Swift Justice: Murder and Vengeance in a California Town 0312070861, 9780312070861

Citation preview

Swift Justice

Swift Murder and Vengeance in a California Town

St. Martin’s Press

Justice Harry Farrell

New York

Swift Justice. Copyright © 1992 by Harry Farrell. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010. Design by Susan Hood

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Farrell, Harry. Swift justice : murder and vengeance in a California town. p. cm. ISBN 0-312-07086-1 1. Lynching—California—San Jose—Case Studies. 2. Kidnapping—Cal­ ifornia—San Jose—Case studies. 3. Murder—California—San Jose—Case studies. 4. California—History—1850-1950. 5. Hart, Brooke Leopold. 6. Thurmond, Harold. 7. Holmes, Jack. I. Title. HV6468.C2F37 1992 364.1'523'0979474—dc20 91-37939

First Edition: March 1992 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3

2

1

For my wife

Betty Regan Farrell with love

Contents

Preface

ix

Part i Shock and Aftershock 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

The Vanishing 3 Players and Manipulators 15 The Harts and Their Town 21 A Sailors Clue 35 Manhunt 45 “Await Further Contact” 56 “Killing Him Is the Easy Way” 67

Part ii The Atrocity 8. 9. 10.

1

79

The Collaborators 81 After the Fact 99 Confession and Incrimination

Part hi Outrage

125

11. The Brittle City 127 12. “As Swift as Law Allows” B. The Woman and the Alibi 14. The Search 159 15. Fury Rising 170

140 151

112

Part iv Retribution 16. 17. 18.

183

In the Grim Bastille 185 The Discovery 195 The Gallows Trees 210

Part

v

Aftermath

239

19. The Next Three Days 241 20. Prosecution and Cover-up 260 21. A Storm Across the Land 271 22. Lingering Doubts 281 Epilogue 293 Selected Bibliography 303 Acknowledgments 308 Index 313

Preface

Early in the Great Depression of the 1930s, two service stations—one Shell and one independent—stood opposite each other on San Carlos Street in San Jose, California. The old man who owned the indepen­ dent station was busy all day because his gasoline sold for a penny or two less per gallon than Shell. The young man at Shell would sit there twelve hours a day and sometimes only a couple of cars would come in. It was probably during the last half of 1932 that the old man crossed the street and asked the young man, “How would you like to buy me out?” The young man was interested. “How much would it take?” “You can have the business for the cost of the inventory.” A figure of a few hundred dollars was mentioned. “I can get the money from my father. ” “There is one other condition,” the old man said. “You’ll have to provide a job for my son.” The son was a slow-witted twenty-six-year-old who had just lost his job with a lumber company. “OK, I’ll put him on at night,” the young man promised. When the young man and the old shook hands on the deal, they set in motion a chain of events that would bring about three homicides, devastate three families, inflame San Jose and blacken its name, spawn an effort to impeach the governor, involve two presidents of the United States in a nationwide moral debate, set off a demonstration in the British House of Commons, and fuel Hitler’s World War II propa­ ganda machine.

The young man’s name was Francis Wyatt. The old man was Thomas J. Thurmond, and his backward son was named Harold. While working for Wyatt, Harold Thurmond met Jack Holmes, an oil company salesman who came around twice a week, and the two men became fast friends. Little more than a year after their first meeting, both would pay the harsh penalty of lynch law as the con­ fessed kidnappers and slayers of department store heir Brooke Leopold Hart. The crime of Holmes and Thurmond, neither of whom had been in trouble before, was incredibly brutal and incredibly stupid. Their bumbling execution of the atrocity verged on the comic. And they could have chosen no victim whose popularity and place in the com­ munity would more surely guarantee the violent retribution that fol­ lowed. A lifetime of close-range fascination with the Hart case led me to write this book. I was nine years old when Brooke Hart was kidnapped. Our home in San Jose was not far from the Hart home, and I went to a school Brooke had attended. Virtually everyone in the city, population then 60,000, knew either the Harts, the Holmeses, or the Thurmonds, or all three, and my family was no exception. One of Brooke’s cousins was a schoolmate of mine. My father and Jack Holmes were business acquaintances. Later, as a San Jose newspaperman, I came to know many other persons connected with the case—police officers, attorneys, vigilan­ tes, friends and families of the principals. I also had the privilege of working with reporters who had covered the story for several newspa­ pers. The Hart case presents a lurid vignette of lawlessness in the 1930s. In my efforts to tell this bit of history as an informal narrative—not a scholarly treatise—I have learned that the historian’s problems in finding the truth often exceed those of the contemporary reporter. For the fabric of my story, I have used the conventional wisdom about the case, based on the facts as aired publicly and taking at face value the Thurmond and Holmes confessions. Indeed, the pre­ ponderance of the evidence supports the long-accepted version of the events. As an objective reporter, however, I have had to deal with certain evidential inconsistencies which cast at least a passing shadow on that scenario. Had the case gone to trial, these discrepancies might have been explored and perhaps explained, but amid the supercharged emotions of 1933 they were ignored or glossed over. I have tried to

examine them fairly in my final chapter, “Lingering Doubts.” Each reader must make his or her own judgment of the truth. My sources are essentially of three kinds: official documents, con­ temporaneous news reports and commentary, and interviews with persons directly involved in the events or having special knowledge of them. The insights of such persons, who have given information never before publicly aired, shed important new light on much of what happened. With each year that passes, fewer such persons remain. Many who have talked to me over the past several years are already dead. Long ago the San Jose Police Department cleared the Hart case records from its files, and the only surviving records in the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Department are the county jail booking sheets for Thurmond and Holmes. Under the Freedom of Information Act, however, I have obtained the FBI’s 345-page file on the case, excep­ tional in its detail. Unfortunately, a large number of other FBI exhib­ its, including two statements in which Harold Thurmond enlarged upon his confession, were destroyed in 1946. In telling the story, I have striven for literal truth. But where sources are in conflict, in obvious error, or incomplete, I have had to make educated guesses. Problems have arisen with direct quotations. Certain matter ap­ pearing within quotation marks does not meet the same tests for exactness that one would expect in a contemporary news story. Freely I acknowledge taking some liberties here, in order to produce a narra­ tive in human terms. Where direct quotations are invented, however, their purpose is to enhance the truth of what is happening rather than distort or dilute it. What is indeed surprising is the amount of solid documentation I was able to find for quoted matter. For example, the seemingly stilted telephone conversation between Thurmond and Alex Hart, during the final ransom call, is one of the most accurately reported dialogues in the book; it faithfully follows a verbatim tran­ script in the FBI file. The talk that passed between Holmes and Thurmond before and diking their crime is documented in the kid­ nappers’ confessions and follow-up statements. My reconstruction of what went on in the Hart household, and what was said there, is based on recollections of family members. The timing and sequence of small events is another matter which I could not determine with 100 percent accuracy. I have tried to follow the action minute-by-minute, but time references in both the old newspaper accounts and the FBI reports are often ambiguous or

contradictory. Occasionally, in the interest of brevity and clarity, I have grouped repetitive events together, though they may have been spread over considerable time periods. In no such case is the sense of the story changed. All persons mentioned are real. In a few instances, all footnoted, the names of characters have been changed for considerations of privacy. In die half century that has elapsed since the events herein related, our customs, values, institutions, and even our language have changed. A word about style and usage is therefore appropriate. In general I have tried to keep the narrative compatible with the time of which it tells, avoiding expressions that have since crept into our idiom. In a few cases, however, I have chosen newer forms purposely, and I would call attention to two of them: In the journalistic usage of 1933, the combination forms of the word kidnap were almost universally spelled with a single “p,” i.e., kidnaped, kidnaper, kidnaping. To the modern eye these forms appear strange, so I have used today's double-p spellings, even within quota­ tion marks. The agency name “Federal Bureau of Investigation” was not used until 1935, two years after the Hart kidnapping. Before that, federal agents listed their affiliation only as “U.S. Department of Justice.” Because “FBI” is universally recognized, however, I use it throughout this book for ease of understanding, although it is at odds with the designation of the time. San Jose, California August 17, 1991

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