Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease

by John Heidenry

  However, newspaper delivery boys had begun to assemble in the neighborhood, and any passerby would be able to see the delivery point from the street. The two men returned to the Greenlease home for a family conference. Robert Greenlease and his advisers decided that a note should be written to the kidnappers, informing them that the money was in the city and at the family’s disposal, and using the excuse that it had not been available before dawn that day. O’Neill, who wrote the note, also asked the kidnappers to call with further instructions. He returned to the church with the note and placed it in the alcove, as Hall directed. A short time later, a passerby saw the white envelope containing the note, realized that it concerned the Greenlease kidnapping, and immediately turned it over to the police.

  When O’Neill and Ledterman returned to the Greenlease house, they noticed for the first time that Hall’s original letter of instruction contained a further note on the envelope:

  Go to your used car lot take money and change to dark used car rember you are being watched—if contact man is picked up boy dies if everything is okay boy will be home in 24 hrs. Go next to adress on envelope—next message will be under mail box. M. Take zigzag route make sure you arnt followed you keep you bargain we will keep ours.

  Meanwhile, Hall and Heady had driven around aimlessly in their rented Ford until about 4 A.M. They then headed toward the mailbox where they had left a further message, and discovered that it was still in place. Driving to a telephone booth located under a streetcar shelter at Brush Creek and Main streets, Hall again called the Greenlease residence to find out what had gone wrong. Ledterman nervously explained that the Greenlease family was confused by his instructions, and also that it did not have the money at home. He also expressed the fear that it would be daylight before the family could comply with the kidnappers’ demand, and said that a message for the kidnappers had been left at the church. Satisfied by this explanation, Hall said, “I will call you later,” and hung up. But he did not go to the church to pick up the message that they claimed to have left, fearing a trap.

  Hall and Heady returned to their home in St. Joseph. That night, Heady called a man named Robert Castle, who lived in St. Joseph, and instructed him to pick up her boxer and take it to the Velflick Kennels, explaining that she would be gone for several days. She wanted the dog to have proper care.

  Hall and Heady remained in St. Joseph until early Saturday afternoon, October 3. They then drove to the Park-A-Nite Motel in North Kansas City at the intersection of U.S. Highways 71 and 69, taking an end cabin. They signed in as Mr. and Mrs. V. E. Heady, of Boonville, Missouri. At 12:14 A.M. on Sunday morning, they drove to the Town House Hotel in Kansas City, Kansas, and Hall again called the Greenlease residence. O’Neill answered and immediately handed the phone over to Virginia Greenlease, who always sat near the telephone during Hall’s phone calls, and who by now was almost hysterical. The call lasted nearly nine minutes, the longest of any of the calls to the house, and Bobby’s mother pleaded with the kidnapper for the safe return of her son—who by now had been dead a week. The police recorded this conversation:

  VIRGINIA GREENLEASE: We have the money, but we must know our boy is alive and well. Can you give me that? Can you give me anything that will make me know that?

  HALL: A reasonable request, but to be frank with you, the boy has been just about to drive us crazy. We couldn’t risk taking him to a phone.

  VG: Well, I can imagine that. Would you do this? Would you do this? Would you ask him two questions? Give me the answer to two questions . . .

  HALL: Speaking.

  VG:. . . and we could follow instructions and have everything ready if I had the answer to these two questions. I would know my boy is alive.

  HALL: All right.

  VG: Ask him what is the name of our driver in Europe this summer.

  HALL: All right.

  VG: Do you have that?

  HALL: Yes.

  VG: And the second question—what did you build with your monkey blocks . . .

  HALL: All right.

  VG:. . . in your playroom the last night you were home. Now, one reason I’m asking you this is because we have other people who claim they have Bobby, and if I can get the answers from you, I’ll know you have him and he is alive, which is the thing you know that I want.

  HALL: We have the boy. He is alive. Believe me. He’s been driving us nuts.

  VG: Well, I can imagine that. He’s such an active youngster.

  HALL: He’s been driving us nuts.

  VG: Could you get those answers?

  HALL: All right.

  At 1:35 that same Sunday morning, Hall phoned again, suggesting that he had talked to his confederates.

  HALL: Lady, I called them and he wouldn’t say anything. He just dummied up and he wouldn’t say anything.

  VG: We need to know that you have the boy and he is alive.

  HALL: Lady, he is very much alive to date. He almost beat me over the head with a ball bat.

  VG: I know he is a very active boy.

  HALL: I know he comes from a good family. We have treated him well. We didn’t beat the information out of him.

  VG: Well, can you tell me how soon he will be released?

  HALL: As soon as we have the money, he will be released in twenty-four hours in another town.

  VG: We are anxious to see him. Can you tell me when he will be released?

  HALL: In another city in twenty-four hours. Believe me, he’s driving us crazy. I couldn’t get the information. Did my best—believe me. He talks about a parrot, Polly, and said he whistled.

  VG: We are ready to make the payoff, if you can assure me my boy is all right.

  HALL: The boy is well. I saw him this afternoon.

  VG: We are ready to make the payoff . . .

  HALL: We’ll carry out our bargain if you carry yours out. I assure you your boy is safe—he is a hell-cat—lady, we have earned this money . . .

  Hall then told O’Neill to go to “13 West Summit and you will find a note under a stone with a red crayon ‘X’ on it.” Hall also directed O’Neill to stop using the two-tone blue-gray Oldsmobile he had been driving, and to begin driving Robert Greenlease’s blue Cadillac. O’Neill and Ledterman drove to the intersection of 13th and Summit, only to discover that there was no such address as 13 West Summit. While searching the area for a note from the kidnapper, the two men were approached by a neighbor who had observed their movements and become suspicious. O’Neill explained that he was on a scavenger hunt, and that he was looking for “the last item and then I can go home.” Satisfied, the man left. O’Neill and Ledterman decided a large stone on the southwest corner of the intersection was the one under which Hall had placed the note; but, try as they might, the two men simply could not get the stone to budge. Finally, they resumed looking elsewhere, and found the right stone with the following instructions:

  Tie a white rag on your radio aerial. Proceed north on highway No. 169 (in Clay County) past the junction with highway No. 69 about three miles where you will come to Henry’s place. Turn back one-half block and across the highway under a sign reading “Oakview, Inc.” you will find another note.

  That virtually incomprehensible second note—and one that yet again contained the wrong directions—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 pickup boy.

  Translation: Return to the junction. Turn west on Vivion Road, also known as U.S. Highway 69. Continue to a road—Old Pike Road—across from a sign for the Lum Reek farm. Proceed for seventy-five feet. Leave the money on the right side of the road.

  O’Neill twice missed the turnoff. It was raining hard that night, and in the dark he and Ledterman became confused by the series of farm lanes about where exactly the drop site was. The two men also had no idea what a “lum reek farm sign” referred to. Continuing to head west, they finally found
a car parked outside a roadside tavern. Sitting inside were a young boy and girl. O’Neill asked them where Lum Reek was located and the young man told O’Neill to follow him. When they reached the road, he said, he would flash his lights. When they reached the spot, the man flashed his lights and drove on, and O’Neill swung down Old Pike Road—a dirt lane—for seventy-five feet. Then he and Ledterman deposited the duffel bag, weighing eighty-five pounds and containing the $600,000 in ransom, at what they hoped was the specified drop-off site.

  Hall, with Heady asleep beside him, had driven to Highway 69 near that point and saw the dark Cadillac sedan go by, and assumed it was the payoff car. After driving down the dirt road, he looked for the duffel bag, but could not find it. He then drove back to Kansas City, Kansas, and placed another call from a phone booth in the Town House Hotel to the Greenlease residence, and was informed that the ransom had been dropped off and that he should go back and look for it. Hall did drive back to look for it, but again could not find it. Calling the Greenlease residence a third time, at 4:32 A.M., he was told that the Greenlease intermediaries were on their way to pick up the money for fear that some unauthorized person might find it. Hall, who sounded drunk, apologized, saying the mix-up had been his mistake, and promised to call again later in the day. He was determined that the drop-off be made on that Sunday, and he again said that Bobby would be delivered twenty-four hours after the ransom was paid. Two hours after they had dropped the money off, O’Neill and Ledterman rushed back to pick it up again. The duffel bag had not been disturbed.

  Hall had made four calls that morning, sounding drunk each time. Most of the Greenlease family’s advisers had concluded by now that Bobby was probably dead. Hall had failed to provide any of the answers Mrs. Greenlease had requested. (On his last night at home, Bobby had built an Eiffel Tower with blocks.) Yet they were eager to cooperate with Hall anyway in the slim hope that the boy was alive.

  On Sunday afternoon, Hall and Heady checked into Tiny and Maria’s Hotel on East Highway 40, taking the end cabin. A very drunk Heady passed out and remained in bed for the rest of the day. Hall spent the afternoon laying out the route for the third payoff attempt, finally deciding on County Road 10E, which ran south off Highway 40 to a bridge a mile away that spanned the Little Blue River. The bridge, he decided, would be where the money was to be finally handed over. After he returned to the motel, he and Heady checked out, some time around 8 P.M.

  Hall had told the Greenlease family that he would call them at eight that evening, but he did not call until 8:30, apologizing for his tardiness. He placed the call from a Katz Drug Store at Lynnwood and Troost streets in Kansas City, and talked to Ledterman.

  “Let’s get this thing over,” Ledterman said.

  Hall assured Ledterman that he would send a telegram in care of Western Union that would tell him where to pick up Bobby.

  “You’re not bunking me on that, are you?” Ledterman asked.

  “That’s the gospel truth,” Hall replied.

  Clearly annoyed by all the mix-ups and inaccurate directions Hall had given the family, an exasperated Ledterman could barely contain his fury when he continued: “This idea of climbing the tree and looking in a bird’s nest for a note, then climbing on your belly somewhere looking for something under a rock with a red, white, and blue ribbon around it—that’s getting tiresome. You know, you and I don’t have to play ball that way. We can deal man to man.”

  “There will be no mix-up tonight,” Hall promised. “It will go perfectly.”

  So far, Hall had sent the Greenlease family more than a half-dozen letters and made fifteen telephone calls. Now, though, despite his assurances, he was about to give the family their most complicated instructions yet. First, he told Ledterman that, after the ransom drop, he should drive to Pittsburg, Kansas, a town one hundred miles south of Kansas City near the Oklahoma border. After registering under his own name at a hotel there, he was to contact Western Union. A telegram would arrive telling him where to pick up Bobby.

  He then said that the family should expect another call that night, at exactly 11:30, at a Kansas City hotel telephone booth with the phone number VAlentine 9279. At that time, said Hall, he would provide further instructions on when and where to make the drop. When Ledterman prodded him on the name of the hotel, Hall, who was slurring his words, admitted that he could not remember the hotel’s name.

  “Suppose I call VAlentine 9279 and I don’t get an answer?” Ledterman said. “How am I going to find out what the hotel is?”

  Hall said that the hotel might be near Linwood and Troost streets in downtown Kansas City, near the Lasalle Hotel, though he could not be sure. Apologetically, he also said that the hotel’s name might end in “shire.” The police quickly determined that the telephone booth was in the Berkshire Hotel.

  That evening, O’Neill sat in a car guarding the $600,000 while Ledterman went into the Berkshire Hotel. At exactly 11:31 Hall called, identifying himself as usual as M, and told Ledterman to head east on U.S. Highway 40 until he reached county Highway 10E, also known as Lee’s Summit Road. Ledterman was to turn south “alongside Stephenson’s restaurant” and continue for about one mile until he came to a wooden bridge. He was to throw the bag out on the right side of the road on the north side of the bridge. Hall indicated that he would be following from a short distance.

  Hall, parked near a filling station from where he made the phone call, eventually saw the dark Cadillac going east on Highway 40 that he assumed contained Ledterman and an associate. Heady was with Hall in the rented Ford as he waited, but she was too drunk to understand what was happening.

  This time, Ledterman and O’Neill succeeded in making the drop exactly where Hall had specified—an isolated crossroads on a county road east of Kansas City. The time was around midnight. Dressed as always in suits, with white shirts and ties and brown fedoras, the two men lugged the eighty-five-pound bag from the car and placed it under some underbrush beneath the wooden bridge.

  Three or four minutes after Ledterman passed by, Hall drove down 10E toward Highway 40, but did not see the bag, and continued heading south for several miles. He then turned around and headed north, turned off the engine and headlights, and waited. About ten minutes later, he turned on the ignition again and drove past the Cadillac, which was now coming toward him. As soon as he crossed over the wooden bridge, he stopped on the north side, got out, retrieved the duffel bag, and put it in the trunk. The time was now about 12:30 A.M., Monday, October 5.

  To calm his nerves, Hall had taken a quarter-gram of morphine before the ransom pickup, and he and Heady had also stopped frequently at various bars, before and after the drop, for a shot or two of whiskey. In addition, they also drank from a bottle of whiskey they kept in the car.

  After they picked up the money, Heady wanted to return to St. Joseph. But Hall decided to keep on going down the highway, though he had no particular destination in mind. Suddenly panicking, he feared that when he had passed the Cadillac containing Ledterman, the Greenlease emissary had been able to take down the license plate of the rented Ford.

  “Well, we go back there,” he told Heady, “they are going to be sitting in the front yard waiting for us, because it’s a chance, because I don’t know that they didn’t get that number. Maybe they didn’t. There’s only one thing to do, and that’s to get to St. Louis, and we will try to get straightened out there and make our plans from there.”

  They continued to argue, and finally Heady agreed to his spur-of-the-moment plan to hide out in St. Louis. But she insisted that, when they did get there, “Let’s go to the Chase,” referring to the city’s premier hotel. Hall, who was unfamiliar with the city and had only passed through it once on his way to Chicago, explained, “If I am hot, that will be the first place they will look, because they will turn every policeman out in the United States in this thing. That’s the first place they do is check the cabs and see if they went to a hotel.” Later, he said, “I’ll get a car and drive to an apartm
ent, rent an apartment where there won’t be any cab records of going to an apartment and renting it.”

  Hall had between $80 and $100 of his own money in his wallet. A half-hour after the pickup, he stopped at a bar on the corner of 31st and Forest streets in Kansas City that he knew would still be open, to make one last cruel call to the Greenlease residence.

  “We got the bag,” he informed Ledterman. He also jokingly remarked, “We made more tonight than we did all last week,” adding, “I might buy a Cadillac.” Once again, he assured Ledterman that he would send a wire in the morning to Western Union in Pittsburg, Kansas, telling him where to pick up Bobby, and promising him that the boy was alive and well, and “full of hell.” “You can tell his mother,” he said, “that she will see him as we promised within twenty-four hours.”

  Ledterman asked, “The boy is alive and well?”

  Hall replied, “And as full of piss as any kid I’ve ever seen.”

  “I can quote you on that, can I?”

  “Yes, you can quote me.”

  Ledterman and O’Neill left for Pittsburg sometime around three o’clock, arriving around 5:30 A.M. At the hotel, they asked the management to wake them at seven o’clock, when the Western Union office opened. After a brief rest, the two men went to the telegraph office as soon as it opened, informed the management that they were expecting an urgent message and needed it delivered to them as soon as possible.

  Still hoping against hope that Bobby would soon safely be returned to them, the two men had brought along a clean suit, new underwear, some socks, and a topcoat to keep Bobby warm on the return trip.

  After a fruitless two-day wait, the two men returned home.

  By the time Hall and Heady embarked on the 243 mile drive across Missouri, both were drunk. Since they had not thought to have a backup plan, neither had brought luggage, toiletries, or anything else that might prove useful on a trip. But Hall did have enough wits about him to pull the car over, soon after leaving the city, to change the license plates. Using a flashlight, he also opened the trunk and raised the flap of the duffel bag to make sure that it actually contained the ransom. Reassured, he wrestled out one package of bills consisting of about $6,000, returned to the car, and remarked to Heady that he had never seen so much money.