James Hackett, Blue Island gambler, paid 150,000 ransom to kidnapers and retuned home unharmed yesterday morning. He was kidnaped Friday afternoon. For two days his wife worked frantically converting securities and jewels into cash and borrowing money, mortgaging the home, in order to meet the demand of the kidnapers.
Hackett said last night that the $150,000 was all he had. It was possible for his wife to raise the money only upon the assurance that he would sign the mortgage on his home when he was freed.
Life in Danger.
Three different gangs had been shadowing him for weeks to take him for a ride, Hackett said his captors told him, and from the conversation of his guards he deduced they were affiliated with a national organization which makes a business of kidnaping wealthy men for ransom. The gang that captured him wanted to take either him or his son, George, 20 years old, whom they had followed on several occasions last week, Hackett stated.Others Kidnaped by Gang.
There was no connection between this attempted bombing and his kidnapping, Hackett declared, but he said he was certain the men who were successful in the $150,000 crime were the same who on Jan. 6 of this year kidnaped Daniel Chamberlain, another Blue Island gambler and liquor dealer, and who also abducted James Ward, chief bootlegger of Chicago Heights.Hackett, until this experience, had resisted all efforts of gangsters to get his wealth or take his profits from him. He is known to have had slot machines all through the southern portion of the county long before prohibition led to the formation of powerful gangs. These gangs, such as those led by Capone, the Saltis-McErlane gang of the south side, and the Bugs Moran gang of the north side, dealing in liquor, decided to annex the slot machine business in conjunction with their liquor sales.
