ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

The Sentencing

Arthur Seale in court

And then Brown handed down the sentence, 95 years, with no hope for parole. And before he left the bench, Judge Brown offered one last stinging comparison between Seale's fate and that of his victim. "You will spend the rest of your life in custody," Brown said. "You will be fed, medical treatment will be provided, but you will not be bound, gagged, shot or placed in a coffin."

According to published reports of the time, the sentencing hearing took two and a half hours.  But there would be more to come that day.

Seale was led in shackles from the federal courthouse to a state courtroom where he faced sentencing for kidnapping and murder. There, Judge Reginald Stanton also imposed the maximum sentence. "The safety of the human community request that you remain in prison for the rest of your natural life," Judge Stanton was quoted as saying.

Judge Reginald Stanton

Though Seale had escaped the death penalty, the judge sentenced him to life in prison for murder and 30 years for the kidnapping charge. Under state law, Seale is technically eligible for parole after serving 15 years on the kidnapping charge and after serving 30 years on the murder charge. It is, of course, moot. All the sentences run consecutively. If by some freak of nature, Seale somehow survived his federal detention, he would still have to serve a minimum of 45 years in prison before he could even be considered for parole. In essence, the courts assured that Arthur Seale, who is now being held in a federal lockup in North Dakota, would never again get out of prison.

The courts also made sure of one other thing. They imposed millions of dollars in fines and penalties on the Seales effectively guaranteeing that the couple, who the courts found tortured and killed Sidney Reso for no reason other than simple greed, would never be able to cash in on the media frenzy over the case to make a profit. Those fines were later reduced to $105,000 after a judge became convinced that there was little chance that the Seales could find a market for their story.

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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