It was on this day (January 8) in 1921, that Jacques Villard, editor of the New Age, returned home to St. Louis after 11 days as an apparent hostage of kidnappers in Chicago.
The 38-year-old Villard was reportedly kidnapped from his room at Chicago’s Hotel La Salle on December 27. He was visiting the city to hire a Polish-speaking assistant editor for his publication, which ran articles in both Polish and English.
According to the Burns Detective Agency, as quoted in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Villard’s abductor “carried him to an automobile (both of Villard’s legs are off above the knees) and took him to a house in the city, blindfolding him as the machine approached the place.
“He was held in a darkened room until last (Friday) night, when the first abductor and two companions took him to a part of the city known as Franklin Court, and lifted him out of the machine, giving him an automobile robe to keep him from freezing. He called for help, and several pedestrians, believing him to be drunk, ignored his appeals. Finally he got a taxi cab….
“During his incarceration, the men repeatedly tried to make him send to his wife for money, but he convinced them that she had none.”
Villard’s kidnappers seem never to have been caught. He committed suicide the following year.
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