The mattson Kidnapping

On Sunday evening, December 27, 1936, Charles F. Mattson, age 10, is kidnapped from the living room of his home in Tacoma, Washington, by a masked man armed with a handgun. After menacing the other children in the house, the kidnaper picks up Charles in his arms and vanishes into the night, leaving behind a ransom note demanding $28,000 for the boy’s safe return. His father, Dr. William W. Mattson, makes every attempt to contact the kidnaper and pay the ransom money, but is unable to do so. A hunter will find the boy’s battered body in a Snohomish County field, approximately four-and-a-half miles south of Everett, on January 11, 1937. Although law enforcement authorities make every effort, the kidnapping and murder of Charles Mattson has never been solved and remains an open case at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). 

Federal Kidnapping Act

In an effort to combat the virulent “snatch” racket, popular during the early 1930s, Congress passed the Federal Kidnapping Act (also known as the Lindbergh Law) on June 17, 1932, making interstate kidnapping a Federal felony, under the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  The law was a response to the New Jersey kidnapping and murder in March 1932 of the two-year-old son of Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974), the renowned aviator, and his wife, Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001). 

Until the Mattson case, there had been no major kidnappings involving the FBI since the kidnapping of young George H. Weyerhaeuser in Tacoma on May 24, 1935.  The FBI, notified of the abduction, determined that the Federal Kidnapping Act had likely been violated, and immediately sent nine agents to Tacoma to assist the police in the hunt for "Tim.”  The kidnapper was declared “Public Enemy No. 1,” and within a week, FBI Director John Edgar Hoover (1895-1972) dispatched some 40 agents to Tacoma, along with assistant Director Harold Nathan, to take charge of the investigation.  Supporting Nathan was Inspector Earl J. Connelly, from bureau headquarters, who had successfully directed the Weyerhaeuser case 18 months earlier. 

On Monday morning, January 11, 1937, Gordon Morrow, age 19, was hunting rabbits on a snow covered field of brush and stumps, behind his home in Snohomish County, approximately four-and-a-half miles south of Everett, when he stumbled across the naked body of a young boy, lying frozen in the fresh snow.  Gordon ran home and told his father, Charles Morrow, and they returned to the site to look at the body.  Then Gordon ran a half-mile through the snow to a nearby gasoline service station and telephoned Snohomish County Sheriff Walter E. Faulkner with the news his discovery. 

The body had been dumped in a thicket of alder saplings, 150 feet west of the Edmonds-Beverly Park Road, and approximately one-half mile west of the Pacific Highway (State Route 99).  Sheriff’s deputies discovered tire tracks and footprints in the fresh snow, indicating the boy had been murdered elsewhere and left there late Sunday night or early Monday morning. Gordon Morrow thought the body was probably left about 9:00 p.m. on Sunday when his bulldog, Nick, started barking excitedly and running from door to door, trying to get out of the house. 

The body was held in an ambulance at the scene, where it was identified as Charles by Paul H. Sceva, a close family friend, and James Gowdey, a relative of the Mattsons. A preliminary examination of the remains, conducted by Snohomish County Coroner Stowell Challacombe and King County Coroner Otto H. Mittelstadt, determined that the boy had probably been killed by blows to the head with a heavy blunt instrument.  Bruises on the body indicated he had been handled roughly, and marks on the wrists showed his hands had been bound tightly with rope. They thought Charles had died no later than Thursday and possibly only a short time after his abduction. Abrasions, grease marks and dirt on the skin indicated the frozen body had been hauled around in the trunk of an automobile. 

On Monday night, at the FBI’s direction, pathologists performed a formal autopsy at the Buckley-King Funeral Home in Tacoma, which revealed that, in addition to the massive head injuries, Charles had also been stabbed in the back with a long-bladed knife. Below freezing temperatures had prevailed in the region for nearly a week, keeping the body from decomposing and making it impossible to determine the time of death. But blue clay on the boy’s face and hands indicated the body had probably been hidden on a river bank or near mudflats. 

In the ensuing years, the FBI interviewed approximately 26,000 people, among them scores of eccentrics who confessed to the crime, either to get attention or because of mental illness. The kidnapping and murder of Charles F. Mattson has never been solved and, because capital crimes have no statute of limitations, the case remains an open file at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Source: historylink.org