Bigger Plans and Carries Out a Fake Kidnapping for Ransom

Bigger’s fake kidnapping and ransom scheme transforms Mary Dalton’s disappearance into a deliberate deception aimed at her family. Recalling the Loeb and Leopold case, he imagines how to demand money without revealing what has happened to Mary, draws Bessie into the plan, and leaves a detailed ransom note at the Dalton home. The scheme depends on making a lie appear actionable: Mary must seem alive, the Daltons must believe they can get her back, and the exchange must be difficult to trace.

Origins and Design

The plan begins when Bigger remembers a notorious murder case in which the perpetrators sought money from their victim’s family. He recalls a proposed exchange involving money thrown from a train, then reshapes that idea for the circumstances before him. He considers asking for ten or twenty thousand dollars and settles on a method involving a shoebox and a car on the South Side. The remembered case supplies a model, but the imagined delivery is his own adaptation.

Bigger’s opportunity depends on the fact that the Daltons do not know where Mary is. He reasons that they might believe she has been kidnapped if someone tells them so. His confidence that Mary will not reappear undercuts the story he is about to construct: he is not reporting a real abduction but exploiting the family’s lack of information. The false account is designed to turn absence into leverage.

Recruiting Bessie and Building the Cover Story

Bigger presents Bessie with a story intended to prepare her for the part he wants her to play. He says that the daughter of the wealthy man for whom he works has run away with a communist, and suggests that her disappearance could be interpreted as a kidnapping. Bessie recognizes the implication: they could claim responsibility and write to the family for money. Bigger agrees and frames the opportunity as something they can profit from because no one else is trying to claim the money.

The exchange shows that the scheme requires more than a forged message. Bigger is shaping what Bessie might say if questioned, considering how to make her repeat details that serve him and avoid mentioning Jan. He is not simply asking her to accept a finished plan; he is constructing a shared cover story meant to protect it. When Bessie questions whether the missing girl might show up, he dismisses the possibility rather than reconsidering the deception.

Writing the Kidnapping Note

When Bigger writes the Kidnapping note, he tries to conceal both his identity and the uncertainty of his claims. He puts on gloves, switches the pencil to his left hand, and prints rather than writing in his ordinary hand. The note speaks as if a group holds Mary, claims she is alive, says that she wants to come home, and warns the Daltons not to involve the police. He revises the wording so that the message presents a stronger assurance of her survival, even though that assurance is false.

The demand is precise: ten thousand dollars in five- and ten-dollar bills, packed in a shoebox. The instructions direct Mr. Dalton to drive along Michigan Avenue between Thirty-fifth and Fortieth Streets the following night, blink the headlights, and drop the box in the snow when a light in a window flashes three times. The message sets midnight as the delivery time. These details give the invented kidnapping the procedural appearance of a real exchange while making the supposed recipient’s movements and the signal part of Bigger’s plan.

He signs the note Red and adds a rough Hammer and sickle symbol modeled on the signs he remembers from the Communist pamphlets. The signature and drawing are meant to point suspicion away from him, but their clumsy construction also shows that the disguise is assembled from fragments of things he has seen. The message’s claim of collective action, its political-looking mark, and its carefully specified instructions all contribute to a persona Bigger wants the Daltons to believe.

Delivery and Immediate Consequences

Bessie reacts with horror when she sees Bigger writing the note and asks whether he truly intends to go through with the plan. He confirms that he does. Afterward, he takes her purse, places the flashlight inside, helps her board a streetcar, and gives her seven cents. He watches her leave through an ice-covered window, then walks through the snow toward the Dalton home with the note in his pocket. These practical gestures connect Bessie to the scheme while separating their movements: she leaves, and he carries the demand to its intended recipients.

At the house, Bigger checks the street, waits at the door, and slips the note beneath it. He then circles to the basement and attends to the furnace where he has been trying to destroy evidence of Mary’s death. His attention shifts from the message to the gloves, pencil, and paper he has used. He returns to burn them, watching them catch fire before closing the furnace door. The parallel actions—delivering the lie and destroying the tools that could connect him to it—show how the ransom plan is joined to concealment rather than replacing it.

The family’s first reported response confirms that the note’s central fiction has taken hold. Mr. Dalton announces that Mary has been kidnapped, and Mrs. Dalton cries out in distress. That reaction is the scheme’s immediate success: the family interprets Mary’s absence as an abduction. Yet the reader knows that the claim of her being alive is not true. The note therefore creates suspense through the gap between what the family is made to believe and what Bigger is hiding.

Narrative Function and Limits of the Scheme

The episode presents the ransom plot as an escalating sequence of invention, recruitment, document-making, delivery, and evidence disposal. Its procedural detail contrasts with the instability behind it: Bigger revises the note as he writes, worries about recognizable handwriting, and remembers only after returning to bed that the gloves and writing materials remain. His precautions are real, but they do not make the deception secure.

The note is also a performance directed at its readers. Its plural voice, false assurances, political signature, and exact exchange instructions attempt to make an invented group and an invented kidnapping seem credible. In the household, the performance works initially because the Daltons lack the truth about Mary. For the reader, however, the dramatic irony is decisive: the successful announcement of a kidnapping deepens the danger rather than resolving the disappearance, while the disposal of the writing materials reveals Bigger’s continuing fear of discovery.