Kidnapping

March 14, 2011

John Paul Getty III

By the time John Paul Getty III died on February 5, 2011 – at age 54 – he had lost far more than the ear his Italian kidnappers had sliced off when he was 17 years old.

by Denise Noe

The old saying that “money can’t buy happiness” may never have been more dramatically illustrated than by the life of the recently deceased Jean Paul Getty III, grandson of the wealthiest man on earth. His father was scion Jean Paul Getty II and his mother was former actress Gail Harris. Paul, as Jean Paul Getty III would be called, was the oldest of four children.

It was quite unlikely that when he was born in England on November 4, 1956 that he would become best known for a crime committed against him. Grandfather J.  Paul Getty, a billionaire oil tycoon, described Paul during his early boyhood as “a bright, red-haired little rascal” and called him “most cheerful and cute.” The Los Angeles Times reported that as a toddler Paul “was said to be one of his grandfather’s favorites.” 

J. Paul Getty was often described by the moniker of The Richest Man in The World. Despite his vast fortune, he continued being a workaholic into his elderly years, putting in hours each day to try to make his almost unimaginable wealth even larger. He was also known for certain eccentricities such as an intermittent phobia of the telephone.

Nov. 19, 2009 Updated Nov. 7, 2011

André Bamberski

For 27 years the heartbroken André Bamberski kept an eye on the fugitive serial rapist who murdered his 14-year-old daughter. Then he arranged a vigilante kidnapping to deliver the murderer to the police. 

by Marilyn Z. Tomlins 

In the early hours of the morning little happens in the town of Mulhouse.

Mulhouse, of slightly over 110,000 inhabitants, is geographically in eastern France, in the region of Alsace, but it is often said by skeptical French that the Mulhousiens and the Mulhousiennes, as the inhabitants are called, have German hearts. The reason is that Germany starts just a few miles east of Alsace, and indeed of Mulhouse, and the Germans have therefore annexed the region three times. The first annexation had been after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war (July 1870-May1871), the second, during World War 1 (1914-1918), and the third in World War Two, after France’s June 1940 capitulation to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi army. This third annexation had lasted until the end of the war in May 1945. Since, Alsace has remained French.

During the early morning of Sunday, October 18, 2009 Mulhouse was again silent, but the silence was disturbed when the computer screens in front of the officers on duty in the police’s emergency call room flashed an incoming call.

The caller, a male, speaking with a marked Russian accent despite his flawless French, gave the cop who took the call the name of a local street: Rue de Tilleul. On that street, said the caller before he rang off, the fugitive, Dieter Krombach, could be found.

Robert Cosgrove "Bobby" Greenlease, Jr

A sensation of 1953, $300,000 of the $600,000 paid in ransom has never been recovered.  Two police officers and a gangster are commonly thought to have stolen the money -- but did they?  

by J. J. Maloney

One of the more tragic and fascinating crimes of the mid 20^th century was the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in 1953, and the subsequent disappearance of half the $600,000 ransom his family futilely paid for his release.

Bobby was the son of Robert C. and Virginia Greenlease. His 71-year-old father was one of the largest Cadillac dealers in the nation. The Greenleases lived in Mission Hills, Kan., the most elite suburb in the Kansas City area.

The kidnappers – Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Brown Heady – had both known privilege earlier in their lives. In fact, it was at military school that Hall met Paul Greenlease, the older, adopted brother of Bobby Greenlease. Hall later inherited a substantial amount of money from his father, but blew it failing at a number of business ventures. For robbing a number of cab drivers – his total take was $38 -- Hall was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary. In prison he dreamed of making "the big score" – a score that would allow him to once again live in luxury.

He later said that kidnapping was the only crime where he could strike once and retire for life.

March 4, 2007

More than seven decades after his execution for committing "the crime of the century," Bruno Richard Hauptmann still has his defenders and sympathizers.

by Lona Manning

As Bruno Richard Hauptmann counted down the days to his execution at the State Prison in Trenton, N.J., his wife Anna went on the lecture circuit, asking her fellow German immigrants to donate to the Hauptmann defense fund. Her husband was not guilty of the "Crime of the Century," she pleaded -- he had not kidnapped and murdered the little Lindbergh baby.

Many checks were mailed directly to Hauptmann at the Death House. He realized that the donors who sent only one dollar didn't necessarily believe in his innocence, they wanted him to endorse the check so they could have the autograph of the man condemned for killing the child of the world-famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh.

But he's acquired a host of new supporters in the decades since he died in the electric chair. Conspiracy theories abound about the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many people unfamiliar with – or dismissive of – the evidence, believe Hauptmann was framed.

March 8, 2009

Grègory Villemin, age 4

The murder of little Grègory Villemin was one of the most mysterious and media-hyped criminal cases of the 20th century. During the 25 years since, the investigation has seen new and surprising developments, throwing light on numerous dysfunctions within both the French judicial system and the media, and leading to repercussions including a second murder, the resignation of a high-ranking gendarmerie office, the destruction of one judge's reputation and another's loss of health and subsequent premature death. Who was the murderer? Who was the corbeau? A quarter of a century later these questions remain unanswered in a story of murder, revenge, bizarre family feuding, strange twists and surprise suspects.

by Anthony Davis

Grègory Villemin would have been 29 years old this year and probably – like his parents before him – happily married, with a good job and a nice house. Instead, an infinitely more cruel fate was reserved for him: On Tuesday, October 16, 1984 his body, tied hand and foot, was found floating in the River Vologne. He was only 4 years old.

As if this wasn't shock enough for the 1,000 inhabitants of the village of Lèpanges-sur-Vologne (Vosges, north-eastern France), a second murder was to follow a mere five months later.

So many rumors, contradictions distortions of the truth have beset the case that it is difficult picking one's way through the files, news reports and books written on the subject to determine what was fact and what supposition, malicious gossip or plain lies.