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Then on July 22, the day Charles Urschel was kidnapped, came word that Betty had received a second package, this one a pen-and-pencil set, mailed from a novelty store in Lake Placid, New York. New York agents were at the store within hours. They discovered that two well-dressed women had purchased the gift a week earlier. One of the women was described as thirty-eight years old, “very stout, very broad shoulders and heavy chest, very dark throughout, dark hair, dark complexion, looked Jewish and wore a yellow sweater ensemble and a very large green pin.” This was Buchalter’s wife, Betty. The second woman, a slim “straw blonde” wearing heavy makeup, was decked out in a blue silk ensemble and a white tam. A salesman identified her from a photo as Vi Mathias.

Agents spread across the Lake Placid area, checking every hotel, resort, and Western Union office. They found nothing concrete, but on a tip that a woman who resembled Mathias had told a salesperson she was heading to Montreal, agents expanded their search into Canada. Finally, on the night of July 27, a hotel detective in Montreal told agents a woman who resembled Mathias had checked out of the Mt. Royal Hotel hours before. Identifying the photos of Mathias and Betty Buchalter, he said the two women had been driving with two men, one a Columbia Pictures executive, the other the owner of an Adirondack tourist camp. The next day, agents located the camp owner, who described how the two couples had toured Montreal nightclubs and upstate New York hotels for a week, drinking heavily and having a wild time. Mathias had fallen hard for the Columbia executive. Neither of the women seemed bothered by the absence of their respective life partners.

The camp owner volunteered that the women were now at the New Sherwood Hotel in Burlington, Vermont. Two agents were dispatched from Manhattan, and at 11:00 the next morning, Sunday, July 30, they watched as Mathias, wearing a low-cut green dress, drove a black Lincoln away from the hotel. Beside her sat the buxom Betty Buchalter. The two agents followed the Lincoln across the New York line, where it turned south. All went smoothly until the two cars passed through the town of Troy, New York, where the FBI car got a flat tire. Mathias and Buchalter continued south, disappearing into a warm Sunday afternoon.

Losing Vi Mathias was the kind of blunder the FBI made often in 1933 as Hoover’s men learned the ins and outs of professional law enforcement. Still, they recovered nicely. By then, thanks to an inspection of hotel registries, the New York office knew where Mrs. Buchalter lived, in Apartment 17J at the Majestic Apartments on Central Park West.r A team of agents was put on twenty-four-hour surveillance, and the next night, July 31, Mrs. Buchalter was spotted leaving the building alone. The agents followed her for a few blocks but let her go. They had already placed a tap on the Buchalters’ phone and secured an informant inside the building, apparently a bellman. If Mathias was still in New York, the agents bet she would return.14

Three days later, the informant at the Majestic alerted the New York office that the Buchalters were preparing to leave for a vacation and had sent a grouping of trunks to Pennsylvania Station. A pair of agents reached the station just as a party of seven, including people identified as Mr. and Mrs. L. Buchalter and Miss V. Allen, boarded a train for Vermont. The agents scrambled onto the train, which reached Vermont that night. But inexplicably, by the time the two agents disembarked, they found the Buchalters’ party had already driven off.

This time Hoover’s men caught a break. Agents from the New York office had been canvassing hotels in Atlantic City for weeks, chasing unconfirmed reports that Verne Miller was hiding in the area. The next evening, Friday, August 4, the assistant manager of the Ritz Carlton in Atlantic City telephoned to say the Buchalters and their son, accompanied by a Miss