Word: ransoming
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Covering kidnapings has always posed a special challenge to newsmen. They must weigh their responsibility to inform readers fascinated by the compelling drama of a kidnaping against the risk of further endangering the victim's life through premature exposure of ransom or rescue plans. "There's a problem of balance," says Minneapolis Tribune Managing Editor Wallace Allen, "between a person's life and the public's right to know...
After Mrs. Kronholm's abductors got in touch with an FBI agent impersonating her husband, he began relaying coded messages over the police radio on how the $200,000 ransom demand should be delivered. Other agents received the messages, which kept referring on the air to "the package"; the messages were also overheard by anyone, including newsmen, who happened to be monitoring weather reports on a citizens' band frequency close to the police radio wave length. Though the FBI had hoped to keep its contacts with the kidnapers secret-it still did not know where Mrs. Kronholm...
...Warm. Meanwhile, Trib Reporter Harley Sorensen, 42, set out in his car on the third night after the kidnaping to try to locate the ransom "drop" point. Following instructions from his city desk via a short-wave receiver, Sorensen cruised through the drop area until he saw a car that he had been following stop by a phone booth on a lonely road. He presumed that it was the agent impersonating Mrs. Kronholm's husband, and he pulled his auto into a side road, hoping to witness what few reporters ever have: the drop-off and possible pickup...
...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...
...hundred-dollar bills into briefcases and stowed them in a car that was then driven to a rendezvous with Argentine guerrillas of the Marxist People's Revolutionary Army. The $14.2 million payoff earned Exxon the unenviable distinction of having forked over what is probably the highest ransom ever collected by kidnapers. (How much, if any, is covered by insurance [TIME, March 18] is unknown.) The company sought the release of Victor E. Samuelson, 36, a refinery manager who was abducted on Dec. 6. At week's end Samuelson still had not been set free, but the ransom...