Chapter 29 Section 4

The first sign that the kidnapping and murder of Bobby Fanks went public was the sudden crowd of reporters around the yellow brick mansion at 5052 Ellis Road.Jacob Fanks immediately announced on behalf of the whole family that a reward of $5,000 was offered for the arrest of the murderer.Soon, Chicago Police Chief Morgan Collins also announced an additional $1,000 on top of Fanks' bounty.Two major newspapers in the Chicago area, the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Herald, have also entered the ranks of the two local tabloids, the Chicago Daily News and the Evening American. This focus news, and respectively expressed their willingness to contribute 5,000 US dollars to purchase exclusive information about the kidnappers.

The next day, the Chicago Police Department and the Cook District Attorney General's Office formed a temporary joint headquarters at the newly completed Drake Hotel to coordinate matters related to the case.Commissioner Collins called the case "the most horrific and vicious crime in the history of this city" at a news conference, adding that "we must and will bring this murderer to justice."Attorney General Robert Corow appointed his most capable assistant, Samuel Ittoson's nephew Bertie Clauson, to preside over the case.Botti is said to have called his wife after taking over the case on a Friday afternoon, briefed him on the case, and said he might be home a few hours late today.As a result, he did not see his wife again until ten days later.

Also during these ten days, in the streets and alleys of Chicago, in restaurants and bars, there was a lot of discussion and speculation about the murder of Bobby Fanks. It seemed that every Chicagoan had his own set of theories to explain the case.Some people say that the purpose of the kidnappers is to defraud money, and generally they will not tear up tickets easily, so Bobby Fanks should have died accidentally during the crime.Some people also said that the murderer's methods were vicious, obviously out of revenge. It is estimated that Jacob Fanks offended someone when he opened the pawnshop.More people believe that the perpetrator may have killed the child by mistake, then pretended to be kidnapped, and set up a ecstasy array to paralyze the police.Others speculated that the perpetrators might have been the kids who had gotten into an argument with Bobby at the just-concluded baseball game, and they were just trying to teach him a lesson, only to miss and kill him.

The police dispatched hundreds of people to carry out a large-scale search around Wolf Lake, Harvard School and some other suspicious locations. At the same time, they got in touch with experts in various fields and asked them to identify and screen the few physical evidence currently available. First, experts from the eyewear industry took a close look at the pair of glasses that Paul Korff found near the culvert.The glasses are small, presumably belonged to women.The ends of the shelves on both sides have traces of repeated chewing by teeth, indicating that the owner of the glasses is often a little nervous.The police sent the glasses to each store in turn, and asked the merchants to help check the optometry and sales records in the store to determine the buyer of the glasses.

Handwriting experts repeatedly studied the name and address of the recipient written on the envelope of the ransom demand letter, and believed that the writer was a fluent handwriting person, but in order to deceive people, the handwriting was deliberately crooked. As for the writing style of the ransom demand letter itself, it shows a solid foundation in English.The police have deduced from this that its author should be very intelligent and well educated.But later, a reporter from the Chicago Tribune discovered that in the "Detective Story" magazine published on May 3 of the same year, in a novel titled "Kidnapping Syndicate" (Syndicate—syndicate, which means joint action organization) , There are striking similarities between the letter left by the kidnappers to the families of the hostages and the ransom demand letter received by the Fanks family.

What troubled the police was the typewriter used by the kidnappers.Based on samples of typing from the same ransom demand letter, experts have come to different conclusions.Some assert it is Corona, others believe it is Ondevo.The only thing they agree on is that it's a portable, not a desktop typewriter.Finally, H.P. Shatton, an engineer from the Royal Typewriter Company, made an authoritative conclusion: the kidnapper used an Ondewu brand portable typewriter.Moreover, the expert further stated that the person was very new to the job. "When a skilled typist hits a key, he applies even force to all the letters. The person who wrote this letter was either unfamiliar with the system, or used only two fingers, so that the letter has Some of the letters were so heavily struck that the paper almost punctured, while others were so light that one felt hesitant and uncertain.”

On Friday morning, James Mulroy of the Chicago Daily News went with Alvin Gerstein to the home of Hartman, a wealthy furniture dealer who lived in Kenwood.According to police reports, the Hartman family's 9-year-old son Ervin, also a Harvard student, was the last person to see Bobby Fanks alive before the kidnapping.When Bobby left school Wednesday afternoon after dropping out of baseball, Erwin was heading home.The direction of the two people's homes is the same.The boy remembers that Bobby was walking about 100 feet ahead of him.Erwin followed Bobby across the street to Ellis Road West, then south across 48th Street.That's when he saw a northbound dark blue Vinton turning left onto Forty-eighth Street.The car made a U-turn at 48th Street and returned to Ellis Road, this time heading south.Erwen walked a few more steps and saw the tulips blooming in full bloom in someone's flower garden by the side of the road, so he stopped to look at them with great interest.When Erwen raised his head, Bobby in front was gone, only the dark blue Vinton was still going south.The little boy said that he neither saw Bobby get into the car, nor did he see anyone get out of the car, but within a minute, Bobby disappeared.

It was already noon when they came out of Hartman's house. Because the editor-in-chief of the newspaper did not assign them specific tasks, the two young reporters walked to Alvin's alma mater, the University of Chicago.At the lunch table they met two of Alvin's acquaintances, Hauer Meyer and Richard Lowe, trainee correspondents and students at the University of Chicago for the Evening American. This Richard Lowe was the Richard Lowe who lived diagonally across from the Fanks family, was distantly related to the Fanks family, and played tennis with Bobby Fanks.But his classmates didn't necessarily know this.Richard's great reputation at the university is that he is only 18 years old and has been a graduate student for a year, a true teenage genius.Richard has been extremely smart and intellectual since he was a child, and he skipped several grades in elementary school. After graduating from junior high school at the age of 12, he entered another prestigious school in the Kenwood community, which is as famous as Harvard School—the High School Affiliated to the University of Chicago.Two years later, Bento was a freshman at the University of Chicago.In order to escape the discipline of his family, Richard transferred to the University of Michigan in Annenberg during his third year of college. He completed all the college courses in two years and became the youngest graduate in the history of the school.Since last fall, Richard has returned to the University of Chicago for graduate studies in European and American history.Now I suddenly say that I am tired of history, and I plan to go to law school to take courses after the summer vacation.