Apologies for the audio quality in this episode, the incorrect microphone was selected during recording.
On a May afternoon in Tacoma, WA in 1935, nine year old George Weyerhaeuser was snatched off the street in broad daylight - that night, his family received a ransom letter asking for the gigantic sum of $200,000 (~4 million dollars today!) in exchange for the safe return of their son. Only months after the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, the country was absolutely captivated with another high-profile kidnapping, and J. Edgar Hoover himself received multiple updates per day on George's case. This is the survival story of George Weyerhaeuser.
Sources
- Deep in the Woods: The 1935 Kidnapping of Nine-Year-Old George Weyerhaeuser, Heir to America's Mightiest Timber Dynasty by Bryan Johnson
- https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/great-depression-history#:~:text=Photo%20Galleries-,The%20Great%20Depression%20was%20the%20worst%20economic%20downturn%20in%20the,wiped%20out%20millions%20of%20investors.
- https://www.history.com/topics/great-depression/dust-bowl#section_3
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover
- https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/lindbergh-kidnapping
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Weyerhaeuser_kidnapping
- https://www.historylink.org/File/7750
- https://www.evidencelockerpodcast.com/transcripts/transcript-161-the-kidnapping-of-george-weyerhaeuser-usa
- https://medium.com/journal-of-precipitation/lets-remember-when-george-weyerhaeuser-s-kidnappers-were-caught-on-this-day-in-1935-june-8-ad768d2db3d5
- https://www.seattletimes.com/business/george-weyerhaeuser-sr-great-grandson-of-timber-company-founder-and-childhood-kidnap-victim-dies-at-95/