Hoxsie wouldn’t want to leave you with the impression that Schenectady had all the crime in the tri-cities in the early decades of the last century. Far from it. But it definitely had some of the most interesting. The Electric City had the mysterious torso of 1914, the killing of Captain Youmans and the ouster of Chief Rynex in 1924, and, in 1923, the frightening kidnapping of the six-year-old son of one of the city’s best-known scientists. It would be decades before a broadcast, multi-media message alerting the public to an abducted child would come to be called an “Amber Alert,” but if we were to respect its history, we would call it a “Verner Alert.”
Ernst F.W. Alexanderson was a Swedish-born scientist who had come to the United States in 1902 and, working for General Electric, developed several important patents that made modern radio possible, including the Alexanderson alternator. When General Electric was asked to create the Radio Corporation of America (RCA, as it came to be known), Alexanderson was named chief scientist. On April 30, 1923, his son Verner and daughters Edith, 11, and Gertrude, 7 were playing in the front yard of their home in the GE Realty Plot “when a young man, who previously had told them he would give them some rabbits, approached, told the girls to ‘get a box for the bunnies,’ took Verner by the hand and started down the street. The girls returned with a box, but the man and their brother had disappeared.”
Not surprisingly, the man “whose abilities have gone far to develop radio communication” took to the airwaves to broadcast a personal appeal to radio enthusiasts throughout the country (radio station WGY was barely a year old at the time, and commercial radio didn’t exist). He offered a reward of $1,000, which was matched by the City of Schenectady, to persons who could furnish a clue that would lead to Verner’s recovery.
“I make this personal appeal by radio realizing that it reaches instantly many localities not reached in any other way. Any information which you can give or any service which you can render will be more than appreciated by an anxious father and mother,” Alexanderson said.
One clue came when police were informed by a garage proprietor at Northville, near Gloversville, that a touring car had passed through driven by a man, containing a second man and a boy who was thought to be Verner.
“Boy Scouts have been on duty in all sections of the city to-day watching for the missing lad or either of the men; ravines in and near the city have been searched, and the entire police and detective force has been placed on the case.”