The Saga of an Abduction

For eight days the agony imposed on one of the nation's wealthiest families was intense. The Edgar M. Bronfmans of New York, whose Seagram liquor fortune and other assets exceed $1 billion, feared that 21-year-old Samuel Bronfman II was buried in a box with a meager ten-day supply of air and water steadily running out. He had been kidnaped, and the kidnapers had demanded a ransom of $4.6 million, the highest ever asked in the U.S. Frantically the family tried to comply, but hitches kept developing. The wait seemed interminable.

The tension finally ended abruptly --and joyfully--at week's end as FBI agents and New York City Police staged a pre-dawn raid on an apartment building in Brooklyn. The lanky young Bronfman, newly graduated from Williams College and about to set out on his first full-time job, was found. He was weary and hungry but well. Two of his abductors were arrested, one at the scene, and police sought others. The FBI recovered the ransom, which had been arbitrarily reduced to $2.3 million by the conspirators. It had been delivered by Edgar Bronfman some 24 hours earlier in a nightmarish post-midnight rendezvous with a masked kidnaper.

The crime jolted a family long accustomed to the luxurious living that wealth affords--a world of multiple estates, private aircraft and gracious entertaining in a circle of New York's theatrical, intellectual and political elite. Edgar Bronfman, 46, owns a $750,000, 174-acre estate in Yorktown, some 35 miles north of New York City in Westchester County, and two fashionable Manhattan apartments, one on Park Avenue valued at $1.5 million, the other a penthouse on Fifth Avenue. Chair man of Seagrams Company Ltd., he is a handsome, hard-driving businessman with an often mercurial temper. But in the kidnap crisis involving his son, he displayed remarkable patience and poise under severe stress.

The abducted youth did not seem to fit the mold of either his father or his fiery grandfather and namesake "Mr. Sam" (who shrewdly built the family fortune but sometimes hurled dishes when angry). Young Sam has seemed a bit brash and arrogant to outsiders, but friends at Williams found him "relaxed" about his wealth and "even-tempered." No jet-setter, he was interested primarily in sport. Strong and wiry (6 ft. 3 in., 185 Ibs.), he had played tennis and basketball at Williams and possessed an encyclopedic mind for sport trivia. He had been looking forward to starting work as a trainee in the promotion department of SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, where he could expect to meet sport celebrities.

No Answer. The harrowing ordeal for Sam--and the painful suspense for his family--began shortly after he and his father had enjoyed a quiet, late, candlelit dinner at the Yorktown home on Friday night, Aug. 8. Sam stepped into the kitchen to compliment the cook on the meal, then left about 11:30 p.m., driving away in his green 1973 BMW sedan. He told his father that he might visit some friends.

One such friend since childhood, Peter Kaufman, said that he waited at a Westchester County bar to meet Sam, as previously arranged, but Sam did not arrive. Kaufman called the house of Sam's mother in Purchase, N.Y., about 20 miles south of Yorktown, where Sam had been staying while preparing a Manhattan apartment for use when he started his new job next month. There was no answer. Day by day, these events followed:

SATURDAY. At 1:45 a.m., Jose Luis, the butler at the Edgar Bronfman home in Yorktown, responded to a ringing telephone. It was Sam. "Call my father; I've been kidnaped," he told Luis. The receiver was clicked off at Sam's end in less than a minute. "He sounded very sad, very nervous," recalled Luis. "Sam is a very sweet boy." Edgar Bronfman notified the FBI and the local police. They soon found Sam's car parked in the garage at his mother's house, the key still in the ignition. His mother was away on a cruise. Servants in a separate building reported hearing nothing unusual.

Members of the family, learning the news, quickly gathered in Yorktown. Edgar Bronfman was firmly in charge. Flying back to be at his side was his former wife of some 20 years, Ann Loeb Bronfman, who had divorced him in 1973. Also present were three of their five children: Holly, 18, Matthew, 16, and Adam, 12. The fourth, Edgar Jr., 20, joined the family temporarily, then moved into his father's Fifth Avenue apartment to follow events from there. All through Saturday, there was no word from the kidnapers.

SUNDAY. A mailman handed a special delivery letter for Edgar Bronfman to Frank Vida, the doorman at Bronfman's Manhattan apartment on Park Avenue. It was a dime short in postage, which Vida paid and duly noted on the envelope. The letter was a curious two-page, single-spaced typewritten document from the kidnapers, and it contained these main provisions:

For Sam's release, Bronfman must pay $4.6 million, and the money must be paid in cash, with no more than half of the bills in an "uncirculated" condition and at least 200,000 of them in $10 denomination. The kidnapers would use the code name "Raven" in making contact with the family and would disguise their voices with speech-altering devices. To signal that the ransom was ready for delivery, the Bronfman family should place a personal ad, signed "Fred Bollard," in New York newspapers.

The letter also implied that Sam was buried alive or held in some sort of vault or cave, with only enough air and water to survive for ten days. Thus, if Bronfman did not respond quickly, the note warned, there might be a "tragic end for the victim." Said the letter, in an understatement: "Contemplate the position that puts you in."

The letter suggested a purely monetary motive for the kidnaping. It claimed that the abductors were "outcasts"--Viet Nam veterans once hooked on narcotics. They wanted the ransom to "give us a chance in life that we have been denied." A bizarre threat was added. If police sought to capture them before the ransom was paid, the kidnapers would use cyanide-dipped bullets to resist; if captured, they would commit suicide. Any ring member not captured would hunt Edgar Bronfman down and kill him.

The FBI experts found something startling in the letter: parts of it were taken almost verbatim from the ransom message delivered in the 1968 kidnaping of Barbara Jane Mackle in Georgia (see box page 13), who had indeed been buried in a box. But FBI agents theorized that Sam's abductors were stressing the Mackle resemblance to mislead police. The FBI doubted that Sam really was buried.

MONDAY. Edgar Bronfman left his estate by helicopter to assemble the huge amount of cash in Manhattan. A tape recording arrived by mail at his Park Avenue apartment. It contained Sam's voice, assuring his father that he was well but pleading for prompt payment of the ransom. Sam said he wanted to come home.

At Yorktown, the family restlessly waited out developments in the large English Tudor house. They mostly sat and talked to one another, sometimes napping fitfully by day, sleeping little at night. Young Adam, described as especially fond of his brother, tried to entice others into Monopoly games to pass the anguished hours. A score of FBI agents arrived at the estate to advise the family and monitor events. Up to 50 reporters and photographers kept vigil at the gates. Helicopters came and went, each flight sending rumors through the ranks of the watching press.

TUESDAY. Specific instructions for the ransom delivery were conveyed in tele phone calls to the Yorktown house. Apparently realizing the impracticality of handling $4.6 million in the denominations asked--the mass would weigh about 1,000 Ibs.--the kidnapers cut their demand in half, now asking for $2.3 million. The drop was set for Wednesday night. Bronfman was to put the money in a car and personally take it to John F. Kennedy International Airport, then wait at a specific public telephone booth.

The newspaper ads signaling cooperation with the kidnapers appeared in three New York newspapers. At least one had been placed by an FBI agent --a fact quickly discovered and reported by the city's highly competitive newspapers. It read:

JACK PLEASE COME HOME.

Your mother is very anxious, we will be happier in the future. FRED DOLLARD

WEDNESDAY. The kidnapers sent another taped message to the family. In it Sam expressed alarm over the newspaper accounts of ransom negotiations and urged that such reporting be cut off. He said that the revelations could endanger his life. (Justice Department and FBI officials in Washington shared this concern over press disclosures and talked of taking legal action against newspapers if Sam were harmed as a result.) The tape included music playing faintly in the background, reassuringly indicating that Sam was not buried. But FBI analysts learned that the tape might have been erased twice, then recorded a third time. The family feared that Sam might have been in bad condition or hysterical and had had to retape the message to suit his captors.

At the appointed hour, Edgar Bronfman, taking no chance of disappointing the kidnapers, loaded the originally requested $4.6 million in the back of a station wagon. It was stuffed into black plastic garbage bags. He drove to a parking lot at Kennedy Airport, then, while FBI agents observed from a distance, walked to the specified phone booth. At 8:10 the phone rang. Using the Raven identification, the caller directed Bronfman to another phone booth, in the KLM Royal Dutch Airlines section of the terminal. He waited an hour with no further word. At 9:30 p.m., the kidnapers called the Yorktown house, telling the family to get Bronfman back to the first booth at J.F.K. They reached him and he did so. Although he waited until well past midnight, however, the phone failed to ring.

THURSDAY. A third tape recording reached the Bronfman family. This time Sam's voice was even more urgent. He again protested the newspaper leaks and asked his family to stop "fooling around"; the situation was too "serious." Deeply concerned about the failure of the night before, the family sent a spokesman to read a statement to reporters at the gates of the estate. It urged the abductors to provide new instructions that were "clear, specific and practical" and "to renew their contacts by calling us at the number they originally indicated." The family had complied with all instructions, the statement said, but "the abductors so far have failed to follow through." They asked for fresh proof that Sam was still alive.

Despite the plea, there was no response all day. Bronfman, restive under the strain, went back to the original J.F.K. phone booth, pacing back and forth outside it for hours. Finally, the phone rang. "Not tonight ... tomorrow ... tomorrow," said a voice. One of the conspirators had apparently been scouting the terminal area and had seen Bronfman there. The arrangements were confirmed in another Raven call to Yorktown. The drop would be at 8 p.m. Friday night, same place. "No cops. No feds," warned the caller.

FRIDAY. Bronfman eagerly kept the appointment, this time driving to J.F.K. with just the $2.3 million in the trunk of a different car. Raven was punctual, but he directed Bronfman from one phone booth to another through a wide section of Long Island for four hours--a fairly standard kidnap technique designed to detect the presence of tailing police and prevent the tracing of phone calls. Accustomed to being driven by chauffeurs, Bronfman had difficulty finding his way through strange neighborhoods and traffic. At one point in Queens, he made a wrong turn, nearly hit another car in circling to correct his mistake--and was pursued by two angry men in the other car. Rattled, Bronfman sped up, and both vehicles raced past a police car, which gave chase and stopped them. Only quick word radioed to local police by FBI agents trailing discreetly at a distance prevented a disastrous delay that could have aborted the ransom delivery.

Bronfman resumed his course as directed, finally stopping near a Burger King hamburger stand in Queens. He was told to leave his car doors ajar and stand beside the auto. He waited that way for two hours. No kidnaper appeared.

SATURDAY. "Where is he? Where is he?" asked an angry kidnaper in an early-morning call to the Yorktown house. "He's f----d up again." A family spokes man told the caller that Bronfman was where he was supposed to be, waiting at the Burger King. Soon a phone rang in a booth near the hamburger place. Bronfman was told to drive to a nearby location, park, and stay at the wheel. He did so.

At 2:50 a.m., a white man, wearing gloves and a stocking mask, jumped into Bronfman's car. He directed Bronfman to drive through an alley and circle the block twice while he checked for any tailing cars. Apparently satisfied that they were unobserved, the man ordered Bronfman to pull alongside a car parked at a curb. Bronfman did so, then opened the trunk of his car. The kidnaper quickly transferred the bundles of cash to the trunk of the other vehicle. Said the man: "Your son will be returned. Go home and keep quiet." Then he drove off.

Unknown to the kidnaper, FBI agents had observed the ransom exchange and got the license number (969KXJ) of the kidnaper's car. Incredibly, neither the car nor the plates seemed to have been stolen. The number checked out to a Mel Lynch, 37, a New York City fireman, who lived in a six-story apartment house in a middle-class area of Brooklyn. Agents quickly staked out the house.

SUNDAY. Shortly after midnight, another kidnaper became nervous. Identified later as Dominick Byrne, 53, an Irish-born operator of a Brooklyn limousine service, he saw FBI agents near the Lynch apartment building. Apparently assuming that the kidnap plot was crumbling, he decided to fend for himself. Byrne sent someone to deliver a note to a police precinct in Brooklyn. Police notified the FBI and went to Byrne's apartment. He told them where Sam was being kept. When police rushed there, they found the building already under surveillance by other FBI agents.

The agents kept watch on the house for hours, awaiting Sam's release. As the time dragged on, the fearful Bronfman family finally agreed that he should be rescued. Guns drawn, local police and 30 FBI agents rushed into the first-floor apartment at 4 a.m. They found Lynch, who offered no resistance, although a .45 automatic was near by. More important, Sam was indeed there, blindfolded and bound. He was undernourished, but well. He had spent the entire time in the apartment, usually tied to a bed or chair.

The ransom was recovered from under a bed in an apartment rented by a friend of Byrne's. The tenant was in a hospital at the time and was not a suspect. Also found with the cash was another gun.

The two men being held, who for the time being were charged only with extortion, were cooperating with authorities. They told the unlikely story that two unidentified men had hired Byrne to drive them by limousine into Westchester County on the night of the abduction. Lynch, a friend of Byrne's, went along. The strangers then pulled guns, the arrested men said, and later forced them to pick up young Bronfman and another kidnaper, who apparently had seized Sam at his mother's house.

Authorities were checking out these claims by the charged men. There was no indication that they had any previous arrest records. Since Lynch was from Ireland and both men spoke with brogues, investigators also were exploring the possibility of any connection with Irish Republican Army terrorists. Some I.R.A. literature was found in Lynch's apartment.

Celebration. The successful freeing of his son provided a cheery uplift for the grateful Edgar Bronfman, who has had a series of recent personal misfortunes. Divorced by Ann, apparently because of his often open involvement with young models and society girls, he had gone through a bitter and highly publicized annulment fight with his second wife, Britain's Lady Carolyn Townshend. Last week he was to have married another young Englishwoman, Georgiana Webb, 25, whose parents own a country restaurant (Ye Olde Nosebag) east of London. During the kidnap turmoil, the wedding, of course, was postponed--although a truckload of flowers arrived incongruously at Yorktown nevertheless. At week's end there was an entirely different reason for bright flowers, Seagram's V.O. and celebration.

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