secrets, the politicians and lawyers and police captains whose liquor came from the bootleggers who counted Detective Ralstin as a close friend. But the constant corruption probes were a headache. Clyde was tired of it all; he wanted a windfall.
Logan, the veteran con, had his own sketch of the big time. Everybody in the joint had a plan; mostly it was just talk, word stuffings to fill a day. But finally, in 1935, somebody had pulled it off: a con’s dream had come true. Big time was the Weyerhaeuser kidnapping, a crime that was hatched in Spokane. A pair of low-level cons, William “Swede” Dainard and Harmon Waley, and Harmon’s bride, Margaret, were killing time in a Spokane apartment when Margaret read something in the newspaper about the Weyerhaeusers. The family, one of the wealthiest in the nation, had millions of acres of private timberland in the Northwest and enough money to fill bathtubs with twenty-dollar bills. The cons drove to Tacoma, where the family lived in regal splendor among the small circle of timber barons. In the light of mid-afternoon, Harmon and the Swede kidnapped nine-year-old George Weyerhaeuser while he was on his way home from school. They took the boy to logged-over stump lands east of Seattle, blindfolded him, and dumped him into a deep pit, three feet wide and sixfeet long, covered with tin. A ransom note was mailed to Philip Weyerhaeuser, the father. Though he tried to keep it secret, word of the kidnapping leaked out; after flashing around the country, it became one of the biggest stories of the year. George spent several days in the
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