Empty Trap

CRIME

A man in a messenger's uniform taxied along Ogden Avenue in the Chicago suburbs one afternoon last week, came to a halt at Smith's Barbecue near La Grange. Two men in a Ford sedan drove alongside the taxi.

"Have you got a package for Smith?" asked one.

"Here it is," said the man in messenger's uniform. He handed over a small bundle.

The sedan started up with a jerk, shot down Wolf Road. The taxi driver and his passenger leaped from their cab, began dancing up & down in the road, waving their arms at an army airplane overhead. The airplane picked up their signal, nosedived. Instantly along Wolf Road, down which the sedan was racing, squad after squad of armed policemen appeared from ambush. A barricade was flung across the road, cutting off the sedan's escape. The airplane was swooping down, into machine gun range. The sedan shot into a side road, turned around, sped back over Wolf Road. Coming head-on toward it was the taxi. The sedan driver headed straight for the cab, swerved clear just as the cab's occupants were leveling their machine gun. Brr-rrr-ack ! went a volley. Careening into a wooded lane, the sedan bounced crazily over bumps and ruts, crashed into an elm. The two men leaped out, ran in opposite directions. One peeled off his hat & coat, dropped them. By the time their pursuers reached the spot, both had escaped. Few hours later a farmer explained that for $10 he had unwittingly driven one of them to a trolley in nearby Maywood. The fugitive had pleaded that his wife had almost caught him in the woods with another woman, that he wanted to get home first to "save our kiddies from a broken home."

Thus unsuccessfully ended the elaborate attempt of Chicago and Federal police to trap John ("Jake the Barber") Factor's kidnappers who had audaciously demanded a payment of $50,000 in addition to the $50,000 they collected when they released him last month. By tapping the telephone wires in Factor's apartment the officers had learned of the second extortion demand, persuaded the frightened Factor to let them lay an elaborate ambush. All they got for their pains was the hat & coat and the damaged sedan, the license of which was listed under the name of a man connected with Chicago's "Terrible Touhy" gang. Newsmen discovered that 300 policemen had been organized for the trapping, but that unfortunately their sealed orders failed to state what it was all about. While the policemen gaped, the kidnappers got a flying start.

Whether, in return, the gangsters got any real money was uncertain. Federal agents declared it was all bogus, but reports were current that the package contained at least $500 in bills wrapped around a stack of note paper.

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