HISTORY
Innocent or Guilty?
Guilt
The majority of people familiar with the history of the fatal kidnapping of Brooke L. Hart in San Jose, California in the fall of 1933 believe that the two men arrested and lynched for the crime were guilty. Seventy-three years ago, no one (except for the father of one of the accused men), came forward to argue the suspects’ innocence, or try to stop the lynching. Valley of the Heart’s Delight undertakes this effort.
This unanimity of the belief in the guilt of the two men crossed economic, social, ethnic, religious, and political lines. The lynching was sanctioned by the then governor of California, James “Sunny Jim” Rolph, who refused to call out the National Guard, and promised to pardon anyone convicted of the lynching. There was never anything like it in the history of public violence in America.
Innocence
Innocence of the accused is at the dramatic core of the Valley of the Heart’s Delight. It turns on two factual elements of the available historical record.
Four days after the kidnapping, a woman told the sheriff that on the night of the disappearance, she and her daughter witnessed a roadster stop next to their barn which turned out to be Brooke Hart’s. A sedan containing four men then pulled next to it. Two men got out of the roadster, and one of them – matching the physical description of Brooke Hart – got into the sedan, and then both cars left.
 The FBI interviewed the woman’s daughter separately before she and her mother could compare recollections, and determined that her story matched her mother’s story. This was the only eyewitness account of the actual kidnapping. The FBI agents telegraphed J. Edgar Hoover that five men kidnapped Brooke Hart. Despite this eyewitness account, two local men were arrested.
Suspect Harold Thurmond’s confession was printed in the newspapers. Thurmond confessed that he and his accomplice, Jack Holmes, drove Brooke Hart to the San Mateo Bridge an hour and a half after he was kidnapped, and threw him alive into the San Francisco Bay.
Although the San Mateo Bridge is less than twenty miles from San Francisco (where the first ransom call was traced), Thurmond stated that he drove Holmes back to downtown San Jose (thirty-five miles), then drove to San Francisco to make the ransom call, then back to downtown San Jose to arrive by midnight.
The confession’s timeline contradicts the statement of a deck hand who found Brooke Hart’s wallet on the bumper of a fuel barge in San Francisco the night of the kidnapping. The bumper was underwater until enough fuel had been pumped out to allow it above the waterline. The deck hand said the bumper would not have shown until 3:00 in the morning, three hours after Thurmond confessed he was back in San Jose. The wallet was dry inside.
Additional Aspects of Innocence
 The mother of Jack Holmes stated that she was with her son and his wife, at 7:00 o’clock the night of the kidnapping (the victim’s car was first seen at 6:30, and then abandoned at another location where it was seen at 7:00). According to Thurmond’s confession, he and Holmes were on the San Mateo Bridge at 7:30.
A husband and wife stated that Holmes and his wife were at their home at 7:30 the same night before they attended the movies together at 8:00. While the veracity of Holmes’ mother might be suspect, such independent testimony establishes an alibi.
Since Thurmond’s confession places Holmes squarely on the San Mateo Bridge at 7:30 the night of the kidnapping, if Holmes’ alibi was true, then Thurmond’s confession was false.
Thurmond confessed that he wrote the ransom notes (despite the fact that Thurmond was subnormal from a childhood head injury and Holmes a college graduate). The FBI analysis of the ransom notes did not find fingerprints of either man.
A continuing demand of the kidnappers was that Alexander Hart, the father of the kidnap victim, personally deliver the ransom money. As a prominent business and civic leader,  it was widely known that Hart never learned to drive. While kidnappers unfamiliar with Mr. Hart would not know this, Jack Holmes, whose father had done tailoring for the Hart Department store for fifteen years (Holmes worked summers at the store in high school), would know.
The Hart family not only received ransom demands from different people claiming to have kidnapped their son following the arrest of Holmes and Thurmond, but even after the lynching. The day before the lynching, the Oakland Tribune published a story on Alexander Hart’s doubts about the guilt of Holmes and Thurmond. The summary report by the FBI on the Hart kidnapping contains no mention of the verified eyewitness account.
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