By JACK MAJOR

The tragic 1932 kidnapping and murder of toddler Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. shocked the nation and prompted several states to enact kidnapping laws that carried harsher punishment — including the death penalty.

Despite the new laws and despite the awareness — and fear — that resulted from the Lindbergh case, kidnappings increased in 1933.

Gangsters rarely, if ever, abducted children, though there weren't enough statistics in the early 1930s to support that statement. When 10-year-old Margaret "Peggy" McMath was kidnapped from a grammar school in Harwich Port, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, May 2, she became the year's youngest victim of a crime involving a ransom demand. The man in charge of the investigation had a gut feeling the girl might have been kidnapped by a well-organized gang, perhaps the people responsible for the Lindbergh crime, which was still unsolved and subject to all kinds of speculation.

But the McMath case bore little similarity to the Lindbergh case. "Peggy" McMath was returned to her family, unharmed, late Thursday evening, about 60 hours after she had abducted.

IT WAS a dastardly crime, but "Peggy" McMath, perhaps in a daze, remained remarkably calm through the whole awful experience, until she faced a curious public and prying journalists a few hours after she was released from captivity. Fatigue plus her sudden status as both heroine and celebrity momentarily flustered her, but she quickly escaped with her parents, went home and got much-needed rest. A day or two later she became a regular Nancy Drew, helping police wrap up the crime, later testifying in court.

Contrary to all initial theories of the kidnapping, the crime was the work of only one man. He was no gangster, though he would later claim two gangsters had forced him to commit the crime. Still later he would say it was a rum-runner named Bill. He didn't know the man's last name.

Except for the cruelty and uncertainty inflicted upon a young girl who was tied up and forced to spend two nights in a cave-like basement, the crime had several elements that were comic enough to be worthy of a movie by the Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan. Granted, there were several "Fargo"-like kidnappings in 1933, but the McMath case is in a class by itself.

Unfortunately, the stories I found about the case raised a few questions that were never answered, including some drawn from the first few words of the following story, which otherwise does a good job of summarizing the first day of the case:

Unfortunately for Brigadier General Daniel Needham, recently appointed the Massachusetts Commissioner of Public Safety and head of the state police, Silvia wasn't located until the investigation was well underway. Thus Needham and his men believed for awhile that it indeed was a Negro who drove off with Peggy McMath. If not a Negro, then someone whose skin was too dark to be Caucasian.

Frank Rodick, a dark-skinned, 45-year-old Portuguese man, was taken into custody for questioning. It was almost immediately obvious he had nothing to do with the crime.

Police also were dispatched to Mashpee to interview native Americans because six members of the Mashpee tribe had recently done gardening work on the McMath property.

Most embarrassing was something that happened far from Harwich Port, in the Berkshires in the northwest corner of the state. For some reason police not only were looking for a Negro, but also for a little coupe, not the sedan that had picked up Peggy McMath at the school.

If I were writing a headline for the following item — that is, writing a headline in the computer age — it would be "Profiling for Dummies."

(I picture Samuel L. Jackson as the Reverend Lee. "So let me get this straight. officer. You thought this" — he points to his white Siberian husky, obediently sitting in the passenger seat, looking out the window — "was a 10-year-old white girl? You damn well better hope the girl's parents don't hear about you calling their daughter a dog!")

At the same time, three men were detained in Hartford while police there waited for Brig. Gen. Needham's men to provide more details of their suspects. But, of course, there were no details to provide since all they had to go on was a statement by a 10-year-old boy at the Harwich School who had seen Peggy McMath get into a car driven by "a Negro." This boy also was certain there was another man in the car. (There wasn't.)

And while some police were chasing little coupes, others, in New York City, were looking for a 16-cylinder Cadillac sedan owned by a New Yorker who once lived in Revere, Massachusetts, and may have driven to Cape Cod a few weeks before the kidnapping.

Brigadier General Daniel Needham — that was his National Guard rank — might well have been an intelligent, capable man, but stories of the McMath case picture him as someone dutifully on his way to nowhere in particular. (Think the Lloyd Bridges character in the two "Airplane" movies.)

As one point he told the press, "There is a possibility that if we solve this case, we might solve the Lindbergh case at the same time. There is nothing inconsistent in the theory that this may be the work of a clever kidnap gang. There is some similarity in this case with the Lindbergh case and it may have been done by the same crowd."

Needham admitted he had no leads, but said he was acting upon "a hunch."

A big part of Needham's problem was the McMath family. They didn't want the police involved, believing their best chance to get their daughter home — unharmed — was to deal directly and secretly with the kidnappers.

The William Randolph Hearst-owned International New Service (INS) had one of its best-known reporters, James Kilgallen, covering the story, and he did so in unremarkable fashion, depending mostly on Needham for information. Needham's scenario was that outsiders were involved, gangsters who might have flown off with the girl or taken her to Long Island in a boat from nearby Wychmere Harbor, or driven her to Canada.

On the other hand, unnamed reporters for Hearst's Boston Evening American. who conducted their own investigation, concentrated on Harwich Port and quickly concluded there were no gangsters involved in a kidnapping. Their source was never revealed, but it might well have been the kidnapper himself or one of his friends . . . because the newspaper's stories had many elements of the different versions of the crime that Kenneth Buck would later tell police.

According to the Evening American, the kidnapping was staged by men who lived in the town. The newspaper story also said the kidnapper had rehearsed the crime beforehand and that he had blackened his face and worn white chamois gloves when he went to the South Chatham post office on Tuesday to place his call to the school, identifying himself as Neil McMath and asking that his daughter be dismissed from school early.

The woman who took the call was Ruth C. Holmes, secretary to Harwich School principal Charles H. Pratt. She would willingly engage in one of those odd, 15-minutes-of-fame rituals common at the time. That is, she gladly — perhaps proudly — posed for a newspaper photo that would be published under the headline, "WOMAN FOOLED IN PLOT."

The Boston Evening American wasn't completely correct, however. The newspaper predicted four arrests; there were only two.

The newspaper, either through a mistake in the writing or the editing, also said the kidnapping had been planned in the McMath home, which threw suspicion on the girl's father, who had nothing to gain from the crime, especially as it was executed. (I think the newspaper meant to say "hometown" instead of "home.").

The two men arrested were Kenneth Buck and his older brother, Cyril, 32. Cyril, at least, was well known around town. He operated a garage and occasionally performed as an amateur magician.

Cyril's involvement raised delicate legal issues that were nicely handled by members of the jury, who, on June 24, declared the man not guilty. It was a wise verdict, the kind often delivered in a small town where people are more interested in truth than evidence.

A Criminal Mastermind? Hardly
Kenneth Buck changed his story several times, and alternately implicating and exonerating brother Cyril, but the only version that made sense was the one in which Kenneth Buck took full responsibility for planning and executing the kidnapping.

Buck kept talking, police stopped listening
That Kenneth Buck played a round of golf as a way of keeping an eye on firemen was another bizarre element of the story. And he didn't play alone. He asked a neighbor, Walter Cahoon, to join him, and while they played, Buck confessed his crime to Cahoon, but said he had been forced into it by two big city mobsters. Cahoon said later he was afraid to contact police, since he claimed to believe Buck's story about the mobsters.

Kenneth Buck had used the two-mobster version in order to convince his brother, Cyril, to act as a go-between with the McMath family. Cyril Buck first advised his brother to release the girl and turn himself in; later he decided on a more cautious plan of action on the possibility — however small — that Kenneth was telling the truth about the two gangsters.

This version was an outgrowth of a story Kenneth Buck had told his brother before the kidnapping that two out-of-town (probably Boston) gangsters had contacted him about finding a place in Harwich to store cases of liquor. Kenneth told Cyril the gangsters were offering to pay $1 per case for storage.

On Wednesday, the day after the kidnapping, Cyril Buck visited the McMath home and opened ransom negotiations, considering himself simply a go-between, the same as McMath's business associate, William Lee. Cyril Buck said later he urged McMath to contact police about their meeting, but the father said he preferred to wait until his daughter had been returned to him.

Cyril Buck did not try to hide his identity, but he also did not reveal to McMath that the kidnapper was his brother, who was known to McMath, having asked the boat builder for a job at his factory.

Nowhere but in the first story on this page is there a mention of that 48-hour moratorium the McMath family and the state police reportedly were giving the kidnapper. Either Kenneth Buck was unaware of the offer, or he had some wild notion that he could make his kidnapping plan work.

Just when things couldn't get crazier, they did. McMath needed proof he was dealing with the real kidnappers. He had Cyril Buck take a note to his daughter, asking her to name a pet dog that had died several months earlier. Buck took her answer back to her father: "Peter the Great." Correct.

So McMath got serious about raising money and on Thursday informed Cyril Buck that he had $52,000 in cash and could get another $18,000. McMath, Cyril Buck and William Lee arranged to meet that evening on Lee's boat, called "Bob" (I kid you not).

When Cyril Buck showed up for that meeting he was accompanied by a masked man, his brother Kenneth, who never revealed his name, never even spoke, and carried on his end of the conversation by writing notes.

After much dickering, McMath produced $70,000, saying it was all he could raise. Kenneth wrote that $50,000 was to go to the kidnappers, $10,000 to himself and $10,000 to Cyril as the contact man.

Cyril Buck refused to accept the money, giving it back to McMath.

During his trial Kenneth Buck would switch to the one-gangster theory, claiming that Bill, the rum-runner, told him Peggy McMath's father was in on the crime. Police, who had heard so many stories from Buck, did not give this one any credence.

After Kenneth Buck took the $60,000, a mask was put on McMath, and Cyril Buck drove him over a lonely, winding road. Eventually they stopped and picked up a passenger — Peggy McMath.

McMath and his daughter were delivered back to the boat where McMath reportedly agreed to wait 48 hours before contacting police in order to allow the kidnappers to escape.

However, police learned the girl had been released only a few hours later. I found no information on how the police found out, but suspect either Cyril Buck called him, or that Neil McMath had phoned his wife and she contacted police.

It wouldn't take long for the case to be wrapped up, especially since there was no reason to believe any of the stories Kenneth Buck would tell them, except the one in which he took full responsibility for the crime. However, his brother Cyril also would be charged for his role in the kidnapping because police suspected he may have been in on it the whole time.

That's precisely what Kenneth Buck would say after his arrest, retracting it only after he and Cyril argued in Barnstable County jail and nearly came to blows.

Cyril Buck, man in the middle
Neil McMath would admit the Cyril Buck had attempted to help him, saying that while his daughter was held captive he was so upset and disoriented that he was oblivious to what Buck was telling him, such as his advice that McMath contact the police.

McMath's business partner and contact man during the kidnapping, William Lee, crumbled under the pressure of the situation and became hysterical when police boarded his boat unexpectedly while he, McMath and young Peggy were sitting inside, killing time while Kenneth Buck supposedly was fleeing the area.

Police, finding the situation a bit suspicious, took the girl, her father and Lee on a long boat ride to the Coast Guard base at Woods Hole where they were questioned. Several hours later, the girl was returned home; police were satisfied her father had played no part in her abduction.

THE TRIAL in late June got bogged down in Kenneth Buck's story that he had been pressured by a mobster named "Bill" to kidnap the girl, and that the girl's father was in on it. Nobody believed the story, but Kenneth Buck's attorney, Elias Burwick, kept insisting it was true.

More successful was Willard Carleton, defense attorney for Cyril Buck, who convinced jurors his client was innocent of any wrongdoing.

Kenneth Buck's guilt, a foregone conclusion, was affirmed by the jury and the young man was sentenced to the rather unusual term of at least 24 years, but not more than 25, behind bars.

What happened to the Buck brothers? I've looked but have found nothing, except that in 1934 a petition was circulated in Harwich for the release of Kenneth Buck from prison. As far as I know, the petition was not successful.

Margaret "Peggy" McMath went on to lead a long, full and happy life. She died February 18, 2014. Her obituary — posted online by Morris, O'Connor & Blute Funeral Homes of South Yarmouth, Massachusetts — does not mention the kidnapping.