Description
[Cover subtitle: The Shocking Story of America's First Kidnapping for Ransom] First Edition, stated. 304 p.; ill.; 22 cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. 303-304). Smart tan cloth hardcover with blindstamped publisher insignia to cover and gilt lettering to spine with red embellishment, shows very minor shelfwear, including minor bumping to tip of spine, but is internally fine, possibly unread, with lovely patterned endpapers. The dust jacket has some minor shelfwear, including but not limited to creases, rubbing, and scratches. From the dust jacket: On July 1, 1874, four-year-old Charley Ross was playing outside his home in the fashionable Germantown section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, when two strange men lifted him into a wagon and carried him away. Three days later on July 4, Christian K. Ross received this letter: July 3 — Mr. Ros — be not uneasy you son charly bruster be al writ we is got him and no powers on earth can deliver out of our hand —You will hay two pay us befor you git him from us — an pay us a big cent. As the full realization of the unsigned letter's import closed in, Christian Ross began to shake. Those around him read it with horror, incredulity, and indignation. A monster walked the earth who had committed the unspeakable crime of child-stealing for ransom. And with this letter began a series of events which shocked and unified a nation whose moral temperament could not abide the heinous crime. To this point in America's history, the kidnapping of a child for ransom was unheard of and it wasn't until the 1920's that such a crime was again committed. The Ross case came as such an unexpected shock that the police's antiquated detective methods proved of little avail against the cunning of the abductors. Charles Brewster Ross became the focal point of a great and dramatic search which in some way involved every man, woman and child in the United States. Norman Zierold has researched and documented the facts of this tragic case; he has also written compellingly of the fears, false hopes, and anxieties which brought Christian Ross to the brink of death and left the entire family irreparably scarred. As the days of the search multiplied and the hope for little Charley dwindled, hundreds upon hundreds of children, most bearing no resemblance whatever to Charley, were proclaimed to be the missing boy. Newspapers vacillated between suspicious attacks upon the Ross family and righteously indignant editorials against the inefficiency of the police. False headlines proclaimed the child found and, of course, repeatedly condemned the criminals. While Ross carried on a bizarre correspondence with the kidnappers, the police searched every house in Philadelphia, stopped every suspicious character, and closely questioned every lost or stray child. The New York police achieved more concrete results from informers. It appeared that the abductors were safe from the law until a remarkable event reversed the situation and,...
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