The Savannah Tribune, 27 September 1928, page 4: the Holstein kidnapping story continued

The front-page story of 27 September 1928 (page 1) continues at the foot of the second column of page 4. It names Michael Bernstein, thirty, of the Bronx, “charged with the actual kidnapping,” whom it says police described as a beer runner. Police said that on Saturday he called Holstein’s “confidential secretary,” Charles King, to a Bronx trucking office and demanded $50,000, and that he tried to cash a $3,200 check drawn on Holstein’s account. Four other men were held “in concert with Bernstein,” among them Moe Schubert and Rudolph Brown, a dance-hall manager. “Three of the prisoners are said to have admitted complicity,” the paper says.

As this paper tells it, shortly before midnight on Thursday Holstein dismissed his chauffeur in front of a friend’s apartment “at No. 265 West 145th street,” and at 12:15 a.m. a man was brought out of the house by four men and driven east toward Seventh Avenue. It says he “was released after being held prisoner for three days,” blindfolded and set down “at 225th street and Barnes avenue, Williamsbridge,” with three dollars for taxi fare and his watch and ring returned. It quotes one of the captors as telling him, “Casper, you’re too damned decent a man to keep here.”

The papers did not agree. The Gary American of 28 December 1928 places the abduction in the hallway of 225 West 140th Street, and the Associated Press reported that he was taken by “seven men and a woman” (Evening Star). This archive records each paper’s version and does not choose between them. The page gives home addresses for the men arrested; they are not repeated here. Nothing in the filed records shows that any of them was convicted. The OCR prints one man’s surname as “Agontino,” where the Gary American prints “D’Agostino.”