The Violent Years (12 page)

Wiles was paroled on February 26, 1928, and returned to Detroit. Frank Hohfer was paroled on May 3, 1929 and was expected to return to Chicago, Illinois, where he had originally lived before coming to Detroit around 1920. If Hohfer did return to Chicago, it was not for long. Hohfer, Wiles, and Germano, along with another ex-convict named William Cardinal alias Gerald “Skin” Murphy, formed a small gang of freelance bank robbers and kidnappers. They were associated with the Legs Laman Gang and involved in several of the gang’s kidnappings. These gangsters formed what the Detroit newspapers would later refer to as an “unholy alliance,” while serving time in Marquette Prison. Inspector Henry Garvin would later claim that many of the gang’s holdups and kidnappings were actually planned by Germano and the others while they were still behind bars. The gangsters wasted little time in proving that the prison time they served had not reformed their ways.

A good example of the cowboy methods of operation of this group occurred on the night of April 8, 1929. Dr. and Mrs. H.A. St. John were surprised by two men with drawn pistols as they pulled into the garage of their Pontiac, Michigan, home. The men, who had been hiding behind the garage, stepped out of the shadows as the doctor and his wife were getting out of the car. They didn’t rob the couple but snatched the car keys away from St. John, shoved him aside, and drove off in his car. Sometime later they stole a set of license plates in Detroit and exchanged them with the plates on the stolen car. The two men who had taken the car had probably been Andrew Germano and Edward Wiles. On the night of April 15, 1929, Germano, Wiles, and another unidentified man drove the stolen car up to Flint, Michigan, where they tried to rob a bank. After an unsuccessful holdup attempt and a shootout with Flint police, they escaped and headed west toward Ann Arbor. The three men were spotted driving aimlessly around the University of Michigan campus by Ann Arbor police officers William Marz and Irwin Keebler at about 2:30 a.m. on April 16, 1929. They looked suspicious, and the officers decided to pull them over. Despite telling a somewhat convincing story, Marz believed the two were up to no good and ordered the man behind the wheel to drive to the Ann Arbor police headquarters. Marz jumped on the running board of the suspects’ car to direct them while Keebler followed in the patrol car. When they were several blocks from the police station, the driver of the gangsters’ vehicle stepped on the gas and quickly turned down a side street. A man in the back seat pushed an automatic pistol into Marz’s stomach and fired four times. He then raised the gun and shot the officer in the chest. A quick curve threw Marz from the running board of the car. Keebler attempted to pursue the outlaws in the scout car but lost them. The only thing that saved Marz’s life was that he had been wearing a bullet-proof vest for the first time. The gangsters raced towards Detroit by way of Birmingham. They took a curve too fast on a narrow country road and their car careened off the pavement and overturned onto a large rock formation about two miles north of Twelve Mile on Franklin Road. One of the three men was badly injured in the wreck. All of the gangsters suffered cuts and bruises.

The three men got a ride to the Village of Birmingham. There they walked up to Henry Milldebrandt, a Birmingham police officer who had been standing nearby, and asked him if he could get them a taxi. They explained to Milldebrandt that they had been in an accident and were trying to get back to Detroit. Milldebrandt hailed a taxi. To their surprise, as they piled into the back, Milldebrandt climbed into the front seat and ordered the driver to take them to the Birmingham police station to make out an accident report. When the cab came to a stop behind the station house, one of the men in the back seat, later identified as Germano, pulled a pistol and shot Milldebrandt in the arm. Another man slugged the driver, shoved him toward Milldebrandt, and slid behind the wheel. The police officer was quickly disarmed, and with Germano pointing his gun at the heads of the cabbie and the police officer, the cab squealed off. The two men were bodily thrown from the taxi several blocks from the police station. Later that morning, the stolen cab was found partly submerged in Narrin Lake, two miles southwest of the Village of Ortonville, Michigan. The vehicle was discovered at 6:30 the morning of April 16 by a local woman who lived on a nearby farm. She told police that she saw a second car filled with men drive away from the vicinity of the lake, headed towards Ortonville. The three gangsters completed the evening’s events by pulling a stickup in Detroit for some spending money.

Shortly after this rampage, William W. Gunn, the recently retired proprietor of a successful Detroit music store, was shot to death by Laman gangsters in the doorway of his Detroit home. The murder occurred between 9 and 10 p.m. on May 6, 1929. Two men walked up to Gunn’s home. When his wife came to the door, they asked her if her husband was in. She called Gunn and when he appeared the gangsters both shoved pistols against his side and, according to Gunn’s wife, said, “Come on, we’re going for a ride.” Gunn grabbed the arm of one of the gunmen and managed to wrestle the gun away from him. The other man calmly shot Gunn twice in the abdomen. According to eyewitnesses, the two men then strolled casually away from the house, got into their car, and drove off. Lt. Holland of the Detroit Police Department Kidnapping Task Force would later state that Gunn had been murdered by Andrew Germano, Edward Wiles, and Lawrence McMullen, another member of the Laman Gang.

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After arresting Germano in Toledo, Ohio, on August of 1929, the Detroit police were not able to get sufficient evidence to tie him to the kidnapping of David Cass. He later was tried and in October of 1929 convicted for the shooting of Birmingham Patrolman Henry Milldebrandt. The charge was assault with intent to kill and on October 8, 1929, he was sentenced to a 35- to 50-year term in Marquette Prison.

Lawrence McMullen was later convicted of armed robbery in another case and sentenced to five years in the Michigan State Reformatory in Ionia. After the shooting and arrest of “Legs” Laman, events were to happen quickly to bring about the final destruction of the Laman Gang.

On September 11, 1929, two men, later identified as Edward Wiles and Frank Hohfer, rented a furnished apartment in Detroit. These rented rooms were to become the temporary prison of the Laman Gang’s next kidnap victim. It would prove to be their last.

Mathew Holdreith was the 24-year-old son of a wealthy Detroit restaurant proprietor. Only several weeks earlier, the senior Holdreith had pointed out Hohfer, who was in the restaurant eating. He identified Hohfer to his family as a former employee who had been sent to prison. Hohfer would later admit to having once worked for Mathew Holdreith’s father. Mathew Holdreith was a 1927 graduate of the University of Detroit. After driving his younger brother—a senior at Notre Dame University in Indiana—back to college, Mathew was due to return to Detroit the night of September 11, 1929.

Shortly after renting the apartment, Frank Hohfer called Holdreith’s father’s home pretending to be a friend of his son. He inquired as to what time Mathew was expected home and was told sometime after 10 p.m. Hohfer, Wiles, and William Cardinal aka Skin Murphy drove over to Holdreith’s home and patiently waited for Mathew Holdreith to return from his trip. Mathew later told Detroit police that Hohfer and Wiles were waiting in the backyard of his father’s home when he pulled into the driveway sometime after 10:30 p.m. that evening. The gangsters pointed pistols at Holdreith and forced him to walk to their car that was parked a short distance from the house. Holdreith was blindfolded and driven to the kidnappers’ new apartment. There he was chained by his hands and feet to a bed and left for the night. The men returned the following day, Thursday, September 12, and released Holdreith from the chains. They ordered him to write a ransom note to his father. At first, he refused and was beaten by the three gangsters. Ultimately, the physical punishment proved to be too much, and he agreed to write the note.

Wiles had been communicating with Holdreith’s father. At first the gang had demanded $30,000 for Mathew’s freedom. After Holdreith’s father had received the ransom note, they eventually agreed on a $5,000 ransom. He was warned repeatedly that if he went to the police, Mathew would be murdered. The kidnappers then gave his father very specific instructions regarding where and how he was to deliver the ransom money. First, he was to pay the ransom in 20-dollar bills and wrap up the money in brown paper. Then he was told to leave his home at exactly 11:30 p.m. on Saturday, September 14, and, driving no faster than 20 mph, head west on Grand Boulevard to Grand River, taking that to Telegraph Road. At Telegraph and Grand River he would rendezvous with the kidnappers. To be certain he was dealing with the kidnappers, they agreed to toss Mathew’s wallet and keys through the open window of his car at the rendezvous location. He would then hand over the package of ransom money.

The night of the scheduled ransom exchange, a Detroit Taxi Company driver named Colman English picked up three men at West Grand Boulevard and 12th Street. The men told the cabbie to drive to Ferndale, where he was directed to Livernois and Marshal Avenues. English was then jumped by the three thugs, robbed, bound, gagged, and thrown into the weeds of a vacant lot. The gangsters then raced off in the stolen cab for their meeting with Holdreith’s father. Traveling out Grand River at high speed, they quickly overtook the senior Holdreith, who had been driving slowly to the meeting place as ordered. They followed Holdreith to the intersection of Grand River and Telegraph. At this point they pulled alongside of his car and tossed Mathew’s wallet and keys through an open window. They were immediately handed the package of ransom money and drove off. In the meantime, English, after rolling around in the weeds of the Ferndale lot for half an hour, was finally able to free himself. He immediately called the Detroit Police Department and notified them that he had been robbed and his cab stolen. The taxi and license plate numbers were given to the Detroit Police Department’s central dispatch.

Early Sunday morning, two Detroit police officers sitting in one of the department’s few radio patrol cars spotted the stolen Detroit Taxi Company vehicle go by at about 40 mph. Having just received a report over their car radio regarding the taxi, Patrolmen Hubert McGrath and Edward Fitzgerald gave chase. The man driving the cab stepped on the gas and was seen tossing the package of ransom money out of the window. The officers chased the three gangsters at high speed, when the cab suddenly lurched to a stop and the gangsters opened fire. After a gun battle in which at least 50 shots were exchanged, Wiles and Hohfer, who were both shot and wounded, surrendered. A man later identified as Cardinal escaped on foot in the confusion and was thought to have been wounded. Wiles and Hohfer were arrested and taken to Detroit police headquarters, where they were locked up. Officer Fitzgerald picked up the bag of ransom money, which contained $4,270 dollars in paper currency. What happened to the difference between the $4,270 and $5,000 supposedly asked for is not known.

While all these events were transpiring, Mathew Holdreith was still chained to the bed at the Hanover Street apartment. Sensing that something had happened to the kidnappers, Holdreith tried to get someone’s attention by making noise, but no one responded. Finally on Monday, after five days without food or water, Holdreith managed to edge over to the bedroom window and slide it open slightly. His cries for help were heard by a man walking by the building, who called the police. Shortly afterwards, five officers broke into the apartment and released Mathew Holdreith. He was taken to Detroit police headquarters, where he immediately identified Hohfer and Wiles as two of his kidnappers. Up until this time, the two gangsters had refused to answer any questions directed at them by detectives. After Mathew Holdreith positively identified them, they made a full confession. Hohfer confessed to complicity in the kidnapping of David Cass and identified Laman as the leader of the kidnapping gang. Hohfer also told police that he had been with Andrew Germano in Toledo shortly before Germano had been arrested. Wiles and Hohfer implicated William Cardinal alias Skin Murphy in their confessions. Cardinal was still at large. It was later learned that Cardinal was seriously wounded in the shootout with Detroit officers and died of his wounds in Chicago.

While they were being held at Detroit police headquarters for the Holdreith kidnapping, both Wiles and Hohfer were identified by an employee of the Sunny Service Oil Company as the bandits that had held up the company’s business offices. Twenty-seven hundred dollars had been taken in the robbery. During the late ‘20s, kidnapping was still considered a state crime with penalties covered by local statutes. The Michigan laws concerning abduction that were then on the books allowed a judge to give a kidnapper up to 99 years in prison and a $5,000 fine.

The two Detroit police officers who had captured Wiles and Hohfer were later given rewards of $50 each by the Superintendent of Detroit Police and publicly thanked by Mayor John C. Lodge. Both Hohfer and Wiles were tried and quickly convicted in the Holdreith kidnapping case, before Judge Christopher E. Stein in Detroit Recorders Court on October 7, 1929. The jury was out only 30 minutes before bringing in a guilty verdict. The two kidnappers were immediately sentenced by Judge Stein to serve from 30 to 50 years in the State Prison of Northern Michigan at Marquette. This would not be the last time that Hohfer and Wiles would be heard of.

On October 3, 1929, Joseph “Legs” Laman was convicted of extortion in the Cass kidnapping case. The jury was out only two hours and 45 minutes. On October 12, 1929, Laman, yawning and grinning at the court, was sentenced by Recorders Court Judge Christopher Stein to serve from one to two years in the State Prison of Southern Michigan at Jackson. When the judge began to lecture Laman, he yawned and stared at the ceiling. Asked if he had anything to say before sentencing, Laman yelled, “Innocent.” When asked by Judge Stein if he wanted to tell him anything about the Cass kidnapping, Laman said, “I don’t know anything about it.”