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Months after his son was fatally kidnapped, famous aviator Charles Lindbergh received a threat against his second child….from Roanoke!
Courtesy of the Virginia Room, Roanoke Public Libraries
The State and City Bank at 102 Campbell Avenue, SW, in 1928.
Financier John P. Morgan was passing through Roanoke on a quiet vacation in February 1933 when he was stunned to read in the Roanoke newspaper of the arrest of two local men for trying to extort money from famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. The nation had been shocked over the fatal kidnapping of the Lindbergh’s first child the previous year, and now the couple was threatened with the kidnapping of their second child, Jon Morrow, unless they paid $50,000… and the threat came from Roanoke.
A few months prior, Lindbergh received a letter that read, in part, “I must have $50,000 or I will get your baby…we can get it for we can and will if it takes years.” The writers continued, “I do not want this little baby. We want the money and it will be cheaper to pay us the $50,000 your child is worth …we will leave this country and you can have your child always and no more to worry about. I am in a little town today called Roanoke, Va.” There were instructions to place the money in a stump along Rosewood Avenue just beyond the city limits.
Col. Herbert Schwarzkopf (father of General Norman Schwarzkopf) with the New Jersey State Police was called in to investigate. He immediately reached out to J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and to the Roanoke Police Department. In Roanoke, Police Superintendent J.L. Manning placed Detective Robert Johnson and Capt. J.L. Thomason in charge of the local investigation. All agreed to keep the threatening letter quiet.
Manning, with the consent of Hoover and Schwarzkopf, planned a ruse to trap the letter-writers. Posing as Lindbergh’s personal secretary, Johnson placed a letter in the Rosewood Avenue stump stating that he was lodging at the Ponce de Leon Hotel and would be handling the transfer of money. Over the course of several weeks, letters encased in jars were exchanged using the stump as a drop-off for the correspondence. Although police surveilled the stump, the letter writers were never seen. Then in early February, a check for $17,000 made out to “cash” was put in the stump with instructions to redeem it only at the State and City Bank in downtown Roanoke and that remaining funds would be paid later. Days went by and the check, sealed in an envelope from the Ponce de Leon Hotel, was untouched. Then on February 8, a man walked into the State and City Bank, approached the teller window of W.M. Skelton and calmly stated, “I want to get this cashed.”
Skelton asked the man to wait as he turned to Leigh Stevens, assistant cashier, who was asked to prepare the bills. “Make it in big bills,” the man told Skelton and Stevens. Taking a money sack, Stevens went to the back of the bank and immediately telephoned police, who had coordinated the ruse transaction with bank officials. Stevens stuffed the money bag with fake currency and returned to the lobby, where he spied Detective Johnson and Officer Howard Ferguson, dressed in plain clothes, in a far corner. After endorsing the check, the man placed the bag under his arm and walked briskly from the bank.
The man, later identified as Joe Bryant, turned south from Campbell Avenue into First Street near Kirk Avenue, crossed the street, and was met by an accomplice, Norman Harvey. Followed closely by Johnson and Ferguson, Harvey turned, recognized Johnson and ran. Ferguson pursued Harvey, while Johnson followed Bryant to Harvey’s automobile parked near the former post office on First Street. Harvey’s wife, Elsie, was at the wheel. As Bryant entered the car, he and Mrs. Harvey were arrested and taken to police headquarters. Meanwhile, Ferguson was able to apprehend Harvey and take him into custody.
Both Harvey and Bryant denied knowing anything about an extortion plot pertaining to Lindbergh. Bryant said he found the check and the instructions about cashing it while walking along Rosewood Avenue looking for a jar of moonshine that a friend supposedly placed in a rotted stump.
A few days later, two FBI agents arrived in Roanoke to take up the investigation that included an exhaustive search of the suspects’ homes and personal belongings. Nothing incriminating was found. Handwriting samples were taken from all three.
As local, state and federal investigators interrogated the trio information about them leaked to the public. Bryant, 19, lived on Woodlawn Avenue with his mother and had been laid off at Walker Machine and Foundry in Norwich. He had a fourth-grade education. The Harveys, in their late twenties, also lived in the Weaver Heights neighborhood with their small child. The stump, that was the drop point for the letters and check, was torn apart by souvenir hunters.
The Harveys and Bryant remained in jail through mid-March before being released on reduced bail, as the government asked for more time to develop its case. From the time of their arrest, the case had made international headlines, including as far away as New Zealand. Time Magazine in its February 20th edition named the case its Crime-of-the-Week. “Swords sharpened by the nation to avenge the murder of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr. last March, were raised menacingly over the heads of two young morons of Roanoke, Va.,” the magazine reported.
In early July, the Harvey and Bryant cases came up for a hearing, but the government decided not to prosecute. The FBI could not match the handwriting of the suspects to that used in the extortion letter, and local authorities could not produce evidence that contradicted the stories told by the trio that they had simply stumbled upon the check and decided to cash it for quick money. With scant evidence, the case was dismissed. Assistant District Attorney T.X. Parsons stated, “We did not feel we had sufficient evidence to go before a grand jury.”
Joe Bryant faded from view, but Norman Harvey had other troubles. That same year he was convicted in Roanoke County for the fatal shooting of Raymond Edwards during an altercation at Harvey’s home and sentenced to 12 years. The identity of those from Roanoke who had threatened the Lindberghs was never solved.
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