Word: ransoming
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...caper involved the Dulce of Wellington, stolen by a slick artnaper from London's National Gallery in 1961 just after the British government had spent $392,000 to buy the Goya masterpiece back from U.S. Oilman Charles B. Wrightsman. While sleuths looked high and low, the thief sent ransom notes, first demanding full value, then offering to settle for $140,000. "When the fuss has died down, the painting will return," predicted Gallery Director Sir Philip Hendy. So it has, in good condition, wrapped in brown paper and left in a Birmingham railroad station...
Died. Edward Bremer, 67, St. Paul banker and brewer who was kidnaped by the notorious Barker-Karpis gang in 1934, gained freedom 22 days later on payment of a $200,000 ransom, but had seen and heard enough despite attempts to keep him blindfolded to help the FBI track down his 15 abductors, who either died in gun battles (Ma Barker, her son Fred) or went to prison; of a heart attack; in Pompano Beach...
...chasing after the killers. Even as the man hunt was underway, new terror struck nearby. Kidnapers seized Harold Eder, 61, one of Colombia's richest and most influential industrialists, from his ranch near Cali, beheaded Eder's police bodyguard, demanded 2,000,000 pesos (about $145,000) ransom, the highest sum in the sordid history of Colombian kidnaping...
...concerts in the Met's Grace Rainey Rogers Auditorium. Its priceless collection of 1,450 Greek pots includes all the known shapes of Attic vases across three centuries, except for one, an elusive type of lekythos. One corner of the museum contains an unequaled war lord's ransom of well-wrought jade in the Heber R. Bishop collection...
...Manhattan's Brown Brothers Harriman, fears that "the stage may be set for trouble" because of careless lending, and H. Frederick Hagemann Jr., president of Boston's State Street Bank, worries because "banks are more highly loaned than at any time since the '20s." Says Ransom Cook, president of San Francisco's Wells Fargo Bank: "The proper criticism now is that banks aren't conservative enough." If Senator McClellan's current probe does nudge bankers in that direction, some bankers feel, it may even be worth the embarrassment...