Joseph Corbett’s Plan Fails Spectacularly
(‘Bitter Brew,’ Forensic Files)
Dating back to 1960, Adolph Coors’ kidnapping is among the oldest cases featured on Forensic Files. But it mirrors the show’s modern episodes about abductions in two fundamental ways: The perpetrator never got what he wanted, and he ended up in dire legal trouble.
In the Sally Weiner case in 1988, for example, the authorities found Sally’s body before her husband had a chance to meet David Copenhefer’s demands for cash. Evidence linking the ransom note to the bookstore owner’s computer helped convict him, and he ended up dying behind razor wire.
Loser situations. Then there’s convicted killer Mark Winger. He dreamed up a plan for having a friend ransomed and using the money to murder a witness. It never made it past the prison walls. A fellow inmate recorded him. In 2007, a judge tacked an extra 35 years on Winger’s sentence for that debacle.
For this week, I looked into what price kidnapper Joseph Corbett — whose plan went haywire almost immediately — paid for his crime against Adolph Coors III, and also searched for additional background information about both men.
So let’s get going on the recap of “Bitter Brew” along with extra information drawn from online research:
Good rich guy. After coming to the U.S. from Germany, Adolph Herman Coors started the Coors Brewing Company with a business partner in 1873. His son took it over and, in turn, grandson Adolph Herman Joseph Coors III moved up to the top spot despite that he stuttered and was allergic to beer, according to the New York Times.
Adolph Coors III was born in 1915, back when Americans still named baby boys “Adolph.” People called him “Ad” for short. He grew up to be 6-foot-3-inches tall and had “Coors trademark” blue-green eyes. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Cornell University, and married Mary Urquhart Grant in 1940.
“The calamity couldn’t have happened to a more undeserving member of his moneyed class,” the New York Times wrote in a book review. “Ad Coors was devoted to his wife and four children and lived a relatively simple, scandal-free life.”
Outside the bottle. He also reportedly liked to help out at his family’s 500-acre ranch. He would drive a tractor and even shovel manure, according to the Kansas City Star.
At the office, he presided over a huge enterprise. In addition to the brewery, the family owned a ceramics business and aluminum can factory. The three companies combined were grossing $40 million a year, a colossal sum in 1960.
Vacant vehicle. On the morning of Feb. 9, 1960, Adolph started his 12-mile drive from the ranch in Morrison to the brewery in Golden, Colorado.
He never arrived.
That day, a milkman found a blue-and-white vehicle blocking the Turkey Creek Bridge, a short and narrow structure built over a shallow creek. The dairyman pressed on his on horn, but Adolph’s International Harvester Travelall — a type of station wagon that auto magazines would later point to as the precursor to the SUV — didn’t move. It had its radio and engine on but no one inside.
Serious trouble brewing. Police took note of a bloodstain on the bridge, and saw Adolph’s brown fedora and a lens from his eyeglasses lying beneath the bridge. The Kansas City Star reported that the found objects were his tan baseball cap and plastic rimmed glasses.
Either way, yikes.
The next morning, Mary Coors, whose children were ages 10 to 18 at the time, got a typed letter saying her husband had been kidnapped. It demanded $200,000 in tens and $300,000 in twenties. Adolph would die if she notified police (she did anyway), the note said.
The kidnapper instructed her to take out a Denver Post ad for a tractor as a signal that she had the money ready. The letter used the pronoun “we” and said that Adolph would be released 48 hours after they received the cash. And they didn’t want to hurt him; they just wanted the money, the note said.
Feds come in. Adolph III’s father, Adolph Coors Jr., who had been finishing up a Hawaiian vacation when he heard about the kidnapping, said he would pay any price to get his son back. The Coorses got the $500,000 in cash together and placed the classified ad.
They waited for further instructions, but they never came.
Because kidnapping is a federal crime, the FBI’s Denver division swooped in to join the case.
Astute witness. The agents studied the letter, noting that it had no errors and was beautifully typed using a font made by a Swiss company. Investigators determined the note came from a Royalite portable typewriter that retailed for $49.99. They noticed the letter “s” printed lower than the other letters, a clue that might help them pinpoint the typewriter used by the kidnapper.
A store clerk remembered that a man bought that model typewriter with cash about four months before the kidnapping.
In the meantime, a witness had recalled seeing a 1951 Mercury sedan near the scene of the abduction and even gave the police a few digits of the license plate number.
Print evidence. The canary-yellow car was registered to a “Walter Osborne.” In Denver, investigators found his apartment, but he had vacated it right after the kidnapping. The maid had seen guns in his room.
Fingerprints found in the empty apartment matched those of Joseph Corbett, a 31-year-old escaped killer using Walter Osborne as a pseudonym. Where did this brazen man come from?
Joseph Corbett Jr. was born in Seattle on October 25, 1928, the son of a newspaperman. He was more than six feet tall and slender with light brown hair and hazel eyes, according to a later FBI Wanted poster, which also noted he was a “proficient typist and neat dresser.”
Promise wasted. He had an IQ of 148 and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Oregon, according to an October 22, 2017 story in The Commercial Appeal.
“I knew him as intellectually very, very sharp,” parole officer Ron Olson would later tell the Denver Post. “Emotionally, very immature. High strung. Excitable.”
At age 20, he lost his mother when she accidentally fell off of a balcony at home. He then dropped out of school.
Penchant for pigment. By 1951, Joseph’s life was spinning out of control. He shot another man in the back of the head near Hamilton Air Force Base north of San Francisco. He claimed self defense but pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and received five years to life.
He behaved so well in prison that he won a spot in a light-security dormitory — and promptly escaped.
As “Walter Osborne,” he moved to Denver in 1955. He got a job as a paint mixer at a Benjamin Moore factory.
Investigators found out that he told colleagues at Benjamin Moore that he would be coming into some money. And one day, he didn’t show up for work and never returned.
Manhunt continues. A neighbor in his apartment building said he heard him typing late at night. Eight days later, a fire chief found the suspect’s burned-out car at a dump site in New Jersey. On the vehicle, investigators scraped off a caked-on substance similar to soil around Turkey Creek. Inside, they discovered the Royalite typewriter used to write the ransom note.
Now, the police had a good suspect but still no sign of Adolph Coors III.
“Will the big spring thaw yield additional clues to Ad Coor’s whereabouts?” reporter John T. Alexander wrote in the Kansas City Star.
Not coming back alive. On September 11, 1960, eight months after his disappearance, hikers found some discarded clothing around Pike’s Peak in the Rocky Mountains. A keyring engraved with “ACIII” helped authorities identify the clothing as belonging to the abducted man.
Four days later, some human remains, including a skull and shoulder blades, plus a jacket with what looked like two bullet wounds, were discovered in Sedalia.
“A colleague ran through the office, saying ‘They found Coors!’ ” recalled Richard Hanes, then an assistant district attorney in the Colorado Springs DA’s office, as recounted in local newspaper The Gazette. Hanes and his co-workers raced to the scene to preserve the evidence. Most of the body parts had decomposed and animals had picked at them. But dental records confirmed the ID as Adolph Coors III. (Hanes told The Gazette that he had to carry the skull in a box past patients in the waiting room of the dental office.)
Plot goes awry. Investigators believed that Joseph Corbett, who in reality had no accomplice, studied Adolph’s daily schedule and route to the brewery. The morning of the kidnapping, Corbett parked his car on the bridge, pretending it had broken down, and Coors got out to investigate, they theorized. Joseph’s plan was probably to restrain him — packaging from handcuffs and leg shackles were seen in a dumpster outside Corbett’s apartment building — and take him alive.
Adolph fought back when Joseph advanced on him, the two men struggled, Adolph broke free and tried to return to his own car, and then Joseph shot him twice in the back, investigators believed.
Then, he probably unloaded the body in the Colorado mountains, drove his own car to New Jersey, and lit the vehicle on fire in an attempt to dispose of evidence.
Mounties ride in. Still, where was Joseph Corbett?
J. Edgar Hoover called him the most wanted criminal in the U.S. The Denver Post later referred to him as “a man once sought more urgently than any outlaw since John Dillinger.”
After seeing a Reader’s Digest article about the kidnapping, a woman in Vancouver reported that a man matching Corbett’s description lived in her apartment building. By the time the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and FBI arrived, he had fled. Next up, the owner of the Maxine Hotel tipped off authorities that a gentleman resembling Joseph Corbett had “recently stayed at her flophouse” under the name Thomas C. Wainwright and he drove a “fire-engine red Pontiac,” according to the FBI website. Finally, on October 29, 1960, a local Vancouver patrolman spotted the car at a motor inn and called for backup.
When Joseph saw the law officers, he said, “I’m your man” or “I give up. I’m the man you want” or “Okay, I give up.” (Sources vary.)
Get your act together. He pleaded not guilty but was convicted of kidnapping and murder on March 19, 1961. Because under Colorado law, courts couldn’t give a death sentence without an eyewitness or a confession, Joseph Corbett received life in prison.
In 1979, he won parole but immediately violated the terms by traveling out of state, and ended up back behind bars. Shortly afterward, he received parole anew, but broke the rules again. On December 12, 1980, officials gave him another chance, releasing him from the Colorado State Prison in Cañon City.
He got jobs in a factory and as a truck driver for the Salvation Army.
Inconspicuous lifestyle. In 1996, Joseph acknowledged to the Denver Post that the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case from 1932 fascinated him, but said he had nothing to do with the botched Adolph Coors abduction.
Toward the end of his life, Joseph lived in a one-bedroom apartment at the Royal Chateau Apartments in southwest Denver. Most of his neighbors knew him only as the quiet man who emerged from his apartment to retrieve his newspaper with barely a word for anyone, according to the Denver Post. A few knew about his past as a killer but never asked him about it (a wise move).
Joseph caused no trouble.
Tight-lipped until the end. At some point, he got cancer and occasionally needed help up the stairs.
On August 24, 2009, after neighbors noticed Joseph’s newspaper lying uncollected outside his door, the building manager entered Joseph’s apartment and found him dead.
He had shot himself in the head with a pistol.
Joseph left no note, dying without ever admitting to his horrible crime.
That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR
Watch the Forensic Files episode on YouTube
