Uncommon Youth

by Charles Fox

  Then Piccolo came back. He was nicer to me. I said, “Let’s try to get it together as we were.” It’s strange, but really I could say anything to him. It was the kind of relationship where we could say, “I know it’s not your fault.” He told me everything about his family and his children. The guy had spent three months in the mountains with me and hadn’t seen his children. That must have frustrated him. I knew everything about these guys’ families. It would be interesting to do a chapter about them.

  One day Piccolo said, “Paolo, I think I’m going to let you go.” He said, “I want to get out of this. It’s going to take too long.” I was sure, as well, that it was never going to end. So I said, “I’ll pay you something.” He said he would take me away, do it separately from the others for fifty million. I would have done everything with him.

  Then he said, “I’m just going to let you go. I want to get back to my family.” He said, “Do you know how much I’m getting for this? Two million. To spend months with you in the mountains is not worth it.” So he said, “We’ll wait until the guys come down and I’ll take them around the corner. I’ll make some kind of sign and you run. I’ll have to do it when they’re around or they’ll think I let you go.” I was sure he would do it, but he never did. If he had trusted me, I would have trusted him.

  At this point in the kidnapping several elements, real or imagined, seemed to collide.

  Chace (notes):

  September 17th: The man Mario calls Bruno, who claims to be a disaffected gang member, met us in Campo Di Fiore [sic] at 12:15. He’s a tough little guy, dark, like he worked outdoors, Sicilian maybe. I don’t think his name is really Bruno. I gave him a little money yesterday and I gave him the balance when I met him today, $600.

  I told him, “Look, if you’re pulling my leg, it’s a game, don’t waste my time. Disappear any time. Now go make your first phone call and go out the back door of the bar and take off for all I care. I don’t want to spend a whole day playing games with you. Here’s your money. If you’re playing games, conning me. If you’re not playing games let’s try and do it right.”

  I didn’t want to waste an afternoon. He told me we had to go to Monte Casino [sic]. Brought Mario as driver and interpreter. I notified the police in the car, I went down the autostrada. The police could have stopped me at the gate but they didn’t identify me. We drove down to Monte Casino. I sat in the back seat and Mario drove with Bruno in the front. He was friendly. He said that when he was a young man he was involved in a personal vendetta and killed somebody, so it had always been a life of crime. He was forced into it, that was the way it was where he came from. He told me he had been in jail and he showed me his parole report—his pink book from the police showing he had been in jail. He said that two or three times he had gotten jobs as an earth moving equipment operator. We passed a yard with earth moving equipment stored out there and I asked him, “What’s the name of that piece of equipment and how do you use it?” Based on my own knowledge I think Bruno was telling the truth when he said he was a heavy equipment operator. He asked me if I could give him a job. He would like to leave Italy and work for an American company. Several times during the day he called into where Paul was being held. At one point driving high in the mountains in the Monte Casino area he said that Paul was in one of the houses up there. We stopped in Monte Casino and he phoned his contact. Mario monitored his calls. He talked to a man he said was called Franco who was with Paul and somebody else on watch. He said that he and Franco had been the ones who left Rome with Paul, he described the car correctly. Bruno said that when the other man left in the evening, Franco would bring Paul down to meet me at the bar. He said I should give Franco $600 too. Bruno left convinced it was all set and he said he was going to leave and he did. I wished him lots of luck in his future life and he said he was sure Paul would be down because the other guy was going to go and get some groceries and Franco would be alone with the boy. I waited in the street watching the bar until it got dark and then drove back to Rome. I thought I had Paul but I didn’t. Nothing came of it. Paul never appeared. That was the end of that one.

  Chace didn’t appear to flinch. He simply fell back to the idea of simultaneous exchange and came up with a plan he considered a masterpiece:

  On September twenty-third I propose a new plan to Fifty. One man should come across a footbridge over a chasm with Paul. I come out from the other end with the money and exchange it for the boy. They would have the better side as far as getting away from the area, and I’d be on the footbridge with the boy and couldn’t be following with my people.

  They took all the plans that I made and processed them through their councils. They came back and reported on them; it took time to develop these things, argue them out, and finally they’d reject them—reject them for flaws, not outright. They were considering simultaneous exchange. They didn’t like the idea of simultaneous exchange, and when they took my proposals back, they picked them apart. This was the steady grind of the negotiations as they went on.

  Chace’s uncharacteristic patience in these negotiations seems to reflect his determination not to be bested by these brigands and to demonstrate to Old Paul that the two of them were indeed peas in a pod when it came to parsimony. Chace had given up on Gail at this point and found himself a girlfriend, a Roman socialite whose apartment was not far from the Eden Hotel.

  However, the kidnappers had no such patience, as they made clear in a letter to Il Messaggero published in the newspaper October 5:

  We beg you to publish our ultimatum. The Getty family has fifteen days to find the money for Paul’s release. The fifteen days will begin from the day on which this ultimatum will be published in Il Messaggero. At the end of this period maybe it will be you yourself who will open the letter containing an ear with a lock of hair from Paul. After which if they don’t hurry up and bring the money, Paul will be killed. His family has offered a sum which is unacceptable, as though they were one of the poorest families in the world. Therefore we are now decided to end it in one way or another. After the fact that they have not kept their appointment, we will now pass to hard facts. Now, if they want Paul they have to say so seriously. In order to not lose any more time they will have to accept our conditions:

  To do an interview and publicly accept the offer on our terms, not theirs. We, in our turn, will let them know the way and the place for the delivery of the money. When this has taken place Paul will be released after three or four days. We have committed a crime with great risk and we know what to expect and one crime is worth another. Therefore, either the offer is accepted immediately or else as above said just as well—first we will kill and we won’t think twice about it. The crime will come of its own without the right amount of money.

  P.S. We have always used Paul’s handwriting in order to run less risk.

  Paul heard this ultimatum over the radio and the kidnappers moved him from the caves down the hill to a house in preparation for mayhem. There was running water in the house and apparently a telephone.

  Paul:

  Then we moved to the house. I’ll make a little diagram. The area was an olive-growing area, and this is where they kept the tools, right? Not very old, light-colored; from the outside it looked very modern, but still fucked-up with the cement not painted. Inside, it looked like a castle—the walls were this thick. People must have slept there sometimes because there was a bed. On the other side of the bed was a wooden chopping block, where I ate every day. I would eat on that side of the bed and the door was there. The door was tall, and on the other side was a corridor.

  The walls were cement. The chopping block I sat down on was where they killed pigs, too. There were spots of blood and shit all over. The floor was dirt. There was a window with shutters. They were closed, so it was dim. Very high ceiling, about twelve feet. Large. Completely empty, a lot of flypaper. There was a little Madonna picture over the bed, Mother Protector, with the name of the town, Sallopaco, written. The room was dark; they never saw
it.

  They spent the day in the next room, probably a garage. Here was the entrance. The entrance itself must have been half the size of the room. It was more like a large corridor. They had done it up. They were like ladies, these people. It was like a real little house with shelves with pasta and all kinds of food on them and white wine. They cooked there each day—big soups. They were excellent cooks. We even had chickens. The chickens stayed in the room with me. I had battles with them. I never ate so much chicken.

  They must have been so bored. They organized this whole thing where I was to tell a story. I had my back to, like, ten people, and one of them was the boss. They told me that the story better be good, because they had told him that it was sooo good, and I thought, Oh my God.

  13.

  The kidnappers were clearly not enthusiastic over the idea of mutilating their captive. When there was some confusion over the dog Tava, which Paul had reported as “bleeding from the mouth,” the kidnappers seemed to pick up on the idea and, working on evident concern that the boy was unwell, reported as much to Gail. She then agreed to meet with them. Chace saw this as an opportunity to get rough with the kidnappers. Once more he was oblivious to the fact that Paul was in the middle, whatever he had done.

  Gail:

  A note came to Iacovoni’s office saying “Paul is bleeding from the mouth.” Apparently he was hemorrhaging—coughing up blood. They were referring to his being ill at that point.

  I wanted to go and see him, with someone if possible, but I wouldn’t want to go to try and capture them. Chace was still trying to convince me: “If we could get one or two of them, we could break them down.” I didn’t want to know about that. I wasn’t interested.

  Once again the kidnappers prepared to meet with the family. They clearly expected to be ambushed and made plans accordingly. Paul’s words make clear at that point how strong had become the Stockholm syndrome, as the interdependency between captive and captor is known, and how much Paul’s freedom depended on the kidnappers’ success.

  Paul:

  They were nice to me the day they moved me down to the house. That night we had a discussion. There were lots of people involved but only Piccolo asked me the questions. And the next day they made me write another letter. “This is the last thing we can do to help you,” they told me. So I wrote a letter to Iacovoni with a copy to my mother. All letters were addressed to Iacovoni. One to the lawyer and one to my mother. I think I had written about twenty or thirty letters in all. I said, “I can’t understand. How can you do this? I wish I had been the son of an operaio, a workman, instead. You’ve been cruel to me. I’m not going to ask you for help again. I just want an answer yes or no.” When the bandits called, they said no letter had arrived. They didn’t respond at all.

  But then they said they had made an appointment with my mother. I helped them arrange it, I told them what kind of car my mother drove, the license plate, what kind of tricks to watch out for if Chace was coming. I really believed it would work. She was to drive south on the autostrada. They organized it all with my mother, and they were going to meet miles away. The day Iacovoni and my mother were going to meet the kidnappers they moved me down to the swamp, near the house. All of them went off to the meeting with my mother, I think—maybe they left one guy with me. There was very weird vegetation in that area, and strange rocks with moss that haven’t been moved in years, damp, flat, and tall—tall bamboo. It was cold, freezing, but then you stick your hand above the bamboo and it was hot.

  But my mother didn’t come. So then they said, “Okay tomorrow.” They really didn’t want to do it, but my mother didn’t come the next day. We were all disillusioned. Once, okay, but twice? Then they phoned her and she said to them, “Why should I believe you, I can’t trust you.” That’s what really pissed me off, you know. You can mess with them, but you can’t insult them, you have to treat them right.

  So now they said, “Okay, we’ll have to do it.” And I said, “When?” And they said, “We don’t exactly know. We have to get some medical things together.” They said, “About a week.” So I waited. They kept saying, “Tomorrow, tomorrow.” And then they finally said “Okay.” They said, “We can wait more if you want,” but I said, “Let’s do it.” I said I thought it was the only way. I’d still be there if they hadn’t done it. So they said, “Okay, okay, okay.”

  That Gail agreed to drive for hours in the middle of the night to meet with the kidnappers was surely a measure of her desperation.

  Gail:

  We arranged for me to meet the kidnappers because we felt we weren’t getting anywhere. They felt it and I felt it. They were terribly concerned about minute details. I had to bring my car. I had an Opel station wagon—it was beat up, the tires weren’t so good, and I didn’t have the proper licensing. They told me to put a Cynar sign on the front bumper so they could recognize the car, and leave at eight in the morning. I was told to take the autostrada south towards Naples, drive a certain way, never to exceed a certain speed, eighty kilometers.

  They wouldn’t let me see Paul. I begged them. I said, “Please let me see him. Please bring him.” They refused. I said, “My car isn’t in very good condition and I’m not lying to you. It really isn’t.” We argued back and forth. They said rent one and tell us what kind of car it is. I said, “Fine with me. We will talk before I leave.” I was prepared to leave in the middle of the night. I didn’t care, although, at this point I honestly didn’t think I was capable of driving a car and I was afraid I’d find myself halfway there on the floor of the car. We had established that I was coming, but I wasn’t really very pleased with various aspects of the meeting.

  They also insisted I come alone. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to go but they wouldn’t allow anyone to come with me. I agreed to go by myself, but Chace wouldn’t let me. He said it was the biggest trap I could possibly walk into. He said no. They were to call me back first or we were supposed to speak again, but we never did.

  It was Iacovoni who suggested a solution to the disappointment at the failure of this meeting. These people, the kidnappers, the Calabrese, might not be God-fearing, but they came from a Catholic region and undoubtedly respected the sanctity of the confessional, even if for them they were outside Italy. On October 15, the lawyer recorded from his office in Rome:

  The Calabrese telephoned. I had a long conversation with him and I tried to convince him to go to a priest in any large city of his own choice. The priest could then go to another priest, or directly to us. I explained to the Calabrese that the priest has to keep the secret of the confessional and that never ever in history has this secret been betrayed. The Calabrese refused, but not categorically. I therefore proposed that I organize a meeting between him and a priest of the Getty family, a Mexican, a certain Don Pedro that Paul knew well. The Calabrese agreed. I therefore invited him to telephone directly to the house of Signora Gail and I told Gail that they would call around four-thirty P.M.

  A second meeting was arranged. In the course of doing so, the kidnappers again threatened mayhem, but neither Gail nor Chace believed them.

  Gail:

  I was to meet them within the boundaries of the city of Rome. A monsignor was going to go with me if they accepted, because they refused Chace. They didn’t want to know him, see him. They didn’t trust him. I talked to this monsignor friend and asked him, “Would you need special permission to come with me or to talk to these people for me?” He said it really depended on what he had to do, but he would like to. He spoke on the phone to the kidnappers, and told me they were asking much too much. That they wanted everything their way, and that it was a very dangerous situation. He concluded that if they’d meet him or me in a place where we felt safe, then okay. The meeting was only to finally establish a price. He said they told him that if we didn’t pay, they were going to cut Paul’s ear off and mail it to us.

  I thought it was part of their whole bullshit thing. I just didn’t believe that they’d cut somebody’s ear off. If this
had been the first time they’d threatened mutilation, perhaps I would have. But they had been crying wolf, ranting and raving. “Hey, we’re going to get Iacovoni.” They were going to get his child. They were going to get everybody, the whole family, total hysteria. Chace agreed with me. So again the whole thing collapsed.

  They were wrong.

  Paul:

  About a week passed. I was trying, I was, to be tough. I would imagine the pain and try to think of a way to make it easier for them to do it. They were going to do it with scissors; that would have been just agony. I think three days before they did it, they said, “We’re going to do it tonight,” but they didn’t. The next day they washed me and disinfected me. That’s why my hair, you can see my hair is a little bit shorter here. And they shaved it right around there and cleaned it. They put me in bed and I knew it was happening because they brought me the radio back.

  They had taken the radio away for a long time and they brought it back that morning, so I knew. You know, they really liked to make me happy. It was a different one. It was a red one—bright red. The first one, the guy broke. So that day, I was really, really happy. They brought me newspapers and I felt really good with these guys. They opened the windows while I was writing a letter. Piccolo promised me, “Three days after the ear is cut off, we swear to release you.” I listened to the radio for the whole day—it seemed like ages. I projected myself to the day after.

  They told me it would happen at seven o’clock, and it didn’t. I waited. Nothing happened.

  October 21 …

  Paul:

  About four in the morning they cooked me four steaks. They said, “This is to help you.” I ate them all. They didn’t eat. They said, “We just can’t. We feel so upset about this.” At about seven o’clock in the morning, three hours after I had eaten, I heard them come in and I heard all these sounds. They said, “Okay. It’s now.” They said to me, “Do you want to hold off for a couple of days?” And I said, “No. Get on with it.” They said, “Get up.”