It would only be three days after the 1923 kidnapping of Verner Alexanderson from his Schenectady home, and his father’s first-ever radio broadcast plea for help, that Verner would be found unharmed, hundreds of miles away, outside of Watertown.
“Verner Alexanderson, kidnapped Schenectady lad for whom a nationwide search was conducted for 72 hours and who was found yesterday evening in a shack on the Indian river near Theresa, 25 miles from [Watertown], started for home today after a joyful reunion with his mother and father at the home of Sheriff Ernest Gillett. With him goes a dog, a present from his kidnappers, the lad insisting that unless his new pet accompanied him he did not want to go.”
The kidnappers had been identified as Harry Fairbanks of Ogdensburg and Stanley Crandall of Rochester, who managed to escape across the St. Lawrence into Canada before the authorities closed in. The boy was found with a Mrs. H.D. Grennel of Alexandria Bay, “who is said to be the foster mother to Fairbanks’ wife.” She claimed not to know the men who brought the boy to her, saying they hired to care for him in a secluded shack half a mile from her village. “In her possession was found a letter, addressed to Dr. E.F.W. Alexanderson, father of the kidnapped boy, in which she asked information about the two men. This letter she did not post and the authorities believe it was written as an alibi for her in case the boy was found and she was arrested.” He was, and she was. When authorities told her they knew of her connection to Fairbanks, she claimed not to know anything about the identity of young Verner, “saying that she thought it was a ‘liquor deal.’”
Not sure what kinds of “liquor deals,” even in the midst of Prohibition, involved little boys.
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