Snatched!: The Peculiar Kidnapping of Beer Tycoon John Labatt

by Susan Goldenberg

In 1934, fifty-three-year-old beer tycoon John Sackville Labatt was kidnapped from his Lake Huron summer home and held ransom for three days. His captors, a group of ex-rumrunners, desperate in the days following prohibition and the Great Depression, were hoping for a big payday. This bizarre true crime story traces the abduction through to the trials of the abductors. From a heavily populated hideout to a case of mistaken identity, follow the story of Labatt, the first person in Canada to be kidnapped for high ransom.

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A worthy effort by a Toronto local historian which covers the absurdities surrounding the bizarre kidnapping and release of beer baron John Labatt. Well researched. Too many digressions from the story bog down the forward movement of "the plot", though; endnotes and appendices would have been more appropriate.

[Carolyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very interesting history of the 1934 kidnapping of John Labatt. I’d never heard of this event before. (For one thing, it has made my daily walks past the Royal York Hotel a bit more intriguing.)

[Ivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

More about everyone around the trials than the actual kidnapping itself.

[Gregory Klages · Rating 2 out of 5]

In principle, this could have been an interesting tale... kidnapping of a prominent Canadian businessman, multiple trials, a case of mistaken identity... it has all the elements necessary for a crime thriller. It fell short, though. Perhaps it was the oh-so-frequent ventures off into barely relevant background on every character. Perhaps it was the lengthy quotations from other published sources. Perhaps it was that the narrative seemed (at least to me) to lack any tension. For whatever reason, I ended up finishing this book not because it was compelling, but because I simply wanted to mark it as read on my profile.