Camden Courier-Post – February 7, 1933
Charges Husband Trapped on Pretense of Returning Child
Accused by his wife of binding her to a chair and threatening her life with a knife and with gas, Charles Flippen, 26, of 609 Grant Street, was held without bail for the grand jury by Police Judge Garfield Pancoast yesterday.
Flippen’s wife, Lillian, 24, lives at 1626 Wingohocking street, Philadelphia. She said the threats took place Saturday afternoon in the third floor front room of a rooming house in Penn street near Sixth. Patrolmen William Thorn, Walter Patton and Raymond Stark said they found adhesive tape and towel strippings in the room, and took two knives from Flippen.
Kidnapping Charged
Mrs. Flippen said her husband went to California last September, leaving her and their four-and-a-half year old daughter at his mother’s home in Grant street. She heard nothing from him, she said, and in December she moved with the baby to Philadelphia. Last month, she charged, he returned and kidnapped the child in the street near her home.
On Saturday, she said, she received a telegram from Flippen, telling her he would give her the baby if she would meet him. She met him in Philadelphia and he took her to the Penn street house, where, he said, his brother was to bring the baby.
They went to a room ostensibly to wait for the brother to bring the baby, she said, and he told her he was going to kill her and himself.
He bound her arms and legs to a chair with adhesive tape and strips from a towel, she said. Then he waved a knife about her head and turned on the illuminating gas, Mrs. Flippen charged.
She pleaded with him and finally induced him to take her to a restaurant, where she whispered to a waitress to call the police, the wife testified in Police Court. The waitress did so, and the police arrived shortly afterward.
Flippen pleaded not guilty to a charge of threatening to kill. He did not testify.
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