By Sandra Dallas, Special to The Denver Post
The 1960 murder of Adolph Coors III was one of Colorado’s greatest tragedies. The 44-year-old chairman of Adolph Coors Co., Ad Coors, was killed in a botched kidnapping attempt by Joseph Corbett Jr., who had escaped a California prison where he was serving time for another murder.
The tragedy brought scores of lawmen to Denver, and J. Edgar Hoover personally assured the family the FBI would get their man. It did, but only after the beer baron’s body was discovered in a dump near Castle Rock. In “The Death of an Heir,” Philip Jett recounts the tragedy in all its horrific detail. He tells of the stoicism of the Coors family, as they continued to run the company without the oldest son, and the toll it took on Ad’s wife, Denver socialite Mary Grant, who turned to alcoholism to deal with her grief.
By all accounts, Ad III was a low-key and well-liked beer executive. His father, Adolph Coors Jr., a hard taskmaster, controlled the brewery, but its operations were run as a triumvirate by Ad III and his brothers, Bill and Joe. The brothers were expected to join the family business, although Ad’s dream was to own a cattle and horse operation, and he had recently moved his wife and four children to a ranch in Turkey Creek. (Bill once confessed he had wanted to be a violinist until he succumbed to family responsibility.)
On Feb. 9 1960, as Ad III drove his International Harvester Travelall down a mountain road on the way to the brewery in Golden, he was stopped by a yellow Mercury blocking a bridge. When he stepped out of the vehicle to ask if the other driver needed help, Ad encountered Corbett, who pulled a gun. The two struggled, and Ad was shot twice in the back.
Later that day, Corbett hurriedly left his apartment at Pearl and Colfax and drove east, eventually setting the car on fire.
With the help of neighbors, one of whom had seen Corbett casing the area and remembered part of his license plate, the FBI quickly fingered Corbett, a former Fulbright scholar with a high IQ, who was living under the alias Walter Osborne.
By then, Corbett had vanished. Not until the burned Mercury turned up did agents know he had fled east. But to where?
Canada, it turned out. Corbett brazenly kept the name Walter Osborne and failed to change his appearance. He eventually was caught after Readers Digest ran an article about the kidnapping with Corbett’s picture.
Jett writes about the kidnapping and murder and subsequent trial of Corbett with considerable detail. He tells about the bumbling and self-serving Jefferson County sheriff Art Wermuth, who tried to force a confession from the closed-mouth Corbett (who never did confess).
He provides numerous details about the Coors family. Ad III was allergic to beer, much to his father’s disgust, and Joe never liked its taste. In 1929, the brewery founder killed himself in Virginia, and in 1934 authorities foiled a kidnapping attempt of Adolph Jr.
“The Death of an Heir” is an excellent account of a 67-year-old tragedy, but it is marred by its creative nonfiction style. The author includes made-up dialogue, so readers don’t know what is real and what is not. That leaves an otherwise credible book hanging between truth and fiction.
The Death of an Heir: Adolph Coors III and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty
By Philip Jett
(St. Martin’s Press)
