Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Roger Kaas ( ) Brian R. Hollstein, Interviewer Interviewed on August 8, 2008

Transcription

1 Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Inc Interview of Former Special Agent of the FBI Roger Kaas ( ) Brian R. Hollstein, Interviewer Interviewed on Edited for spelling, repetitions, etc. by Sandra Robinette on October 18, Edited with Mr. Kaas corrections on December 1, 2008 by Sandra Robinette. Hollstein/ (H): My name is Brian R. Hollstein; today s date is the eighth of August, I m talking to Roger Kaas, K-a-a-s. Roger just very quickly - no classified information please during the conversation, no information that would identify an informant either from the general information or their name or their I.D. number, Bureau I.D. number. I ll be sending you a Copyright Release for this conversation. Now you were telling me you were born in Iowa? Kaas/ (K): Burlington, Iowa, May 8, I was educated locally and then went to Drake University where I got my undergraduate and LLB and JD. H: And you went into practice then for a little while before you joined the Bureau? K: Yes, I did for a short time but, in a small town, you were expected to know more things than I did know. I enjoyed courtroom that was it. Having been following World War II, I was in the Counter-Intelligence Corps where I got the cops and robbers bug and that s when I applied to the FBI. H: (Laughing) well I was in the successor to the Counter-Intelligence Corps, Army Intelligence, yeah. I had five years with them. How do you happen to find out about the Bureau? K: The local Resident Agent in our town was named Doc Helgeson. I don t know how Doc and I got together to tell you the truth but that was it. H: So you went through training in Washington in Quantico and your first office was where? K: New Orleans. H: Oh you got lucky. And from New Orleans you went where?

2 Page 2 K: (Laughing) You won t believe this but I was in New Orleans as a first office Agent and sent over to Mississippi on some sort of extortion plant of some kind. We were sitting on the extortion plant and somebody was saying, I think it was the SAC in Mississippi, he said, You know he knew I was first office, one place you ain t gonna go boy is New York. They got guys sitting around on their asses reading files, you know. They got some sort of a mess up there. Next thing I know I got a transfer to New York. I m serious. H: (Laughing) Got lucky twice, huh? Well I had six years in New York. I didn t look at files very often, yeah. K: What years? H: I was there seventy-two to seventy-seven. K: I was gone. Let me tell you this. To me, the best and the worst were in New York. H: Yup. K: That office can t compare with anything else. H: (Laughing) No. It was unique. In my case, we came from New York. Both my wife and I, and her father lived right around the corner from the office there up on 69 th Street. K I learned more in the short time I was there as a street Agent. H: Yeah a good spot. And New York then to where? K: To the Bureau. H: And how long were you, when were you at the Bureau? K: I went everywhere in the Bureau. I started out in the Criminal Division. Alex Rosen was the Assistant Director. Are you recording this? H: Yup. K: (Laughing) Well anyway I got the transfer back and went into the Criminal Division and introduced myself to Mr. Rosen. He said, Yes, I know you can write. He said, I ve read your reports. I ve just come back from a meeting with Mr. Hoover and he used the word, I can t remember the word now for gap, what s the word for gap? H: Oh it will come to you.

3 Page 3 K: At any point he said, I want you to, and he s ticked off about the SAC in San Diego, and I want you to review all the San Diego files and take the SAC apart using this particular word and I said, Yes sir, Mr. Rosen. And that was my introduction to the Criminal Division. The word was hiatus! H: Laughing. K: And then later on there was a big mail robbery of United States mail. And there was a big fight between the Postmaster General and Mr. Hoover as to who was going to take over jurisdiction on this and Mr. Rosen wanted to take it over. I don t want to get into that, I better not get into that at all. It s got nothing to do with what you were saying here at all. H: But it was a jurisdictional problem? K: Let me put it this way, I said, Mr. Rosen, it will be a much easier for you to censure a grade 14 than to explain what the hell a grade 13 is doing with this. So he gave me my 14 and censured me. H: (Laughing) Okay, well that made a better man of us. So you got a letter of censure. K: Oh that was the old Bureau. Anyway I went from there to the training division. Mark Felt was the AD at that time. I went from the training division over to Bill Sullivan and I probably had the lowest, what do you call them, Counter-Intelligence Agents on the totem pole. I had Bulgaria and there ain t nobody lower on the totem pole to tell you the truth. And I finally got fed up with that crap and I went to see Sullivan. Anyway he s the one who transferred me to the staff and when he did, he said, Roger, let me quote Shakespeare to you Yon Cassius has the lean hungry look because it s best that I surround me with fat men. Very prophetic. H: Yeah, very much so. K: I mean that s how I ended up on the staff. H: Okay K: I was there without getting into the subject of why the other happened, I ended up in Atlanta. H: Okay. How long were you at the Bureau, what years? K: Oh golly, sixty to sixty-four? H: Sixty to sixty-four?

4 Page 4 K: Yeah roughly. H: Okay and then so you were in Atlanta for awhile then before the Mackle case broke. What were you doing in Atlanta? What cases, type of work? K: I really don t remember, other than you know somebody in my grade, you did whatever the hell you wanted to do is what it boiled down to. I can remember being called in and just doing surveys on stuff. I think basically, what do you with somebody in my grade? I remember Joe Ponder when I first came down. Joe Ponder was SAC and he said, Go somewhere, just get out of my sight. So I sat down and said, You got any RAs that you know that need help. So that s what I did. I went out and helped the RAs that needed help. H: Under Frank Hitt, who was the, I guess he succeeded Ponder. You were number one man? K: Yeah, that s right. Like I said we d been on staff together and I guess we meshed, and with the ASAC that was there, there was no problem. He said, Just don t bother me. H: Okay, let s get into the meat here of the conversation. K: Fine. Around five o clock a.m. on Tuesday, December 17, 1968 I was telephonically notified by the night clerk and I ve already told you why the night clerk called me. H: Right, because you were the number one man for Frank Hitt. K: He d just received a call from someone in Decatur alleging a kidnapping. As we evaluated the information he had received, I felt we had sufficient basis to believe that a kidnapping had occurred and I directed a certain Special Agent to go directly to the motel. When I arrived I found Mrs. Mackle to be near collapse but I did interview her. Now this is the interesting part. Her daughter Barbara, a junior at Emory, had contracted the flu which was then epidemic. So she had flown to Atlanta and brought her to the Roadway Inn because the infirmary was full. And Barbara hadn t completed her final exams, you know. So then in the early morning hours they were both unable to sleep and about four a.m. there was a knock on the door and when she looked out the window there was this guy in a black leather jacket wearing a policeman s hat, etc. He said something about a young man being involved in an accident. At that time Barbara was dating a guy named Steven Woodward and Mrs. Mackle thought that s who the man was referring to. Then the guy burst into the room. He was followed by a smaller person wearing a ski mask; he put a

5 Page 5 gun to Barbara and the other person attempted to chloroform Mrs. Mackle, tied her hands and feet and attempted to put tape over her mouth. K: We know now that Barbara had been taken directly to a pre-selected burial site where the box was already partially buried. Where she was shot full of Novocain, photographed and placed in the box. She was sufficiently conscious to hear the screws being put in and the dirt being shoveled on top of her. Krist and Schier then never did go back to the box. The interesting part is that back in the motel room, the tape had come loose from Mrs. Mackle s mouth and she commenced screaming and somehow she managed to get outside and opened the door of Barbara s car and lean on the horn, still screaming. Now this is a gal in a shortie nightgown, in twenty-four degree weather, tape hanging from her mouth, her lips are blistered and the manager came out and told her, If you don t shut up, I m gonna evict you. H: (Laughing) Oh man. K: I m serious. I m serious. She tried to tell him, you know, that her daughter had been kidnapped and call the police, which he refused to do, really. H: I guess he d heard it all before. K: He finally cut her hands free and she hobbled back into the room, cut her feet loose and called the DeKalb P.D. and Stewart Woodward, Barbara s boyfriend. Now I made a note on this. It says, While one of the local officers did make a report of the kidnapping at gunpoint, their attitude was no different than the night manager s. They considered it a college prank. Woodward arrived and he called Mr. Mackle in Florida and that s when he was told to call the FBI. This is when we arrived on the scene. I was only vaguely aware of the Mackle name and I recall asking Mrs. Mackle if there was a substantial demand for ransom could it be met? She looked at me like you know, where you been boy? She put up her hands and said, I don t know up to several million I guess. When she said that and, I m serious, any questions I had, you know in regard to this case, and getting it resolved, I immediately called the Bureau. H: Yeah, yeah. Well it turned out that Mackle was a friend of President Nixon, is that right? K: Oh yes, you haven t heard the end of that story. You want me to get to the end? H: Oh no, no, that s all right. You go ahead tell it at your pace. K: Now as I said, I had told the night clerk, you know, to call the other Agents to get their ass out there. They originally were designated to identify and locate anyone who had been a resident at the motel at the time. I don t know why I remember this, but I see that

6 Page 6 we were subsequently accused of completely ignoring local officials which was true. I felt their attitude would contribute nothing. K: Unfortunately, and here again is another note; During a routine contact with the DeKalb Police Department, a reporter had been furnished a copy of the report and recognized the Mackle name. As a result all of a sudden we were inundated, you know. H: Oh yeah. K: With reporters. Following that another example we had established a trap on the telephone in the room H: This is in the hotel? K: to be contacted you know. I fielded one call from a New York wire service. They refused to get off the line unless I gave them the info. I m going through my notes and this is interesting. I threatened him with obstruction of justice if he didn t get off the line, you know. In addition, oh I remember this one, in addition, a ranking dean from Emory appeared on the scene. When he learned that Special Agents were going to conduct investigations on the campus, he promptly informed me that no investigations were going to be conducted without his prior approval on an individual basis, etc., etc. H: Amazing. K: I tried to explain that we did not need his approval and I wasn t getting through to him. Mr. Mackle had a number one man named Billy Vessels. H: Right that s the name, I remember that. K: Billy Vessels, I think he was a Heisman trophy winner. Anyway Billy told him to get your ass out of here. And that s a quote. And I wanted to add you know, If you don t I m going to charge you for obstruction of justice. I don t know if I could or not but I always wanted to use that phrase when I was working. H: Oh sure. K: This boyfriend, who was Woodward, created a problem as much as the press did. So we had to get rid of him because at that time we didn t know whether he was involved or not. H: Sure.

7 Page 7 K: As he was very persistent because he was interested in marrying her. And then of course the call was received by Mr. Mackle and the demand at the Florida Office. I don t want to get into that, but the note said, All twenty dollar bills, no older than 1950 issue, no more than ten notes in consecutive serial numbers. They must be reserve notes of a standard configuration, no more than one half to be un-circulated, no form of markings, etc., and they had to occupy no more than four thousand cubic inches and furnished the exact dimensions of the suitcase. H: You can see the minds already developing there, yeah. K: Yeah, consider, you know, at this point the logistics of trying to find twenty-five thousand twenty dollar bills at Metro-Pacific; each of which had to be micro-filmed, they had to be hand-recorded, and listed by serial numbers and so forth and not only that; we had to call the Secret Service because to get permission to photograph the damn thing. It s against the law otherwise. This was accomplished in a matter of hours. It actually took the Bureau and the First National Bank to come through. H: Now this was down in Miami, right? K: Yeah. Then of course you got all the telephone calls that came to Mr. Mackle and the payoff that was finally made. And the scary thing was when the final drop that was made the deputies had spotted this car; they didn t know what it was. It was just a suspicious car that was left and, you know, the plates When Krist and Schier went back to it, the deputies approached them and they started running. The one deputy thought that when Krist went over the fence that he pointed the gun at him so the guy shot at Krist twice. Thank God he didn t hit him. H: Yeah. K: At that point Krist and Schier split and that s it. The next thing is eventually H: If we could just mention just because somebody might be reading just this one, K: Okay. H: this one interview, the agreement was made to make the payoff. The money was left in a little park, right, somewhere there in Miami? And then the police were surveilling the area? K: At the border, they got lost. So then they made another call and they said, We assume, it got lost. H: Right.

8 Page 8 K: So there was a second call. Billy Vessels, and we had an Agent in the back with Billy, that made the actual drop when Krist picked it up. H: Right, but by this time then the two of them were separated. K: Right. H: Krist and Ruth Eisemann Schier, his accomplice and nothing was heard of her then. K: No. H: Yeah, she was K: She never made any attempt to call the office to where the body was. You know the story about getting the fingerprints and how we finally caught her? But Krist did make a call to the office. And I will never, ever forgive him for this because there were all sorts of landmarks up there that he could have given us and he didn t. For the Atlanta personnel, there is a plan, a kidnapping plan that goes into effect immediately. All of the personnel, including the clerical personnel are given the salient facts in regard to it. In this case it was the burial thing, the capsule was the clue word. So our telephone operator, Trish, and I don t know Trish s last name, she s dead, she had an aneurysm. H: I ve got it here somewhere. K: Trish called H: Poindexter. K: Okay. When Krist called and said he was going to give directions regarding the capsule. Trish knew immediately what he was talking about. That this was undoubtedly the person who was involved. But the directions were non-specific. They were non-specific. Instead of going up into the woods we go down, we go down into the woods and we flooded this place with Agents; the whole area, because of the non-specificity of the thing. H: Sure. K: And there were two Agents Stokes Kennemer and I can t think of the name of the, I think it was Tony Casanarro. H: Yeah, I think that s one of the names that was mentioned, yeah.

9 Page 9 K: Stokes died recently. Tony, I think, was a former airline pilot. They were walking back from coming to where they shouldn t have been and they heard something of a humming. They said No, that s a manufacturing place in fact that s what you hear. You know. No, no, no. That s not what I hear. Actually it turns out they were standing right on top of the box. H: Wow. K: They had put the box in a swale. He had not buried it. He had put it into a swale and basically covered it lightly with leaves. What they heard was this motor that he had prepared that was humming. So when we started digging with our hands there was, they were right on top, right on the surface. H: Right. So then the next thing, and I don t know where it came, from somebody went up to one of the cars and came back with a tire iron that had a flange, you know like when you re going to pop your hubcap. K: But I still just think it was God s idea, a flange that small to fit those screw heads. You know I just still think it was God s idea that we found it, because we unscrewed the lid and took her out of the box and put her in the car. We had a safe house prepared and I carried her to the car and took her to the safe house. We called the Bureau and called her folks and so forth and we had a doctor at Emory standing by and he came in and he examined her and he said she was basically dehydrated. H: Were you present at the time that the box was actually opened up? K: Of course. I took her in my arms. H: What did she say? K: She didn t say anything. When I had her in the car I pulled out photographs. She seemed very coherent, and I questioned her. Are you all right, did you need anything, whatever. I really don t know what she said. I do know that she identified both Krist and Schier to me in the car. H: Oh, by this time, you had photos? K: Oh yes, I always had them with me; always had them with me. And we took her to the safe house as I said. Her parents; interesting thing (laughing), when they flew in on a private plane, of course the press was all around. I had her in the car and I m taking her out by myself to you know bring her back to her father.

10 Page 10 K: I had made arrangements with the airport authorities. When I came through the gate they shut the gate and nobody could follow us. So I drove her right directly up to her father s airplane. Would you believe when I parked and got her out, I had a flat tire. H: Oh no. K: I couldn t have gone any further than I did. H: Oh man. K: Just an aside that doesn t mean anything. H: Yeah, but it s just part of the life. K: I ll tell you another thing that, don t put any of this record, please H: All right, hold on. Okay we re back on. The actual prosecution was carried out by DeKalb County? K: Yes. H: And how did that K: There was no interstate involved. H: Even though the pay-off was made in Florida? It didn t meet statutory requirements? K: The body, the body was never transported. It did not fulfill the statutes. H: Well okay. So then you went back down to Miami, I assume to get some of the evidence put together and prepare for trial? K: Not really. We had them come up here. H: Oh I see. So they brought the box and all the other materials that they had obtained and got it up there. K: The box was still in Atlanta. H: I m sorry? K: The box was still in Atlanta. H: Oh of course, of course, yes. How did it get down to Miami then?

11 Page 11 K: As far as I know it never did. It went from Atlanta to the Bureau, where it s on display is my understanding. H: Oh I saw a big blue box (laughing) in Miami, that s interesting. K: I don t know why (laughing)? H: Yeah, why would it go down there? K: No, uh, uh, uh. H: Maybe it was well anyway, no matter. So did the U.S. Attorney have anything to do with the preparation of the, for the trial at all? K: No, myself, our lab people, you know our experts, and the DeKalb County assistant attorney that was it period. As I said, Barbara didn t want to testify. I had to really talk to her. We had a problem with our own experts. There were people in this red neck area that number one didn t believe the man had landed on the moon and they didn t believe that this woman was buried in a box. That was a real problem. H: Interesting. K: Yeah, it was interesting. H: So this was not, not prosecuted right in Atlanta then, it was? K: Yeah it was prosecuted in DeKalb County. H: Oh DeKalb County, okay. Is Atlanta in DeKalb County? K: No. Atlanta itself is in Fulton County. H: Okay. K: Where the box was found, you know, the jurisdiction was DeKalb County. H: Oh I see okay. Did they have sufficient K: There was no question about it, you know. H: Well what I was meaning though, did they have sufficient skilled prosecuting attorneys in that area?

12 Page 12 K: That s an interesting question, yes. I was much impressed with the assistant that was assigned to it because he realized you know, this is the Bureau case period and if I m going to be successful you know it s going to be the Bureau who s going to make me successful, which was true. H: Oh yeah, you had all the cards. K: We had all the cards. H: Yeah, they had nothing. K: They had nothing. H: Yeah. K: In fact that s what I said at the outset of this thing. We excluded them. We excluded them. H: Yeah, it didn t take long though because most of the, much of the action in terms of the two subjects were down in Florida. K: True. H: So that was out of there. So digging them up, digging her up and getting her squared away K: I think she was caught in Oklahoma. H: Right yeah. In fact I m due to talk to the guy that, Mike McCrystle, who arrested her. K: That would be interesting, that d be interesting. H: (Laughing) K: I d love to see his 302. H: Well you ll get to see it. K: Great. H: No problem. There s also a possibility that this will be on C-Span radio. K: You re kidding.

13 Page 13 H: Yeah they re doing a show on it, on the Mackle kidnap so I m sure that portions of your interview will be included in it. K: There were so many Agents that were involved in this thing you know. This thing, Case Agent doesn t mean squat, you know. H: (Laughing) Well you re right on top of everything though. K: That s true. H: You knew how the case unfolded which is particularly interesting here. K: When you think that the two Agents that were on the Emory campus that had the foresight when they heard that he d gone to a telephone directory trying to find out where Mackle was. You know, you open a telephone book and you automatically run your finger down. H: Absolutely yeah. K: And these, these guys were smart enough to do that and pull that page and get a fingerprint off of it. H: Yeah. K: I mean we had some smart people involved in this thing. H: Yeah I was, I was particularly fascinated when I heard that. You know that s something I don t know if I would have thought of that. It s too late now. I ve been out of the Bureau thirty years so (laughing). We ll never know. K: That s true. H: How long did the prosecution take? Just roughly I mean? K: I really can t remember. H: Maybe a month or? K: It was brief. It was very brief and I said the only thing that was of any consequence was when the Agent testified about the faulty motor that he made. Other than that it was very routine. H: So Krist, that was the only reaction then? K: Yup he got really upset.

14 Page 14 H: Did he actually testify at all? K: No. H: So it was just, was a parade of witnesses then K: Right, right. H: talking about each of the pieces of evidence and where things were and what have you. K: It was very cut and dry you know. The guys down in Florida had done a helluva job on the background and they tracked him from the time he went to work for the Marine Institute down there, and she also, that s where they met. H: Right. Yeah. K: You know more about this than I do (laughing). Why are you talking to me? H: (Laughing) well their plan, wasn t it to escape by water once they d gotten the bag of money and K: except they split. H: Yeah. Then that shoot-out with the police [who] were looking for burglars I guess, staked out for burglars. Then they show up all dressed in black and skulking around with a black. K: Do you realize that out of the $500,000 ransom they got back everything but a couple of hundred bucks. H: Yeah, yeah it was something. Well when he went to pay, to pay for the boat to go across on the canal, he took out a paper sack and gave the guy money and that sort of tipped off people to, tipped him off anyway. Thank goodness the boat guy thought that something was funny here. K: In my notes the only thing we couldn t account for was $340 out of the five hundred grand. H: That s pretty good. K: Which is pretty good.

15 Page 15 H: Oh yeah, yeah. There s a funny story somebody told me in Tampa. When they brought the money back up they put it in the vault and then two Agents with shotguns were placed on the vault day and night until they got the money out of there and into the bank. Joe Santoianna wasn t going to fool around. No chance there d be any problems with that. K: As I said, I never worked for Joe, but thank God I love him. H: Let s see what else now? You remained as the Case Agent then because, or did that become a fugitive case in terms of Eisemann Schier? K: Once we identified him, you know there was no problem, you re still Case Agent period. There s no need to issue a UFAP on him. H: Right so you maintained then the search for Ruth Eisemann Schier then? K: Right. The only thing I ever regret, you know, the Bureau sent Rex Shroder down, have you talked to Rex? H: No I haven t yet, not yet. K: I don t know if he s still alive truthfully. H: I talked to Bill Beane. I ll look up Rex Shroder s name. I don t see anything. Anyway he was active in the case, I remember his name. K: Yeah, he was sent down as co-inspector. H: Oh here it is yeah he s out of, I have him here out in Nevada, yeah. K: When Florida had zeroed in on Krist down there, Rex and I wanted to go down you know. He was the inspector now in charge. I was basically superseded is what it boiled down to. H: Sure that happens, yeah. K: So, Rex went down. I don t know what but I m sure he was involved in the capture and so forth because at that point I was taken out of it. H: Right, yeah as soon as the inspector shows up that, everybody steps back on that. K: But I liked Rex. I thought he was okay. H: In terms of the search for Ruth Eisemann had there been any, you mentioned earlier that there was some background information concerning her right?

16 Page 16 K: Oh yes. We haven t gotten into that? H: No. K: Her mother and father were married into a private ceremony before some low level nobility in England. I don t know the exact nature of the nobility. Then they moved to Honduras. Her father was insane. Her mother had both, as I understand it, a medical and dental degree in a remote part of Honduras. She was known as the lady, when they had electricity, who pulled teeth or something like that. But with her background she raised Ruth to be a complete amoral person; you deserve more than you have and I don t care how you get it. That was basically the way she was raised. So when she met up with Krist, it was logical and it fit. H: So she took off, nobody knew where and but you knew who she was and you had a photo? K: Yes. H: So she very quickly, she became a Top Ten, didn t she? K: Good question. I don t really remember. I don t really remember. I got something the Bureau sent me some time ago it was called a chronological time table I got. H: On one of the major case write ups? K: It must have been. I don t know, here it stops on Krist. It doesn t do anything with Schier. It stops on Krist. H: Well that s a matter of record anyway. So she was out and gone and then got picked up. Then Krist served his time, and you didn t follow him too much then afterwards? K: No, I didn t follow him at all until somebody started sending some newspaper clippings. Number one, it said he got life you know. Life in Georgia is seven years, seven or eleven and not only did he get a parole, one of the parole board members sponsored this bastard and he got a parole pardon. H: Is that right? K: Yeah. H: All because he didn t kill somebody.

17 Page 17 K: He was on one of the islands and he got a medical degree from one of the island and he came back to the states and tried to get authorized. He was turned down I think in Georgia and then he got to Indiana and was practicing in Indiana. I think it was the time when he got involved in the narcotics and all and as far as I know he was back in jail. H: Yeah, he s probably better off there. K: You could get all that from other sources. I m just reading from the old newspapers of course, and I didn t date them so I don t know. H: Well good. Anything I haven t asked you about? K: No, I can t think of a thing (laughing). H: (Laughing) All right let me shut down.