ENVY: The Kidnapping and Murder of Sidney Reso

The Rainbow Warriors

At first, authorities treated Reso's disappearance as a mystery. It was not immediately clear whether it was abduction, and if it was, who was behind it. According to published reports from the time, soon after Reso's disappearance, Exxon executives received a ransom note, purportedly from a group of environmental extremists who identified themselves at The Rainbow Warriors, stealing the name of two ships operated by the environmental group Greenpeace. Greenpeace denied any knowledge of the kidnapping.

There were, according to published reports, even those in the community who believed that Reso's disappearance was a hoax, suspecting that for whatever reason the mild mannered engineer had engineered his own kidnapping.

Local and federal officials, however, did not share that sentiment. Though they classified the matter initially as a missing persons case, within days they became convinced that what they actually had on their hands was a kidnapping.

But they had no idea who had Reso, or whether he was alive or dead.

On May 10, eleven says after his abduction and nearly a week after what authorities would later discover was his lonely and "excruciating" death, Reso's wife, Patricia, made an emotional appeal in a story in the Newark Star-Ledger to the presumed kidnappers for his return.

The appeal apparently fell on deaf ears.

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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