Snatch Findings

Within a few hours of each other, one evening early this week, two western kidnapping cases came to happy endings. Found in the desert near Tucson, Ariz, three weeks after she had been snatched was June Robles, 6, granddaughter of a Tucson cattleman. No ransom was paid, no snatcher caught. From Chicago officials had received a special delivery airmail letter directing them to a spot g-2 mi. from Tucson. They found June Robles lying in a shallow hole, chained by her ankles, covered with tin, burlap and cactus. Beside her lay a jug of water, a loaf of fairly fresh bread and some wilted oranges and vegetables. She was thin, dirty, sunburned, weak but otherwise sound. Her first words: "I want my mama!"

Nineteen years ago William F. Gettle left Oklahoma for Bakersfield, Calif, to become manager of a J. C. Penney chain department store. By 1929 hard work and good fortune in Oklahoma and California oil lands rewarded him with enough money to quit the Penney company and move to Beverly Hills, Year ago he bought a five-acre place at Arcadia, 15 mi. outside Los Angeles. He and his invalid wife gave a little house-warming one night last week to christen a new pavilion and swimming pool.

At midnight, Host Gettle and a friend named Wolf were alone in the pavilion having a drink at a new bar. They had just clinked glasses when two masked men walked in. "Put 'em up." Gettle and Wolf were led outside and across the garden to a high wall. Leaving Wolf taped and bound, the snatchers hoisted Gettle's 500-lb. bulk over the wall by a ladder, dumped him down on the far side, drove him off into the night.

Four days came and went and Mr. Gettle was still missing, while officials, friends, family fumbled in the dark to make contact with his abductors. On the fifth day police traced telephone calls to a Los Angeles apartment, arrested one James Kirk and a woman who said she was his wife. Kirk sent them to a house in La Crescenta, few miles from the Arcadia estate. There they seized two other suspects, let one slip away. But they found and held fast to unharmed William F. Gettle.

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