Snatched!: The Peculiar Kidnapping of Beer Tycoon John Labatt

Louis A. Knafla is a professor of history at the University of Calgary,
the co-editor of Law, Society, and the State, and the author of Lords
of the Western Bench.

On the morning of August 14, 1934, John Labatt, the millionaire owner
and president of John Labatt Ltd., was kidnapped on his way to work in
London, Ontario. Susan Goldenberg, an award-winning author of books and
articles on business, property, and trade, describes the massive manhunt
for the three kidnappers—who demanded a ransom of $150,000—and the
arrest, trial, and conviction of the wrong man, David Meisner. The
arrest of one of the kidnappers for a failed robbery a year after the
kidnapping set off a chain of events that culminated in the overturning
of Meisner’s guilty verdict.

In Goldenberg’s engrossing and well-researched account, the various
police agencies and Crown counsel do not come off well—neither, for
that matter, does John Labatt himself. The real hero of the story is
Meisner’s colourful and determined lawyer, Charles Bell. As the
Toronto Daily Star put it, the courts, Crown attorneys, detectives, and
police “do not like to confess a major miscarriage [of justice].”