Vintage Original Wanted Poster dated February 6th 1937 Reward of $10,000 “for information furnished to a representative of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, United States Department of Justice leading to the identification and apprehension of the person or persons responsible for the kidnaping on December 27, 1936 and subsequent murder of CHARLES FLETCHER MATTSON, ten-year-old son of Dr. and Mrs. W. W. Mattson of Tacoma, Washington.”
The Poster Measures: 16” X 10.5”
Tacoma had a moniker it had hoped would fade, the "Kidnap Capital of the West." In 1935, three years after the Lindbergh kidnapping, 9-year-old George Weyerhaeuser, son of Washington timber baron John Philip Weyerhaeuser, was grabbed off a Tacoma street in broad daylight. His parents paid a $200,000 ransom, the boy was released unharmed, and an arrest was made within days. Then, two days after Christmas 1936, a man broke into the mansion of Tacoma physician William Mattson. The intruder menaced the four children present with a gun, picked up 10-year-old Charles Mattson and fled. He left a ransom note asking for $28,000. Two weeks later the boy's body was found on a snow-covered field 60 miles north, near Everett. The Mattson murder was never solved.
