On this day, Feb. 9, in 1960, Coors brewery heir Adolph Coors III was kidnapped and held for ransom in Colorado before being shot to death. The FBI launched one of its largest manhunts ever for a Fulbright scholar named Joe Corbett, a convicted murder who had escaped from a minimum-security prison four years earlier. Eight days after the kidnapping, a burned out car was found in New Jersey with dirt traced back to the site of the abduction. At Corbett’s house, police uncovered a typewriter used to write the ransom letter. Eight months later, Vancouver police captured Corbett after citizens recognized him from a magazine article. Corbett was sentenced to life in prison, but was paroled in 1980. In 2009, he shot himself to death at age 80.
— Scott McCabe
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