ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

Image Is Everything

If Arthur Seale resented his wife for her attempts — however unsuccessful they might have been — to portray him as the evil mastermind of the plot, and to depict herself as a naïf, incapable of resisting his power, he never publicly demonstrated it. In fact, he was even quoted as saying that he "sympathized" with his wife for trying to cut a deal.

Some observers have speculated that even that was a calculated attempt to try appear magnanimous and to burnish his image. Certainly, there can be little doubt, given Seale's penchant for trying to maintain his image as a man of means despite his personal and financial failures, that Arthur Seale was a man who understood the power of appearances.

And given the heinous nature of the crime he had committed, Seale was presented with tremendous access to the media. In fact, in the months after his arrest, media stars tripped over one another trying to snag the all-important exclusive interview with Arthur Seale.

As Peter Johnson wrote in a Nov. 12, 1992 article in USA Today; "He's not a household name, but last month the rush to get his exclusive story on the air created a feeding frenzy in the increasingly competitive world of TV newsmagazines. PrimeTime Live's Diane Sawyer, 60 Minutes' Steve Kroft, 20/20's Barbara Walters and Dateline NBC's Stone Phillips all wooed him. So did Maury Povich, Inside Edition and Hard Copy."

"ABC's Walters won," Johnson wrote.

As Seale's lawyer told Johnson, even he was shocked by the feeding frenzy. ''I made a comment that Arthur wanted to tell his story and it was like the killer bees. Not one sweeps down on you, but all of them...I went in there trying to sell my client's story. When I was done, I didn't know who was selling who.''

In the interview — the broadcast also included an interview with Reso's widow, Patricia — Seale tried to make the argument that, he was not simply an avaricious monster, but that in a way, he too was a victim. As he put it, "we were normal people driven to absolute desperation."

The broadcast aired on Nov. 6, 1992, less than a month before Arthur Seale, who ultimately pleased guilty to seven federal counts of extortion and conspiracy, was to be sentenced. It is an open question whether anyone in the audience that night felt even a tinge of pity for Arthur Seale.

But it certainly had no impact on the prosecutors or on the judges in the case.