The next day, the kidnapping made front-page news when the newspaper ran a story under a three-column headline: “Child Kidnaped on a Ruse. Woman Pretending to Be an Aunt of Robert C. Greenlease, Jr., 6, Takes Him from the French Institute of Notre Dame de Sion, 3823 Locust.” Heady was described as “35 or 40 years old, about 5 feet 5 inches tall, weighing about 135 pounds, chunky build, reddish hair, wearing a white blouse, dark brown skirt.”
The paper also reported that a housekeeper at the Greenlease home recalled that, about ten days earlier, she had received a telephone call from a woman who said she was a representative from the public schools, and wanted to know the ages of the children in the family, and where they attended class. Public school officials denied conducting any such survey.
Cab driver Willard Creech was quoted as saying that, when he left Bobby and the mystery woman at the Katz parking lot, they headed toward a blue Ford that was either a 1952 or a 1953 model. (Heady’s car was a 1951 Plymouth.) But he was unable to continue observing them because just then a car honked behind him, and he was forced to move out of the way. The nuns at the school confirmed that Bobby showed no fear when he left the school in the woman’s company.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch did not run an item on the kidnapping and ransom demand until Wednesday, September 30, and even then relegated it to page 37. Front-page news in St. Louis included a story about the sale of the St. Louis Browns, the city’s cellar-dwelling American League baseball franchise, to a Baltimore syndicate for $2,475,000; and an item about the record-breaking 101-degree temperature on the previous afternoon. In other news, the first game of the World Series was scheduled to begin at Yankee Stadium, with the Bronx Bombers playing host to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
The days passed grimly at the Greenlease home. Bobby’s father at first held out hope that the kidnapping was the work of professionals, who presumably would be interested primarily in collecting a ransom and less likely to harm the child. Neither parent was able to sleep, except for brief naps. “About all we can do is sit and wring our hands and hope,” Greenlease told reporters. A local truck driver reported seeing a man, a woman, and a child who fit the descriptions of Bobby and his abductors in a red pickup soon after Heady left the school with the boy. Others called from as far away as Boston, Chicago, and New York. At Notre Dame de Sion, the 220 pupils took turns filing into the chapel in groups to pray for Bobby’s safe return. The public was also urged to be on the lookout for a six-year-old boy who stood about thirty-eight to forty inches tall, weighed about fifty-three pounds, whose lower left front tooth was missing. He was last seen wearing a white short-sleeved shirt, short brown linen trousers, dark brown socks, and brown leather shoes with a white leather tongue. Pinned to his shirt was a small bronze school medal with a red ribbon. The authorities included this last item in their description of Bobby, even though the medal had already been returned to the boy’s family, because the Greenleases felt that secrecy was essential in their negotiations with the kidnappers, and they did not want to make any information public.
Forty-eight hours after Bobby was taken, the police closed the Greenlease home to visitors. Both parents remained in seclusion, with Virginia Greenlease under the watchful care of a physician. Unaware that the kidnappers had almost immediately contacted the family, the press remained as much in the dark as the public, and continued to report that the kidnappers’ silence only deepened the mystery of who had taken little Bobby. Police officials admitted that their investigation had already reached an impasse. Another hypothesis now being considered was that perhaps a woman who was mentally disturbed had taken Bobby. Police quickly discounted the theory that professionals had taken Bobby, since the woman who showed up at the school could be readily identified if she appeared in public. Robert Greenlease now hoped that the kidnapping was the work of a hoodlum interested only in money, because that meant Bobby would be released when payment was made.
On Wednesday morning, two days after Bobby vanished, Ledterman drove Virginia Greenlease to mass. He, Johnson, and other Greenlease associates and friends were concerned not only for her health, but also for Robert’s, as he was now seventy-one and the strain was increasingly intense. Paul Greenlease arrived early each morning, as usual, to be with his father. By now reporters were calling from St. Louis, Chicago, Philadelphia, and numerous other cities, and in each case Ledterman’s response was the same: There was nothing new to report. Eugene Pond, chief of detectives, stated that the police were no nearer to a solution, and FBI agents publicly said that they would not become officially involved until the parents received some demand for a ransom—although, of course, two had already been received.
Later that same Wednesday, Ledterman—a genial, heavyset man who always dressed in a white shirt and dark tie—told reporters: “We have received about eight telephone calls during the day from cranks who say they have the child. I talk to the persons making the calls and ask them questions about the appearance of the boy or what he was wearing. That ends the conversation because they don’t know the answers. On several occasions the telephone rang and there would be nobody at the other end when you answered.”
Two nuns from Notre Dame de Sion visited the home on Wednesday afternoon, staying about an hour. The Greenlease home also became a popular destination for sightseers eager to see the scene of such national excitement.
The papers further reported that a considerable number of people had phoned police headquarters to say that they, too, had received calls from someone asking about the number of children in their home, their names and ages, and where they attended school. Police learned that a company trying to sell encyclopedia sets was making the calls, and it agreed to stop.
Heady, meanwhile, continued to live in a world that was half-fantasy and half-delusion. Around noon on Wednesday, September 30, she applied for a $10,000 loan at the Drovers and Merchants Bank in St. Joseph, using her 316 acre farm as security. Her intention was to pay her former husband $2,000 as a final settlement in their divorce, which became official at the end of October; and also to repay a $2,000 loan to the bank that fell due in January 1954. Some of the money would also be used to pay for a new hardtop Studebaker convertible that she had ordered from Carnes Motor Company, a local agency. The car was scheduled to be delivered on October 13. The balance of the loan would be used to pay for her and Hall’s traveling expenses to what she called “Old Mexico” until they could safely live a life of luxury in La Jolla. An updated version of their fantasies now called for them to invest in a motel that they would manage together. Both still agreed, though, that they would never be away during the winter thoroughbred racing season. They also planned to be married in Chicago the week of October 12.
That same day, mindful that she and Hall were still on a budget, Heady also returned several items to Bruns’ Hy-Klas Food Store and got a refund of $1.29.
Never once did she and Hall discuss dividing the money between them, or of separating and going their different ways after the kidnapping. In fact, Heady had suggested to Hall that she sell her house in St. Joseph and her farm upstate, and use the proceeds to buy the motel without having to resort to a kidnapping, but Hall vetoed that suggestion. He wanted much more money than those two sales would generate.
That Wednesday evening, Hall and Heady drove to the Coates House, a hotel on the corner of Broadway and 10th Street in Kansas City, to have dinner. A historic landmark that was once among the city’s fanciest hotels, with a marble staircase leading off an ornate lobby, it was their favorite place to have dinner. Grover Cleveland had spent his honeymoon at the hotel. Hall and Heady always sat at the same table, when it was available, and enjoyed exchanging pleasantries with the same waitress.
After ordering, Hall excused himself, entered a phone booth, closed the door after him, and stuck a handkerchief in one side of his mouth in an effort to disguise his voice. Then he dialed GIlmore 6200, the number of the Greenlease home. It was now 8 P.M., fifty-eight hours after Bobby had been taken from schoo
l. Johnson, who by now had decided to help monitor calls, picked up the receiver.
Hall said, “This is M.”
“What did you say?” Johnson asked.
“M,” Hall repeated.
He then mentioned the Jerusalem medal, and gruffly informed Johnson to have the ransom ready by Thursday night. Rejoining Heady, he finished eating his meal. Afterward, he and Heady returned to their home in St. Joseph.
The next day, Thursday, October 1, Heady canceled the order for the new Studebaker, explaining that she had changed her mind. A bank official remembered that she was smartly dressed. She then rented a blue 1952 Ford sedan from the McCord-Bell U-Drive-It agency on 7th Street in St. Joseph. Hall drove it to North Kansas City, with Heady following in her station wagon. He then abandoned the station wagon in the parking lot of a service station across from Lynn’s Tavern, stole another set of license plates from a car parked on a nearby street, put those on the rented Ford, and threw its plates away. Hall worried that passersby and casual witnesses might have seen a woman driving the 1951 Plymouth station wagon who matched the description of the alleged aunt who took Bobby out of school. He was carrying his Smith & Wesson as he made his rounds, but he did not call the Greenlease family as he had promised.
After returning to St. Joseph, Hall and Heady had lunch at the Hoof and Horn Restaurant. In the evening, he scoured the personal ads in the Star, which was delivered daily to Heady’s home, and saw the response to his classified advertisement that he had been waiting for. It read: “M: Meet me in Chicago Sunday. G.”
The following Friday afternoon, Hall drove to Kansas City and placed another call to the Greenlease residence between 8:30 and 9:00 P.M. Again, he used a handkerchief to disguise his voice. Evincing no fear that his calls might be traced, Hall—in this and every other call to the family—seemed in no hurry to hang up as quickly as possible.
O’Neill answered, and Hall told him that he would be calling later that night with the instructions for the drop-off.
“Is Bobby all right?” O’Neill asked.
“He is fine but homesick,” Hall answered.
In a sick joke, he claimed that he was even “earning” his ransom money because little Bobby was proving to be such a handful. He ended the conversation by saying, “Tonight,” and hung up.
Hall then began to mark off the route that intermediaries for the Greenlease family were to follow when delivering the ransom. He had purchased medical adhesive tape at Herman’s Drug Store in St. Joseph, and later some red chalk at a Katz Drug Store in North Kansas City. His first stop was at the intersection of 29th and Holmes streets in Kansas City, where he taped a note under a mailbox that told the intermediaries to proceed to 42nd and Charlotte streets and look under the corner mailbox. At that intersection, he used the chalk to draw a cross on a rock, and placed a second set of instructions under it. This second note ordered the Greenlease family to deposit the ransom money in an outdoor alcove of the First Brethren Church at 40th and Harrison. Accompanying Hall, as he laid out the delivery route, was an inebriated and completely oblivious Heady. As Heady later confessed, she wanted to stay drunk because her conscience had begun to bother her, and she did not want to think about the horrible crime she had helped to perpetrate.
On October 2, Edward R. Murrow on CBS TV News, still only a fifteen-minute evening news program with limited national distribution, and The Kansas City Star reported that the Greenlease family had received a demand for a $500,000 ransom. Ledterman, as family spokesman, immediately denied the claim. “No figure has been mentioned,” he said. “We have not been in contact with the kidnapper.” Murrow also reported that the family had been in contact with the kidnappers since shortly after the abduction, and that Greenlease was being subjected to a series of tests to prove his “good faith.” The newspaper further noted that “an advertisement in the personals column of the Star this week was said to be part of the ‘good faith’ test.”
“It was apparent that anxiety was mounting at the home,” the Star reported. “Ledterman said he tried to ease his tension last night by walking. He made ten trips around the circular driveway at the home, and finally went to bed about 1 o’clock.”
The Greenlease kidnapping was now a nationwide sensation. The abduction was not only front-page news in the Kansas City and St. Louis newspapers, but also on those of The New York Times and most other major newspapers. Time and other magazines also covered the kidnapping, and Murrow’s near nightly broadcasts about the tragedy made it the first American crime to be covered evening after evening on national television. The crew of NBC’s evening national news program—the 15-minute Camel News Caravan with host John Cameron Swayze—reported on the kidnapping from its position outside the fence of the French Institute of Notre Dame de Sion. Not since the Lindbergh kidnapping in 1932, and, in the previous decade, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb’s thrill-killing abduction and murder of Bobby Franks, had a crime so fascinated the entire nation.
The abduction had become international news as well, with reporters calling from England, Italy, and other countries. Both the public and the media, except for a very few reporters sworn to secrecy, remained unaware that the Greenleases had been in contact with the kidnappers, with both the local police department and FBI declining comment. Newsweek ran a news item titled “Where’s Bobby?” in its National Affairs section. A photograph of Bobby and his father accompanied the story over a caption reading: “Bobby and dad: No news, bad news.” In the absence of hard news to report, the Star noted that the fall foliage and a gentle rain had even “brought a scene of autumn tranquility” to the Greenlease estate. Indoors, though, all was suspense and high drama, with Bobby Greenlease’s life seemingly in the balance.
Many people assumed that organized crime was involved since so much money seemed to rule out anything an individual criminal was capable of planning. Kansas City, after all, had a well-deserved reputation as a haven for mobsters, and the era of Pretty Boy Floyd and Boss Pendergast still resonated in the city’s collective consciousness.
To assist in the search for Bobby, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters announced that it was printing a circular with a photograph and a detailed description of the boy that would be posted at union halls throughout the country. In Washington, the head of the AFL National Association of Letter Carriers urged the union’s 120,000 members to keep a lookout for Bobby. Reports of a woman and a boy in a car were now coming in from various parts of the country. In Wichita Falls, Texas, police even put up a roadblock after one such sighting. The Associated Press also reported that the Reverend Dr. Braxton Bragg Sawyer, a Baptist minister at Fort Smith, Arkansas, who broadcast daily into Arkansas, Missouri, and Kansas, offered to act as intermediary, but declared that under no circumstances would he deliver ransom money.
At 1:35 in the morning of Saturday, October 3, Hall again called the Greenlease home, this time from a bar located near the intersection of Troost and Armour streets in Kansas City, while Heady waited in the car. The bar was just about to close when Hall showed up. O’Neill answered and said, “Identify yourself.” Hall replied, “This is M. Ribbon.” This time he told O’Neill to go to 29th and Holmes streets, where he would find further instructions about delivering the ransom beneath a mailbox.
The police and FBI, while recording Hall’s phone calls to the Greenlease home, were complying with the family’s request that they be allowed to negotiate with the kidnappers directly. Law enforcement officials also agreed not to follow family emissaries when the ransom was delivered. The Detroit Times was to report months later that the FBI knew Hall was the kidnapper the day after Bobby disappeared. But the bureau did not know where he was, and feared arresting him because of the possibility that Hall belonged to a gang. Hall’s first ransom note had been immediately flown to Washington, where his fingerprints were matched with those of his service records.*
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*Hall’s correspondence with the Greenlease family was undoubtedly forwarded to FBI h
eadquarters in Washington, D.C., for forensic examination, as the Detroit Times noted. But nowhere in the FBI files on the Greenlease case is there any evidence that the agency knew that Carl Austin Hall was one of the kidnappers, or even that fingerprints of any kind had been successfully taken from the ransom demands. Nor did any other newspaper or news sources subsequently claim that the FBI knew the identity of the kidnapper soon after Bobby’s abduction.
O’Neill and Johnson drove to the spot, and after considerable searching found a piece of paper rolled into one of the four legs of the box. Driving away from the scene, they quickly opened the note, only to discover that they had unearthed a grade school pupil’s spelling test, with three words out of twenty-five misspelled and marked in red pencil by a teacher. Frantically rushing back to the mailbox, they resumed their search, and this time found the piece of paper taped to the underside. The note said: “Drive to the Greenlease used car lot at 29th and McGee. Leave your car. Exchange it for the second car in the middle row—a black one.”
The two men did as directed, but since no one was on duty at the lot at that hour, no keys were available for the black car. Having no choice but to ignore that part of the note, they followed the next instruction, which directed them to another mailbox at 42nd and Charlotte streets. The printing was so childish that at first they wondered if Bobby had been made to write the note, though a handwriting expert later determined that he had not.
This time O’Neill and Johnson easily discovered the second note taped to the underside of the mailbox. It told them that the designated ransom delivery spot was the “first alcove of the First Brethren church” at 40th and Harrison. Two outdoor alcoves were built into the church’s wall. (As with his first ransom note, Hall had again provided inaccurate instructions. The church’s actual name was the Telescope Memorial Evangelical United Brethren Church.) This note instructed them: “Leave money here drive straight home boy fine if money ok he will be home in 24 hrs.”
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 5