Tale of the New West

On a lonely roadside seven miles from the town of Everett one day last week, a small boy waved down a passing motorist. Said eight-year-old Lee Crary solemnly: "I'm the boy they're looking for." Indeed, "they" were. For 3 1/2 days more than 600 searchers--FBI agents, sheriff's deputies, airmen, Boy Scouts--had been frantically stalking a 20-square-mile section of the state. The Post Office had intercepted a crudely written ransom note demanding $10,000 in exchange for Lee Crary's return. Safe at last in the hands of FBI interrogators, Lee devoted 90 minutes to his excruciatingly detailed story.

He was throwing rocks at trees in a schoolyard near his home, he said, when a car pulled up and the driver got out. The man talked pleasantly to Lee about birds and animals, said his name was Bob. Suddenly the man clapped his hand over Lee's mouth, warned him to "be quiet and don't make any noise because I don't want to hurt you." The kidnaper stuffed a lace handkerchief into Lee's mouth, then tied another around his face. The boy was then led to the car, shoved into the trunk--which, Lee noted, had holes punched in the lid--and carried off.

Food for a Spider. Lee never panicked. An astute (IQ: 140) watcher of cowboy and adventure TV shows, he peered through the holes in the trunk, made mental notes of the car's movements. For three nights the boy and his kidnaper slept in the car. Each morning the two drove into the back country west of Everett. They spent their days in the woods happily engrossed in nature study, fed small spiders to big spiders ("The big spiders would grab the little ones and roll them up in a ball. Bob said that was for their winter food"), once observed "a grouse, a muskrat and six deer all in a bunch." The nature lovers encountered a dog, which Lee named Rex. As the second day went by, Lee became weary, pleaded in vain with Bob to take him home.

On the third day Bob was getting restless. Rudely he called Rex a "damn dog," strapped the boy to a tree and chained up the dog, then took off. "When he went," said Lee, "I remembered how Wild Bill Hickok got loose in a TV picture when he was tied up like that. I figured I shouldn't be sitting around in the brush like that, doing nothing, so I worked my wrists trying to get loose. Then I reached around with my teeth and got that bar in the buckle to drop loose." Releasing Rex, Lee made for the nearest road.

End of a Ducktail. Worldly-wise FBI men were skeptical about the eight-year-old's story: the memory seemed too perfect, the details too complete. How could they be sure he was telling the truth? If they wanted to check his story, Lee Crary replied, all they had to do was pick up the young, blond (ducktail haircut) fellow driving a Chevrolet. With no hesitation Lee rattled off the license number: 20318-D.

The sheriff sent out a call for the car. The owner: Unemployed Riveter George Edward Collins Jr., 20, penniless, badly befuddled, blond, ducktailed, who was jailed on a charge of first-degree kidnaping. In a 13-page confession George Collins corroborated Lee's story to the last detail, admitted that he had sent the $10,000 ransom note to Lee's father, an auto-parts salesman. Collins had been too scared to try to collect the money. He and his wife had decided to try kidnaping, said Collins, because they were so broke. Then the power company had shut off their electricity. Even the finance company had taken their TV set away.

"It was fun, all right," said little Lee Crary when it was all over, "but I was glad to get home. He was a real nice guy." Everybody agreed that Bob's big misfortune was losing that TV set. You can learn a powerful lot, jes' asettin' and awatchin' Wild Bill Hickok.

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