Word: kidnaps
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...gunman was identified as Ian Ball, 26, who apparently had hoped to kidnap the princess. In his car, police found a neatly typed but disjointed letter full of grievances against the royal family. The letter asked the Queen for a ransom of ?2 million ($4.7 million). Scotland Yard immediately launched an investigation to discover any possible accomplices; preliminary evidence indicated that Ball had acted alone...
Lloyd's of London is the only insurance group that openly admits to issuing kidnap policies. In the past several years its premium income on ransom insurance has jumped from less than $1 million to about $7 million a year. The policies cover the ransom demand itself and the often high cost of negotiating with the kidnapers. Some executives are insured for up to $20 million at a cost to the company of $100,000 in premiums over three years. The average coverage for one person ranges between $2 million and $5 million and costs between...
Though the article was discursive and heavy with detail, many editors happily rushed the story to press. After all, it was a dramatic tale whipped out on deadline. The Philadelphia Inquirer, however, wired Murphy its reservations: "Request urgent rewrite of first-person kidnap account. Suggest lead is in twelfth graf. Suggest perhaps you are too close to story. Suggest step back, take another look. Can you comply?" Constitution Associate Editor Hal Gulliver, who received the message in Murphy's absence, did not know whether to laugh or cry. So he replied: "In the unhappy event that one of your...
...with a form of political terrorism from which the nation has until now seemed mercifully immune. For years political abductions have plagued Latin America, and the victims have included U.S. diplomats and businessmen stationed there. Occasionally the virulence has struck spectacularly elsewhere in the world, as in the 1970 kidnapings by French-Canadian separatists of Quebec Minister of Labor Pierre Laporte and British Trade Commissioner James Cross. But in the U.S., political extremism has taken other forms, though the Berrigan brothers and their friends did kick around an almost comic-opera scenario to kidnap Henry Kissinger as part of their...
Within six hours of Murphy's return, FBI agents swooped in on a modest suburban home in Lilburn, Ga., 15 miles from Atlanta, and arrested William A.H. Williams, 33, and his wife Betty Ruth, 26, on kidnap charges. Williams, who described himself as a building contractor, had previously been convicted on forgery and stolen-car charges. Last week his bail was set at $1 million and his wife's at $500,000. Inside the Williams home, police found stacks of bills - all or almost all of the $700,000. Murphy positively identified Williams as the man who came...