Lights! Cameras! Murder!: Life imitates art in this chilling tale of a wannabe filmmaker who set out to imitate his hero – the TV character, Dexter.
The Stepmother from Hell: What kind of a monster would torture a 6-year-old amputee and cancer survivor?
Black Widows of Hollywood: The barely believable tale of a couple of elderly women who targeted the homeless in a callous murder-for-profit scheme.
The Barbecue Murders: Marlene claimed that her parents had gone on an extended vacation. The bones in the barbecue pit said different.
Mob Rules: The kidnapping and murder of a much-loved San Jose businessman brings about a truly horrific end for the perpetrators.
The Werewolf Butcher: Jack had an ambition. He wanted to be the most notorious serial killer in America. He was certainly one of the bloodiest.
Evidence of Murder: A young girl gets lost in a cornfield and ends up in the clutches of a vile pedophile in this harrowing tale from southeast England.
Justice for Buddy: All Buddy wanted was a companion to share his golden years with, what he got instead was a female predator with a penchant for torture.
Click the "Read More" link below to read the first chapter of
Murder Most Vile Volume 12
Mob Rules
Alex Hart Sr. was a much-loved businessman in the city of
San Jose, California. His landmark Hart’s Department Store, on the corner of
Market and Santa Clara Streets, was an institution in the city. In the days
before suburban shopping malls, everybody shopped there. And everyone who did
loved the Hart family. Renowned for their munificence and community spirit, the
Harts gave generously to many causes. They’d even donated their historic family
home to the YMCA.
The undoubted golden boy of the Hart family was Alex’s
oldest son Brooke. The 22-year-old, with his athletic build, wavy blond hair
and blue eyes, was regarded as San Jose’s most eligible bachelor. He cut a
dashing figure, cruising the city’s streets in his green 1933 Studebaker
Roadster. It was said that the young ladies of the city came down to the
department store just to get a look at him.
In 1933, when our story takes place, Brooke Hart had just
graduated from Santa Clara University and had been made a junior vice president
of the family business. Brooke, who had worked various jobs at the store
throughout his youth, was being groomed to take over. Fate, however, had other
plans. It came in the form of two desperate men, Thomas Harold Thurmond and
John M. Holmes.
The year 1933 was in the midst of the Great Depression, a
dark period in American history marked by intense economic stress,
disillusionment, and anger among the poor. Thurmond and Hart certainly fit that
mold. A couple of high school dropouts who had grown up in the area, both were
unemployed and struggling to make ends meet. Holmes’ plight was particularly
desperate. He was married with two young children. Eventually, the pair hit on
a plan. They were going to kidnap one of the city’s wealthiest citizens and
extract a ransom from his family. The victim they decided on, was Brooke Hart.
Brooke’s father, Alex, had never learned to drive a car, so
Brooke was in the habit of driving him to and from work. His vehicle usually
spent the day parked in a downtown San Jose garage and it was while retrieving
it from that location on the afternoon of Thursday, November 9, 1933, that he
was ambushed, forced into his car and then driven to a rural area about seven
miles east of the city. There, the kidnappers changed vehicles, abandoning the
Studebaker at the side of the road. From there they drove to the San
Mateo-Hayward Bridge, where they carried out the rest of their scheme. Thurmond
and Holmes had never intended holding Hart as a hostage. Their plan was to kill
him. The young man was brutally bludgeoned with a chunk of concrete, then
dropped into San Francisco Bay. The killers fired a shot at him as he floated
in the water. Then they left.
By now, the Hart family was frantic with worry. Brooke’s
routine was well established. He’d fetch the car and then return to the store
to pick up his father. Today, however, he hadn’t returned and his car was
missing from the garage. Alex Hart had just reported the matter to the police
when the phone at the family residence jangled into life. There was a man on
the line demanding $40,000 for Brooke’s safe return.
There was never any doubt in Alex Hart’s mind that he would
pay the ransom. $40,000 was a huge sum in the financially fraught days of the
Depression but the Harts could afford it. All Alex wanted was the safe return
of his son. Still, like any good citizen, he immediately reported this latest
development to the police. Within the next few hours, Brooke’s Studebaker was
found beside a road in the area that is now Milpitas. Then there was another call
from the kidnapper, reiterating the demand. Over the days that followed there
would be further communications via telephone and postcard.
The police were by now sure that they were dealing with a
bunch of amateurs who would slip up sooner or later. They were right. On the
evening of November 15, the caller stayed on the line long enough for police to
get a fix on his position. Thomas Thurmond was arrested as he walked away from
a pay phone located just 150 feet from the San Jose Police headquarters. He
quickly confessed, naming John “Jack” Holmes as his accomplice. Holmes was
arrested later that same night.
As word of the arrests began seeping through to the public,
so came the first rumblings of a lynching. The American people, still raw from
the abduction and murder of the Lindbergh baby, had no sympathy with
kidnappers. When the San Jose papers confirmed the arrests the next morning,
the County sheriff took the wise precaution of moving Thurmond and Holmes to
the Potrero Hill police station in San Francisco. There, at around 1 o'clock
that afternoon, Holmes finally admitted killing Hart.
Holmes said that he and Thurmond had planned the kidnapping
for “about six weeks.” After ambushing Hart in the car park, they drove him to
the San Mateo Bridge, where they bound his hands with baling wire and then
attached two concrete blocks (brought along for that purpose) to his shoulders.
Holmes then beat him on the head with another chunk of concrete, but Brooke
started screaming so they picked him up, placed him on the railing and then
dropped him into the water below. Unfortunately for them the tide was out, so
the body didn’t sink. They then fired a shot at him and left. (A shell casing
would later be found on the bridge but there were no bullet wounds to Brooke’s
body. He likely drowned.)
With the admission that Brooke had been thrown into the bay,
a police search was launched involving officers from Santa Clara, San Mateo,
and Alameda Counties. But the area that the searchers had to cover was huge and
they had no luck until November 26, when a couple of duck hunters found a badly
decayed and crab-eaten body about a mile south of the San Mateo Bridge. It was
in such a horrific condition that the police warned members of the Hart family
not to view it. Brooke Hart was identified by one of his friends.
The news was out now, raging through the community like a
virus. People were angry. A beloved member of their community had been brutally
slain and they wanted justice. Mob rule had taken hold and it would continue to
build over the following week, first with the revelation that the killers were
claiming insanity, then with an announcement by the DA that they could not be
convicted on their confessions alone and might walk free unless corroborating
evidence could be found.
The local media hardly helped cool the situation. Radio
stations broadcast bulletins peppered with inflammatory statements, paying
scant regard to the principle of presumed innocence. The local papers published
equally provocative editorials. Meanwhile newsmen from across the nation began
ascending, setting up their cameras in St James Park across the road from the
Santa Clara Courthouse, where Thurgood and Hughes were now being held. Around
them, an angry mob had begun to build.
Sheriff William Emig watched that growing crowd with
trepidation. He and a small detachment of officers had been detailed to guard
the prisoners but he knew that they’d be powerless against a sizable lynch mob.
He therefore sent an urgent dispatch to the governor, asking him to mobilize a
National Guard unit. Governor James Rolph refused. In fact, he responded by
saying that he had no problem with a lynching and would personally pardon
anyone involved.
Such a pronouncement from a public official could only have
emboldened the mob and the radio stations soon picked up the cudgel, announcing
on air that there would be a public lynching in St James Park at 9 p.m. that
Sunday evening (November 27). That pronouncement was just the call to arms that
the mob needed. By late afternoon on that chilly November day, over 1,000
individuals had braved the cold and descended on the park. By sundown that
number had tripled. As the hour designated by the radio stations approached
there were 5,000 men, women, and even children, gathered. The mood was angry
and it continued to darken as the evening wore on.
By 11:00 p.m. the tone of the mob had reached a state of
near hysteria. Wooden barricades that had been placed in front of the
courthouse had been torn down and hurled at the building, along with rocks,
bottles, and any other debris the would-be lynchers could find. Inside, the
small force of police officers took cover behind desks and in closets, as
missiles shattered the windows of the courthouse. When a section of the mob
broke away and began raiding an adjacent building site for ammunition, Sheriff
Emig knew that he and his few deputies had no chance of repelling the assault
that would surely come. Soon the mob was battering at the courthouse doors,
using steel pipes looted from the building site. Emig then played his last
card. He ordered his men to fire tear gas. That served barely to slow the
advancing horde. As the door of the building began to splinter and then burst
open, the cops bravely stood their ground. Emig had ordered his men not to fire
into the crowd. They were quickly overwhelmed and trampled underfoot, Emig
himself suffering a skull fracture.
Fights had now broken out among the crowd, each man eager to
get at the prisoners. They swarmed up the stairs, jostling for position.
Thurmond and Holmes heard the crowd coming and cowered in the corner of their
cells, paralyzed with fear. The elderly jailor had his jaw broken by a fist and
was forcibly relieved of his keys. Then the prisoners were dragged, kicking and
screaming, from their cells, Holmes put up a fight but was quickly subdued by
fists and boots.
Thurmond and Holmes were now manhandled down the stairs and
thrown into the street to the accompaniment of whoops and cheers. There, they
were grabbed by their feet and dragged across the tarmac into the park, where
burning torches illuminated the scene. They were kicked and beaten, spat upon
and mauled with bricks and tree branches, every blow cheered by the onlookers.
“Killers! Murderers!” they screamed.
Thurmond had by now given up the fight, either knocked
unconscious or paralyzed by fear. But Holmes still struggled, suffering
terrible injuries at the hands of the furious mob. Meanwhile, a youth had
scurried up a tall elm in the northeast corner of the park and tossed a length
of rope over a sturdy branch some twenty feet from the ground. The other end
was fastened into a noose and pulled over Holmes’ head as he continued to
fight. A few yards away, a second noose was placed around the head of a
seemingly unconscious Thurmond. He was quickly hauled into the air and died
oblivious to his end.
Holmes’ demise was far less peaceful. As he continued to
fight, a group of men beat him to the ground with steel bars, breaking both of
his arms. Then he was stripped naked and the rope firmly knotted around his
neck. He was hoisted up, kicking out in ever weaker spasms as the life was
choked from him, and the crowd celebrated his demise. Some of the lynchers then
held burning matches under his feet while others in the crowd chanted “Burn!
Burn!” The atmosphere was festive, the lynchers wild-eyed with righteous
indignation. Hugs and backslaps were exchanged, while at the fringes police
officers looked on impotently. Many probably agreed with their governor’s
assessment – that justice had been done this night.
The frenzy did not abate immediately. For hours afterwards,
people lingered at the scene watching the naked bodies of Thurmond and Holmes
swaying in the breeze. Still others broke branches and gouged chunks of bark
from the hanging tree. They carried these home as souvenirs.
The lynching of Thomas Harold Thurmond and John M. Holmes was
one of the darkest chapters in the long history of American mob justice. Many
condemned the action but there were an even greater number who commended it.
One such person was a professor at Stanford, who led her class in a minute’s
applause in honor of the lynch mob.
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