Heading the FBI's investigation was St. Paul's veteran SAC (special agent in charge), Werner Hanni, a balding, thirty-eight-year-old native of Switzerland who had joined the Bureau in 1919. He had an intermittently contentious relationship with Hoover, who was forever castigating him for this or that minor transgression, such as forwarding a report a bit late or not telephoning headquarters with updates quickly enough.
As Hanni's granddaughter Lisa Hanni pointed out in 2021, her grandfather wasn't Hoover's type. He was European, dressed like one, spoke with an accent that he made no attempt to soften, was older than Hoover's young and grateful special agents, and was neither a lawyer nor an accountant. (He'd been a Swiss army colonel and a carpenter in Nebraska.) But his years of experience made him a valuable SAC in a tough town.
Meanwhile, the kidnap caravan rolled along. After a five-hour ride, Hamm was brought to a hideout: a two-story frame house where he was taken upstairs to a sparely furnished bedroom with an iron bed, boarded-up windows, and a single unshaded electric light dangling from the ceiling. He later recalled a couple of distinguishing features: pictures of flamingos on one of the walls and the word 'mother' inscribed on the bed's baseboard.
Hamm was usually guarded by a man in a rocking chair and was forced to face the wall whenever his goggles were off. Nearby church bells, children playing, busy thoroughfare traffic, and a train whistle were among the sounds he heard.
With Hamm in captivity, the kidnappers continued sending messages to Dunn. At 1:30 a.m. on June 16, he received a call at home from the same anonymous person who'd phoned the previous afternoon. "Well, Dunn, you are following instructions very well so far," the man said. "You must realize by now that the call was not a joke."
Late that evening, a drugstore delivery boy named Art Kleifgen brought Dunn a note at his residence. As Kleifgen would tell the FBI, a curly-haired man had entered the Rosedale Pharmacy on the west side of town earlier that evening to buy some cigarettes. After leaving, he phoned the drugstore, claiming to be Dunn. He told young Kleifgen that he'd left a letter in a soda booth there and asked the boy to bring it to his home.
Kleifgen had known the voice wasn't that of Dunn, who was a regular customer, but he carried the message anyway. In the note, the kidnappers demanded that Dunn deliver the $100,000 in ransom money personally because they'd learned he was cooperating with law enforcement. "You brought the coppers to this, now you get rid of the assholes," the note read.
The FBI men suspected a leak in the St. Paul Police Department based on another note Dunn soon received. It warned him not to go through with a plan that St. Paul detective Charles Tierney had hatched for the delivery of the ransom money. Tierney wanted to conceal himself under a tarpaulin in the back of the Hamm's beer truck that Dunn was supposed to drive, then pop up and spray the kidnappers with machine-gun fire when they tried to collect. The latest missive to Dunn read, "If you are through with the bullshit and ballyhoo we will give you your chance." He was to "get away from the coppers" and find a standard Ford or Chevy instead of the beer truck they'd previously instructed him to use.
The note told Dunn to remove the side doors and trunk lid and put a red lantern in the back of the car so that no one could hide inside. Clearly, the kidnappers had been tipped off to Tierney's plan.
Dunn also received delivery instructions: drive alone out of St. Paul on Highway 61 with the money in a bag until he saw an approaching car flash its headlights five times. Then drop the bag at the side of the road and continue to Duluth. This time Dunn did as instructed, and on the night of June 17, he made the drop-off.
The $100,000 Dunn turned over that night (more than $2 million in 2024 dollars) was the largest ransom amount paid for an American to date. Two months later, Lloyd's of London underwriters began writing kidnap insurance for up to a maximum of $100,000 for an adult.
Most high-ransom kidnappings of adults in the Depression era had been mobster on mobster: one criminal outfit would abduct an enemy gang's leader or a high-ranking union racketeering official out of revenge. But by 1933, all manner of criminals, including some previously known only as bank robbers, were seeing the "snatch racket" as easy money. Their targets were wealthy businessmen who could afford to pay. Arguably, it beat robbing banks, which usually involved at least some shooting and often killing.
One disadvantage to ransom kidnapping: it brought the feds into the case, at least if state lines were crossed. The Hamm kidnappers weren't too worried, though, about the FBI, which was inexperienced in handling kidnapping cases. Previously, the Bureau had taken a back seat to state law enforcement authorities, who asserted primary jurisdiction over a kidnapping. But Hoover was itching to get into the game, and even though there was no proof yet that Hamm's abductors had taken him across state lines, there was no proof that they hadn't. Hoover decided to assume Lindbergh Law jurisdiction provisionally, and if it later turned out that federal jurisdiction was lacking, the FBI could always turn over the fruits of its investigation to state authorities.
The Hamm snatch was the first high-profile kidnapping case the FBI would lead. And how well Hoover's men performed would go a long way toward establishing whether the lightly regarded agency was up to the task of bringing dangerous criminals to justice.
* * *
Back at the hideout, Hamm's kidnappers were giddy over the $100,000 in currency spread before them on the kitchen table. "You better round up some Hamm's beer," one of them said. "I got a feeling that it'll be my favorite brand for a long time to come."
