Sex. Murder. Mystery. (88 page)

The remark was odd, and begged a second question, but the line was dead. Mattson had hung up. But it didn’t matter. I was hooked. By not saying anything to sell me on the story,
on the telling of the Mattson story
, Bill Mattson had made me want to know more at that moment than if he’d spilled his guts. I needed to know everything.

* * *

Before delving into some of the details of the haunting tragedy that was the Charles Mattson abduction and murder case, keep in mind that the 1930s was
the
decade of infamous American kidnappings. Eras are defined by their crimes and a historical perspective is warranted at this point. The 1970s were the time of airplane hijackings or “skyjackings”; the 1980s were the decade of financial scammers; the decade after, terrorism. Nothing, without exception, characterizes the 1930s better than the rash of high-profile kidnappings that seized the attention of the media (radio and newspapers, mostly) and made the wealthiest Americans targets by have-nots determined to steal a child and trade his or her young life for money. The most infamous case, of course, occurred on March 1, 1932 when Charles Lindbergh, Jr., the twenty-month-old son of the famed aviator, was abducted from the second-floor nursery of the family home near Hopewell, New Jersey. He was found later, as surely everyone knows, murdered. There were others, too. St. Louis, Los Angeles, New York had their celebrated “snatching” cases.

Nowhere in the country was a kidnapper’s paradise more so than Tacoma, Wash. In the space of 18 months
five
abductions and/or attempted snatchings were made in the lumber and shipping city on Commencement Bay in Washington State’s Puget Sound. Sadly, two Tacoma kidnappings ended in murder.

On May 24, 1935, George Weyerhaeuser, the nine-year old son of lumber baron J.P. Weyerhaeuser, was kidnapped on his way home from Tacoma’s prestigious Charles Wright Academy, where he attended school. Within a week a $200,000 ransom was paid and the boy was released, unharmed. The Weyerhaeuser kidnappers were apprehended, convicted and sent to prison. In November 1936, two attempts were made to kidnap a wealthy grocer’s son, George Griggs Franklin, 6, from his family’s mansion (Haddaway Hall, formerly the Weyerhaeuser mansion and two blocks from the five-acre estate that was the Mattson home.) The following month, Mildred Hook was kidnapped by her estranged husband, Douglas Van Vlack. Mildred’s body later was found in a culvert in a remote area of northern Idaho.

Just a few weeks after the Hook case made headlines and the Franklins had departed for the sunshine and safety of California (where the family had a villa and tickets for the Rose Bowl football game), the kidnapping of a little boy from another enormous Tacoma house became the story that would never go away.

On December 27, 1936, Charles Fletcher Mattson, the 10-year-old son of a prominent doctor and his wife, stood in the kitchen of the family’s Point Defiance mansion and caught sight of a man in the bushes. The boy ran to tell his older brother, Billy, 16, and sister, Muriel, 14, what he’d seen. In addition to the Mattson children, a girlfriend from Seattle, 16-year-old named Virginia Chatfield, was visiting at the time. Dr. and Mrs. Mattson were away at a party. The Mattsons’ longtime maid had the night off. A few minutes after Charlie spotted him, the stranger smashed one of the panes of a French door with the butt of his .38 revolver and forced his way inside. The girls screamed. The man grabbed Charlie, dropped a ransom note demanding $28,000 and disappeared into the night.

It was the beginning of a case that would make headlines from Tacoma to New York to London. Newspaper reporters converged on the scene. President Roosevelt and Mrs. Roosevelt called for prayer for Charlie Mattson.

Acting under the jurisdiction mandated by the so-called Lindbergh Law of 1932, FBI agents took immediate control, while law enforcement agencies from across the Northwest played active, though minor, roles in the investigation. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had a private telephone line installed in the Mattson residence so he could speak directly to the family and the cadre of Special Agents he personally summoned for the job.

Evidence was scant, but no effort was spared. In the 1930s, science and technology were the “new” tools of crime fighting that promised no one could escape punishment. The Mattson case, for example, was the first in which plaster casts of footprints and tire tracks were collected to help identify a potential perpetrator. (Decades from now, one can only wonder if we will see fingerprinting or even DNA typing, charmingly archaic?)

Fingerprints found at the scene were compared with 7 million others on cards in the FBI offices in Washington, D. C.

Throughout the ordeal, each day brought some horrific detail. Classified ads directed to “Ann” and “Mable” were published in the Seattle Times to facilitate ransom drop plans: “
Mable: We have received your communications. Police have not intercepted them. Channels are entirely clear. Your instructions will be followed.”

Ransom missives were written in the handwriting of the boy to his father:
“If you don’t obey the notes after phone call connections will be off for keeps and remember an army of police can kill a couple of kidnappers but they will not be able to find the kid until after he is dead.”

Dr. Mattson begged reporters to keep their attempts to retrieve the boy secret, but the reporters ignore him and continue to pursue Dr. Mattson, the FBI, and any others associated with the case, under the guise of the public’s “right to know.”

The doctor made every effort to contact the kidnappers but was unable to do so. The ransom was never paid. On January 11, 1937 a teenager hunting rabbits north of Seattle in Everett found the Mattson boy’s nude and lifeless body in a snow bank. He had been dead for as many as ten days. Over the course of the weeks and years that followed, the FBI investigated some 25,740 suspects, among them were dozens of persons who confessed either to get attention or because mental disorders made them admit to the most hideous of crimes. One of those red herrings took the form of a 35-year-old escapee from Medical Lake Hospital, a state-run insane asylum near Spokane on the eastern part of the state. Later, it was learned that the escapee was in the hospital at the time of the snatching.

When Charlie’s battered body was found, the G-men turn their attention from a kidnapping to a kidnapping/murder case. The coroner determined the boy had been bound with cord, beaten with a hammer and stabbed. Under the dead boy’s fingernails were traces of blue-gray-colored clay and abrasions on his limbs indicated that he had tried to claw himself from somewhere. A pit? A cellar? A basement? The coroner determined that the boy had been dead for several days, maybe as long as a week. He also supposed that the body had been kept in a meat locker and frozen. And, he added, perhaps the boy’s body had been moved from another resting place. FBI soil samples confirmed the possible scenario —though no one knew why.

In the spring of 1937, Thomas Dewey, then special racketeering prosecutor, sought extradition from Mexico a man named Alexander Pompez —and tried to tie him to the Mattson case.

On December 27, 1942, the FBI issued a statement six years after the kidnapping: “The case hasn’t been closed and never will be closed until it is solved.” They were still working, still looking for the one who had done the unspeakable.

Suspects over the years included a Seattle man, a former asylum inmate who had once plotted a similar kidnapping, and one of Dr. Mattson’s patients. Jack Nathan, under direct orders from Hoover, flew to Los Angeles to interrogate a suspect there. By most accounts, the Mattson case is considered the largest manhunt in FBI history. It was also one of the most frustrating. Clues were meager. Footprints that were left in the snow were cast in plaster, revealing that the kidnapper wore socks
over
his shoes as had Bruno Hauptmann in the Lindbergh kidnapping. And, as was the case with the Lindbergh case, a ladder left by the kidnapper who attempted to snatch another Tacoma boy was sent to the FBI lab (it was believed that the Mattson and the other case were related). The ransom note had been written with a child’s typewriter toy.

Legislation to halt the scourge of kidnapping was proposed in Congress, and at various state legislatures throughout the country. Many lawmakers, outraged over the Mattson tragedy, called for the death penalty for the perpetrators. Others sought to make
paying
a ransom a federal crime.

The Mattson case has never been solved, but the FBI has kept it in its active files for decades. Archivists at the FBI reveal that the Mattson file is among the bureau’s largest with more than 240,000 pages of documents. To understand the mammoth size and importance and scope of this case, consider the Charles Lindbergh kidnapping case file. The Lindbergh file contains 22,000 pages of documentation.

More than solving the case for the sake of the devastated Mattson family, Hoover and the FBI wanted to capture the kidnapper for their own purposes —the preservation of a perfect record of solving
all
kidnapping cases under federal jurisdiction. In fact, as the record indicates even now, of the hundreds of cases handled by the FBI, only two remain outstanding: Tacoma’s Charlie Mattson and Peter Levin, a 12-year-old who was kidnapped and murdered in New Rochelle, New York, in February 1938.

The Mattson case remains open today.

THE PLAYERS IN THE MATTSON SAGA

THE G-MEN, THE PRESIDENT AND MRS. ROOSEVELT

The G-men,
“Ace Kidnapper Trackers ”, as the press dubbed them, arrived from all points of the country, FBI credentials in tow and a perceptible swagger that was the result of a 100-percent-solved-cases success rate. Mattson was FDR’s priority Number One. In fact, it was reported in 1946 that it was likely that not a single FBI agent working at that time who
hadn’t
worked on an aspect of the Mattson case at one time or another. No case, before or since, comes close to that kind of total involvement. Not even 9/11.

J. Edgar Hoover
—Director of the FBI for almost a half century. In 1924 Hoover was named head of the Bureau of Investigation of the Justice Department, which in 1935 became the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Following World War II, Hoover led the bureau in a series of major investigations designed to curb subversive activities. Throughout his tenure, Hoover was a controversial figure, often accused of abusing his power and exceeding the jurisdiction of the FBI. 1936, the year of the Mattson case, was a heady year for Hoover and his G-men. Pulp magazines and comic strips with names like “War on Crime,” “The Feds,” and “G-men” glorified the bureau. All of the hype, the promotion of invincibility, made Hoover a national hero. It also went to his head. Hoover was delighted at the publicity and the dashing image of himself and the bureau. The FBI as a crime-fighting machine, whose effectiveness verged on omnipotence, was completely the result of J. Edgar Hoover’s leadership.
To further this image as the master detective and daring man of action, Hoover decided he would go after a couple high-profile criminals himself. That was evident during the days and weeks surrounding the Mattson case. Alvin Karpis, the last of the Barker gang, was considered Public Enemy Number One and in April of 1936, Hoover flew to New Orleans on a tip that Karpis was hiding out in an apartment there. Once other FBI agents had the situation in hand, Hoover —always the grandstander —stepped in to make the arrest. The thrill of being in on the capture (and more importantly the headlines and photos that were sure to follow) brought Hoover into the field the following week when he traveled to Toledo, Ohio, to “lead” the capture of Harry Campbell, another Karpis-Barker gang member. Hoover and the FBI had entered a new phase: the celebrity era. Hoover was a national hero. He began to see himself as the guardian of the country’s laws, citizens and morals. History would later rewrite the story of the most powerful man in the history of American government into the story of a power-mongering, cross-dressing demigod, but that would be decades after Charlie Mattson’s memory had faded. Or
hadn’t
faded.