DEEP IN THE WOODS-Bryan Johnston

of the biggest man hunt in Northwest history. The caper plays out like a Hollywood thriller, with countless twists and improbable developments. Perhaps the most astonishing thing of all, though, is how it all ends. Book we're featuring this evening is Deep in the Woods, the nineteen thirty five kidnapping of nine year old George Waerhauser, heir to America's mightiest Timber dynasty. With my special guest, journalist and author Brian Johnston. Welcome to the program, and thank you so much for

this interview. Brian Johnston, how do you do?

parton me, and interviews with George Warehouser himself. So just just yeah, that's exactly our audience, a little bit of an introduction. Let's get to May twenty fourth, nineteen thirty five, and tell us what happens. Take us back to where this is, Tacoma, Washington. Take us back to that day and why George was walking home without say this chauffeur that might have been able to pick him up. Tell us a little bit about his background, family's background, and what happened that day.

of Washington. Here's a really goofy statistic for you. They own about one six hundred and fortieth percent of all of America.

now and then. And on this occasion, May twenty fourth, George was at school, which is about a half mile from home, and he walked down to another school where his sister is going to school, and he was supposed to meet her there and then their chauffeur would give him a ride the rest of the way. Well, he got there about fifteen minutes early, after waiting around for a few minutes, when was this dumb Why do I want to wait here? I'll just walk home. It's you know,

it's like six blocks. So he starts walking and he's about three blocks from home when a car just pulls up in this little parking lot that he happened to just be in at that moment, nobody else around. Guy jumps out of the car asks him a question, Hey kid, can you tell me where Stadium Way is? George doesn't give it a thought, He says, yeah, sure, and then a guy grabs him, throws him in the back seat of the car, says keep your mouth shut, nothing's going

to happen, and drives away. Kidnappers now have George Warehouser kidnapped.

had gone sideways. By that time, George's dad was back in town and George's mom was getting home that evening. So yeah, it was like I said about, I think about five o'clock at night when they got the ransom note in the mail and actually got delivered hand delivered to their to their house.

originally only asked for fifty thousand dollars. This was four times that amount of money. Well, the warehousers were wealthy, but they didn't have two hundred grand and small and marked bills laying around. And that was the number one demand. We want that money in five days or else. Some of the other demands were that it will communicate with us using personal ads in the Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper

using a code name. The code name Percy many. So this way, when the Warehouser family was ready to pay the ransom, they would place a person lad in the paper saying we're ready or something to that effect, and sign it persing in. The kidnappers every day would flip through the newspaper and the person lads looking for that code word, and then they would know, you know, the

Warehousers are ready to pay up. Some of the other demands, which were ridiculous, were don't tell the police haha, good luck with that, and also do not tell the media, which also ridiculous. In fact, the ransom note said do not alert the newspapers. So what did the newspaper do? They posted the ransom note on the front page of the newspaper.

And then Margaret was Harmon's wife. So Bill Mayhan and Harmon just randomly ran across each other out on the streets in Salt Lake City about six weeks earlier. So Harmon says, hey, Bill, you got to come back to my house and have dinner with me and my wife. Harmon had met Margaret only six months earlier. Dated for

a week and then got married. Margaret was nineteen years old, never been in trouble in her life, but she was raised in the Mormon faith, and she was taught to always do exactly as your husband tells you too, And that was her undoing through the whole thing. Poor Margaret, she was, she was a pawn in this whole thing, but she got caught up in it unbeknownst to her. So Margaret and Harmon, they're totally captivated by Bill mayhann esus talker, good salesperson, and he says, Hey, I'm head

enough to Spokane, Washington. I've got a job up there. He didn't, why don't you guys come with me? Maybe I can get harm in a job too. A why because at the time, Harmon and Margaret had six bucks to their name, and they're like, sure, let's do that. So they jump and build Mahon's car and they drive up north. He stops along the way at this garage and says, hold on for a second, opens a garage. There's a second car. Yeah, this is my other car.

Why don't you guys drive it? And they're like, holy crap, this guy's got two cars. During the depression. They think their ships come in. So they drive up to Spokane, they runt a house together, and you know, they just go about their business. So they then they drive back. They drive across the state over to western Washington, Seattle, Tacoma and a little town called hoke Whim where Harmon

grew up. And Margaret's under the impression that they're, you know, that William's trying to help Harmon get a job and help him with his sales as it were. Little does she know that they're actually casing banks, looking, you know, to rob banks. They drive back across the state, and then Margaret totally changes the calculus of everything completely unwittingly. She reads an article in the newspaper. It says, uh,

you know, local millionaire Warehouser dies. Well this was George's grandfather, Okay, And she just went, huh, that's really interesting, That's all she really said. Bill Mayhan hears that and he sees the angle. He's like, huh, local millionaire dies, So maybe he leaves a lot of money to his son. Maybe his son has kids. Hmm, I see leverage opportunity. So Bill Mayhan and Harmon head back west again. They tell Margaret again. Now we're going to head back west. We

got opportunities for sales again a lie. They go back and they start looking for They look through the newspaper. We see the newspaper. They look through the phone book and they find the warehouser's phone number and address. They drive down and they start casing the joint and they see little George and his brother walk into school and the light goes on for Bill Mayhon, and he's like, ah,

here we go, here's my opportunity. So for about two days they're casing, they're tracking the kid, and so that's how the whole kidnapping came about. It really was just a crime of opportunity. She reads an article in the paper, she makes a comment, Bill Mayhon. The light goes on, and they follow the kid and they snatch the kid. It all came together in like two days.

the cops in that state couldn't chase after him. So after the Limberg kidnapping, the FBI Jaegerhover said, this is ridiculous. We need this to stop, and so he enacts what everybody else called the Limberg Law, so that if you took somebody across state lines, it becomes a federal offense and that the FBI can get involved, okay, And so that's how things changed. Kidnapping at that time was really

really popular. It kind of you know, jumped in with bootlegging and you know, all the all these other big crimes at the time, and criminals started to come to the realization, this is a much safer way of making a buck. Grabbed somebody, hold on to him, offer ransom demands and just wait for the money to show up, and it usually worked, but after the Limberg Law came

into effect, it didn't work so much anymore. In fact, the FBI, I mean, once the Limberg Law kicked in and the FBI really got involved in capturing capturing kidnappers, kidnappers failed almost every single time. But evidently Bill Mahon and Harmon Wiley didn't didn't know the statistics.

So they they Bill Mahan was hoping to kidnap some other guy, you know, weeks or months earlier, and he dug a hole out in the forest just for the purpose of keeping somebody stashed there. But then he realized the person he wanted to kidnap didn't have the money, and so he forgot about it. Well, now all of a sudden, he's got George Warehouser. That's where he's going to keep kids stashed. So this hole in the ground,

which is basically the size of a grave. It's about six feet long and four feet deep, three feet wide, with some boards across the bottom. And they put George in the hole and they chained him up, and they threw some boards over the top and camouflaged it. And so George is sitting there for a couple of days, you know, and the pitch dark nine years old. And after the first day they realized, okay, because like hikers happened to be nearby, they discovered we got to move him.

So they moved him to another hole in the ground in another forest. Then after about another day they went, okay, this is the things are getting too hot, because now it's on the front page everywhere, and it's on the radio everywhere. You know, It's literally on the front page of every newspaper in America, and the cops are fanning out all over the state looking for the rappers. I'm looking for George, and so they decided they want to take George back to Spokane. Now, during all this, Margaret

is still oblivious. She has no idea that George has been kidnapped. She has no idea that her husband has part of because what's going on with this as well? So this is a funny thing. Build my hand, goes it back and gets Margaret drives her back out into the forest and she's like, why are we out here? And he goes, wait, I got to get your husband. And she's like, what's my husband doing out in the forest. So he says, shut up to sit here. He goes off in the forest. A few minutes later, her husband

comes back with a flashlight. He gets in the car and says, Margaret, I need you to get on your hands and knees on the front seat and cover your head and then I'm going to fold the seat over you. She's like, what, he says, just shut up and do it. Okay, She gets on her hands and knees. He puts the seat over her head, and all of a sudden, she hears the trunk open and slam. She has no idea that George Warehouser had just been put in the trunk of the car, so they start driving back across the state.

Halfway across the state, they stopped to get gas and Margaret hears a voice out of the trunk saying, hey, mister, can you let me out now? She freaks out, going, oh my god. All the puzzle pieces fall into place, and she realizes they'd got the kid who's on the front page of every paper in America. And then Bill Mahon pulls out a gun and says, you're going to keep your mouth shut or I kill you. I killed George, I kill your husband. So she keeps his mouth shut.

They drive back to Spokane, where they've got that house. They rent a house again, Okay, the same house that they were in before. But here's what this is an interesting thing that nobody seems to understand why they did this. Driving back across the state, they went past Spokane. Spokane is really close to the Washington Idaho borders, literally just a few miles away. They drove across border into Idaho for like a few hours, and then drove back into

Spokane again. No reason why, but because they did that, it officially became a federal offense. They didn't know that at the time, or if they did, they weren't saying why. So they rent this house from a pastor on a local pastor in Spokane, and the pastor had come over to the house saying, okay, I want you to take good care of my house and.

speaking about the Carpus Gang. Tell us about how the Carpus Gang gets to be number one suspects in this.

been shot or they've been put in prison. So Carpus he and you've heard of Ma Barker, Okay, the Barker Carpus Gang. We're kind of last the big time criminals. And Carpus was really famous for doing a couple of really big kidnappings just you know, about a year earlier. So he was number one suspect. And back in those days, the newspapers never used the term allegedly. They just speculated and that was that. So they were putting articles out

there that pretty much just plain simple set. It's clearly the Karpus gang. They're the ones that did it. They're guilty, they were the judge and jury, and it happened frequently, so that's why everybody just thought, oh, it must be the Carpus gang.

at Cabby and says, hey, here's an envelope. I want you to take it to this hotel and for this name. Gives them two bucks. Guy says, sure, no problem. Inside there is the next instructions. Okay, So he goes to the hotel, hands it off, gives it to George's dad, and the instructions say okay, you're ready to make the money drip, because we saw in the paper that you had said we're ready to go sign Percy Mini. So the George's dad, they've got the two hundred thousand dollars

in small, unmarked bills. Now give you a little backstory on that. That took a lot of doing to get the money. Then on top of it, the FBI had to they had to keep a record of every single serial number. That's twenty thousand serial numbers for all this money, and that took them over four thousand man hours to do and they only had five days to pull that off.

booklet of these numbers. Okay, So now George's dad has got this suitcase full of money, and the letter from the kidnapper said you will drive to this location and you will go to this abandoned house, and in the yard you'll find a little stick of wood with a piece of white fabric attached to it like a flag. And under that you'll find a tin can, and inside the tin can you'll find a note that'll instruct you to the next place. So this is playing out like

a Hollywood movie at this point. Okay, like a Bogie film. So his dad drives out there by himself, and he goes to this abandoned house and he sees in the yard this little stick of wood, and he finds the note inside of the tin can, and it says go to this next location. So he drives to the next location, to another place, another little piece of wood with another flag, except there's no tin can and there's no note. He's freaking out because the ransombody is due that night or else.

He's crawling around on his hands and knees in the dark with matches and looking for it. After a couple hours, he gives up. He heads back to the hotel. The next morning, the kidnappers call, pissed off, saying, hey, where's our money, And he's like, I tried, the second note wasn't there, And they went all right with and give you one more chance. So they gave him new instructions. So that night he goes to a new location again

the same same drill, who infant repeat. They find a flag, they find the tin can, they find a note, they take to another one, et etc. Finally, the last note says, park your car, leave the dome light on, leave the money in the back seat, start walking back down the road. His dad does this. After he's about one hundred yards away, he hears a noise behind him, looks back, sees somebody jump out of the bushes, jump into the car and

drive away. Bill Mahon now two hundred thousand dollars. So he drives to this abandoned well amount of bandon a shack that he had Margaret waiting for him with and he brings back the money. And now they'd got the money. So then they head back to Spokane and they've got two hundred thousand bucks. And now it's time to hand over George.

eighteen plus. Is formulated with nutrients to help support brain health, bone health, blood health, and provide antioxidant support. But Richual didn't stop there. They invested in a gold standard university led clinical trial to prove the impact of Essential for Women eighteen plus multivitamin. The results Essential for Women eighteen plus was shown to increase vitamin D levels by forty three percent in omega three DHA levels by forty one

percent in twelve weeks. I've been taking Ritual for about a year now, and I started when my wife had been taking Ritual Essential for Women for about two years and she felt it had made a significant difference in her daily routine. So when it became available for men and teens, I took Ritual fifty plus and I've been taking it for about a year and I feel it's made a significant difference in my daily routine. Right now, ritual is offering my listeners ten percent sent off your

first three months? Is it ritual dot com slash murder and turn healthy habits into a ritual? That's ten percent off at ritual dot com slash murder. Now we talked about that Bill Mahon and Harmon, but mill Mahon had in his possession two hundred thousand dollars and they had stipulated they won him in twenties, certain denominations, in twenty certain number of twenties, tens and fives. Despite their demands. How difficult was it going to be to spend any

of that money? And what was the plan for Mahon and Harmon in regards to that money being spent?

sharpest tools in the shed. And as I'll get to a little bit down the road here when we're talking about this, that was their undoing. Yeah, they that they tried to not spend it, but they couldn't. They didn't They didn't have money tucked away for spending money for like a six month period, which is what they should have done. Okay, So they eventually had to spend some and that's how the FBI eventually caught up with them. Like I said, we'll chat about that here in a few minutes.

So how does she act now that they have some money and tell us about this split and where the two perpetrators went after?

So Harmon says, here, takes take this suitcase, and you're gonna take the train to Salt Lake City and I'm going to join you when I get down, and I'll bring the money with me. She doesn't realize that she's got that ninety five thousand dollars in a suitcase with her. She doesn't realize it. She's sitting there on the train with her feet propped up on top of the suitcase. What she also doesn't realize is that Harmon is on

the train and he's spying on her. She thinks that he's not coming until the next day, but he actually went on the same train to keep an eye on her. So she gets down to the Salt Lake City. Harmon shows up there the next day and they rent a

house and they start going about their business. So that's and again she's she knows what's happened, she knows what they did was wrong, but she was also terrified of Bill Mahon and his gun, and so she just went along stupidly or naively or just because she was terrified, you know, I'm not sure which it was probably a little bit of all three. And so yeah, that was the fall of Margaret.

treatment by those kidnappers. So how was it that George, at nine years old had the wherewithal and the ability to be able to handle this. What was his source of optimism in his mind?

across the stream. George hears the water and he's thinking, are they going to toss me in the river? Are they going to toss me in the stream whatever and drown me? Because they're done with me, and he asked, you know Mayhem that, hey, mister, are you going to throw me in the river and drown me? And Mayhand said, kid, You're worth too much alive. And I think that's when George realized, Okay, as long as I keep quiet, I'm worth something to them. And so he just kept quiet.

And Harmon Whaley, you know, Harmon was kind of watched watch took care of George for the five days back in Spokane while Mayhan mardered or making trips back and forth. And according to George, Harmon was okay with him. He didn't treat him poorly. He was a reasonable man, is what he said. And so, yeah, George, that was the reason George hung in there because he trusted that nothing was going to happen to him. So now let's talk about how George has dropped off, because this is a

great part of the story. So they're driving back from Spokane and driving back, Mayhean and Whaley are discussing where are we going to drop off George because they hadn't really thought that far in advance. Again, a not the smartest, sharpest tools in the shed. So they finally realized, let's drop them back off in the forest, near that hole in the ground where we kept him a week earlier. So they take him up this old timber road and they drop them off by this I wouldn't even call

it a shack. It's just a glorified lean to. And they said, okay, George, here's a blanket, here's a dollar. We're going to leave you here. Your dad's gonna come pick you up. And they drove away. It's midnight, okay, and he's they just dropped this nine year old off on a timber road and pitch dark out in the forest and it's raining. So George is sitting there in the rain, in the dark for a couple hours, and

he finally his dad's not coming. He doesn't know that though, because his dad doesn't even know where he's been dropped off. He doesn't even know that he has been dropped off. So after a while, George goes, this is stupid. I've had enough of this, and so he starts walking and he walks from miles and he finally comes across this old farmer's house. It's about six o'clock in the morning.

He's drenched and knocks on the door and the farmer opens the door and there's this soaking wet kid standing on their front porch and he says, Hi, I am George Warehouser. Can you take me to my folks? So this farmer answers the door, and the kid who's been on the front page or every newspaper in America just magically appeared on his front porch. Oh my gosh, it's George Warehouser. They throw them in their model Tea and they take off, taking him back to Tacoma. About halfway

between Izaquah and Tacoma is called renting. They get about as far as renting, and the farmer pulls over, goes to a gas station and makes the phone call of the Warehousers, because evidently you can just grab a phone book and call these really rich people because their numbers looking listed. So they called the Warehouser house and the FBI had this elaborate phone system set up just for this phone call. And the phone system failed, utterly, completely failed.

The FBI agent that's at the house, here's the phone ring. He's supposed to wait for it to ring five times or something to that effect. I forget exactly what it was, but it rang once and then it was silent, and the FBI agent picked it up and he listens in the dead silence. There's nothing. The farmer on his end, it's his ringing and ringing and ringing, and he let it ring for four minutes long, and then nobody's picking it up, and finally he gets set up and he

hangs up the phone. So then he calls the police. Now this is where this is really interesting, and it depends on who you believe. You either believe the reporter or you believe the FBI. So now the reporters have been camped out at the Warehouser House for days, waiting for their big break. Media circus, all right. In fact, the Warehouser House had become like this tourist attraction, cars lined up down the road, people stealing flowers out of

their yard as soon and ears. So the reporters they get wind that George has been released, but they don't know any particulars. Now, the reporter a guy by the name of John Drer. He was a golf reporter for the Seattle Times, and he claims that he got a tip from his publisher that George had been released in uh and like in Zaqua and was driving back in a Model T through rent from Renting. Okay, that's what

he claims. Now here's what the FBI says. The FBI claims that the reporter was in the Tacoma police station and overheard the phone call between the farmer and the police officer, and he went, Okay, the kid is coming this way in it. So the reporter gets a cab, tells the cabby head for Renton, we're going to try to intercept George before the FBI. And so they drive

down the highway. Now, granted is in nineteen thirty five, there's not a lot of cars on the road, and sure enough they see it and Modeled T come in the other direction and they see George in the front seat. So you know, the reporter's like, there he is there, he is, go get him. Cabby spins around, drives up, pulls alongside him, waving at him like they're trying to

pull the car over. The Model he pulls over. The reporter jumps out of the Model and jumps out of the Cabby, runs over, insinuates to the farmer that he's with the police when he's not, gives the farmer five bucks farmer hands George over. No questions asked to this

stranger could have been another kidnapper, hands George over. The reporter puts George in the back seat of the cab below the window level, gets in the back seat on the floorboards below the window level, tells the cab you drive back to George's house, take your time, go on back roads, and then he interviews George for like the Biggest Scoop Pulitzer Prize you know, wasn't a winner, but it was a nominator fort Pulitzer Prize for thismongous, humongous scoop.

That's on the front page the next morning. So then they get to George's house, George is reunited with his family, everybody who is crazy, everybody's all excited, and then becomes the greatest man hunt in Northwest history.

he bought a train ticket to Salt Lake City. And then Margaret, she's got some of the bills and she goes to like a store called Cress's Cress and she buys some stuff. Then she goes to a Woolworths and she decides she's going to buy a a cigarette case for her dad for his birthday, a twenty cent cigarette case, and she gives them five bucks. Now, back in those days, a lot of stores don't do the exchange right there

at the counter. They take the money and they go back to what's called a cash cage where they've got a person back there. So they take the five dollar bill. They go back to the cash cage. They give the five bucks over to that woman and she's got one of those booklets that has all the serial members and she just, you know, force a habit, flip flip flip, flip flip big and go it's one of the bills. Oh my gosh, this is a ransom bill. She calls

the police. In short order, the police arrive and they grab Margaret and it doesn't take long for her to crack, and it doesn't take long before they nab Harmon as well. And there you go. They've got two of the kidnappers right there on the spot and they take them off to be you know, to be sent before the judge. Word gets out that Harmon and Murder had been busted.

And Bill Mayhan he for whatever reason I think he was, he went down to Salt Lake City also, I'm not sure exactly why, and he heard that his compatriots have been busted, so he high tails it to Butte, Montana. The next morning, he's standing on a street corner seven o'clock in the morning. He looks across the street and there's a police officer and the cop is staring at him, and he's staring at the cop and the cop keeps staring at him. Well, Bill Mayhan starts getting nervous, thinking, okay,

he's on to me, and he takes off running. Well, the police officer didn't recognize him as a kidnapper because he had no idea Bill Mayhan was one of the kidnappers. The cop recognized him because he'd arrested Bill Mayhan three years earlier, so pure chance, he sees the guy that he'd arrested, and now the guy that he'd a rerect makes a break for it, so he goes chasing after him.

Bill Mayhan jumps over the fence of this yard, in this yard, and there's a guard dog in the yard, all right, and the cop jumps over the fence as well. Mayhean has run past the guard dog. So the guard dog turns on the cop. The CoP's got to make a choice. Okay, shoot the dog and capture the guy who running away from him, or not shoot the dog. He chooses to not shoot the dog, and as a result, Bill Mayhan escapes for another year. So now we get to Margaret and Harmon. I'm back taken back to Tacoma

and they're going before the judge. Harmon guilty, I'm guilty. I'm guilty. I'm guilty. Fine, forty five years. They're going to Alcatraz. That's it. Margaret guilty, guilty, guilty, But Harmon says, wait a minute, she's not guilty. She didn't know anything about it. She didn't participate other than going along with it. Once you found out about it. But she never even saw George, which is true, she never once saw him. They'd make sure they'll always keep her, keep her, uh,

you know, out of sight of George. So the judge says, wait a minute, you want to plead guilty, but you didn't really participate in the kidnapping. And she's like yes, He's like, why would you do that? She's like, I can't imagine my life. Well, my husband is in prison, me being free. And the judge thinks, you know that's this is stupid. No, no, no, no, no no, you are going to plead not guilty and it's going to go to trial, and that's what he forced her to do.

And then it became this enormous trial in Seattle. Enormous trial, biggest trial in Seattle history at this point, huge, huge, huge, huge, and would you like me to chat chat chat about that right now? So Margaret, Margaret as her defendant, as her public defender, is this really talented lawyer who is the former mayor of Seattle, and he was smart enough to realize that she's got no prayer, she's got no chance,

and so he portrays her. This is his defense. He portrays her as the stupidest person on the planet, as a total moron, a complete idiot who would jump off the building if her husband told her to, and he's on her side. Okay, And poor Margaret, you know, the media are saying things like they're describing her as plane and plump. No woman weighed one hundred and twenty pounds, you know, but they just basically saw her as a figure of pity. And you know, they go through while

this trial is going on. Meanwhile in the Seattle, at Tacoma, all the Puget Sound area, there's a massive timber strike going on, and there are riots in the streets, and there's tear gas and there's National guardsmen with bayonets and people are getting shot and cars are being dynamited. All this is playing on in the backdrop of this massive trial. So, like I said, this thing's playing out like a movie. Okay.

And so finally, you know, they the jury, which this is interesting too, They list, you know, they describe every person on the jury. They describe if as a man, if it's a woman, what their name is, what they do for a living, and where they live, all right, And they even described it as a better looking than most jury in the NewsPage. So the jury goes off and in short order they come back and they say Margaret's guilty, and she's guilty, but not to the same

degree that Harmon and Bill Mayhon. Arm So she gets twenty years in the work farm and she says, I count the days till I'll be back, you know, with my husband Harmon. Blah blah blah blah. That lasted about twelve hours. While she's being taken back East Michigan. On the way back, she's like, that jerk. Everything bad that's happened to me is because of him. I am swearing off men for the rest of my life. The day she gets out of prison, she divorced harm So Harmon

gets forty five years in prison. Bill Mayhon gets sixty years in Alcatraz, and they're also there at the same time that al Capone is there. And evidently Harmon, who was a small time, petty criminal and according to George is a very reasonable guy, he became kind of a heart and criminal and he got into fistfights with al Capone and stuff like that while he was there.

she was released. And I can't remember how many Mayhan served, but it was a pretty good chunk.

your kidnapping, unless it's a really uncomfortable subject. Because whenever I'd read any articles about the Warehouser kidnapping, there would be always be some family members saying George doesn't like to talk about the kidnapping. So I really didn't expect to get anything. So about three days later I got a voicemail from George saying, Brian, this is George Warehouser. Happy to chat with you. It happened a long time ago, not an uncomfortable subject at all. I'm like, holy crap.

So I call it the back up and he agrees to sit down with me. So I prived down to his house and they was in a very nice house, you know, it's not like a humongous mansion or anything. And he's sitting out on the back porch by the lake and I start chatting with him and I'm like, George, how old are you? Anyway, says Brian, I'll be ninety four next week, and I'm like, oh, man, I should

look so good when I'm ninety four. So we go inside the house and he and his daughter sit there and we chat for a couple hours, and he's just delightful. He still remembered a fair amount of things. He was pretty sharp, some things you know, that were hard for him to remember. Granted it was eighty five years since the kidnapping. But I was asking him things like, you know, I was asking him like shorts, I mean, did you have any really bad you know, PTSD after this? Did

you have stress or nightmares? He's like, Nope, none at all, really, nope, none at all. Okay, did when you were after you were returned, did your parents just bring clamps down on you and drive you everywhere and just hover over you. Nope, not at all. They wanted me to get back to normal life as quickly as possible. They let me walk to school again. I'm like, you got to be kidding me.

So that's the kind of stuff we just chatted about, you know, I asked him, I said, now, when you're in college, this has got to be the best pickup line in history. You gotta talk to girls saying, yeah, I'm George Warehouser. You probably heard of me. I got kidnapped once and he said, nope, nope, never did it once. Like this is nuts. I can't believe this. But which then takes us. Boy, I'm wondering if I should give away the this ending. It's such a remarkable ending, it's

such an uplifting ending. But I'm I'm wondering. I'm wondering aloud now if I should give it away a play or not. But it's such a it's such a great story. But I guess my my thinking on it is, you know, when I want to go see the movie Titanic, I knew that the that was going to sink, but I still enjoyed the movie anyway.

So then twenty five years after the kidnapping, George, by this time is, you know, thirty three years old, thirty four years old, and he's just a couple of years short of becoming the president and CEO of this massive corporation. And he gets a phone call and he answers the phone and it's Harmon Whaley. He says, Hi, George, this is Harmon Whaley. I just got out of prison. I could sure use a job. And George hired him. George hired his kidnapper.

any conversations in the courtroom are taken verbatim. Everything you see on the printed page is exactly what was said in the courtroom.