of the city's most prominent, and their influence was the source of many colorful stories: one such tale recounts that the artist who repainted the ceiling of Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph in the 1920s modeled the cherubs in his work on the family's children. Brooke Hart had worked in his family's department store during much of his youth and was well-known and liked by the local community. After he graduated from Santa Clara University, his father, A.J., made him a junior vice president and began grooming him to take over when A.J. retired. Disappearance Just before 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 9, 1933, Brooke Hart retrieved his 1933 Studebaker President roadster, a graduation present from his parents, from a downtown San Jose parking lot behind the department store. He had agreed to chauffeur his father, A.J., who did not drive, to a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce at the San Jose Country Club. When Brooke did not turn up to collect his father, A.J. became concerned. As hours passed and there remained no sign of Brooke, the Hart family's anxiety grew; Brooke was responsible and punctual, and his absence was entirely out of character. A.J. confessed his worry to Perry Belshaw, the manager of the San Jose Country Club, during dinner; after Brooke's friend phoned to say the younger Hart had missed an appointment at 8:00 p.m., A.J. called the police to determine if his son had been involved in an accident. According to the parking lot attendant, Brooke had left the lot heading east on Santa Clara Avenue at 6:05 p.m.; he was later spotted around 6:30 p.m. by a Hart store employee at Santa Clara and Fourteenth. Finally, a rancher in Milpitas, seven miles north of San Jose, saw a man matching Hart's description standing alone next to an automobile on Evans Lane at approximately 7 p.m.; when the rancher returned, he saw the car still parked there at approximately 8:30 p.m. with no one else present. Ransom demands At 9:30 that night, Aleese Hart, the older of Brooke's two younger sisters, answered the telephone at the family home and was informed by a "soft-spoken man" that Hart had been kidnapped and that instructions for his return would be provided later. At 10:30, what sounded like the same man called and informed the other sister, Miriam, that her brother would be returned upon payment of $40,000