ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

Now and at the Hour of Our Death

Seale of course, has always insisted that he never meant to kill Reso. In fact, Seale say he assured Reso that he would not die, in a exchange that is, depending upon your point of view, either a chilling indication of Seale's depraved indifference or evidence that the kidnapping, like almost everything else in Seale's life spiraled out of his control.

As Seale put it in a taped interview broadcast on Rivera's show; "I had told Mr. Reso on one of the—one of the first times we saw him—after we placed him in the box, we brought him to the—to the storage facility—I talked to him and I told him that no matter what
happened, he was going to be released...By that point in time, I was convinced,
I just wanted him released," Seale said.

"He asked me, at one point—one of the times that I went back—what was
happening, what did we want? And I explained to him that—nothing from him,
that this was Exxon that we were—you know, we were dealing with Exxon. But
he—at no point in time did I believe that he was in danger of dying," Seale told the interviewer.

Perhaps that's true. Perhaps Seale had expected to release Reso once the ransom was paid. All the same, just four days after his abduction, Reso died.