Kidnapping

“ Nothing except a natural cataclysm is so excitant of mass terror as the first suggestion that there are child-stealers abroad. What fevers and rages of the public temper may result from such crimes will be seen from some of what follows. The most celebrated instance is, of course, the affair of Charlie Ross of Philadelphia, which carries us back more than half a century. We have here the classic American kidnapping case, already a tradition, rich in all the elements that make the perfect abduction tale. ”

“ The fourth time, a poor man had been kidnapped, also at night, and forced into the same illegal jail. He sat in the dock—an innocent man, to be made into a beast. The metamorphosis had begun;—he was already in chains and his human heart seemed dead in him; sixty ruffians were about him, aiding in this drama, hired out of the brothels and rum-shops for a few days, the lust of kidnapping serving to vary the continual glut of those other and less brutal appetites of unbridled flesh. ”

“ Private kidnapping is likewise carried on to a great extent; for he who can catch a neighbor's child is sure to find a ready purchaser; and it sometimes happens that the captor and his living merchandize are both seized by the white slave-trader. Houses are broken open in the night, and defenceless women and children carried away into captivity. If boys, in the unsuspecting innocence of youth, come near the white man's ships, to sell vegetables or fruit, they are ruthlessly seized and carried to slavery in a distant land. ”

“ They always carry slaves through our land; but the strictest account is exacted of their manner of procuring them before they are suffered to pass. Sometimes indeed we sold slaves to them, but they were only prisoners of war, or such among us as had been convicted of kidnapping, or adultery, and some other crimes, which we esteemed heinous. This practice of kidnapping induces me to think, that, notwithstanding all our strictness, their principal business among us was to trepan our people. ”

“ Young, I wouldn't believe this strange story of yours, but for your brother's statements and my absolute conviction of your brother's honesty. Both he and his wife tell a staightforward tale of your arrival and departure on that Sunday, which exactly coincides with your own. And there is other corroboration. Now, you are held here, as you know, for other reasons; kidnapping is a crime, and not a slight one, either."
"I know it, Mr. Stone, and I'll take my punishment for that, but I'm not guilty of murder. I was possessed to get hold of that pin. ”

“ The risks are so great, the punishment, of late years, so severe, and the chances of profit so slight that logic seems to demand some special and extraordinary motive on the part of the criminal. It is true that kidnapping is one of the easiest crimes to commit. ”

“ When the loud expressions of our joy had eased our hearts, we set our brains to work upon the business, and we set them to work hard, for a fortnight is a very short time to plan, arrange and carry out such a delicate operation as the kidnapping of a wealthy and gentlemanly young fellow, well known in the city of London, even had we been careless of the consequences. ”

“ Circumstances under which kidnapping may occur.—If performed to cover a debt for which payment had been repeatedly demanded, or to cover an injury for which a proper fine had been repeatedly demanded in due form, kidnapping was a legal seizure, although the victim and his kindred might not consider it so. ”

“ A third method employed by the labor agent is outright kidnapping. I have heard of many cases of the kidnapping of women and of men. Hundreds of half drunken men are picked up about the pulque shops of Mexico City every season, put under lock and key, and later hurried off to Valle Nacional. Children, also, are regularly kidnapped for the Valle Nacional trade. The official records of Mexico City say that during the year ending September 1, 1908, 360 little boys between the ages of six and twelve disappeared on the streets. ”

“ Nothing tended to exhibit their hostile spirit so much as their persevering attempts to carry off our men by stealth, whenever they could find an opportunity; and indeed the kidnapping system was followed up with many circumstances of barbarity, to the very close of the war. ”

“ Still, that did not surprise anyone. They might easily have expected just such an ending to the affair, knowing as they did what conscienceless scamps were in all probability engineering the kidnapping affair. ”

“ In a time of intense excitement over alleged kidnapping of children, we have known a man to be apprehended in open court and examined as a bad character, because the colour of his clothes was unusual. ”

“ Every person found guilty of kidnapping, shall be confined in the penitentiary for a term not less than one year, and not more than seven years, for each person kidnapped or attempted to be kidnapped. ”

“ Instances of law-enforcement officers dying as a result of a criminal’s activities should be discouraged.
(10) The crime of kidnapping shall never be portrayed in any detail, nor shall any profit accrue to the abductor or kidnaper. The criminal or the kidnaper must be punished in every case. ”

“ The author has limited himself to problems of disappearance and cases of kidnapping, thereby excluding many twice-told wonders—the wandering Ahasuerus, the Flying Dutchman, Prince Charles Edward, the Dauphin, Gosselin’s Femme sans nom, the changeling of Louis Philippe and the Crown Prince Rudolf and the affair at Mayerling.
Neither have I attempted any technical exploration of the conduct and motives of vanishers and kidnappers. It must be sufficiently clear that a man unpursued who flees and hides is out of tune with his environment, ill adjusted, nervously unwell. ”

“ Reducing the facts to their essentials and then trying to reason, the possibilities became a very general preoccupation. The deductive steps may be briefly set down. First, there were the alternative propositions of voluntary or involuntary absence, of hiding or abduction. Second, if the theory of forced absence was to be entertained, there were only two general possibilities—abduction for ransom or kidnapping by some maniac. The ideas of murder, detention for revenge, and the like, come under the latter head. ”

“ A regular system of kidnapping prevailed; prisoners had their fixed price, and were carried off to labour in the African dockyards, or to be chained to the benches of the Moorish ships which their oars propelled, until either a ransom could be procured from their friends, or they could be persuaded to become renegades, or death put an end to their sufferings. A captivity among the Moors was by no means an uncommon circumstance even in the lives of Englishmen down to the eighteenth century, and pious persons frequently bequeathed sums of money for the ransom of the poorer captives. ”

“ But we do not pause to pursue this matter for it is obvious that there has been a complete lack of competent proof that the girl was 'held for ransom or reward or otherwise' as that term is used in the Federal Kidnapping Act.
The act of holding a kidnapped person for a proscribed purpose necessarily implies an unlawful physical or mental restraint for an appreciable period against the person's will and with a willful intent so to confine the victim. ”

“ And this business was accomplished by swarthy half-caste sailors who were experts at the kidnapping game. These kidnappers were men who had devoted their lives to stealing and enticing ignorant native girls, youths, children and native men from the Solomon Isles and elsewhere by hundreds, nay, thousands, carrying the boys and men off to be sold as cheap plantation labour, and the girls for the seraglios of heathen chiefs (and sometimes seraglios of white men) in remote isles of the North and South Pacific. ”

“ Sir George Young found slaves to be procured by war, by crimes, real or imputed, by kidnapping, which is called panjaring, and a fourth mode was the inhabitants of one village seizing those of another weaker village, and selling them to the ships. He believes, from two instances, that kidnapping was frequently practiced up Sierra Leone river. ”

“ Thomson were to come out, we might find that we had burned our fingers. The kidnapping, to be sure, would be a court card upon our side, if we could only prove it. But it may be difficult to prove; and my advice (upon the whole) is to make a very easy bargain with your uncle, perhaps even leaving him at Shaws where he has taken root for a quarter of a century, and contenting yourself in the meanwhile with a fair provision. ”

“ Host of the prominent newspapers, and several of the most prominent clergy, defend the kidnapping. Attempts have repeatedly been made to kidnap my own parishioners. Kidnapping is not even a matter of church discipline in Boston in 1851. ↑ The conduct of public magistrates, who are paid for serving the people, is not what it should be in respect to temperance. The city authorities allow the laws touching the sale of the great instrument of demoralization to be violated continually. ”

“ The two cadets, Henry, Frank and Tim Muldoon were soon in their former staterooms, while Guy, Simon, the two kidnappers, and the men in their employ were told that they would be sent aboard the Golconda, to be returned to Santiago.
"The authorities there can do as they please with them," said Dick. "Senor Valdez and his son can make a charge of kidnapping, if they choose. I'm not going to bother with them, or take them as prisoners to New York. ”

“ All these, and many other circumstances, combine to facilitate the practice of kidnapping, which thus goes on almost undisturbed, and generally unpunished!
"A rich citizen, who has a sufficient number of emissaries called bondsmen, carries on his trade much more easily than a poor one does. The latter is often obliged to go himself to the Kámpong Búgis or elsewhere, to take a view of the stolen victim and to carry him home ”

“ So the crabbed old man, and his companions cruised about, hoping to hear some news from the marooned party, yet being afraid to venture into port to make inquiries, for they reasoned that search would be made for them, because of the kidnapping. ”

“ By abducting and trafficking in a woman or child is meant any of the following acts: abducting, kidnapping, buying, trafficking in, fetching, sending, or transferring a woman or child, for the purpose of selling the victim. ”

“ Kidnapping § 14. If a man has stolen a child, he shall be put to death.
Abduction of slave § 15. If a man has induced either a male or female slave from the house of a patrician, or plebeian, to leave the city, he shall be put to death.
Harboring a fugitive slave § 16. If a man has harbored in his house a male or female slave from a patrician's or plebeian's house, and has not caused the fugitive to leave on the demand of the officer over the slaves condemned to public forced labor, that householder shall be put to death.
[pg 046]
The capture of a fugitive slave § 17. ”

“ A scratch, a cut, abrasions left by removal of tape or rope, bruises, nervous shock, disturbance of digestion, all of a kind which heals or passes before 'liberation' occurs? Few kidnappings take place without harm of some kind to the victim. They may be executed by force or by mere threats. One produces traumatic injury, from minor abrasion to death, the other nervous or mental shock of momentary or lifetime duration. How much injury, and what kind, did Congress have in mind? ”

“ I was to drive the car. Until tonight I didn’t have no idea I was getting mixed up in a kidnapping, and maybe worse.”
“What do you mean—worse?” the Major inquired.
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“Well, I don’t want to have any hand in letting an innocent man be killed. That’s why I’m spilling everything I know. Rascomb planted one of his men at Melveredge Field. He has it fixed so some poor guy will get killed tomorrow when they test out a parachute.” ”

“ A case of kidnapping had occurred in the vicinity of West Cain Township, Chester county, at about half past one on Sunday morning, the 16th March. A black man, by the name of Thomas Hall, an honest, sober, and industrious individual, living in the midst of a settlement of farmers, had been stolen by persons who knocked at his door, and told him that his nearest neighbor wanted him to come to his house, one of his children being sick. ”

“ The Department of Justice estimates that more than 50,000 children will be victims of nonfamily abductions each year. While the rate of recovery in such kidnappings is approximately 99 percent, the trauma of abduction affects far too many. No young person in America should ever know the terror of abduction, and no family should ever have to experience the nightmare of having a loved one suddenly taken. ”

“ Nagkidlap ang sugà sa patrul, The police car’s light is flashing. n flash, sparkle. paN- v [A13] sparkle intermittently and rapidly. Nagpangidlap [465] ang linantip sa kaháit, The bolo is sparkling, it is so sharp.
kidnap v [A; a] kidnap, abduct. Mga ribildi nga mikidnap sa upisyal, The rebels who kidnapped the official. Gikidnap siya sa sinalikwayng trátu, She was abducted by the man she had spurned. maN-r- n a kidnapper. paN- n kidnapping.
kig- (←) prefix, short form for nakig- and makig-. ”

“ It is well known that child snatchers almost never succeed with this part of the business. The cases in which the kidnapper has actually got the ransom and made off without being caught and punished are so thinly strewn upon the long record that any criminal who ever takes the trouble to peruse it must shrink with fear from such offenses. Finally, it is familiar knowledge among police officers that professional criminals usually are aware of this fact and consequently both dread and abhor abductions. ”

“ Turn the water on in my tub and I'll be slipping into decent duds in a jiffy. Here's an extra I picked up downtown. The scream of the evening is a kidnaping—most deplorable line of business! Have you ever noticed a certain periodicity in child stealing? About every so often you hear of such a case. Despicable; a foul crime hardly second to murder. Hanging is not too severe a punishment. Clear out now, for if we begin talking I'll never get dressed!"
The account of the kidnaping in the park was little more than a bulletin, but Archie soon had it committed to memory. ”