Journeys in Suburbia: Downtown San Jose--The Brooke Hart Murder and Hangings

Downtown San Jose

Side Story: The Brooke Hart Murder and Hangings

Hidden away in a nondescript location of Downtown San Jose is this sign.

This faded ghost sign is nearly forgotten, but nearly all that remains of both one of greatest success stories and one of the darkest chapters of San Jose history. The story goes back to the early days of San Jose's history, to a Jewish Alsatian immigrant named  Leopard Hart.

 Leopard Hart set up shop in San Jose in 1866 and soon had a thriving business. By 1933 under Leopard's son Alex, Hart's with a heart-shaped logo had become a successful two story department store on Santa Clara and Market St., the largest in Santa Clara Valley and patronized by most of San Jose and the rest of the Valley.  Alex himself was raising his son, Brooke Hart, 22, to eventually take over the family business.  All three generations were widely regarded as respected and active patrons of San Jose and Brooke was held as the area's most eligible bachelor.

Hence the entire community was shocked when on November 9, 1933, Brooke Hart disappeared while retrieving his car. That night, a phone call demanding $40,000 in ransom came.  Six days later, the FBI arrested Thomas Thurmond in downtown San Jose as he finished extorting money from the Harts in a traced call, and soon after arrested accomplice John Holmes.  Both Thurmond and Holmes quickly confessed to the kidnapping, holding Brooke at gunpoint in the parking garage; they also revealed that they had driven the captive Brooke to the San Mateo Bridge, knocked him out, and threw him off of the bridge before even making the ransom demands. As news of the confession spread, the mood in San Jose turned ugly.   "If mob violence could ever be justified it would be in a case like this" one paper called,  "Seek Noose For Hart Killers!", read the headlines of another. On November 26, Brooke's corpse was recovered.  That night, some 5,000-10,000 people gathered in front of the jail where the two men were held in downtown San Jose.  The entire city had a population of 60,000 in 1930.  At 11:00, the mob rammed down the prison doors using a heavy steel pipe and stormed the building. Overwhelming the guards, they seized the two prisoners, broke their bones, stripped them and dragged them to St. James Park, where hung them and set the bodies on fire. Afterwards, the hanging tree was torn to pieces and distributed as souvenirs. 

The vigilantes were met with support from Governor James Rolph, who had turned down a request for National Guard troops to protect the prisoners:

"If anyone is arrested for this good job, I'll pardon them all...it was only natural that... they should rise and mete out swift justice to these two murderers and kidnappers."

No one was ever charged for the public lynchings, the last in the state. The lynchings were met with support from many in the community, most of whom held that in effect the criminals got what they deserved. In Nazi Germany, Joseph Gobbels promoted the incident as a reflection of American decadence and control by Jews. Others were horrified. Fritz Lang, having fled Germany, directed the film "Fury" based on the incident.  The Harts continued their downtown department store under Alex Jr. until the 1970s, when they finally closed their venerable store and moved to the suburbs.