INTRODUCTION
THE CALL
As J. Edgar Hoover lay asleep in his home in the early morning hours of July 22, 1933, he was fitfully aware of the tentative hold he had on the job he had come to know and love. He was Director of the United States Department of Justice's Bureau of Investigation. At age thirty-six, he was thought by most to be too young, too inexperienced and too politically unconnected for the job most people in government considered to be barely more than a political patronage appointment. And, lately, he'd been proving them right.
His team's investigation of the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping had been a laughable failure. The case had dragged on with no resolution or notable progress in the sixteen months since then-President Herbert Hoover had tapped him to lead the federal efforts to solve the case and find the kidnappers. His initial efforts to get involved in the investigation had been rebuffed by the New Jersey State Police, who flat out refused to share information, and dismissed his men as inept federal glory hunters. Lindbergh himself was barely cooperative.
His overreaching in the capture and arrest of an escaped federal prisoner had resulted in the mass murder of four law enforcement officers, including one from his bureau, and the prisoner himself. The machine gun assault had taken place in the parking lot of Kansas City's busy Union Station in full view of the train station's bustling crowds.
Not only was his competence being called into question by the national press, but his masculinity was, as well. The new president's wife was said to loathe him, and he'd just barely escaped a sacking by Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first choice for attorney general.
But Hoover was about to receive a phone call that would turn his fortunes around. The call would deliver to Hoover the most effective and cooperative witness in the history of the agency's war against crime. It would set into motion the biggest manhunt in the nation's history and lead to a spectacular trial that would transfix the country and transform the Bureau.
The events would unleash a cavalcade of publicity that would ultimately put the beleaguered director on course to become not only the most powerful lawman in the nation's history, but the most admired, as well. Within ninety days, Hoover would go from a man whose head had been on the political chopping block, to the star performer of the new administration's ambitious plans.
Hoover could not have realized all of this as his bedside telephone rang on that Sunday at 2:00 a.m. But his life was about to change, and history was about to be made.
Just weeks earlier, Hoover had established the country's first national crime hotline, a special telephone number that anyone could call to be put through immediately to the Justice Department headquarters in Washington, DC. It was intended to be used for reporting kidnappings, a heinous crime that was occurring with alarming regularity throughout the country. Hoover hoped his hotline would tip his agents off quickly so they could get on the scene without delay and get control of the investigation before the local authorities could lock things up and freeze them out. So eager was he to get news quickly that he instructed the telephone operators at the Bureau to put calls through to a special line he had installed in his home.
It was now ringing.
Hoover roused himself awake and sat in his pajamas on the side of the bed, clearing his head and lifting the receiver from its cradle.
"National 7-1-1-7," he intoned.
"This is Mrs. Charles F. Urschel in Oklahoma City. I wish to report a kidnapping."
"This is J. Edgar Hoover, Mrs. Urschel. Give me every detail you can."
Copyright © 2015 by Joe Urschel
