The Kidnap Squad
JahnsenWe had another case. I think the case that you were referring to when we were talking about it was the organization of the kidnap squad, and how it worked and how fast it worked.
King
Maybe that's right.
Jahnsen
And how quick it went. They kidnaped the warden at San Quentin prison--the whole prison board and directors--some of the criminals did this.
Stein
I remember reading about that.
Jahnsen
They took over. When Warren organized the kidnap squad, he got two men from the sheriff's office, two men from our office, two from the Oakland police department--they were in that picture I gave you--two from San Leandro, and two from Berkeley.
King
But how do you get over to San Quentin? Isn't that Marin County?
Jahnsen
Yes. Well, it's all right. [Laughter]
Anyway, what happens is, radio was new then--we all had radios in our cars, and everybody had a number. When a call would come, "All K cars report for an assignment," now "K" meant kidnap cars, and mine was nine, so they called me the dog of the outfit.
Stein
Yes, canine. [Laughter]
Jahnsen
I was the K-9, see? [Laughter]
So when this happened, we got all K-cars assembled and report. No matter what they were doing, no matter where they were, this call would never go out, unless they had to-- We made tests on it, you see? No matter what case they were on they'd have to be located. Their local departments'd have to get them, and they cut them loose.
They all assembled at the district attorney's office, immediately, and were given instructions. Within one hour, I would say, or thereabouts--maybe from the time the kidnaping was reported, which would be two hours from the time it happened--in that period of time we were all assembled in the yard at San Quentin prison to go out, and we would work in all counties.
We had what was called the county-wide plan. The mutual aid plan was an off-shoot of this. It was joint-county, too, with Contra Costa County.
One day, to give you an illustration, we had a little girl that was picked up on her way home from school in San Leandro by some fellow in a car. And this man--somebody saw him pick the girl up. She was about seven or eight years old, nine years old. He took her in the car. She disappeared--she didn't come home. Her mother immediately notified the police.
Joe Proehler was chief of police, then, out there, and he immediately called up and asked for us, and got me on the phone. I immediately put out the call for all K-cars to assemble. This would be about three o'clock in the afternoon. By eight o'clock that night we didn't only have the girl back, but we had the man and the confession. The next morning the man plead guilty to kidnap and went to San Quentin prison by the next afternoon.
King
That's pretty fast work.
Jahnsen
We got the girl. This man a syphilitic. He had the girl up back in the hills in Hayward, and was starting to fool with her. Fortunately we got a line that some farmer had seen this car stalled down the road, and he asked for some help. The farmer called in to report this fellow up there, and we had a line on it that way. We got the fellow and he confessed to picking the girl up and the whole thing.
A peculiar coincidence about that case: I had a barber named Ernie Meier who lived in Oakland; I lived on College Avenue and went to him. Ernie Meier's wife--it was her second marriage, to Ernie--this was her first husband. She told me a lot of things about the guy afterwards. The guy was just a
We also had the first police schools. [They] were set up in Alameda in the district attorney's office. Once a week the kidnap squad met. We would always bring in people from the outside, outside criminologists. We would bring in people that had a lot of information that they could give us on autopsies: doctors, surgeons.
King
Then you taught a course about this at U.C., didn't you?
Jahnsen
No, I taught the course on surveillance. This was one of my own, how to shadow people. I taught at San Jose and also UCLA at Los Angeles. It was an interesting course. The fellows would stay until seven or eight o'clock at night. [Laughter]
King
That would have been fun.
Jahnsen
I told them how to shadow people, and a lot of these things, you know. A lot of it's based on your own imagination, and so forth, what to do. I remember telling them how to enter an elevator. They wanted to know, "How do you follow the guy in the hotel if he gets in the elevator?"
Well, you have to anticipate. A lot of it's anticipation. You've got to be prepared to be able to anticipate the other fellow's moves. You have to know that the other fellow knows he's being followed. You must be assured of that. You must realize that this man--
King
That he's trying to elude it.
Jahnsen
Well, he's a criminal, he's suspicious. He's always looking, see? But you've got to brace him. You've got to take away his suspicions. Psychology is [what] a lot of it is.
When you go in the elevator you go right in with the man. Naturally the fellow's gonna say, "What floor?" or press the button, so you press the button ahead of him, ask for the floor ahead of him, see? You never want to ask for the floor above him, because he might walk up and meet you! [Laughter]
The idea is to get off on the lower floor and know that he's above you. Then try to anticipate where he's going above you, see? Then, if anything should happen, go in, and if you spot him, you'd say, "By the way, do you know where the ABC coal company is?" Or, "Can you tell me where Mr. Smith's office is here?" You ask him, right at him. You brace him right on, you see?
That throws him off right away. Immediately you change his pattern of thought. His fear leaves him. He feels more or less confident. He's gonna say, "No, I really don't." You might see the office he's going into by doing this, see? Even if you get off with him, if you give him enough chance. He's going to watch you, and look around, and he'll go into an office, and you could say, "Oh, say, just a minute. Can you tell me where So-and-so's office is?"
The same way when you shadow a person, you always want to be ahead of them, never be behind them. He's always looking back. When you're walking along the street, always be in a position where you can use the benefit of the windows as a mirror. See where they're going, see? There's many little tricks about this.
King
We were all saying something about the prison board being kidnaped in Marin County, or at San Quentin? And the warden being kidnaped, and we never got that story, I guess.
Jahnsen
Yes. Well, the warden was kidnaped.
King
Who was that? Was that Clint Duffy?
Jahnsen Oh, it was quite a long while ago.
Al Bagshaw, who was district attorney of Marin County at the time, was trying some cases out around Valley Ford. He heard the radio and the news. He ran into some of the sheriff's deputies, and they handed him a shotgun, and they'd had this fellow.
What they did, they came-- Have you been in Valley Ford?
King
Yes.
Jahnsen
Well, as you drive through, there's a place called Denucci's--it's a little restaurant. The road goes around this place as it goes out to the town of Bodega Bay. One road goes to Bodega Bay, or you can go around the other way into Monte Rio. You could also turn in this road that goes into a ranch, and you'd go into a dead-end in the ranch.
They made the wrong turn and went into the ranch. They kept the prison board sitting in the back of a car while they kept the guns on them. They kept the gun on the driver, also.
They had forced the prison gate open, and they said they'd kill these guys (the prison board) if they didn't open the prison gates and let them out. So the San Quentin guards did. The prison board said to the gate tender, "Just let us out." So they let them out. They drove about forty or fifty miles before they drove into this dead-end. They couldn't back out, because they were getting cornered.
Just about this time one of these criminals went around a barn, and Al Bagshaw, who was a pretty sharp lawyer and a very fine man, had the shotgun. Somebody hollered, "Look out, Al, he's gonna shoot you!" Al looked around the building and saw this person with a gun, and he upped with the shotgun and killed him. Shot him up pretty bad.
As he lay there, Al said, "Let's get him to the hospital. Let's get him to the hospital!" One of the board members said, "Let the son-of-a-bitch die. What do you want to send him to the hospital for? What's he good for? That's too far to get him to the hospital. Let's get the rest of these guys."
Then the prison board came back. The others were later arrested and tried again for an escape, and so forth, and of course for the conspiracy. They did time there at the prison.
King
That's really almost the first attempt at coordination, the Alameda County kidnap squad?
Jahnsen
Well, this was one of the first. The Bay county peace officers association came in, and the California state--it used to be the sheriff's convention, the sheriff's association. Then this California state peace officers. Then they organized, with Warren's efforts, the Bay counties, the nine Bay counties, into an organization. Then, as a result, we were pretty well coordinated
This was when kidnaping was really going on. The FBI was the head of the squad, that is of the over-all picture, and I was the local head of the county squad, and our squads. We would call them out, but we only had certain grounds to call them out on, see? We were out on two or three, and we were very successful in the operation of the squad.
Courtesy of Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft0000023x&brand=oac4
Title: Oscar J. Jahnsen
Contributing Institution: Regional Oral History Office, University of California, Berkeley
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