As the Audubon County Journal reported at the time, Cudahy’s insistence on following the ransom note to the letter was both frustrating — they could have caught the kidnappers that night — and understandable. Apparently, the note had threatened unspeakable revenge against the boy if Cudahy Sr. didn’t behave himself, including “burning out the boy’s eyes.”
As it happens, the Pinkertons and the police managed to apprehend one Pat Crowe, a man with a serious grudge against Cudahy (via the Nebraska State Historical Society). Crowe’s butcher shop had been put out of business by the massive Cudahy plant, where he later took a job, only to be fired for embezzlement. Crowe evaded Nebraska detectives until 1905, when he was arrested in Montana for robbery and shooting a policeman, according to the Nebraska State Historical Society.
At the time, Nebraska had no law against kidnapping — it had never happened in the state, and no one had thought to outlaw it. He was charged instead with robbery, for which he was acquitted. The sensational trial made Crowe a kind of perverse celebrity, and he tried to use his new fame to launch careers in acting and writing books. He would die alone in a New York City boarding house in 1938. Eddie Cudahy Jr., the kidnapped boy, would go on to enjoy a long and uneventful life.
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