In the summer of 1933 Basil Banghart and Isaac Costner met Jake
the Barber in suburban Maywood, Illinois to discuss Factor's kidnapping.
Banghart was suspicious, so Factor explained that there were too many holes in
his kidnapping story and that too many people were starting to doubt the whole
thing. The British government wouldn't let up on its demands to have him
extradited. He said he was willing to pay them $25,000 in cash if they would
call him and demand more money while the FBI and police listened in on the
line.
After a few demands from them, Factor said he
would arrange a time and place for the additional ransom money, $25,000, to be
paid. Then Factor gave Costner $5,000 as a down payment and Banghart agreed to
go into the deal. A day later, Costner placed the call to Factor's hotel suite
while Tubbo Gilbert and Special Agent Melvin Purvis of the FBI listened in on
the call. Costner identified himself as one of the kidnappers and demanded to
know when the second half of the ransom would be paid. Factor replied that he
was having difficulty raising the money and that Costner should call back in a
day or two.
Then, to the absolute horror of police
professionals, after the call had ended Factor called a press conference and
said that he had received a telephone demand for more money from the kidnappers
and that Chief of States Attorney's Investigators Tubbo Gilbert and Special
Agent Melvin Purvis were listening in on the line at the time. The papers ran
with the story and suddenly Jake the Barber's kidnapping story was credible
again.
Eventually Costner and Banghart arranged to pick
up the additional ransom on the corner of Wolf and Ogden Roads, just outside
the forest preserves.
In preparation, Chicago Chief of Detectives
William Shoemaker rounded up 250 heavily armed policemen, police cadets,
sheriffs, deputies and FBI agents, two airplanes and sixty-two squad cars, ten
machine guns and a dozen drop bombs and then huddled with Melvin Purvis and
Tubbo Gilbert for three days to plan the kidnappers' capture.
It had been agreed that the money would be
dropped off by a messenger in a taxi cab and the police commandeered a cab that
they filled with two officers, armed with machine guns and pistols, drove to
the pick up point and waited. Banghart was late picking up the money and sped
onto the road where the cab was waiting and pulled up to the taxi's fender,
screeching to a halt, just barely avoiding an accident. He stepped out and
walked over to the cab and looked at plainclothes officer Patrick McKenna in
the back seat.
"You got a package, a package for
Smith?" he asked.
McKenna nodded "Yes. It's here." At
that,
McKenna climbed out of the car, looked up at the two police
airplanes circling above them and waved his arms to signal that the pickup had
been made.
Banghart saw the set up, if in fact he hadn't
already been told about it by Gilbert, and floored his car down the road only
to find it blocked by a dozen squad cars. Throwing the car in reverse, he raced
down to the other end of the road to find another road block. He threw the car
in reverse again and dodged back and forth between the roadblocks looking for
an opening. At one point the two cops in the taxi, McKenna and Meyers, drove up
behind Banghart's car and fired a machine gun at the gangster, missing every
shot. In frustration, Meyers pulled the cab up alongside Banghart's car to give
McKenna a better target. McKenna let a burst go from the Tommy gun but missed
again. This time, Banghart drove straight at the roadblock in front of him and
the cops, not really sure if he would stop or not, moved out of his way.
Banghart drove into the forest preserve to get out of the view of the airplanes
above him. With the police only yards behind him, Banghart leaped out of the
car, let it smash into a tree and ran away on foot into a rain gully that led
to a state highway. From there, he hitchhiked back to Chicago, $25,000 richer,
or so he thought. When Banghart opened the package, he found only $500 and
stacks of cut up newspapers.