Welcome to Unsolved Mysteries of the World Season 6 Episode 14 The Old Idaho Penitentiary Part II.

In 1932, Joseph F. Hook, a well-known author of pulp fiction stories, and his wife, Edna, moved to 4312 N 37th Street with their three children: Clyde, 21, Mildred, 19, and Vincent, 18.

Carl C. Van Vlack, a bottler at the Columbia Brewery, his wife, Edna, and their son, Douglas, 28, lived around the corner on the same block at 3621 N Stevens Street in Tacoma. Mildred Hook met Douglas F. Van Vlack in the spring of 1933 while searching for the Hook family dog, “Buster.” and soon they began seeing each other.

The couple was privately married in Shelton on July 28, 1933, and kept it secret for five months before telling their parents, who weren’t especially pleased. In December 1933, they moved to an apartment at 801 North I (Eye) Street in Tacoma. But living together proved difficult from the beginning. Mildred was gregarious and Douglas was misanthropic. Mildred had a good job with the Washington Gas and Electric Company as a cashier and Douglas, sullen and argumentative, was unemployed and had difficulty holding jobs. He was drinking heavily and started to physically abuse her. Mildred filed her first divorce action on November 29, 1934, but the couple got back together when Douglas got a steady job driving a truck for the Delicious Ice Cream Company. But he proved unreliable and irresponsible and several months later was discharged. In early 1935, he was employed by Meadowsweet Dairies as a milk-truck driver, but was soon fired for insubordination.

In September 1935, during an argument over money at the Van Vlack home, Douglas shoved Mildred down a flight of stairs and locked her out of the house. After cutting her hand on broken glass while trying to regain entrance, Mildred retreated to her parents home, bruised and bloody. The following day, she filed for divorce, charging “burdensome home life and spousal abuse,” and was granted a restraining order prohibiting Douglas from having any contact. Douglas retaliated by stealing all her clothes and jewelry from their apartment and burying them in the ground. Mildred and her attorney responded by a filing theft complaint. Douglas was arrested on September 15, 1935, but the complaint was later dismissed on plaintiff’s motion when items were returned, even though dirt and mold had ruined Mildred’s clothes.

Meanwhile, both Mildred and Douglas moved home to live with their respective parents. On October 11, 1935, Mildred obtained an interlocutory degree of divorce, and was granted the right to assume her maiden name. Mildred resumed a normal life and went to work every day, while Douglas became morose and isolated himself. He became obsessed with getting Mildred back and began stalking her and watching the Hook home for male visitors. On Sunday, October 18, Mildred went to a physician for treatment after being tied up and raped by Van Vlack.

On Thursday, November 14, Douglas forced Mildred to accompany him on an afternoon automobile ride, then bound her wrists and again physically attacked her. The following day, Mildred and her attorney went to Pierce County Deputy District Attorney Stewart Elliott to file a complaint against Douglas for criminal assault. But when she learned the penalty was 20 years in prison, she decided to drop the charge. Instead, she wanted Elliott to talk to Van Vlack and enforce the restraining order.

However on Monday morning, November 18, Joseph F. Hook and his attorney, Idaho State Senator Wesley Lloyd, demanded Elliott charge Douglas Van Vlack with violation of the new Washington state kidnapping law. Elliott said it didn’t meet the criteria for kidnapping, since there was no request for ransom, but agreed to charge Van Vlack with abduction and assault.

Sometime during the week, Van Vlack stole a .38-caliber Remington Model 51 semi-automatic pistol and shoulder holster from Morley Barnard, a casual friend, who was living at the YMCA. Earlier Van Vlack told Barnard he planed to take Mildred to Mexico and if anyone interfered, he would kill her. Barnard didn’t realize his gun was missing until days later.

At 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, November 23, 1935, Mildred Hook was on her way home from work with her close friend, Doris Clark, age 20, a student nurse. The two women had just stepped off a downtown streetcar and were walking north on Mason Avenue toward the Hook residence when Douglas Van Vlack drove his car over the sidewalk, blocking their path. He got out of the car, brandishing a pistol and smelling of liquor. The couple quarreled for 15 minutes, then he told Mildred she had 30 seconds to get into the car or he would shoot her and commit suicide. When Clark tried to intervene, Van Vlack pointed the gun at Mildred, and shoved her, crying, into the car. Before driving away, he told Clark to tell Mildred’s father he would kill her if anyone set the police on their trail or tried to interfere in any way.

When Joseph Hook learned of his daughter’s abduction, he immediately contacted Deputy District Attorney Elliott who obtained a bench warrant for Van Vlack’s arrest. The Tacoma Police Department alerted law enforcement up and down the West Coast to be on the lookout for the couple traveling in Van Vlack’s slate-gray 1931 Ford Model A coupe bearing Washington license plates.

With Mildred as hostage, Van Vlack sped down the Pacific Highway (US Highway 99) toward California and the United States-Mexican border. At 10:45 p.m., she telephoned her uncle, Frank Michel, in Portland, Oregon, telling him she was all right but was being forcibly detained and Van Vlack had threatened to kill her if anyone notified the police. At Salem, Van Vlack headed east across central Oregon to Boise, Idaho. They had been driving for 24 hours straight and arrived in Boise about 5:00 p.m. on Sunday, November 24. The couple stayed overnight in a Boise hotel and departed late Monday morning for Salt Lake City. While in Boise, a telegram was sent to Mildred’s parents, under her name, purporting she was safe and would be returning to Tacoma soon. Van Vlack also sent a telegram to his parents: “Sorry I had to do this. Everything all right. Letter follows. Douglas” But a letter never came.

At 2:00 p.m. on Monday, November 25, 1935, Idaho State Patrolman Fontaine Cooper, age 34, and Twin Falls Deputy Sheriff Henry C. Givens, age 45, spotted Van Vlack’s 1931 Ford coupe on Highway 30, a half-mile east of Buhl. The officers pulled Van Vlack over to the side of the road, then got out on foot and approached the vehicle. Cooper ordered Van Vlack to step out of the car and when he didn’t respond, opened the driver’s door. Van Vlack pulled his pistol from the left pocket of his topcoat and shot Cooper through the left eye, killing him instantly. When Givens went for his gun, Van Vlack shot him three times: in the throat, in the left arm, shattering the bone, and through the left hand. With both officers down, Van Vlack calmly drove down the highway toward Twin Falls.

Clifford Hammond, a farmer from Buhl, was an eyewitness to the shootings. He was passing in his truck and watched the event unfold in his rear view mirror. As soon as Van Vlack left, Hammond went to the scene, found Cooper dead and Givens critically wounded. Hammond put Givens in his truck and rushed to the Twin Falls County Hospital. Then he telephoned the news to Twin Falls County Sheriff Edwin F. Prater, who immediately ordered a countywide dragnet for Van Vlack’s automobile. Sheriff’s posses set up roadblocks on all roads and highways leading out of the county and guarded all bridges and service stations. Radio stations broadcast descriptions of the couple and asked the public for assistance in locating Van Vlack’s car. It was the biggest manhunt in south central Idaho’s history with hundreds of posse-men, armed with weapons from the Idaho National Guard armory and scores of radio-equipped cars, searching for the killer.

For the rest of the day, Van Vlack played a game of cat and mouse with sheriff’s patrols and roadblocks. He hid the car in the sagebrush on the Salmon Tract until nightfall and removed his license plates, hoping for the opportunity to steal another set off an Idaho car. Van Vlack wanted to head south into Nevada, but roadblocks on the highway forced him to stay on unmarked backroads, which seemingly led nowhere. Eventually Van Vlack, low on gasoline, ditched his car in a dry irrigation canal near the small farming community of Berger and the couple set out on foot.

The night was clear and the temperature dropped into the 20s. The couple was lightly clad, having left Tacoma with no winter clothing. Van Vlack wore a topcoat and street clothes, and Hook wore a suede coat over a woolen dress and high-heeled pumps. Mildred had gloves, but neither wore a hat. They set out on foot, walking through sagebrush, across fields and along the banks of irrigation canals to avoid being seen. They periodically took shelter inside haystacks and culverts to get out of the biting wind.

At dawn on Tuesday morning, November 26, 1935, two spotter planes left Twin Falls to assist the sheriff’s posses searching for the couple. At 8:15 a.m. a posse found Van Vlack, cold and exhausted, huddled in a roadside ditch along Highway 93 approximately two miles north of Hollister. Carl Groth, a Linotype operator for the Twin Falls Idaho Evening Times, disarmed Van Vlack, who claimed his name was Jack Burke, and held him at gun point until Sheriff Prater arrived. The prisoner was taken to Twin Falls and lodged in the jail atop the county courthouse. That afternoon, a search party found Van Vlack’s Ford coupe in a dry irrigation ditch on the Salmon Tract, a mile and a half southeast of Berger and about three miles from where he was arrested.

Although Van Vlack admitted shooting the two police officers, he insisted Mildred