Fresh from a hospital bath, Howard Freeman, 2 years old, was restored to his parents in the McDonough county jail at Macomb last night while the woman who kidnaped him nine days ago, Mrs. Pat Novak was being returned to Chicago.
    Mrs. Novak and the child were found by two state patrolmen shortly before noon yesterday in a dilapidated, unpainted house in Prairie City, a farming village 200 miles southwest of Chicago and 19 miles from Camp Ellis, where the kidnaper's latest husband, Pvt. Stanley Novak, is stationed.

    For six days they had lived in the small village unnoticed, be-friended by a young trucker, Roy Milam, and his wife, who found Mrs. Novak and the Freeman boy sitting beside a road near Prairie City late on the day after the kidnaping.
    Merlin L. Nichols, who owns a poultry company at Avon, three miles from Prairie City, put police on Mrs. Novak's trail. She applied to him for a job last Monday, and worked Tuesday morning candling eggs.
    Yesterday morning Milam, who had offered to let Mrs. Novak and the child stay in his home until she received money from her father in St. Louis, appeared at Nichols' plant with a note asking that Nichols give Milam $1.40 Mrs. Novak earned Tuesday. It was signed Natalia P. Novak.

    Nichols, who had read of the kidnaping, called State Patrolmen Clyde Duncan and James Wynkoop, stationed at Macomb.
    Duncan said Mrs. Novak grabbed the boy, who was playing on the floor, and ran toward a back door as he stepped up on the front porch. Just then Wynkoop entered thru a side door and seized her.
    The Milams, parents of two children, were amazed when they learned Mrs. Novak was wanted for kidnaping the boy. "Why only yesterday," Mrs. Milam said, "she told us she was going to send his birth certificate to Washington so she could force her soldier husband to get a pay allotment for the child."

    "The boy was so thirsty and hungry when we picked them up a week ago last Saturday that he swallowed seven glasses of water and gobbled down a piece of cake quicker than you could say scat," Mrs. Milam recalled.
    At the office of Sheriff Roy Stine in Macomb, Mrs. Novak gave her occupation as bookkeeper for a La Salle county vice ring. The federal bureau of investigation last week arrested 31 persons on information given earlier by Mrs. Novak.
    Mrs. Novak charged that she and the baby's mother, Dorothy, 28 years old, 3538 Monroe street, collected their pay as waitresses Thursday, Oct. 5, the night before the kidnaping, borrowed some more money and "went out to have a good time," leaving the child with a "Mrs. Cunningham."

    "During the night Dorothy and I became separated," Mrs. Novak said. "When I got home to the Freeman flat, where I had roomed for a few days, the child wasn't there. I asked Mr. Johnson, the landlord, what to do and he said to go get the child. So I did. But the mother wouldn't let us in, so I started to St. Louis with Howard to see my father. I didn't know what else to do with the child."
    Howard was reported kidnaped the afternoon of Aug. 6 from the home of Mrs. Mildred Callahan, 2904 Madison street.

    Howard Freeman with Nurse Alice Warner (picture at left) in St. Francis hospital at Macomb last night after baby had been rescued. In picture at right is Mrs. Pat Novak as she appeared after state police seized her with baby at Prairie City.

Source:

Unknown, "Parents Clasp Kidnapped Boy; Woman Jailed," The Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, Sunday, 15 August 1943, pp. 1, 3.