When they were girls during the twenties and thirties, everybody knew the Lewis sisters of Long Lake. There were five of them, and though each was very much her own person and decidedly competitive with the others, all were beautiful, vivacious, strong willed, active, athletic, and “gifted.”
Inevitably, the boys started coming around in significant numbers when the sisters were in their teens—“like flies to honey,” as one of the girls would somewhat unkindly describe the dynamic many years later. On Sundays, when socializing was forbidden, Addison Lewis, the girls’ harried father, would stand in front of the house and windmill the line of cars in and out of the circular drive as though he were a traffic cop, which, in a manner of speaking, he was. “Keep moving, keep moving!” he would shout at the young men in the cars. Never mind that the frustrated suitors often included a Pillsbury, a Morrison, a Drake, or another scion of another family of wealth and standing.
Addison Lewis founded and ran a successful advertising agency in downtown Minneapolis. In his spare time, he tended to the trotters he exercised on the small harness track behind his barn. (Then as now, rolling, semirural western Hennepin County was horse country.) He could trace his lineage back to George Lewis of County Kent, England, in the late 1500s. Addison’s wife, Dorothy, was the daughter of another well-to-do family, the Dutoits, and was, according to at least one of her daughters, an unapologetic snob.
Like their mother, the girls were brought up to pay attention to family names and origins. They studied musical performance, took dancing lessons, wrote formal thank-you notes, rode to hounds, played tennis and golf, and skied out West. But they were not debutantes, and they attended public schools. When they came of age, they were expected to join the women’s auxiliary of the symphony orchestra, get involved with one of the local hospitals, or find another means of community service. Eventually, they married well and started families of their own. Like their mother, each of the Lewis sisters wore a crown of stunning white hair by her thirtieth birthday.
Virginia, the Lewises’ second born, was homecoming queen at Wayzata High before going off to Pine Manor, a two-year women’s college in Massachusetts, on a music scholarship. (She played the violin.) Two months after her graduation, she married Bobby Piper, a Princeton University alumnus then serving as an enlisted man in the Army Air Corps. Ginny was nineteen; Bobby was twenty-four. They had known each other for several years, though Bobby was only one of Ginny’s many suitors prior to their engagement.1
At first blush, they might have seemed an odd match. Ginny was glamorous and outgoing, quick to laugh and joke and say what was on her mind. Bespectacled and buttoned-down, Bobby was reserved, analytical, and, while probably just as competitive and opinionated as Ginny, more politic in his pronouncements. He did not like to draw attention to himself or his wealthy family or, for that matter, to the good fortune into which he and most of his friends were born.
Like many of his peers, Bobby was brought up to value money but not talk about it, except, of course, when the talk involved business.
Once word of Ginny’s abduction hits the airwaves, it travels fast.
The last time most citizens can remember a bulletin shattering the afternoon’s calm like this followed President Kennedy’s assassination almost nine years earlier. It’s unlikely that anyone can recall a daylight home invasion and abduction like the one they’re breathlessly talking about on the radio today—not in this part of the world. In fact, many Twin Citians will say much later that the news gave them a jolt similar to the thunderbolt from Dallas, and can tell you where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news.
Within a few hours, Virginia Piper’s kidnapping is front-page news across the country. From coast to coast, newspaper editors are formatting gaudy headlines in inch-high type:
For friends, neighbors, and sundry acquaintances beyond the immediate family’s confines, the news is baffling.
Ginny Piper, for one thing, is one of those persons who has led a charmed life. She is attractive, well married, and wealthy, an apparently healthy and happy mother and grandmother leading a purposeful life surrounded by a loving family and numerous friends. Of course, those who know them well know the Lewises and the Pipers have their problems. Who doesn’t? There is alcoholism, adultery, divorce, profligacy, madness, and suicide in most of these eminent families, even if it is in poor taste to discuss or even acknowledge it. But Ginny’s abduction is something else, something unforeseeable and inexplicable, the crime virtually impossible to connect with its victim.
The setting is nearly as improbable as the victim. Serious crime is almost unheard of out here. The last significant criminal event involving one of the moneyed properties in this part of Hennepin County was the burglary of the Bert Gamble residence two years earlier.2
Virginia and Harry Piper Jr. and sons—from left, Harry III, David, and Addison (“Tad”)—circa mid-1950s. Courtesy David Piper
Nor is the Piper home a landmark in the area—nothing like Tanager Hill, built for Charles Bell, son of the founder of General Mills, or Southways, the thirteen-acre Pillsbury estate on Bracketts Point, or one of the architecturally important structures that are popular places to stop and gawk when meandering through Minnetonka’s labyrinthine byways or trolling the lake’s shoreline on a Sunday afternoon. Besides, it is unlikely that more than one in a hundred Twin Citians could find Spring Hill Road on a map. Spring Hill and the several similar tree-shaded lanes in the area are so tucked away and presumably inviolable that many families don’t bother to lock their doors at night, nor use any sort of deterrent to unwanted visitors other than a fence, a gate, and a dog that is usually more companion than guardian.
Then there is the crass but inevitable question that quickly emerges even among Twin Citians whose only connection with the region’s gentry is via the newspaper: Why prey on the Pipers when members of the Pillsbury, Dayton, Heffelfinger, Bell, and another couple of dozen higher-profile and presumably more affluent families live within striking distance?
Nothing about Ginny’s kidnapping makes much sense.
Piper, Jaffray headquarters is normally a site of order, quiet efficiency, and decorum.
Bobby’s father, the first Harry Cushing Piper, and his partner, C. P. Jaffray, opened their commercial paper business in 1913. By the mid-1930s, the firm was brokering securities and had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange. After graduating from Princeton, serving in the Pacific during the war, and a brief period at Honeywell, Bobby joined Piper, Jaffray in 1946. He became a partner four years later and took the company’s reins after his father retired in 1962. In July 1972, with one of his sons at a desk nearby, the company embodies his policies and personality.
Ginny is—was?—a presence here, too: Piper, Jaffray’s First Lady. She has organized and presided over the firm’s frequent social events, here at the office, at home, and at Woodhill County Club. She has often accompanied Bobby to New York and to openings of branch offices throughout the West and Midwest. Bobby, a shrewd judge of character himself, values her opinion on personnel matters and other issues. Men are attracted to her for obvious reasons, but women are, too, because she is unpretentious, easy to talk to, and jolly. Standing amid the usual crowd of admirers at a company party—impeccably coiffed, made-up, and attired, with a cigarette in one hand and a martini in another—she is usually the center of attention. Everybody calls her “Ginny.”
This afternoon the office is cocooned in a stunned and fearful silence. Soon enough, the FBI arrives and sets up shop in the corner office where Bobby’s father once presided, the agents monitoring calls, asking questions, and eyeballing possible suspects. Nobody else knows quite what to do or say. Business as usual is impossible.
Vivian Meunier quietly answers her boss’s telephone, explaining to the few callers who have not yet heard the news that Mr. Piper has left for the day.
Three hours after Ginny’s abduction, the world is clamoring to know more.
The scrum of reporters and news crews clustered at the bottom of the Pipers’ driveway is growing by the minute. The reporters shout questions at anybody wearing a business suit or a uniform who emerges through the police line, but they get few answers. “No comment!” is the usual response.
Terror is surely creeping up Bobby’s spine. But if he ever, before this surreal afternoon, feared for himself or his family, no one can recall his mentioning it. You would never know it by the lack of security he has employed at the house, where doors have been left unbolted and the family dog, a blissful golden retriever, would have been delighted, Tad Piper recalls years later, to show an intruder where the family kept the silver. At some point this afternoon it must dawn on Bobby that he and his family are no longer protected by the relative anonymity and remoteness he has long presumed to be theirs. He must feel outrageously exposed.
Nevertheless, when the Twin Cities television audience gets a glimpse of Bobby on the evening news, few would know who he is without the voice-over introduction. They see a trim, unexceptional-looking middle-aged man in a crisp summer suit and dark tie, with a full head of carefully parted dark hair and an economics professor’s horn-rimmed glasses, and they hear him speak in a surprisingly clear and steady voice, all things considered. He doesn’t look or sound like a “Bobby,” or, as far as that goes, like the husband of, in the blink of an eye, the most famous woman in Minnesota.
He does not carry a prepared statement. He simply walks down the long driveway with John Morrison at his side and at the bottom, amid the parked cars and milling people, speaks into the thrusting microphones.
“Obviously there’s been a kidnapping, and the case is in the charge of the FBI, and there’s really nothing more I can tell you now,” he says.
“Was there a ransom note?” someone asks.
“Yes,” he says, “there was a note.”
“How much was it asking?”
“I can’t tell you that,” he says. “It could very possibly jeopardize Mrs. Piper’s chances.”
“They said they would be calling?”
“They said they would get in touch with me, yes.”
“Did they say how soon?”
“I can’t tell you any more,” Bobby says evenly, with only a hint of the impatience he has to be feeling. He knows he needs the media to spread the word, to increase the number of eyes and ears alert to his wife’s location. Yet how much can he say? Surely, among the eyes and ears within the broadcast’s territory are those of the kidnappers or their confederates. “That would be unwise,” he explains. “You can’t ask me to take any chances …”
A moment later, he and Morrison walk back up the driveway to the house.
At last—it seems like several hours to Ginny—the car apparently reaches its destination. Its wheels spin. It seems to be stuck.
They tell her to sit up, then pull her out of the backseat by her arms. She still has the pillowcase over her head, so she sees nothing. One of the men seems to be taking things out of the car while the other holds on to her arm. Wherever they are, it is noticeably chillier than it was at home. It is lightly raining as well. They are standing in wet grass that goes over her bare ankles.
Her escort leads her forward, up a hill, and the two of them walk quite a ways in what she guesses to be a forest. The air is cold, and her surroundings seem darker through the pillowcase than they did when she first stepped out of the car. After a few minutes, the incline flattens out a bit. But the ground is rough and uneven. She stumbles as she walks, her wet feet slipping and sliding in her flimsy sandals that were not designed for this type of terrain.
She stumbles into a tree.
The man says, “Watch it!” and then tells her to sit down. He spreads what seems to be a sheet or sheets of polyethylene on the wet ground next to the tree, and that is where she sits.
A short while later, he helps her up, removes the handcuffs, and gives her a large sweatshirt to put on and a pair of men’s trousers to pull up over her thin slacks. Then he puts the cuffs back on. He replaces the pillowcase with some sort of blindfold made of adhesive tape and cotton balls. He must know that the blindfold is not going to be very effective because he tells her that she can’t turn her head and look at him.
“I’m going to be sitting here next to you,” he says, “so don’t try anything funny.”
Shivering in the damp cold, she assures him that she won’t.
The FBI has issued a six-state bulletin to police departments and media outlets with Ginny’s description and other pertinent details, such few as exist.
Law enforcement has no comprehensive description of the kidnappers or their car. One of the cleaning women glimpsed the vehicle from an upstairs window when the men pulled up in front of the house, but “dark green” is all she could tell the investigators afterward. The roadblocks thrown up around western Hennepin County have only complicated the Thursday-afternoon rush hour, and the state patrol helicopter hovering over the area spots nothing of pertinent interest. Given the scanty description of the car, it is not clear what the airborne cops are hoping to see.
Back from his brief appearance in front of reporters, Bobby takes off his suit coat and tie. He, John Morrison, Morgan Aldrich, another close friend, his sons Tad and David, and a handful of FBI agents gather in the sitting room just inside the front door, drinking the coffee and eating the sandwiches provided by the women in the kitchen. Nearly everybody smokes. Here and around town, including the Morrison residence a mile away, the agents are seeking names, asking about unfamiliar cars and unusual incidents, and compiling lists. With Bobby’s permission, the FBI has begun monitoring the Pipers’ home phone as well as the Piper, Jaffray line that has been routed to the house. The incoming calls thus far have yielded no more than the roadblocks.
Bobby has already spoken by phone to another friend, George Dixon, who is the president of the First National Bank in downtown Minneapolis. The FBI has its own protocol when dealing with kidnappers, but there is no doubt in Bobby’s mind that he’s going to accede to the kidnappers’ demands and promptly provide the million dollars. There will be no stunts or derring-do on his part or on the part of law enforcement if he can help it. Bobby is nobody’s fool. He has grown the family fortune by successfully assessing risk and arranging deals involving many millions of dollars. Of course, this transaction, with his wife’s life at stake, is unique. The ransom note is chilling in its specificity and no-nonsense language—all the more threatening for the absence of an explicit threat. These men mean business, albeit a drastically different sort of business than Bobby’s.
He and Dixon have made arrangements for securing and packaging the money per instruction, so the ransom will be ready for delivery when the kidnappers call tomorrow night. In the meantime, there is nothing much else to do but help the agents with their lists and wait. It will be the longest night of Bobby’s life. Then there will be a long day tomorrow, while they wait for the kidnappers’ call.
The house, where he and his wife have lived for twenty years, is full of people but eerily bereft of Ginny. Until that afternoon so open and humming with life, the house is unimaginable without her. Even Bobby will concede that this is her house, full of her personality, sensibility, and enthusiasms: the enameled touches reflecting her fondness for “Oriental” design and decor; the layers of pink, her favorite color, in the master bedroom and bath; the sprays of fresh-cut flowers throughout. The artwork that covers the walls reflects her tastes and within the family evokes the image of Ginny and an architect friend, martinis in hand, deciding where a new piece should hang, never mind that it’s late and her friend, who lives nearby, has answered her call in his bathrobe.
Who knows where Ginny is at this moment? In what kind of surroundings and condition?
Decades later his sons will not remember anything specific Bobby said during this first night of the crisis. Each exists in his own dreamlike bubble. They are sure, though, there were no pep talks, no insistence on a stiff upper lip, no paternal demand to look on the bright side. That wasn’t Bobby’s style. He preferred to lead by example.
Tad believes his father wanted them to see him calm and focused. He had a job to do, and he would do it, without complaint or any more commentary than was needed. It was pretty much, the sons would agree, the way he operated every day of his life.
From her position in the woods, she can hear cars and the occasional truck, meaning she is not far from a road, though she is quite sure it isn’t the freeway. (There aren’t enough cars and trucks for that.) The silly blindfold that replaced the pillowcase has fallen off her face and dangles from her neck. The man who stays with her tells her again not to look at him.
It is dark now, and it continues to rain on and off, sometimes hard. She sits on the plastic sheeting in the thick, wet brush, sometimes with her back against a tree and her legs stuck straight out in front of her, as the rain spatters the leafy, leaky canopy above her. Her captor, sometimes standing and sometimes sitting more or less behind her, occasionally speaks, mostly to answer a question, responding when she makes an effort to engage him in conversation, which she hopes will increase her chances of staying alive. Oddly, considering their evident isolation, and without the man demanding that they do so, they whisper when they talk.
From his rough manner of speaking, not to mention his current line of work, she assumes he is not going to be very comfortable communing with a “socialite,” which is how she can imagine the papers describing her. The man is not like anyone she has ever spent any extended time with, she is quite certain of that.
She is hungry—she has had nothing to eat since that peanut-butter sandwich at lunchtime—and would pay a queen’s ransom for a cigarette. She is also increasingly chilled and uncomfortable, despite the sweater and the extra pair of pants and the makeshift poncho the man tried to fashion for her as protection against the rain. He has produced a box of Kleenex and a roll of toilet paper, but the supplies aren’t very helpful in the rain. On the other hand, she is not so nervous anymore, not so afraid of the man behind her. He has treated her decently, even gently, with consideration since they arrived in the woods. He has promised he won’t hurt her, though she assumes he still has his guns. She can even talk to him, at least in fits and starts. Ginny can talk to anyone—she has heard that said a million times, and it’s true, and, incredibly considering her circumstances, she has the confidence that she can converse with this man, too.
She is fairly certain the man is not in charge of the operation. She has no idea where the other masked man went, and she suspects that there is at least one other person—“that goddamn Chino!”—involved as well. Which raises another question that worries her: Who knows what those other men might want to do with her?
She is glad, though, they didn’t take Bobby, because Bobby can’t talk to just anyone, and she is quite sure they would kill him.
1 Another was George Roy Hill, a Minneapolis boy who later became a highly successful Hollywood filmmaker, directing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting, among other hits beginning in the late 1960s.
2 Bertin Gamble cofounded the Gamble-Skogmo conglomerate of retail establishments, including, in the 1970s, the familiar Gambles hardware and Red Owl food stores.