Unusual Victim

Safely home last week came Charles Boettcher II, 31, wealthy Denver investment broker who had been kidnapped on the night of Feb. 12. His story: After being carried for some 18 hr. in an automobile, he was kept with eyes taped in a room which he judged by its musty smell to be a cellar. He never saw the two, possibly three, men who guarded him. Returning, they left him on a side-street in East Denver.

Commonly accepted report was that a Boettcher friend had tossed $60,000 ransom across a railroad culvert near Denver. Banker-Father Claude K. Boettcher refused to admit that the ransom had been paid, though he did say that "all obligations were fulfilled."

Young Boettcher's return set airplanes, radio cars and volunteer posses scouring the northern Colorado and southern Wyoming countryside in a hunt for the kidnappers. Meanwhile Denver, stroked its chin over reports of the young broker's slowness in paying large gambling debts. Declared the Rocky Mountain News: "The story of the victim is to say the least unusual. . . . Certainly many aspects of the case need clearing up."

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