The fact is that kidnappings are seasonal. They come invariably in the spring and summer: not all the microscopes in the crime laboratories in Washington can explain why.
They come in waves. This can be explained by the human imitative complex. When terrific publicity is being given to one case a second always arrives to drive it off the front pages. A man or a gang of men read the details and follow suit.
There have been 33 major kidnappings in the United States in the last six years, of which eight are still unsolved.
Reports of most of them have never reached Britain, for unless the victim is a child and the kidnapping is followed by murder the news rarely becomes international.
For crimes in this category which have been solved 104 men and women have been punished by law. Of these 88 are in jail, serving long sentences, six have been executed, one faces death in the electric chair, live have committed suicide, two were killed by G-men, and two were hanged' by the mob.
The most brutal and startling of kidnapping murders was the famous Lindbergh baby case. Then came the cases of the school-boys Mattson and Levine.
These crimes resemble each other. The Lindbergh baby was stolen as he slept in his father's house by an intruder who crept up under the cloak of darkness. The Mattson boy was snatched in exactly the same way, while he slept at home.
The Cash boy was abducted similarly. Peter Levine, too big and strong to be taken from his bed, was kidnapped on his way home from school.
Whenever there is a surge of kid-mappings, people ask why the senseless, inhuman crime of murder is so often added to that of abduction when the ransom money is there ready to be paid by eager parents. In the Lindbergh case £10,000 was paid, and in return the child's corpse was found.
Many American criminologists believe that the Federal Law is the reason. They say it is all wrong, that it provokes murder.
The law states that kidnapping is punishable by a sentence of not less than ten years in jail or death. The emphasis isondeath. This is regardless of whether the kidnapped victim is returned unharmed.
It the kidnapper is caught he faces death. It is reasoned logically that the kidnapper must think, once he has done the job, that if he is caught he will face the electric chair anyhow, so he kills the victim to lessen his chances of being caught.
Thus a kidnap becomes a kidnap murder, though the ransom money—the real reason why the abduction was committed—might be hot in the criminal's pockets, or waiting to be collected round the corner.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.