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Brooke Hart (June 11, 1911 – November 9, 1933) was the oldest son of Alexander Hart, the owner of Leopold Hart and Son Department Store at the SE corner of Market and Santa Clara Street in downtown〔http://www.scscourt.org/general_info/contact/och_history.shtml Hart Department Store Location〕 San Jose, California. His kidnapping and murder were reported throughout the United States, and the lynching of his alleged murderers, Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes, sparked political debate. This incident is sometimes referred to as "the last lynching in California",〔, p. 300.〕 though the last California lynching actually occurred on January 6, 1947 in Callahan, California.〔Kulczyk,David. (2008). California Justice: Shootouts, Lynching and Assassinations in the Golden State. Word Dancer Press. P115 ISBN 1-884995-54-3〕 When Hart's body was discovered in San Francisco Bay on the morning of November 26, 1933, word of a lynch mob spread quickly throughout northern California. On the evening of Sunday, November 26, 1933, four days before Thanksgiving, a crowd gathered in St. James Park across from the Santa Clara County Courthouse. The lynching was broadcast as a 'live' event by a Los Angeles radio station. Scores of reporters, photographers, and news camera operators, along with an estimated 3,000 to 10,000 men, women, and children, were witness to the lynching. When newspapers published photos of the lynching, identifiable faces were deliberately smudged so that they remained anonymous; the following Monday, local newspapers published 1.2 million copies, twice the normal daily production. Hart had worked in his family's department store during much of his youth and was well-known and liked by the local community. After he graduated from Santa Clara University, his father made him a junior vice president〔http://leonardoricardosanto.blogspot.com/2010/08/alex-hart-he-was-philanthropist.html Hart Family History〕 in the store and began grooming him to take over when his father retired. ==Kidnapping and murder== On the afternoon of Thursday, November 9, 1933, the 22-year-old Hart was kidnapped while retrieving his Studebaker roadster from a downtown San Jose garage. He was driven in the car by his captors to what is now Milpitas, about seven miles east of San Jose. There they abandoned the Studebaker for another car, drove to the San Mateo-Hayward Bridge, where Hart was hit over the head with a concrete block and dumped into San Francisco Bay. At the time, the tide was out and there was only a few feet of water at the base of the bridge, so Thurmond and Holmes shot Hart, killing him. A few hours later, the Hart family was telephoned by Thurmond and Holmes, who demanded $40,000 for Hart's return, with further instructions to follow. Hart had been kidnapped at the exit of the parking lot behind the family department store. A half hour later, a mother and daughter on a farm immediately south of Milpitas, watched as a Studebaker President Convertible Roadster with two men in it stopped near their barn. Their description of the man driving, slender with light colored hair, matched the description of Hart, as did the Studebaker as his car. Moments later, a long-hooded dark sedan with four men in it skidded to a stop, and Hart was placed in the larger car with the four men and driven off. A fifth man followed in the Studebaker. Later that night, a man living in Milpitas reported that his wife had seen an abandoned convertible left with its lights on outside their home. The car was Hart's. At 9:30 the same night, Miriam Hart, Hart's youngest sister, answered the telephone and was informed by a "soft-spoken man" that Hart had been kidnapped and that instructions for his return would be provided later. At 10:30, what sounded like the same man called and informed Miriam that her brother would be returned upon payment of $40,000. Delivery instructions would be provided the next day. However, the family was not contacted again until the following Monday, when a card, postmarked in Sacramento, arrived in the mail at the family department store. It instructed Hart's father, Alex Hart, to have a radio installed in the Studebaker (which already had a radio), because the ransom instructions would be broadcast over NBC radio station KPO. The kidnapper also instructed Alex Hart to be ready to drive the Studebaker to deliver the ransom, but Alex Hart had never learned to drive. On Tuesday, a second ransom note arrived, again postmarked in Sacramento. It instructed Alex Hart to place the ransom in a black satchel and drive to Los Angeles. That night, Alex Hart took a call from a man claiming to be his son's kidnapper who instructed him to take the night train to Los Angeles. The FBI staked out the train station and mistakenly arrested a bank teller out for an evening stroll. The next day, a sign was placed in a window of the Hart store stating that Alex Hart did not drive. A call was received that night again demanding that Alex Hart drive to deliver the ransom. Hart demanded proof that his son was with the caller. The caller stated that Brooke Hart was being held at a safe location. Because a phone tap had been placed on the Hart telephone, the call was traced to a garage in downtown San Jose, but the caller was gone by the time the authorities arrived. Another ransom demand arrived the following day, November 15, again ordering Alex Hart to drive with the ransom. That night, another call was received and the demand that Alex Hart drive was repeated. The sheriff arrested Thomas Harold Thurmond near a pay phone in a parking garage 150 feet from the San Jose Police station at about 8 p.m. At 3:00 a.m., Thurmond, after hours of questioning, signed a confession in which he claimed to have bound Brooke Hart with wire and tossed him off the San Mateo Bridge into San Francisco Bay some time between 7:00 and 7:30 on the night of the kidnapping. He identified a recently unemployed salesman separated from his wife and two children as his accomplice. Jack Holmes was arrested in his SRO room at the California Hotel near the San Jose Police station at 3:30 a.m. Early in the morning, because of lynch threats, the Santa Clara County sheriff moved Thurmond and Holmes to the Potrero Hill police station in San Francisco for safekeeping. At 1 o'clock the next afternoon, Holmes signed a confession admitting that he and Thurmond kidnapped Hart and threw him into San Francisco Bay. Later, the Santa Clara County District Attorney advised the press that, unless corroborated by independent evidence of the crime, confessions by Thurmond and Holmes in which each blamed the other for the crime were not admissible in a court of law. The San Jose Police, the Santa Clara County Sheriffs office, and the U.S. Division of Investigation (the forerunner of the FBI) were quickly brought into the case. Hart's wallet was discovered in San Francisco, on the pier where the daily passenger ship to Los Angeles had just departed. The ship was stopped and searched upon arrival, but nothing was found. Police officers from Santa Clara County, San Mateo County, and Alameda County began searching the bay around the bridge, hoping to find Hart's body. On November 26, two duck hunters from Redwood City discovered a badly decayed and crab-eaten body about a mile south of the bridge. Hart's body was identified by one of his friends later that day. Meanwhile, local newspapers reported that Holmes and Thurmond had met with psychiatrists and would attempt to plead not guilty by reason of insanity. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brooke Hart」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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