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Swift Justice: Murder & Vengeance In A California Town
In 1933, a nightmare shook the quiet town of San Jose, California, when a young man named Brooke Hart was abducted while leaving his father's department store. In the days that followed, the Harts, local and state police, and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI scrambled to outwit the kidnappers, whose demands kept them at bay until they--and Brook Hart's murder--were at last discovered.
Then the unthinkable: A band of vigilantes stormed the San Jose jail and hanged the two criminals in the town square as ten thousand watched. The next day the governor hailed the lynching as "a fine lesson".
The San Jose lynching, which divided the nation and haunts the city still, is a chilling tale of fear, fury, and the collapse of justice--of a small American paradise turned inferno.
Then the unthinkable: A band of vigilantes stormed the San Jose jail and hanged the two criminals in the town square as ten thousand watched. The next day the governor hailed the lynching as "a fine lesson".
The San Jose lynching, which divided the nation and haunts the city still, is a chilling tale of fear, fury, and the collapse of justice--of a small American paradise turned inferno.
320 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 1992
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Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews
June 11, 2016
Swift Justice is the dissection of a double-headed atrocity: the kidnapping and horrific murder of Brooke Hart, and the equally horrific lynching of his murderers by the citizens of San Jose. It's compelling, cleanly-written, and even-handed. Farrell offers as many perspectives as he can and is clearly doing his best not to pass judgment on the choices and ambiguous motivations that allowed the lynching to happen.
There isn't really much doubt that Jack Holmes and Harold Thurmond murdered Brooke Hart. The discrepancies in their stories are the sort of discrepancies that are bound to surface (each man insisted the other was the one who actually had the (missing) gun), and Jack Holmes' insistent claims that he was innocent and that his confession was tortured out of him are exactly the sort of thing a guy like Jack Holmes would say, especially to his father and (semi-estranged) wife. I'm not buying. And given the picture Farrell paints, I don't think Harold Thurmond was capable of the kind of sustained lying that would have been necessary to incriminate an innocent Holmes.
With all that said, and given that what Holmes and Thurmond did was unforgivable (kidnapping for ransom where the victim is dead before the ransom demands have even been made is peculiarly horrible, and the circumstances of Brooke Hart's death--the callous, deliberate brutality; the fact that it's impossible to tell whether the pistol whipping, the fall from the San Mateo Bridge into San Francisco Bay, or drowning was the actual cause of death; the horrible fact that Brooke Hart lived long enough to call for help but not long enough to be found and rescued--make it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for Holmes and Thurmond), the lynching is unforgivable in its own right. Farrell's description of the death of Jack Holmes chilled me to the bone.
As Farrell points out, Thurmond and Holmes are unusual for victims of lynching in that they were white men. And--if proof were needed that lynching has nothing to do with justice--there was barely a whisper of a wisp of a question about what was going to happen to them if due process of law was served. These weren't men who had been pronounced innocent against a community-wide belief in their guilt. They hadn't been pronounced anything. They hadn't even been arraigned. And Farrell makes it very clear that there were back up plans on all sides to make sure that Thurmond and Holmes did not wiggle off the hooks the law had in them. The lynching came from a completely different set of motivations, ones which Farrell points to but never quite discusses when he talks about California history and the never quite articulated idea of "frontier justice." The people of San Jose--not a majority, but certainly a diverse cross-section from university students to pillars of the business community to roughnecks and petty criminals--were denying the right of the law to deal with Thurmond and Holmes. And the conspiracy of silence--a conspiracy that was so strong fifty years later that there were only four men Farrell could name as being part of the lynch mob: two teenagers who were stupid enough to brag about it, one adrenaline-junkie ("a man irresistibly drawn to any scene of violence, disorder, bloodshed, or fire--an affinity that would later make him one of San Jose's most visible news photographers" (220)) who simply admitted it, and Jackie Coogan, a friend and fellow student of Brooke Hart's, who was recognizable in photographs of the lynching--the conspiracy of silence denied the law's right to pass judgment on what the mob had done. What I found just as horrifying were the police chiefs and sheriffs who inexplicably failed to send back-up to the besieged sheriff of Santa Clara County, the journalists and radio newscasters, who not merely reported on the lynching but encouraged people to come join the fun, and--of course--Governor James "Sunny Jim" Rolph, Jr., who repeatedly and publicly gave the lynching his gubernatorial blessing. The idea that there was something inherently right and laudable in lynching--and not in the KKK's upside down morality, either--is something clearly present in the reactions of some (though not all) people to the ghastly deaths of Thurmond and Holmes, but something that I can't get my head around.
"An eye for an eye leaves us blind," Ron Perlman's character says in an episode of the short-lived Magnificent Seven TV series, and as I said in talking about the Hatfields and the McCoys, one thing reading a lot of revenge tragedy sensitizes a person to is the cold ugly truth that vengeance only makes a terrible situation worse. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice," Francis Bacon said, and he did not mean it as praise of wild things. The rest of the sentence reads, "which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out." Vengeance only perpetuates the cycle of murder and counter-murder; it only turns human beings into beasts--not animals, because animals don't do this sort of thing--beasts, brutes, werewolves (the horror being that, as the etymology suggests, they are creatures that are neither man (Anglo-Saxon were), nor wolf, but some unnatural combination of the two), slavering Mr. Hydes smirking at the desperate rationalizations of Dr. Jekyll. Humans are worse than animals; lynching, like any other form of revenge, proves it.
---
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. (Matthew 5:38-41 KJV)
There isn't really much doubt that Jack Holmes and Harold Thurmond murdered Brooke Hart. The discrepancies in their stories are the sort of discrepancies that are bound to surface (each man insisted the other was the one who actually had the (missing) gun), and Jack Holmes' insistent claims that he was innocent and that his confession was tortured out of him are exactly the sort of thing a guy like Jack Holmes would say, especially to his father and (semi-estranged) wife. I'm not buying. And given the picture Farrell paints, I don't think Harold Thurmond was capable of the kind of sustained lying that would have been necessary to incriminate an innocent Holmes.
With all that said, and given that what Holmes and Thurmond did was unforgivable (kidnapping for ransom where the victim is dead before the ransom demands have even been made is peculiarly horrible, and the circumstances of Brooke Hart's death--the callous, deliberate brutality; the fact that it's impossible to tell whether the pistol whipping, the fall from the San Mateo Bridge into San Francisco Bay, or drowning was the actual cause of death; the horrible fact that Brooke Hart lived long enough to call for help but not long enough to be found and rescued--make it impossible to feel any kind of sympathy for Holmes and Thurmond), the lynching is unforgivable in its own right. Farrell's description of the death of Jack Holmes chilled me to the bone.
As Farrell points out, Thurmond and Holmes are unusual for victims of lynching in that they were white men. And--if proof were needed that lynching has nothing to do with justice--there was barely a whisper of a wisp of a question about what was going to happen to them if due process of law was served. These weren't men who had been pronounced innocent against a community-wide belief in their guilt. They hadn't been pronounced anything. They hadn't even been arraigned. And Farrell makes it very clear that there were back up plans on all sides to make sure that Thurmond and Holmes did not wiggle off the hooks the law had in them. The lynching came from a completely different set of motivations, ones which Farrell points to but never quite discusses when he talks about California history and the never quite articulated idea of "frontier justice." The people of San Jose--not a majority, but certainly a diverse cross-section from university students to pillars of the business community to roughnecks and petty criminals--were denying the right of the law to deal with Thurmond and Holmes. And the conspiracy of silence--a conspiracy that was so strong fifty years later that there were only four men Farrell could name as being part of the lynch mob: two teenagers who were stupid enough to brag about it, one adrenaline-junkie ("a man irresistibly drawn to any scene of violence, disorder, bloodshed, or fire--an affinity that would later make him one of San Jose's most visible news photographers" (220)) who simply admitted it, and Jackie Coogan, a friend and fellow student of Brooke Hart's, who was recognizable in photographs of the lynching--the conspiracy of silence denied the law's right to pass judgment on what the mob had done. What I found just as horrifying were the police chiefs and sheriffs who inexplicably failed to send back-up to the besieged sheriff of Santa Clara County, the journalists and radio newscasters, who not merely reported on the lynching but encouraged people to come join the fun, and--of course--Governor James "Sunny Jim" Rolph, Jr., who repeatedly and publicly gave the lynching his gubernatorial blessing. The idea that there was something inherently right and laudable in lynching--and not in the KKK's upside down morality, either--is something clearly present in the reactions of some (though not all) people to the ghastly deaths of Thurmond and Holmes, but something that I can't get my head around.
"An eye for an eye leaves us blind," Ron Perlman's character says in an episode of the short-lived Magnificent Seven TV series, and as I said in talking about the Hatfields and the McCoys, one thing reading a lot of revenge tragedy sensitizes a person to is the cold ugly truth that vengeance only makes a terrible situation worse. "Revenge is a kind of wild justice," Francis Bacon said, and he did not mean it as praise of wild things. The rest of the sentence reads, "which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out." Vengeance only perpetuates the cycle of murder and counter-murder; it only turns human beings into beasts--not animals, because animals don't do this sort of thing--beasts, brutes, werewolves (the horror being that, as the etymology suggests, they are creatures that are neither man (Anglo-Saxon were), nor wolf, but some unnatural combination of the two), slavering Mr. Hydes smirking at the desperate rationalizations of Dr. Jekyll. Humans are worse than animals; lynching, like any other form of revenge, proves it.
---
Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. (Matthew 5:38-41 KJV)
March 13, 2016
I recently had the unique experience of attending the San Jose’s Tabard Theater’s production of the newly adapted play based on the 1933 lynching of the two men accused of kidnaping and killing Brooke Hart, heir to Harts Department Store. The play was based on this book written by Harry Farrell, a reporter for the San Jose paper - the Mercury News. After having had my interest seduced by this fascinating play, I wanted to read more complex details of this San Jose history. Since this book is currently out of print and its cost of purchase was not within my book budget, I needed to patiently wait my turn on the local library’s hold listing. This award-winning book is filled with additional facts about this history making lynching such as just who, both famous and infamous, were involved. It also went into depth with additional information about the families it touched. If you have an interest in San Jose (CA) history, this book is a "must” read. Even though both men denied help, did Holmes and Thurmond do it alone? Why wasn’t someone in the lynching party ever charged with the crime? Who knows!
November 10, 2008
The story of the Brooke Hart kidnapping and murder in 1933 was the sensation of not only San Jose, California, but of the entire country at a time when kidnapping for ransom was becoming the crime of choice among brazen criminals. This book was written in 1992, but as far as I know, there isn’t another book which so thoroughly examines this case.
Brooke Hart was a 22-year-old who had just been made vice-president of the department store his father owned in downtown San Jose. He was abducted and then horrifically murdered even before the kidnappers sent their first ransom note. The kidnappers were subsequently captured and a lynch mob hung them in a downtown park.
The writing is pretty pedestrian, but the subject is engrossing, so the pages really fly by. This book spends much focus on the subject of lynching. Was it the right thing to do? Is it ever the right thing to do? Did the state government know beforehand that it was going to happen, and set it up so that there was little interference with the lynching?
Read the book and decide for yourself.
Brooke Hart was a 22-year-old who had just been made vice-president of the department store his father owned in downtown San Jose. He was abducted and then horrifically murdered even before the kidnappers sent their first ransom note. The kidnappers were subsequently captured and a lynch mob hung them in a downtown park.
The writing is pretty pedestrian, but the subject is engrossing, so the pages really fly by. This book spends much focus on the subject of lynching. Was it the right thing to do? Is it ever the right thing to do? Did the state government know beforehand that it was going to happen, and set it up so that there was little interference with the lynching?
Read the book and decide for yourself.
March 19, 2017
This is true crime and might not be for everybody but this is part of the history of my hometown and I can remember shopping at Hart's department store downtown San Jose as a child. This made me want to go to Oak Hills and put a flower on Brooke Hart's grave.
May 21, 2017
E
Excellent reporting of the killing of Brooke Hart for the purpose of trying to get ransom money from his wealthy family. This attempt failed and resulted in the public lynching of the two perpetrators.
Excellent reporting of the killing of Brooke Hart for the purpose of trying to get ransom money from his wealthy family. This attempt failed and resulted in the public lynching of the two perpetrators.
November 3, 2011
Must read if you call yourself a native of San Jose.
August 20, 2013
This should be essential reading for anyone interested in Bay Area history . Lynch law does not confine itself to any one area of the country
August 27, 2022
In the mid-2000s a movie was made about an infamous lynching in San Jose. It was very B-movie with a poor script and few details, which was disappointing. When I found this Edgar-winning book from 1992, I was excited to read it. (And I now realize "In the Valley of the Heart's Delight" was just "inspired by" and did not even follow the same people or events.)
This was a great read, particularly if you are from San Jose. The author is meticulous, which may bore people not familiar with the streets and roads, but I loved that aspect. There are certainly times when he is too detailed or spends too much time, but, overall, this was a quick read full of background on the kidnapping and murder; the sordid behavior of the mob; and the politicians, lawmen, and newspapers that influenced and celebrated the lynching.
He also includes a "Lingering Doubts" chapter at the end and presents other theories and conflicting stories.
Having lived downtown San Jose for many years, I have been in St. James Park countless times. The notorious story of a vigilante mob breaking into the county jail and hanging two prisoners right outside has always been a curiosity. The author does a great job bringing all the pieces together. I highly recommend this book.
(A friend reminded me that former San Jose mayor, Tom McEnery, turned the book into a play a few years ago, which was still playing locally into 2021.)
This was a great read, particularly if you are from San Jose. The author is meticulous, which may bore people not familiar with the streets and roads, but I loved that aspect. There are certainly times when he is too detailed or spends too much time, but, overall, this was a quick read full of background on the kidnapping and murder; the sordid behavior of the mob; and the politicians, lawmen, and newspapers that influenced and celebrated the lynching.
He also includes a "Lingering Doubts" chapter at the end and presents other theories and conflicting stories.
Having lived downtown San Jose for many years, I have been in St. James Park countless times. The notorious story of a vigilante mob breaking into the county jail and hanging two prisoners right outside has always been a curiosity. The author does a great job bringing all the pieces together. I highly recommend this book.
(A friend reminded me that former San Jose mayor, Tom McEnery, turned the book into a play a few years ago, which was still playing locally into 2021.)
December 31, 2020
Swift Justice is nonfiction but it reads like a thriller. It's the story of the 1933 lynching of the kidnappers and killers of a popular young San Josean of prominent family. The lynching made San Jose infamous. To some, a national scandal and embarrassment. To others, an example of how to stop major crimes like kidnapping (this happened shortly after the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby). James Rolph, California's governor at the time, condoned the lynching, denying the local sheriff national guard troops to protect the jail and the kidnappers and then promising to pardon any member of the lynching party who was prosecuted. This happened in what has been my home town for 50 years now, so the sites of events and the names of many of the people involved (sheriff, police chief, business leaders, political bosses, and more) are very familiar. A few of the folks who were around at the time of the lynching were still around when I came to San Jose and I knew them--though never knew of there peripheral involvement in the events of 1933.
May 17, 2020
My mother-in-law handed this book that she gotten from the local library sale. This book tells you the who died, and who done it right on the dust cover of the book. So you know the ending before you even start reading the book. (If you don't read the dust cover, this might not apply.) This story is the documentation of the events sixty years later of a kidnapping of Brooke Hart and lynching of the kidnappers in San Jose, California, in 1933. The author weaves an interesting story of the events back then. At the end, he wraps up what happened to the many people involved in the story -- the police chief, the sheriff, the lawyers, and family of both the victim and the relatives of the perpetrators. The topic is very adult but interesting.
November 27, 2019
This was an okay documentary of San Jose and the horrible lynching at St.James park. Toward the end it just sort of dragged and I lost interest.
October 27, 2024
Very interesting local history, and very well written journalistic history.
I'd strongly recommend this book for someone who's interested in San Jose from the 1930s.
I'd strongly recommend this book for someone who's interested in San Jose from the 1930s.
September 16, 2008
This book came highly recommended by my Grampy and he even let me borrow his copy. It is a local reporter's findings about a kidnapping / murder that took place in San Jose, CA (where we live) in the 1930s and the author/reporter's investigation took place in the 1980s. It was so neat to read about places and streets that I actually know and have been to or walked on. The young man who was kidnapped even attended the same university I did. The reason I enjoyed the book so much was definitely because of the relatable historical aspects, but it was also a very interesting story and one that haunts our area even today. Two men were actually lynched in a very prominent downtown park which still exists today. It's so crazy to think that something like that happened HERE not so long ago. I found some parallels in my feelings and reactions toward the men behind the crimes in this story and those in "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote. I felt so sympathetic toward the more simple minded of the two criminals even though he had committed such a heinous crime. You almost find yourself understanding how a person could get to such a place where they are capable of such acts and it's so sad to go down that road along with them. It's a great read if you're interested in true crime type stories or if you're from the Bay Area and you want to know more about the Hart family kidnapping story.
May 20, 2017
Excellent true-crime book detailing the kidnapping/murder of Brooke Hart, heir to the Hart's Department Store chain in San Jose, California. Hart's kidnapping occurred just months after the famous "Lindberg baby" kidnapping and Farrell points out that in the 1930's kidnapping wealthy citizens was viewed as an easy way to make money in the depths of the Great Depression. Hart's kidnappers bungled their chance at collecting anything when they killed Brooke and tossed his body into San Francisco Bay. The kidnappers were eventually caught but angry residents of San Jose stormed the jail, took the two prisoners and lynched them in St. James Park. The lynching was the last lynching to occur in the state of California and has for over 80 years been a dark shadow on the history of San Jose.
July 10, 2016
Farrel covers the horrible 1933 kidnapping, murder, and lynching in San Jose, California. He captured the culture, geography, and Great Depression. While the details differ from 2016, society's behavior still reeks of mob mentality. Fortunately, there's still good behavior too.
"When the young man and the old shook hands on the deal, they set in motion a chain of events that would bring about three homicides, devastate three families, inflame San Jose and blacken its name, spawn an effort to impeach the governor, involve two presidents of the United States in a nationwide moral debate, set off a demonstration in the British House of Commons, and fuel Hitler's World War II propaganda machine."
"When the young man and the old shook hands on the deal, they set in motion a chain of events that would bring about three homicides, devastate three families, inflame San Jose and blacken its name, spawn an effort to impeach the governor, involve two presidents of the United States in a nationwide moral debate, set off a demonstration in the British House of Commons, and fuel Hitler's World War II propaganda machine."
August 6, 2016
This happening was truly a tragedy in a tragic time. The young heir to a department store in
San Jose,California was abducted and put to death by two unsavory individuals in1933. After the
two had been apprehended and placed in prison,the tragedy was extended by their being forcefully
removed from the prison and lynched in a park in the heart of town. No one was ever convicted of
their lynching because of a conspiracy of silence which still exists.
I,especially found the book fascinating because I lived in the area in the 1960s and was told the
outline of the story by a close friend. However, I was unaware,before having read this work,of all the
politics,characters and lawlessness involved in the affair.
June 4, 2012
i great non-fiction story on a piece of San Jose history. The focus is the kidnapping and ultimate death of a local department store heir. The author was a local newspaper reporter and he describes the subsequent arrest of the 2 perpetrators and their imprisonment in the local jail. The news of their arrest was well known and the jail was stormed by a bunch of vigilantes who pulled the criminals into a local park and lynched them.
October 7, 2007
One of the best true crime books ever. Department store heir Brooke Hart was kidnapped and murdered in 1933. The subsequent lynching of his murderers, Harold Thurmond and John Holmes (the last public lynching in California), is a case study of Depression-era San Jose. Outstanding book by a long-time reporter for the S.J. Murky News.
March 6, 2014
A very impressive book. Farrell's writing style is gripping. This book is very well researched. The details are incredible. He documents the names of a lot of the people involved, as well as times, dates, and places. I'd find it hard to believe there are many errors in Farrell's facts and his insights are persuasive.
November 16, 2013
A gripping true story of the Brooke Hart kidnapping in San Jose in the 30's and subsequent lynching of the perpetrators, published in 1992. Very well researched and written, particularly fascinating as a crime in my local area. A fascinating, emotional and terrifying chain of events with great insight by the author made a very compelling read.
April 1, 2019
Account of the 1933 lynching of the two men accused of kidnaping and killing Brooke Hart heir to Harts Department Store in San Jose. Written by Harry Farrell who wrote for the local San Jose paper - the Mercury News. If you have an interest in San Jose (CA) history, this book is a "must read". Did they do it? Who knows!
January 30, 2008
Extremely well-written and researched account of the kidnapping and murder of Brooke Hart as well as the subsequent lynching of the perpetrators, which took place in San Jose in 1933, two blocks from my current residence.
January 1, 2010
A great story about the last lynching in California. It took place in the park in San Jose and I'm almost certain my grandparents were in that mob. I wish they were still alive so I could ask them. Highly recommended. I read it for a book club.
December 15, 2014
It's probably not fair to say I "read" this book. It's better to say I skimmed it and very much enjoyed the history lesson. I'm not one for non-fiction, but since I lived and went to school right where this happened, it was fun to picture the area as I read.
June 1, 2016
Extremely well written true crime story that is so good, it reads like fiction. Yes, it's about something that happened in my home town (San Jose), and it's really quite shocking. But it's compelling.
June 14, 2012
It was good for people who have some connection to the town/events. I enjoyed it and passed it on to a cousin who lived in San Jose and knew the story.
July 22, 2017
I read this years ago. It was very interesting as a local history story.
March 7, 2016
Came across this book and had to read it because I was born in San Jose, CA and grew up in the area. Interesting story.
June 15, 2011
Creepy reading about my hometown area, awesome to learn the history.
Displaying 1 - 29 of 29 reviews