ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

Arrest

Seale had instructed them to take the money — all in $100 bills to be placed in laundry bags — on a whirlwind tour of Northern New Jersey. The elaborate route he had planned took three hours to complete, and it included a short trip by train. But Seale had apparently either miscalculated or never bothered to square the itinerary he laid out with the railroad's timetable and the efforts to pay the ransom collapsed when the couriers carrying the money missed the train.

Two days later, the Seales tried again. Again they contacted authorities with an elaborate itinerary through the hills of North Jersey. They had made a critical mistake however. The Seales had instructed the FBI to establish a cell phone account through which the kidnappers would contact them. It apparently never dawned on Arthur Seale that cell phone calls can easily be traced. This time, authorities set up an elaborate surveillance operation. Seale was spotted making the call from a pay phone at the Rockaway mall. From their vantage point, investigators could see that the caller was wearing a pair of latex gloves.  Authorities, perhaps hoping that the kidnappers would lead them to Reso, decided not to pounce immediately, but, in much the same way that Seale had monitored his hostage, they watched him as he left the phone and hopped into a rented car.

They trailed the car to the rental company in rural Warren County, and when Irene Seale pulled up in her white Mercedes, they closed in and arrested the pair. When they searched the car, they found a cache of reasonably incriminating evidence. There was the pair of latex gloves, identical to the ones Seale had been seen wearing when he placed the phone call. There was a pair of scissors, a roll of quarters, and a few .38 caliber bullets. And most important of all, they found a 1985 Exxon directory that included the home addresses of Exxon's chief executives, including Sidney Reso, and four laundry bags, exactly the type that the kidnappers had intended to stuff their loot in.

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1. A Simple Man of Simple Tastes
2. A Man of Means
3. High Life and Hard Times
4. Schemes
5. Best Laid Plans
6. Cold Blooded
7. Now and at the Hour of Our Death
8. A Patina of Caring
9. The Rainbow Warriors
10. Ransom
11. Arrest
12. Hope Fades
13. Battered Wife Defense
14. Image Is Everything
15. Life in a Larger Box
16. The Sentencing
17. A Bid for Redemption
18. Bibliography