When Kidnappings Were All the Rage
IN THE EARLY 1930s, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover placed advertisements in newspapers advising the families of kidnapping victims to contact his agency. The ads encouraged them to telegraph or phone, since a letter would take too long. Berenice Urschel kept the number by the phone, just in case. When her oil magnate husband was abducted at gunpoint in 1933, she called immediately.
Her husband, Charles F. Urschel, was taken from his Oklahoma City home to a farmhouse in Texas, where he was held until a $200,000 ransom was paid. That was how most high-profile kidnappings turned out: pay the money, get home safe. But the Urschel kidnapping was the first where the FBI was involved from start to finish, thanks to the
