On this day, Nov. 26, 1933, vigilantes in California lynched two men suspected of murdering the heir to a San Jose department store fortune. Brooke Hart, 22, had been abducted two weeks earlier. His family received a $40,000 ransom demand and, soon after, a massive manhunt and some good breaks led to Thomas Thurmond and John Holmes. The men confessed to hitting Hart over the head with a piece of concrete, and dropping the body into the San Francisco Bay.
The public, outraged at the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh’s baby a year earlier, was crying for blood. Radio broadcasts called for their lynchings and a mob broke into the jail and strung the suspects to trees.
Said Gov. “Sunny Jim” Rolph afterward, “The best lesson ever given the country.”
-Scott McCabe
