Word: ransoms
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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About all the grave robbers could be charged with, unless they demanded ransom, was "interfering with the peace of the deceased" (maximum penalty: three years...
...overseer, controls a French conglomerate comprising 150 companies with 130,000 employees and annual sales of $4.7 billion. The kidnap vehicles and the Peugeot were found abandoned. Was Empain the victim, in the current European terminology, of a kidnap à 1'italienne, engineered by professional criminals purely for ransom, or of a kidnap à l'allemande, pulled off by terrorists trying to force the release of jailed compatriots...
Cranks purporting to represent various groups claimed responsibility. But it was soon clear that the kidnap was à 1'italienne. Along with a ransom demand reported to be $20 million, the kidnapers sent the baron's family a letter written by him and his identification card, plus further proof that they held him: a bit of flesh from a fingertip...
What persuaded the late oil billionaire J. Paul Getty to pay $2.9 million in ransom for his kidnaped grandson Eugene Paul Getty II was the 17-year-old's right ear. His Calabrian kidnapers had cut it off and mailed it to a Rome newspaper with threats of further mutilations. Last week young Getty, now 21, was working in Southern California on documentary films and no longer self-conscious about that ear. A new ear of tissues taken from his own body is in process of being sculpted at Stanford University Medical Center...
...average of eight out often of these crimes, or 13% more than in 1976, remained unsolved. Kidnaping, more often for profit than political motives-but occasionally for both -reached a record total of 76 in 1977. Since 1970, kidnapers have netted $175.5 million in ransom money...