August 4, 2025
ALLEGED KIDNAPER
CAUGHT; BOY FOUND.
HARRY JACOBS WAS WITH
UNCLE, CLARENCE CRAFT.
Stepfather Locates Stolen Child,
Dressed in Girl's Clothing, on
Train -- Craft to Be
Prosecuted.
The alleged kidnaper of little 4-year-old Harry Jacobs, who was coaxed from the home of T. H. Jacobs, his "grandpa," 1508 Olive street, about 1 o'clock Monday afternoon, was so unsuccessful in covering up his tracks that the child was gone from home but seventeen hours. He was returned to his mother about 8 o'clock yesterday morning. As soon as Mrs. Jacobs heard a description of the suspected kidnaper she thought of her brother, Clarence M. Craft of St. Joseph, Mo. Little Harry had lived three years with Mrs. Frank M. Baker, mother of Mrs. Jacobs and Craft.
FOUND CHILD ON TRAIN.
After the search in this city had been in vain, Harry Jacobs, the stolen boy's step-father, decided to leave for St. Joseph Monday evening. He wired for detectives to meet him at the train there at 11 p. m., intending to go to the home of the baby's grandmother, Mrs. Baker.
Soon after the train had left Leavenworth, Kas., Jacobs, suspecting that the kidnaper might have gone to that city by the electric line, started to walk through the train. In the coach immediately ahead of the one in which he had been sitting Jacobs saw Craft, Frank M. Baker, Craft's step-father, and the baby. Little Harry was dressed as a girl.
Jacobs approached and asked what was meant by spiriting the child away. He says Craft replied that it was none of his business as he was not the boy's father. As the train slowed up at the Union depot in St. Joseph, Jacobs says Craft attempted to escape with the child by running around the baggage room. He was caught and turned over to Detectives Parrott and Gordon of the St. Joseph police force.
CRAFT IS LOCKED UP.
"I saw that Craft was placed safely behind the bars," said Jacobs yesterday afternoon. "At the packing house I learned that Baker had been at work there at 1 o'clock Monday afternoon so he was released. He had gone to Leavenworth to meet Craft."
Jacobs asked that Craft be held. Yesterday he went before the prosecutor here and swore to a complaint charging kidnaping. Justice John B. Young issued the warrant which was turned over to Chief of Police Frank Snow with instructions to send a man to St. Joseph after the alleged kidnaper. Mrs. Jacobs, who was greatly alarmed over the absence of her child, says she will prosecute her brother.
In an attempt to learn where little Harry's clothes had been changed the boy was taken out yesterday morning by his step-father. He led the way through the alley in the rear of the house at 1508 Olive street, from whence he was taken, to Fifteenth street. When they reached the fountain at Fifteenth street and the Paseo, which little Harry calls "the flopping water," he stopped. He said that he was taken into a house near there which had a broken porch. His clothes were taken off and girl's apparel substituted.
BOY'S CLOTHES THROWN AWAY.
After leaving the place, t he little boy said, his overalls, waist, etc. of which he had been divested, were wrapped in a piece of paper and thrown over a fence. The house could not be located. The child said several people were present when the shift was made. Candy and the promise of a long ride on the choo choo cars," is what lured the boy away from home.
Jacobs and the stolen boy's mother have not been married long. Mrs. Jacobs was first married in St. Joseph several years ago to Harry Burke from whom she was later divorced. For three years she left her child with her mother, who later married Frank M. Baker, a packing house carpenter. The grandmother and Baker became greatly attached to the child and did not want to give him up when the mother remarried. Jacobs is a cook.
Labels: children, Fifteenth street, kidnapping, Leavenworth, Olive street, Paseo, Police Chief Snow, railroad, St.Joseph
