Murder of James Bailey Cash Jr.

During the 1930s, the United States experienced a series of "ransom kidnappings" committed explicitly for financial gain, and the victims were generally from either middle-class or wealthy families.[1][2] The most widely-publicized ransom kidnapping at the time was the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr., the only son of the record-setting aviator Charles Lindbergh.[1][2] Like James Bailey Cash Jr., Lindbergh's son died during the abduction, but a ransom was sought nevertheless. The Lindbergh case inspired the US Congress to pass legislation that allowed the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate kidnappings in any state under certain conditions, one of which was a ransom demand.[3] Despite this, ransom kidnappings continued to be a major concern when James Bailey Cash Jr. was abducted in May 1938.[4]

On the night of May 28, 1938, five-year-old James Bailey Cash Jr., nicknamed "Skeegie", was kidnapped in the middle of the night by Franklin Pierce McCall.[4] McCall was a local laborer and a former tenant of the Cash family.[5] After being put to bed by his mother, Vera, sometime after 9:30 pm she locked up the house and left to meet her husband at the family-owned general store.[4] Sometime later, McCall entered the house and used a handkerchief to quiet the boy before taking him from the home, smothering him to death in the process.[6] McCall hid the boy's body about a half-mile away from his home.[4] By 10:10 PM, both parents returned home to find the boy missing and began to search the surrounding area. The search effort was later joined by neighbors and local Boy Scouts.[7][8]

The Cash family had numerous members within the town, and one of its members was the wife of Asbury Cash, Beatrice Cash who through a stranger learned of the disappearance and began to take her daughter back home.[9] Soon after the murder, by 11:00 of the same night, McCall began to intimidate John Emanuel and Geraldine Barnes, a local farming couple and also members of the town's African American population.[10] At first, McCall attempted to get Emanuel to speak with him and to deliver a letter to Bailey Cash, Cash Jr's father. Emanuel however refused and McCall began to threaten to shoot Emanuel before leaving.[11] The couple then left their home, hiding out at a friends home for safety.[12] Meanwhile, Beatrice had made her way home, on her front door was a letter wrapped around the door knob, the letter telling them to go to a specific house in town that was home to one of Princeton's African American families, specifically Emanuel's.[13]

The note was addressed to J.B. Cash. In response to the letter Beatrice woke up her husband and then drove over to the Cash residence to help with the search.[13] The house mentioned in the letter was the house belonging to Emanuel. By midnight the search was beginning to end, by now many of them were angry over the disappearance and by 1:00 AM, Bailey Cash and the rest of the family went over to Emanuel's house, surrounding it while Bailey and Asbury began to look for the note.[14] They soon found the note underneath the door of the house.[14] This note was the first of a series of ransom letters that the Cash family would receive.

The first note was composed of multiple sheets of paper with a series of demands written throughout. To summarize, these demands were:

The Cash family was to provide 10,000 dollars in various types of bills, deliver the bills with serial numbers not in an order and deliver them all in a shoe box to Homestead and drive alone its road until receive a flash two times before leaving the money on the roadside and continuing the route. If Bailey were to do this, and also to keep this secret, the note promised that Cash Jr. would be safely returned.[15]

By 3:00 AM that morning Special Agent Arthur Rutzen of the FBI had been contacted by a Dade County Sheriff, R.B. Eavanson who informed Rutzen of the case's current details.[16] They would meet up later at the Roberts Hotel at Miami Beach to further discuss the case, and then after their discussion another investigator would be gathered to help with the case, specifically Samuel K. McKee who would go with Rutzen to the Cash home to continue the investigation.[17]

At the Cash residence, Baily Cash and Rutzen began to discuss the two ransom notes, and after examining the slang used within the ransom notes they concluded that the kidnapper had to be from the local area.[18] During this meeting Baily Cash became directly involved in the investigation, and asked the FBI to not become involved until after Bailey had paid the ransom, due to Florida law allowing parents to choose if they wished to pay for such a ransom, Rutzen allowed his request.[19] While at the Cash residence, Rutzen continued to interview Bailey Cash as well as their upstairs renters learning from Cash that the kidnapping was most likely done exclusively for money rather than as part of a personal vendetta as Bailey believed his income to be well known and to have few enemies within the town. Due to this Bailey's belief that the kidnapper had to be someone who knew the Cash's personally was reinforced as they were aware of his financial situation, along with the schedule for him and his wife.[20]

After this meeting, on Sunday morning at 10:15 AM, McKee and Rutzen called the FBI headquarters in Washington DC requesting more agents be sent to help with the investigation.[21] Director J. Edgar Hoover approved the request and later that day Agent Earl J. Connelly, an agent experienced with kidnappings during his career, was sent to Miami to take charge of the investigation.[21] With the FBI now present and involved they began to set up a telephone line within the Cash home and begin to take charge of the ransom payment as the Cash family was not wealthy enough to meet the demands of the ransom letter.[22]

On May 29 FBI agents were made aware that news of the kidnapping had made its way to the media, two companies; The Miami Herald and Miami Daily News agreed to a media black out until both Cash Jr. was rescued and the ransom was paid.[23] The following day, May 30, which was a bank holiday meaning getting the funds would normally have been difficult, however agents were sent to the First National Bank and Trust Company of Miami to gather the necessary funds, as well as to fulfill the necessary protocols for a ransom payment which included sending the serial numbers to every bank within both America and Canada, along with the post offices as well.[24] The money was given to Bailey Cash, who would proceed to go to the instructed site and attempt a delivery by midnight.

According to McCall, around 12:45 AM he discovered a third ransom letter at a local Amoco gas station, owned by another member of the Cash family, Wilson P. Cash.[25] He had actually written it ninety minutes before, after doing so he made his way to the gas station, sliding the note under the door while talking with Harry Wright, an employee outside the gas station. An hour later he returned with another friend, claiming he needed gas for a family members car, while there McCall explained that he saw someone strange by the pumps, but no one was found at the gas station. Afterwards they entered the gas station to turn on the gas station pumps at which point McCall took the note he had previously left.[25] He reading and making calls out the note, McCall would find Bailey Cash on his way home at 1:00 AM, coming back from the ransom drop off after not receiving the signal mentioned in the second note.[24]

This new note instructed Bailey Cash to redo the ransom payment, this time at 4:00 AM on May 31 along the same route. At 4:10 AM, Bailey Cash left the money (ten-thousand dollars in a shoebox specifically) by a telephone pole.[25] McCall at this point was hiding at an orange grove, and after collecting the money, he hid the money in various places around Princeton before going to visit friends.[23] Searches for Cash Jr. continued on May 31, which McCall would join in. It was also on May 31 that the media began to, through both newspapers and radio, speak about the case.[23][26] Soon there was an influx of attempted help by citizens who tried to report believed sightings of Cash Jr. and reporting on possible rumors of who could be involved, some of these tips did yield some help with two possible suspects: James Sidney Smith, a prior criminal known to the FBI at the time, along with M.F Braxton who was known to have had disagreements with Bailey Cash in the past.[27] Beyond this however there was more substantial help coming in on June 1 from thousands of members of the American Legion, along with the Civilian Conservation Corps and Red Cross among many other groups who worked alongside FBI members and Sheriffs, while other groups like the Florida National Guard were put into standby. It was these groups and others who would continue the search in the Redland district, searching up to one hundred square miles but ultimately did not find Cash Jr.[28] By June 3 this group of thousands would be withdrawn, and a smaller group of 150 members who possessed tracking skills would be sent in to continue the search with law officers.[29] Later that same day the search would be called off.[30]

Even though the search was officially over. McCall had managed to arouse suspicion; due in part to his final ransom note and the circumstances surrounding its discovery. The circumstances were seen as suspicious with the Cash family, who soon proceeded to inform the authorities. The authorities brought McCall in for questioning on June 5.[30] During the investigation, McCall and other suspects were subjected to a lie detector test. The interrogations took place over a three-day period, and by June 7 he had confessed to the murder of Cash Jr.[29] McCall's motive for the kidnapping and murder was to make money for his wife's spending habits, and overall for himself as well. After the interrogations was over McCall would take the investigators to where the ransom money, and then later the victim's body had been hidden. In a report to Hoover, Agent Connelly explained that during their search on June 3 the searchers were "just on-tenth of a mile west of the spot where the body was found."[29]

With the discovery of the body, Hoover removed the restrictions on the media who quickly began to write on McCall and the murder, along with his confession.[31] After the confession, McCall had been moved to the Biscayne Building however his stay was short lived. Angered over the murder of Cash Jr. a mob of three hundred people formed outside the building to protest, while McCall was not lynched it was decided that he be moved to Dade County Jail. As McCall plead guilty there was to be no trial, on June 15 there was a preliminary hearing and then the following day a presentation of evidence, and by the end McCall was sentenced to death.[32] The execution was carried out on February 24, 1939 by electric chair in the Florida State Prison.[33][34] He was the first to die under the Florida Lindbergh Law.[2]

Cash Jr. was buried in Graceland Memorial Park in Coral Gables on June 9, 1938.

In 2018, the Historic Homestead Town Hall Museum put on an exhibition about the case.[34]

• List of kidnappings
• List of solved missing person cases