Caleb Milne, the 1930s Actor Kidnapped in Broad Daylight

The three young men walking along Old York Road in late December of 1935 were about to come across a sight they'd remember for the rest of their lives. There, lying in a ditch at the bottom of a hill just outside Doylestown, Pennsylvania, was a man. His wrists, knees, and ankles were bound; his mouth and eyes were taped shut. He was missing his socks and had only one shoe, the other lost as he tumbled down the hill from the roadway above.

The boys flagged down a motorist, who quickly worked to get the man loose from his bonds and into his vehicle. The stranger moaned as he was driven to the hospital. There, doctors discovered a series of puncture marks on his arm.

Before long, word came down from authorities: The man was confirmed to be 24-year-old Caleb Milne IV, who had been missing for the better part of a week. Kidnappers had demanded $20,000 for his safe return. While this was a considerable sum during the Great Depression, Milne’s grandfather, Caleb Milne II, was an incredibly wealthy businessman—and from the looks of things, the elder Milne had finally consented to pay for his grandson’s life.

Soon, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover declared the Milne case was “definitely” a kidnapping. But Hoover’s agents would quickly learn there was far more to the crime. As Milne began to talk, he detailed another story even more sensational than his abduction.

The Special Delivery
A Likely Story

The Special Delivery

The Milne family arrived in the United States from Scotland in 1837, when David Milne immigrated and founded a textile company in Philadelphia. The business was passed down through generations before arriving in the hands of Caleb Milne II, who sired Milne III, who raised Milne IV.

Despite his grandfather’s fortune, Milne IV (heretofore just Milne) was set on his own path in life. A graduate of Germantown Academy and the University of Pennsylvania, Milne was a trim 5 feet, 11 inches tall and photogenic. His interests leaned toward the arts, and he settled in New York City to pursue a theater career, taking odd jobs while going on auditions. He shared an apartment on 157 East 37th Street with his brother, Frederic, which cost the two $15 a week.

On Saturday, December 14, 1935, Frederic awoke to a scribbled note. Milne had written he was off to Philadelphia with a “Dr. Greene of Gracie Square.” Gracie Square was a psychiatric hospital in New York.

Frederic was unconcerned by the note and thought little of it until the following morning, when he received a letter right at 6 a.m. It came via special Sunday delivery. Inside was a missive composed of letters clipped from magazines, a technique familiar to any mystery fiction writer.

“We have your brother in the country,” it read. “Keep in touch with your grandfather in Philadelphia and have a large sum in cash available. We will communicate with you again.”

Ominously, the ransom note was accompanied by Milne’s wristwatch.

You Might Also Like ...

Add Mental Floss as a preferred news source!

Frederic notified police, who tried to track down a Doctor Greene at Gracie Square to no avail. Milne’s landlord informed them that Milne hurried out of the building after receiving a phone call, insisting his grandfather had fallen ill and that he needed to tend to him. But the older Milne was fine. They contacted Milne’s mother, Frederica, as well as his aunt Anita, who spoke to the press.

“I can’t give any information except that Caleb has been kidnapped in New York and that a ransom note has been received,” she said. “Naturally, we are all very upset at this occurrence.”

East Coast newspapers quickly picked up on the story, which invited plenty of morbid curiosity. The victim was an attractive young man—“more than ordinarily handsome,” Frederic said—whose grandfather was wealthy. His safe return seemed to hinge on his grandfather’s capitulation to criminals.

Milne II, however, didn’t seem all that bothered, and didn’t seem to regard the ransom note with much gravity. Police in New York, he said, weren’t alarmed and considered him a missing, not kidnapped, person. “I don’t think there is anything to worry about,” he said. “I think he just stayed away and his brother became excited.”

As the week wore on, more reports came in. The ransom was $20,000, or possibly $25,000. It was said that Milne II received a demand for even more money—$50,000—and that the kidnappers had phoned him at his home. “Philadelphia is still the place,” a voice said. “We will—” Then the call cut off.

Soon, federal agents were descending on the various Milne residences. A mailman was said to be detained after delivering a suspiciously large number of letters. One reporter observed Milne’s aunt being ushered into a vehicle quickly, leading to speculation she might be en route to greet Milne—or Milne’s body.

Finally, on Wednesday, December 18, Milne was discovered near Doylestown, bound and bedraggled. As he convalesced, he explained to authorities that four men, one of whom had claimed to be a doctor, had taken him by force outside his apartment and driven him to a cabin hideout near Doylestown. There, he said, they kept him groggy with narcotics by administering injections. With the ransom paid and his usefulness gone, he was tossed down the hill from a moving vehicle.

Upon his arrival at the hospital, Milne was thought to be in too much distress for further questioning by agents, but after several hours, he finally agreed to talk. He would soon wish he hadn’t.

A Likely Story

Federal agents who questioned Milne were curious about the 26 puncture marks on his arm. That many injections, they reasoned, would likely result in a fatal dose of narcotics over such a short period of time. And there was another inconsistency: Milne told investigators he had been driven through the Holland Tunnel and checked his wristwatch, which read 11 a.m. But the ransom note sent to Frederic and containing Milne’s wristwatch had been postmarked prior to 11 a.m. How could he have known what time it was without his watch?

Law enforcement asked Milne to repeat his story over and over again. Each time, the details failed to add up. The way he was bound could have been an act of self-restraint, with a slipknot to make cinching it easy. Inside his hat they found hairs belonging to a wig.

Finally, Milne confessed. He was not a kidnap victim but had instead played the part of one. During his “disappearance,” he merely fled to a hotel in Trenton, New Jersey, where he donned a disguise and deployed the ransom demand to his grandfather. After waiting, he traveled to Pennsylvania, bound himself, and tumbled down the hill to be found. The needle marks were made with a pin.

“I admit that my alleged kidnapping was perpetuated by myself,” he wrote. “Because of my desperate financial condition and inability to find a job, I felt … that if I could get some publicity I could get a job.”

Authorities were further amused to discover Milne was also an aspiring author and had written a short mystery story, “The Perfect Crime,” two weeks prior to his self-imposed exile.

His grandfather, Milne II, was as laconic after the confession as he had been during the so-called kidnapping. “You know, my grandson had those G-men fooled very badly,” he said.

The justice system was less amused. Milne was charged with extortion and held over on $7500 bond (more than $178,000 today), which his father posted. In February 1936, a grand jury failed to formally indict him, allowing Milne to dodge a possible 20 years in prison and a $5000 fine.

There were still consequences to the staging of his own kidnapping. Upon his grandfather’s death in 1941, Milne learned he had been denied any inheritance: His grandfather had written him out of his will. (His father and uncles split a $431,000 estate.)

Milne himself would only outlive his grandfather by just two years. In 1943, while volunteering as an ambulance driver in Tunisia, he was killed when enemy fire sent shells in his direction. At the time, Milne was attempting to rescue two injured men from the battlefield.

His obituaries hailed his heroism, though never failed to mention the scheme he had perpetuated years earlier that had briefly fooled federal agents. But the New York detectives apparently knew something they did not. In their files, Milne’s initial missing persons report was marked with one addendum: “publicity.”