Introduction
In May 1953, a freshly minted ex-con named Carl Hall happened to mount a barstool in St. Joseph, Mo., beside a stranger named Bonnie Heady.
The sun outside was high in the sky and the air was sweet with the approach of summer, but sunshine made people like Heady and Hall twitchy.
Heady, 41, had been around the block. She had a stubby build, a plump, round face, beady brown eyes, and a bit of a turtle chin. Her short, brown hair framed a pasty facethe complexion of a dedicated barfly.
Hall wasn’t much of a looker, either, with prominent ears, puffy eyes and a flabby midriff. His rapidly receding widows peak made him seem older than 34. His hands were soft and doughy, the mitts of a man whod done nothing more strenuous in life than grip a highball glass or pool cue.
Hall and Heady were a pair by the time they staggered out of the Pony Express saloon in St. Joes Hotel Robidoux on that May day. They had at least three things in common: an unquenchable thirst, a lack of scruples, and an alcohol-diminished ability to think straight.
Theirs would prove to be a match made in hell.
Within four months, Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady would put their heads together and commit one of the most inscrutable crimes imaginable.
They kidnapped and murdered a 6-year-old boy, then managed to extract a kings ransom from his wealthy father, a Kansas City Cadillac dealer.
They fled to St. Louis with their loot but without a clue what to do with it. Their post-ransom plan was so thin that they didn’t even bring along a change of underwear.
Life on the lam amounted to a fleeting drunken bender. They were in custody less than 48 hours after grabbing the ransom cash. Ultimately, they would pay dearly for their crime.
And the fate of the kidnap ransom would become an embarrassing coda to their story and an obsession for FBI boss J. Edgar Hoover when $300,000 turned up missing after it passed through the hands of a rogue St. Louis cop.
A taxicab rolled to a stop in front of the exclusive Notre Dame de Sion Catholic School on Locust Street in Kansas City, Mo., at 10:55 a.m. on Monday, Sept. 28, 1953.
The cab idled as the fare, Bonnie Heady, made her way into the school building. She was dressed respectably brown hat, beige blouse, dark gabardine skirt and white gloves.
Sister Morand greeted the stranger at the door. Heady explained she had come to remove a first-grader, Bobby Greenlease, from class because the boys mother had had a heart attack while shopping that morning.
The woman explained that she was the sister of the stricken woman, Virginia Greenlease, who desperately wanted to see her boy.
Sister Morand would later recall that the visitor seemed agitated, which struck the nun as appropriate under the circumstances. She may have noticed that the woman smelled of Clorets, which Heady had chewed to mask the odor of the eye-openers of whiskey shed downed that morning.
Sister Morand sent a colleague to fetch Bobby. She led the visitor into a school chapel to pray for Mrs. Greenlease. Heady folded her hands, bowed her head and pretended she cared.
After a few minutes, she stepped out of the chapel, and Bobby Greenlease, a slightly built 6-year-old, was standing there waiting for her.
He came right up to me and took a hold of my hand, Heady later said.
Bobby, with a mop of sandy hair, was wearing a white shirt with brown slacks. Pinned to his shirt was a Jerusalem medal, a large cross surrounded by four smaller ones, signifying the spread of Gods word to the corners of the earth.
Bobby was chatty. Heady led him to the cab and directed the driver to a parking lot in downtown Kansas City, a short drive from the school.
There, Heady paid the cabby and led Bobby around a corner to a remote section of the parking lot, where her 1951 Plymouth station wagon sat waiting.
Heady opened the front passenger door and encouraged Bobby to slide into the front seat. Behind the wheel sat Carl Hall, her drinking buddy.
Hall asked Bobby how he was, and the boy said he was doing well. The child noticed Headys boxer dog in the back of the station wagon. He told the couple he had two dogs of his own, as well as a green parrot named Polly.
The three chatted about their pets and about Bobbys Jerusalem medal a source of pride for the boy as Hall drove the car south, then west toward the Missouri-Kansas state line.
The boy indicated no fear and apparently did not question Hall about where they were going or why. As the FBI later reported, Bobby was very talkative and gave him absolutely no trouble.
The car crossed the state line then continued 5 miles, until the city faded into farmland in Johnson County, Ks. Hall turned the station wagon into a field at the Moody Farm, following the ruts of a tractor path to a remote spot concealed by standing crops and an overgrown windrow.
Heady got out, opened the cars tailgate, threaded a leash over the boxers head and took him for a walk. As the boy sat watching the dog over his shoulder, Hall gripped a foot-long piece of clothesline in both hands, slipped the cord over Bobbys head and pulled his garrote tight.
Bobby flailed his fists and kicked his feet. Halls dainty drinking hands weren’t strong enough to asphyxiate the 6-year-old. He went to an alternative method, dropping the rope in favor of a 38-caliber revolver.
As Bobby continued to struggle, Hall pushed the boy to the floorboard of the car and tried to pin him down with a knee. He fired a shot but missed the gyrating boy from point-blank range.
Finally, Hall raised the gun to the roof and brought it down on Bobbys face, knocking out three teeth. The stunned child was finally still. Carl Hall took a breath, aimed his gun at the boys head and fired a second shot. This one hit its mark and snuffed out the brief life of Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr.
Hearing the shots, Heady hurried back on rubbery legs and put her dog back in the car. Hall wrapped Bobbys body in a blue tarp and laid it on the floorboard of the back seat. As an afterthought, he opened the tarp, unpinned the Jerusalem cross from the boys shirt and tucked it in his pocket.
Hall drove back into Missouri, then north through Kansas City toward St. Joe. But thirst cried out as the car passed Lynns Tavern in northern Kansas City, one of their many watering holes. They went in for a couple of stiff ones, leaving the boxer alone with the boys body in their bloody car.
With their gullets full of booze, the kidnappers made their way home to Headys house on South 38th Street in St. Joseph, an hour north of Kansas City. Hall carried the body to a hole hed dug in the backyard and covered it with lime and dirt, topping the grave with fresh mums.
He next retrieved an addressed letter from a drawer and drove back to Kansas City, where, at about 3 p.m., he mailed the letter special delivery. It was addressed to Robert Greenlease, Sr.
Virginia Greenlease learned that her son had been snatched from school at about the time the killers were enjoying their nerve-settling whiskey at Lynns Tavern. A supervising nun from Bobbys school had phoned the Greenlease home to check on the womans condition. A maid passed the phone to Mrs. Greenlease, and both nun and mother understood immediately what had happened. The mother called her husband at work, and he rushed home.
Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr., was a self-made man. Born in 1882 on a Missouri farm, he moved to Kansas City at age 12 and was smitten by the horseless carriages that were just then beginning to frighten draft teams and pedestrians on the streets of American cities.
Before he was 21 the ambitious Greenlease and a partner had designed an automobile they called the Kansas City Hummer. They manufactured four of them before the enterprise went belly up. Greenlease next opened an auto repair shop, then parlayed that into a car dealership. He hung up his overalls, donned a suit and began selling the Thomas Flyer.
Fortune came knocking the next year when he won a franchise to sell Cadillacs. That company merged with General Motors, and Greenlease soon owned a string of Cadillac and Oldsmobile dealerships in Kansas City, Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Omaha and Topeka.
As an early Cadillac franchisee, he was able to win wholesale distribution rights for a vast swath of the country. His bank account grew every time a Caddy rolled out of dealerships from El Paso, Texas, to Fargo, North Dakota, and St. Louis to Denver. He invested heavily in General Motors stock, and over time Greenlease became one of GMs largest shareholders and one of Kansas Citys most prosperous citizens.
But as he reached his moneymaking prime, Robert Greenlease felt a niggling dissatisfaction with his personal life. He had married young, but he and his wife had failed to conceive a child. After years of trying, they adopted a son they named Paul in 1917, when Robert was 35.
He gave his adopted son everything he could, including a private education at Kemper Military Academy, a boarding school in Booneville, Mo., 100 miles east of Kansas City. Yet Greenlease yearned for a child of his own blood. When his marriage ended in divorce, the auto magnate began an April-September romance with a young woman named Virginia Pollock. They married in 1939, when he was 58 and she 29exactly twice her age.
The couple had a daughter, Virginia Sue, three years later. Bobby followed in 1947, when his father was 65. They raised their children in a Tudor-style mansion on Verona Road in the country clubby Kansas City suburb of Mission Hills, Ks.
Greenlease spared no expense on his family. A staff of maids, nannies, gardeners and chauffeurs reported for duty each day. He treated his wife and kids to extravagant vacations, and he enrolled his children in two of Kansas Citys most reputable schools.
From the moment he learned of his sons disappearance and presumed kidnapping, Robert Greenlease decided that no price would be too much to pay for his namesakes safe return.
Like Greenlease, both Hall and Heady had tasted wealth. Unlike the auto executive, neither had had to work for it.
Hall was born to a pampered life in 1919 in Pleasanton, Ks. (pop. 1,000), 75 miles south of Kansas City. His father, John, was a big-shot lawyer in the small town, and his grandfather was a judge. His mother, Zella, lost her only other child as a toddler, so she focused her attention on Carl.
As Hall later said, No one could have a finer mother than I had, and the same goes for my father. I had wonderful parents. Their actions were in no way responsible for my going bad.
John Hall died suddenly of a brain tumor in 1932, as his son entered his teenage years, leaving Carl as heir to his familys sizable fortune.
But trouble with the boy started the summer after his father died. He became so unruly that his mother sent him to live with another couple, hoping the influence of a father figure would bring Carl in line.
Carl won over the woman of the house with occasional tearful fits about the loss of his father. The woman told friends that Zella Hall simply was too cold-blooded to soothe the boys anxiety, according to journalist James Deakins book, A Grave for Bobby.
At age 14, Hall was packed away to Kemper Military Academy in Booneville, Mo., where, not incidentally, he was a classmate of Paul Greenlease, Robert Greenleases adopted son.
Zella Hall felt the discipline of a military school would be good for her boy, and the strategy seemed to work. Hall was an honor student and member of the rifle, baseball and basketball teams during his first two years. His evaluations were positive for the first two years, spiced with words such as dependable, conscientious, promising, ambitious, honest and capable.
Yet Hall was a terror at home when he returned for summers and holidays. He had discovered booze at a young age, and the Pleasanton police became accustomed to picking up the local scion for drunkenness, vandalism and disturbing the peace.
Carl Hall had changed when he returned to Kemper for his third year.
His evaluations suddenly featured different phrases: slow developing, temperamental, none too straightforward, worthless streak, tries to bluff. He became a disciplinary problem and was caught with alcohol more than once.
Hall transferred to Pleasanton High School for his senior year, and Zella Hall must have breathed a sigh of relief when he graduated in 1937.
He gave college a try at his mothers insistence, but he flunked out after a semester and enlisted in the Marines. He completed four years, then re-enlisted for a second stint amid the patriotic fever of World War II. Hall made sergeant briefly but was busted back to the rank of corporal due to an AWOL one of many drinking-related disciplines during his eight years. He won a discharge under honorable conditions less distinguished than a full honorable discharge and was deposited back into civilian society in 1946.
Zella Hall died in 1944, while Carl was away in the service. He was left with an estate valued at more than $200,000equivalent to roughly $2 million today. He would be set for life if he played it smart.
But he didn’t.
He ordered the family attorney to convert the estates property and securities into cash. He took his loot to Kansas City and started spending, and he didn’t stop until it was all gone.
He lived at the Phillips Hotel in K. C., where he handed out dollar-bill tips like they were dimes. He played the ponies and the stock market. He did poorly at the former, worse at the latter. He became an inveterate gambler dice, cards, whatever. Other players greeted him warmly when he walked into a gambling den with a bulge of cash in his pocket.
He invested in one business after another that failed crop-dusting, elevator music, liquor stores.
After a quick marriage and quicker divorce prompted by his drinking, Hall headed west. As Hall later told the FBI, he was just bumming around the country drinking and gambling until I had lost all my inheritance. He was broke five years after being handed a fortune.
By May 1951 Hall had turned to crime to support his lifestyle, which at that point amounted to a daily fifth of whiskey and a nightly flop on skid row. He was arrested that month in Milwaukee for vagrancy and fraud. Penniless, he had tried to sell a car he did not own.
He made his way back to Kansas City that summer, bought a Saturday Night Special and embarked on a series of taxicab robberies notable only because they were so pathetic. He grabbed a grand total of $33 in eight robberies before being collared on September 16.
He pleaded guilty to two stickups and was sent up the river on a five-year sentence that lasted a year and three months. He was released on April 24, 1953, thanks in part to the work of Bernard Patton, a St. Joseph attorney who had done legal work for Hall on his various business enterprises.
Patton found Hall a St. Joe apartment for $50 a month, then he secured his former clients release by arranging a job as a salesman at an auto dealership. When Hall was fired for drinking, Patton scrounged up a second used-car job. Again he was fired, and again Patton came through, finding Hall a job selling life insurance.
He sold one policy. His client was Bonnie Heady, the woman he picked up at the Pony Express in St. Joe.
Heady was born Bonnie Brown in 1912 on a Missouri farm. Her mother died young, and she was raised by an aunt, who later described the child as happy, carefree, normal and sweet.
Like Hall, Bonnie tried college but dropped out and married Vernon Heady, a livestock merchant at the St. Joe Stockyards. They had a 17-year childless marriage that had the appearance of respectability. The couple bred and showed pedigreed boxer dogs. Bonnie became an accomplished horsewoman, frequently riding in St. Joe parades.
She inherited a 360-acre family farm when her father died, and she earned a decent monthly income by renting the place to a tenant farmer.
Over time, Vernon Heady noticed that Bonnie, a social drinker, was becoming a serious drinker. She imbibed at home alone with increasing frequency and lost interest in her passions, horses and boxer dogs.
The marriage came to an acrimonious end in 1950. Bonnie got the couples house in St. Joe, and a man of questionable reputation moved in while Vernons side of the bed was still warm. The man flattered Bonnie about her lovemaking skills, convincing her she should put those skills to capitalistic use.
Bonnie and the man remodeled a spare bedroom into a sexy barroom, with dim lighting, a comfortable sofa, a liquor cabinet and nudie pictures on the walls. Soon St. Joe cabbies were delivering lonely men to Bonnie Headys boudoir bar for private sexual consultations. She estimated that she serviced 150 different sexual clients over a couple of years.
Carl Hall cuckolded Bonnies pimp and took over his place in the womans bed. He called her Baby Doll. She called him Honey Bunch. They polished off twin fifths of whiskey almost every day. He beat her now and again, then apologized and professed his love. She forgave him and loved him back.
They had an arrangement: Heady paid for everything. The woman would later say she felt pressure to provide her lover with the finer things in life because he had grown accustomed to living high on the hog until his inheritance ran out.
But she continued working as a home prostitute for only a few weeks after Hall arrived in her life. It wasn’t that he was morally opposed. He had a bigger score in mind than $10 tricks.
That summer, the couple frequently drove to Kansas City to carouse at fancy hotel bars. Heady noticed that Hall often mentioned the Greenlease name during these trips. They would drive by the Greenlease Cadillac dealership, and Hall would brag that he was a Kemper classmate of the rich mans son.
During one Kansas City visit, Hall picked up a phone book and jotted down the Greenlease familys phone number, Gilmore 6200, and address, 2920 Verona Road in Mission Hills.
Hall told Heady the Greenleases had a young son and that the boys old man probably would pay $1 million to get him back if they kidnapped him. Heady later said she went along because she loved Hall and was afraid to lose him.
Soon the couple was casing the Greenlease home in Mission Hills. Hall went so far as to telephone there, but he was informed by a maid that the family was on vacation in Europe and would return for the start of school in September.
When September arrived, Hall became acquainted with the familys routines. He followed Robert Greenlease, Sr. one morning as the man drove Bobby to school at Notre Dame de Sion. Hall decided to use a time-tested method of kidnapping: go to the school with a sob story and ask that the boy be released.
Hall had no intention of holding the boy for ransom, as the FBIs Greenlease case file makes clear.
FBI Agent Donald Hostetter wrote, He further related that previous to the time the victim was kidnapped he had decided to kill him because he considered the boy evidence, and that he thus decided to destroy the evidence.
In the week before the kidnapping, Hall used Headys money to buy a tarp and a bag of lime. He dug a hole in Headys backyard. Heady prepared a ransom note. Hall read that $1 million is too heavy for one man to carry, so he decided on $600,000 in $10s and $20s, with a total weight of 85 pounds.
His greatest worry concerned the nerves of Bonnie Heady, whom he told the FBI would do anything for one more drink of whiskey.
Hostetter wrote, He further advised that due to her alcoholic mind, she would be in a haze for days, and related that she would drink at least a pint of whiskey before breakfast. He stated that his only fear at the particular time was that Mrs. Bonnie Heady was not getting his instructions through her drunken mind and would foul up things at the crucial time when it came time to obtain the victim.
He neednt have worried. Two drunks were able to pull off the kidnap plot because the nuns at Bobbys school were so willing to turn over the boy without so much as a single skeptical question.
Robert Greenlease called the Kansas City police chief minutes after he learned of the kidnap, and cops alerted the Postal Service to be on the lookout for any mail addressed to the family. The ransom note was improperly addressed to 2600 Verowa in Kansas City, Mo., not 2920 Verona Road in Mission Hills, Kansas. But it was close enough. Robert and Virginia Greenlease were holding the ransom note just hours after Hall mailed it. It read:
Your boy has been kidnapped get $600,000 in $20s $10s Fed. Res. notes from all twelve districts we realize it takes a few days to get that amount. Boy will be in good hands when you have money ready put ad in K. C. Star. M will meet you in Chicago next Sunday signed Mr. G.
Do not call police or try to use chemicals on bills or take numbers. Do not try to use any radio to catch us or boy dies. If you try to trip us your wife and your child and yourself will be killed you will be watched all of the time. You will be told later how to contact us with money. When you get this note let us know by driving up and down main St. between 39 and 29 for twenty minutes with white rag on car aeriel [sic].
The note continued on the other side of the paper:
If you do exactly as we say and try no tricks, your boy will be back safe within 24 hrs after we check money.
Deliver money in army duefel [sic] bag. Be ready to deliver at once on contact.
M.
$400,000 in 20s
$200,000 in 10s
Three of Robert Greenleases business associates, Robert Ledterman, Nobert ONeill and Stewart Johnson, moved into his home and began assembling the ransom money through a family friend, Arthur Eisenhower, a Kansas City bank executive and brother of President Dwight Eisenhower.
FBI agents carefully recorded the serial numbers of all 40,000 bills in the ransom money 20,000 each of $20 and $10.
On Tuesday, the day after the kidnapping, Ledterman placed the ad in the Star with the coded message indicating the money was ready. Meanwhile, Hall apparently realized that he had used the wrong address on the first ransom note, so he sent a second letter on Tuesday that was received the same day.
It began, You must not of got our first letter. That letter was an abbreviated version of the first, with the same basic instructions. The envelope contained Bobbys Jerusalem medal.
The Greenleases were confused by the second letter since they had placed the ad in the Star, as directed. They wanted the kidnapper to know they were willing to cooperate, so Robert Greenlease stepped out of his house on Tuesday afternoon to speak with the crowd of reporters gathered there.
We think they are trying to make contact, Greenlease said of the kidnappers. His voice cracked as he added, All I want is my boy back.
Robert Greenlease was a successful businessman during the 1930s, the heyday of kidnapping-for-profit in America, so the snatching of his own son must not have come as a complete surprise. In Kansas City alone, three high-profile kidnappings had occurred that decade. The victims included the owner of a drug company, the head of a garment firm and the city manager. In each case, the victim was released after a ransom was paid.
These followed the hallmark American kidnapping, the 1932 abduction and murder of aviator Charles Lindberghs son in New Jersey, had prompted passage of the Federal Kidnapping Act giving the FBI jurisdiction in interstate kidnappings.
Child snatchings have occurred for as long as there have been haves and have-nots. In 94 BC, for example, a descendant of the king of Armenia Major was abducted and held ransom by a political rival who demanded a vast tract of land as ransom. He got it in exchange for the release of the heir.
The earliest use of the word kidnap dates to 1682. It then denoted the abduction of English boys who were shipped to America to work on plantations.
In the United States, the first stereotypical kidnapping an abduction by a stranger motivated by profit occurred in Philadelphia on July 1, 1874, when two men used candy to entice Charley Ross, age 4, into a buggy.
His father, Christian Ross, a prosperous merchant, placed a newspaper ad offering a $300 reward. Soon he received an unsigned letter the first of 23 ransom notes demanding $20,000 ransom. Police cautioned Ross against setting a precedent by paying a ransom. He decided to pay nonetheless, but communications from the kidnappers ended before he was able to.
A tip directed cops to New York-based burglars William Mosher and Joseph Douglas, as well as William Westervelt, an ex-Philly cop. Westervelt was arrested, but Mosher and Douglas could not be found. Five months after the kidnap, the pair were shot while breaking into a mansion on Long Island.
As Douglas lay dying, he said: “Its no use lying now. Mosher and I stole Charley Ross.” Asked where the boy was, Douglas replied, “I don’t know where he is. Mosher knows.” But Mosher was dead, and Douglas soon followed.
Charley Ross was never seen again.
Twenty-five years later, kidnapping was back in the news when Eddie Cudahy, 15, heir to an Omaha, Neb., meatpacking fortune, was snatched then released unharmed after the boys father paid a $25,000 ransom.
Investigators pinned the crime on Patrick Crowe, an ex-Cudahy employee with an ax to grind. Crowe fled to South Africa with the ransom money, then wrote parrying letters to Cudahys father in which he identified an accomplice and playfully suggested that he might return to Omaha.
The accomplice, James Callahan, faced trial in 1901, but he was acquitted with a clever defense ploy. Callahan was charged with robbery because Nebraska had no law against kidnapping a child older than 10. Callahans attorney argued his client had not committed robbery since Cudahy had given the money freely. Robbery required physical force, the attorney said.
Confused by legal double-talk, the jury acquitted Callahan. The incensed judge told the jurors, “I hope none of you will ever appear again in this jury box.”
Crowe finally returned to Omaha from South Africa and in 1905 was brought up on extortion charges. Remarkably, he, too, was acquitted.
Other notable kidnappings include:
- Billy Whitla, 8, son of a Pennsylvania steel baron, snatched from school in 1909, was released when his father paid a $10,000 ransom.
- In 1924, University of Chicago students Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold shocked America when they kidnapped and killed Bobby Franks, 14. They demanded $10,000 ransom, but the boys body turned up before payment was made. The thrill-killers were discovered and pleaded guilty to murder. They escaped the rope and won life sentences thanks to defense attorney Clarence Darrows famed plea for mercy.
- In 1927, William Hickman snatched and murdered Marian Parker, 12, daughter of a Los Angeles banker. Hickman was charged, tried and executedthe first American kidnapper subjected to capital punishment.
- In 1935 George Weyerhaeuser, 9, son of a lumber tycoon, was kidnapped in Tacoma, Wash., and released after payment of $200,000. Twenty months later, a playmate of Weyerhaeuser, Charles Mattson, 10, was abducted. The kidnapper demanded $28,000, but the boys body was found before the ransom was paid. The crime was never solved.
These cases surely passed through the minds of Bobbys parents as they endured a tortured 58 hours of waiting before the kidnapper finally telephoned the Greenlease home at 9 p.m. Wednesday. Family friend Stewart Johnson spoke with the man later identified as Hall, who asked, Have you the money ready? He muttered the word medal to verify his legitimacy. Before brusquely hanging up, Hall asked the family to be ready for a ransom drop Thursday night.
But Thursday came and went without contact.
Finally, the phone rang again at 6:30 p.m. Friday. The kidnapper told Norbert ONeill, another Greenlease friend, that he would call back later that night with ransom-drop instructions.
According to an FBI transcription of the brief conversation, ONeill asked, Is Bobby all right, sir?
Hall answered, He is fine but homesick.
Seven hours later, at 1:30 a.m. Saturday, Hall called to say instructions for the drop could be found beneath a mailbox at 29th and Holmes in Kansas City. ONeill and Johnson drove there and found a note directing them to another mailbox at 42nd and Charlotte, where yet another note told them to drop the money outside a church at 40th and Harrison.
It read, Leave money here drive straight home boy fine if money ok he will be home in 24 hrs.
But the men did not have the ransom money with them, so they returned to the Greenlease home. The kidnapper called again at 4 a.m. Family friend Ledterman nervously explained they were confused by the kidnappers instructions. Hall promised new, clear instructions on Sunday.
But the worst of the scavenger hunt was yet to come.
At 12:14 and 1:35 a.m. Sunday, Hall had two cruel conversations with Virginia Greenlease, who pressed for details about her sons well-being.
Hall said, We have the boy. He is alive. Believe me, he’s been driving us nuts We have treated him very well Well carry out our bargain if you carry yours out. I assure you your boy is safe. He is a hellcat. Lady, we have earned this money.
In the second call, Hall told Mrs. Greenlease that instructions for the ransom drop were beneath a marked rock at 13th and Summit. ONeill and Ledterman loaded the money into a car and drove there. They dashed out into a driving rain, found the note and returned to the car to read it.
It contained instructions to tie a white rag to the car aerial then drive to Highway 169, where yet another note would be found under a rock beneath a sign. That note read:
Go back to Jt (Viona Rd)Go west to first rd heading south across from lum reek farm sign. Drive in 75 ft. leave bag on right side of road. Drive home, will call and tell you where you can pick up boy.
The two men did their best to follow the instructions, but the rain, the dark night and a series of farm lanes left them confused about the drop site. They went so far as to stop to ask directions to the lum reek farm. They guessed as best they could and left the duffel bag with $600,000 cash sitting on the roadside, then returned to the Greenlease home.
At 4:32 a.m., Hall telephoned to say he couldn’t find the money. Ledterman and ONeill rushed back and retrieved the duffel bag, which lay undisturbed where they left it. The kidnapper phoned again at 4:58, 5:50, 6:17 and 6:46 a.m. in the first two to see whether the men had managed to find the money, and in the second two to argue with ONeill and Ledterman over whether they had properly followed his instructions. The men thought he sounded drunk.
The kidnapper phoned again at 10:15 a.m. Sunday to say he would call with new instructions that night.
But Ledterman was losing his patience. He was testy when the phone rang at 8:28 Sunday night. Early in the conversation, the longest of 15 calls from Hall, Ledterman said, Lets get this thing over.
Hall again promised the boy would be released 24 hours after the kidnapping, and for the first time he mentioned a location: Pittsburg, Kansas.
Ledterman said, you’re not bunking me on that, are you?
Hall replied, Thats the gospel truth.
When the kidnapper said he would call back with further instructions on the ransom drop, Ledterman had had enough.
He said, This idea of climbing the tree and looking in a birds nest for a note, then climbing on your belly somewhere looking for something under a rock with a red, white and blue ribbon around itthats getting tiresome. You know, you and I don’t have to play ball that way. We can deal man to man.
Hall said, There will be no mix-up tonight. It will go perfectly.
But Hall proceeded to give Ledterman his most convoluted instructions yet. He said he would call at 11 that night at a hotel with the phone number Valentine 9279. The catch was Hall couldn’t remember the name of the hotel.
Ledterman was exasperated. He said, Suppose I call Valentine 9279 and I don’t get an answer. How am I going to find out what the hotel is?
After much questioning, Ledterman finally extracted from the word-slurring kidnapper that the hotel was in downtown Kansas City near the Lasalle Hotel.
Ledterman managed to find the hotel the Berkshire and was waiting there when the phone rang at 11:30. Hall told Ledterman to drive east out of Kansas City on Highway 40, then south on a county road for one mile to a bridge, beside which the money should be placed.
Ledterman followed the instructions, and at 12:35 a.m. Monday, October 5, nearly a full week after the kidnapping, Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady took possession of the $600,000 ransom, the largest ever paid at that time.
Heady and Hall, driving a Ford they rented in St. Joe, headed east across Missouri on U. S. Highway 40, toward St. Louis. They had no luggage no toiletries, no change of clothes, nothing but the loot. After driving half an hour, Hall stopped to make one last depraved call to the Greenleases.
Ledterman answered.
Hall said, You can tell his mother that she will see him as we promised within 24 hours.
Ledterman pressed for details, but Hall said he would send a telegram with the time and place of release to the Western Union office in Pittsburg.
Ledterman told him he would go there and wait. He asked, The boy is alive and well?
Hall replied, And as full of piss as any kid I’ve ever seen.
Ledterman: I can quote you on that, can I?
Hall: Yes, you can quote me.
Ledterman drove that night to Pittsburg, 100 miles south of Kansas City near the Oklahoma border. He waited for two days to no avail.
The kidnappers brief, booze binge with the loot makes it all the more remarkable that this pair of staggering drunks managed to pull off a kidnapping and murder, then extract a record ransom.
They arrived in St. Louis thirsty at about 6 a.m. Monday, after the five-hour drive across Missouri, and found their way to the Sportsmans Bar on South Jefferson Street. After a few drinks, Hall phoned Bernard Patton, his lawyer friend back in St. Joe, and asked him to remove Headys name from the rental agreement on the Ford they were driving. He explained they had some trouble in Kansas City. Patton said he doubted he could.
Hall and Heady left the car at the Sportsmans, hoisted the conspicuous duffel into a cab and headed downtown to find a shop where they could buy more discreet luggage. While Heady drank Walkers Deluxe whiskey at Slays bar on North Broadway, Hall went to a nearby Army surplus store and bought a green metal footlocker and a large black suitcase.
They took a cab back to the Sportsmans, drove the Ford into a nearby alley and transferred the cash from the duffel into the new luggage, then drove to the Hi-Nabor Bar on Wyoming Street for more whiskey. It was the third bar they had visited in St. Louis. The clock said 9:30 a.m.
They abandoned the rented Ford and took yet another cab to yet another saloon, Colombos, on South Kingshighway. While Heady drank, Hall went to a nearby car lot and bought a used 1950 Studebaker with $425 in ransom money.
At about noon the couple rented a cheap furnished apartment at 4504 Arsenal St. Hall all but carried Heady inside because she was falling-down drunk. He noticed the landlady watching and called out that his wife was ill. The woman also watched Hall carry in their luggage the footlocker and suitcase.
Although she couldn’t see straight, Heady was not satisfied with the accommodations. She demanded to know why they were staying in a dive now that they were rich. Hall ended the discussion with a left cross to her kisser.
She passed out on the bed.
Hall went back out, drove the Studebaker a mile away, abandoned it and flagged down a cab, which dropped him at the Old Shillelagh Bar on Morganford Road. This was followed by another cab ride that included a stop at the Post Office, where Hall mailed $500 cash to lawyer Patton in St. Joe.
The cabbie dropped him at the Squeeze Box bar, down the street from the Old Shillelagh. He had whiskey there, then took a cab to Brownies Tavern for more of the same. When he finally returned to the flat Heady was still asleep.
He left $2,000 in ransom money beside a note: Had to move bags in a hurry as report came in on radio Girl next door looked funny couldn’t wake you Stay here and Ill call when I can.
He got in a cab with his ransom money and headed downtown, where, at about 3:30 p.m., he hooked up with one more hack, Johnny Hager, who doubled as a one-girl pimp.
Hall introduced himself as Steve Strand. He put five crisp $20 bills in Hagers palm and asked him to find a hooker.
As the cabbie would later say, I said to myself, What a fare I’ve got here. I decided I was going to stick with this guy.
Hagers girl, a big-boned blonde named Sandy ODay, was in the cab within half an hour. The three stopped at McNamees Bar on St. Louis Avenue for a get-acquainted drink. Hall asked about a motel, and Hager suggested the Coral Court, a landmark no-tell joint just west of St. Louis on famed Route 66.
Hall rented room number 49A and dragged his luggage inside. He put $200 on the bed for ODay, then counted out $2,500 and asked Hager to buy him a shirt, socks and underwear. Hager split at 7 p.m. to give the couple privacy, but ODay later said Hall was physically incapable of sex owing to drunkenness.
Hager returned at 10:30 p.m. Hall donned his new clothes. He wanted to stay in the room and drink, but ODay insisted on dinner. They went down the road to the Harbor Inn, where ODay and Hager ate while Hall drank.
Hager dropped his client and hooker at the Coral Court after midnight, then sped to the home of his estranged wife. He woke her up and told her about his deep-pockets fare. The man seemed to have a lot of money, Hager said, and he was making plans to get some of it.
On Tuesday morning, Sandy ODay woke up to find Hall holding 100 $10 bills. He explained he would give her the money if she would agree to fly to California and mail a letter addressed to Bernard Patton, his St. Joe lawyer. He apparently believed this would send the authorities on a wild goose chase. ODay gladly took the cash and was out the door as soon as Hager arrived.
A breathless ODay told Hager that she had peeked into lover boys footlocker and found it full of cash. Hager drove ODay to buy clothes for her trip. But instead of flying to California, she decided to travel to St. Joe to look into Patton and his client, Steve Strand. She, too, smelled an easy mark.
Hager spent Tuesday ferrying Hall on errands, with plenty of tavern breaks. Hall bought more new clothes, then picked up a couple of garbage cans as part of an abortive plan to bury part of the ransom money. He decided to move out of the Coral Court, and Hager found him a place that afternoon at the Townhouse Hotel, 5613 Pershing Avenue.
What Hall didn’t know is that his personal valet, Johnny Hager, had dropped a dime on him. Hager phoned his boss at Ace Cab Co., a mob confederate named Joe Costello, and whispered that he had an angel who was throwing $20 bills around like confetti and carrying around a fortune.
Costello called a dirty cop, St. Louis Police Lt. Louis Shoulders, an old cab-driving pal from years before. Shoulders was a shakedown artist who had two or three questionable fatal shootings in his record. He figured Costellos mark was likely an embezzler or robber. Shoulders and Costello had played this game before squeeze a bad guy for 50 percent, and everyone goes home with something in their pocket and a smile on their face.
At 7:30 Tuesday night, Hager rendezvoused with Costello, Shoulders and his driver, Officer Elmer Dolan, near Halls hotel. They followed Hager back to the room, and Shoulders and Dolan barged in behind the cabby as Costello waited around the corner.
Dolan and Shoulders arrested Hall, drove him to a district police station, booked him and placed him in a holding pen. The cops then disappeared for 80 minutes. When they returned they carried in the foot locker and suitcase. It contained $288,000. More than half the ransom money was missing, and Hall had spent no more than $5,000.
Shoulders went into the holding cell and questioned Hall about the source of the cash. Forty-five minutes later, Shoulders walked into the office where Dolan sat guarding the evidence. He told Dolan they had arrested Bobby Greenleases kidnapper. Dolan nearly wet himself.
Carl Hall gave up Bonnie Heady, and cops collected her from the room where she had been holed up drunk for more than a day.
Initially, Hall admitted to the kidnapping but denied killing the boy. But Heady gave the complete story, in an interview with FBI Agent J. E. Thornton.
She began, I’m trying to help you as much as I can. I’m just so hazy on some things that I can’t remember. If you had been drunk as long as I had, it does something to your brain. I just travel around in a haze most of the time.
When Thornton asked whether she remembered the day of the kidnapping, she replied, No, I don’t know what day it is half of the time.
The agent tried to address the womans motivation. He asked, You have some income of your own and have been a substantial citizen You know the boy had disappeared. Why didn’t you call the police?
Heady said, I should have, I know that. But I thought if I called the police theyd come and take him (Hall) away, and I love him very much and want to keep him. We had been very happy together and I wanted to keep him.
As she spoke, Bonnie Headys face was marked with cuts and bruises from the beating he had administered in their argument over the quality of their accommodations in St. Louis.
When confronted with Headys true account of the murder of the boy, Hall dropped his head, groaned and said, Its true, its true. Later that night, he sat in the interview room muttering, Money, money, money.
The body was dug up from a chrysanthemum bed in Headys yard in St. Joe before 9 a.m. that morning, Wednesday, October 7, and Heady and Hall were charged with federal crimes under the Lindbergh Act because they crossed from Missouri to Kansas to kill the boy.
They pleaded guilty to murder, a gambit that allowed their attorney to focus on avoiding the death penalty for the pair. A jury convened in federal court in Kansas City on November 16, seven weeks after the crime, to determine their fate.
The confessions were the most compelling evidence. The prosecutor took 45 minutes to read Bonnie Headys 25-page confession to the jury. Later, FBI Agent Arthur Reeder read Carl Halls 36-page statement as Robert Greenlease sat glowering just yards from his sons killers.
It was a brief trial three days and an even briefer deliberation. Jurors condemned Hall to die within eight minutes of retiring to the jury room. One juror voted to spare Heady in the first vote, but his mind was changed after less than an hour of back-and-forth.
The judge announced the death sentence and ordered Heady and Hall to the prison in Jefferson City, Mo., to await execution. They would not wait long.
From Death Row, Bonnie Heady wrote a note of apology to the Greenlease family. It read in part:
I doubt if this letter will do much good, but there isn’t anything we could do or say that would atone for our mistake I would give anything if I could go back to that Sunday in September and erase everything that has happened since. It all seems like a nightmare to me I don’t say I don’t enjoy money, as everybody does, but that was not my motive. I could have been very, very happy with Carl living in my house as I had been, but he was used to more money. My case was loving not wisely, but too well. I wanted so much for him to be happy I think anyone will find if you drink from one to two fifths of whiskey a day for a year and half that your brain doesn’t function properly. Since I have been in jail is the first time I’ve been able to reason clearly for some time.
Just after midnight on December 18, 1953, a scant 81 days after they committed murder, prison officials led Hall and Heady to the building that housed the prisons gas chamber. The walked without rancor to the execution chambers anteroom. An Episcopal priest led them in the Lords prayer. The two were allowed to hold hands for a moment, and they kissed goodbye.
They were blindfolded, led into the chamber and strapped into adjacent chairs. Before gas began seeping into the room, they spoke their last words.
Bonnie Heady said, Are you doing all right, honey?
Carl Hall replied, Yes, mama.
After the execution a grand jury indicted Officer Dolan and Lt. Shoulders for perjury concerning the missing ransom money. Dolan was tried in March 1954, convicted and sentenced to two years in prison. Shoulders was sentenced to three years after a trial a month later.
Joe Costello escaped indictment in the case. He invoked the Fifth Amendment against self-implication each time he was questioned about the missing money. Cabdriver Johnny Hager cooperated in the investigation and was not charged. He returned the remainder of the $2,500 that Hall had given him.
Nor was his personal prostitute, Sandy ODay, charged. (She never made it to St. Joe. She got as far as Kansas City, then got waylaid in a hotel bacchanal. Police found her in bed with another woman.)
The recovered half of the ransom was returned to Robert Greenlease. But the missing cash was a black mark on the St. Louis Police Department and a thorn in the side of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover for some years.
The FBI tried assiduously to track the missing bills all 16,971 of them by distributing copies of the serial numbers to banks across the land. Hoover ordered an agent assigned full-time to Greenlease ransom money duty. The agent, Howard Kennedy, spent 15 years on the assignment.
But only 115 of the bills turned up. Thousands more no doubt made it into circulation but went undetected.
For years, the FBI badgered Elmer Dolan to come clean, dangling the possibility of a presidential pardon. He repeatedly declined until 1962, when both Lou Shoulders and Joe Costello died.
Dolan said he was ready to talk. He was flown to Washington that September, and Agent Phillip King took a six-page statement from Dolan that confirmed suspicions and added a few details.
The cop said Lt. Shoulders passed the money-laden luggage to Costello outside the hotel before they took Carl Hall in for booking. Costello took the money home. Shoulders and Dolan went back to Costellos place after booking Hall. Costello had removed half the money from the luggage. Dolan said Shoulders offered him $50,000.
Dolan said he told Shoulders, I don’t want anything to do with that crap.
Shoulders replied, You really don’t have anything to say about it.
Dolan said he lied to protect Shoulders and Costello because he feared for his life. While he said he didn’t take the cash offered him, he did accept $1,500 in hush money from Costello after he was released from prison. It was Christmastime, Dolan said, and he had a wife and six kids.
At J. Edgar Hoovers urging, President Lyndon Johnson pardoned Elmer Dolan in 1965.
The FBI believes Costello laundered the money through St. Louis mob boss John Vitale, who had connections with the Chicago mob.
After the murder of Bobby Greenlease, FBI Director Hoover issued a directive asking schools and youth organizations to review safety procedures to combat stranger kidnappings.
“Assuredly, a more heinous crime cannot be conceived,” Hoover wrote.
Most schools changed procedures for removal of pupils by non-parents, including the use of emergency contact cards that authorized certain individuals to pick up a child. Such a system might have saved Bobby Greenlease.
Since the 1970s, an explosion of parental kidnappings related to custody disputes a trend author Paula Fass calls the democratization of kidnapping has created a new challenge for schools in trying to sort out authorization issues.
How many kidnappings are there in America? The most recent U. S. Department of Justice study, conducted in 2002 with statistics for the year 1999, estimated that nearly 800,000 children were listed as missing.
More than half of those were considered runaways. About 204,000 were family abductions, and some 58,000 of the cases involved abductions by non-family members. Just 115 of those were victims of what authorities call stereotypical kidnappings, or abductions with financial or sexual motives. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children says that about 100 such incidents are reported each year. In three of four of those cases, the abducted child is killed within three hours, just as in the Greenlease case.
Today, technology might have hastened the arrest of the boys killers.
The insertion of a microchip into a ransom bundle, for example, allows authorities to trace its movement, and advanced telephone tracking technology might have led police to the kidnappers during one of the many phone calls they made to the Greenlease residence before the money drop occurred.
Bobby Greenleases parents took refuge in their Catholic faith after the murder, and they made frequent visits to his burial site, the Abbey Mausoleum at Forest Hills Cemetery in Kansas City. Virginia and Robert Greenlease drew particular comfort from the Rev. Joseph Freeman, a Jesuit priest from Rockhurst College in Kansas City. The couple would never forget the priests kindness.
They funded a permanent position named in Freemans honor on the schools philosophy faculty, and over the years they continued to donate generously to the school in their sons memory.
The Greenleases financed construction of a library and art gallery for the college and in 1962 donated land for a new affiliated high school. The school property was named the Greenlease Memorial Campus.
The couple lived long lives. None of their offspring was so fortunate.
Bobbys adopted half-brother, Paul, died in 1964, at age 47. Bobbys full sister, Virginia Sue, also died young, at age 43, in 1984.
The causes of the deaths have been obscured by time, but a cousin of the family said of Virginia Sue Greenlease, The sister never grew up to be a happy, normal person. What happened to her brother had a bad effect on her.
Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr. lived for 16 years after the kidnapping. He died on September 17, 1969, at age 87. The mother, Virginia, died at age 91 on September 24, 2001, five days short of the 48th anniversary of the kidnapping.
She left $1 million each to Rockhurst College and Rockhurst High School in the names of Robert Greenlease Jr. and Sr.
Books
James Deakin, A Grave for Bobby, 1990, New York, William Morrow/Berkeley
Paula Fass, Kidnapped: Child Abduction in America, 1999, Harvard University Press.
Ann Hagedorn, Ransom: The Untold Story of International Kidnapping, 1998, Henry Holt & Co.
Newspaper Stories
Greenlease kidnapping changed child safety ideas, by the Associated Press, Jefferson City, Mo., News Tribune, Sept. 29, 2003.
The Greenlease Kidnapping, by John M. McGuire, St. LouisPost-Dispatch, September 28, 2003.
Greenlease kidnapping happened 50 years ago today, by Brian Burnes, Kansas City Star, Sept. 28, 2003.
Virginia Greenlease, benefactor of Rockhurst schools, is dead at 91, by Tim Higgins, Kansas City Star, Sept. 25, 2001.
FBI Files Unlock Mystery of Greenlease Ransom, by Sue Ann Wood and Edward W. OBrien, St. LouisGlobe-Democrat, Oct. 8, 1982.
Other Resources
FBI Files: The Greenlease Kidnapping
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
FBI Famous Cases account of the Greenlease kidnapping:
Ransom Kidnapping in America, by Patterson Smith, AB Bookmans’ Weekly, April 23, 1990.