Random Disturbing Ransom Notes with Strange and Tragic Consequences (12 items)

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  (#7) Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr

  • Dec. at 2 (1930-1932)

  Prior to the JonBenét Ramsey case, the 1932 disappearance of the Lindbergh Baby was the biggest child abduction case that the world had ever seen. The son of a world-famous pilot was only 2-years-old when he was abducted from his home and replaced with a note that demanded $50,000 in exchange for the child. The ransom also included veiled threats: "We warn you for making anyding [sic] public or for notify the Police The child is in gut [sic] care."

  Over the course of more ransom notes, the captors increased the money to $70,000. After paying the fee, the kidnappers told the Lindberghs that their son was on a ship named The Nelly. Later, investigators recovered Charlie's body less than a mile away from the Lindbergh mansion. Coroners believed he had died the night of the abduction. 
   
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  (#1) John Paul Getty III

  • Dec. at 55 (1956-2011)

  In 1973, nine members of the Calabrian Mafia abducted John Paul Getty III - the grandson of an oil tycoon. Getty, 16, was on holiday in Rome when the Mafia took him to a mountain hideaway. Shortly afterward, Getty's family received a ransom note asking for $17 million. Getty's grandfather refused to pay the ransom, so the next letter they received came with one of Getty's ears and the threat: 

  This is Paul's ear. If we don't get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits.

  Getty's family reluctantly paid the decreased ransom, and their son was safely returned. Italian authorities convicted two of the kidnappers, but the rest of the men involved were acquitted. 
   
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  (#2) Marion Parker

  • Dec. at 12 (1915-1927)

  William Edward Hickman, 19, abducted 12-year-old Marion Parker from her Los Angeles school in 1927. After the abduction, Hickman began sending letters to her father demanding to be paid in gold certificates. He signed them as "FOX-FATE." One letter read: "Your daughter's life hangs by a thread and I have a Gillette ready and able to handle the situation." 

  After changing meeting places multiple times, the "Fox" and Marion's father finally met on a street corner, where Marion's father could see his daughter sitting in the passenger seat of the kidnapper's car concealed up to her neck by clothing and unable to move. Once her father handed over the ransom, Marion's body was thrown out of the car and a coroner later testified that she'd been dead for 12 hours. The courts hung Hickman for his offenses in 1928.
   
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  (#4) June Robles

  • 91

  In 1934, an unknown man abducted 6-year-old June Robles - daughter of Fernando Robles, the owner of the Robles Electric Company - outside of her school in Tucson. After the kidnapping, the man paid a young boy 25 cents to deliver a note to Fernando demanding $15,000 for June's safe return. The mystery man only referred to himself as "Z" and instructed Fernando not to speak with the police.

  After a lot of back and forth, "Z" cut contact with Fernando. Then the Governor of Arizona received a postcard mailed from Chicago that gave him instructions as to where June was being kept in the desert. It took highway patrolmen two hours to find June, who was locked in a small metal cage and buried under some shrubbery. She was alive and unharmed.
   
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  (#11) The Ransom Note For Toddler Charley Ross Was The First In US History

  In 2012, a Philadelphia school librarian uncovered what may be the first ransom notes in American history. The 22 letters, addressed to the kidnapped boy’s father, Christian Ross, first appeared after unknown assailants abducted 4-year-old Charley Ross from his Germantown home in 1874: 

  You wil have to pay us before you git him from us, and pay us a big cent to. if you put the cops hunting for him you is only defeeting yu own end.

  Then a second letter appeared: 

  This is the lever that moved the rock that hides him from yu $20,000. Not one doler les - impossible - impossible - you cannot get him without it.

  In spite of the Ross family's lifelong efforts, they were never able to find Charlie. Although the courts convicted William Westervelt of being complicit in Charlie's kidnapping, there's some debate about whether he was just a scapegoat or if he had actual knowledge of the abduction. 
   
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  (#9) Leopold And Loeb Typed A Ransom Note On A Stolen Typewriter

  In 1923, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb orchestrated a plan where they planned to kidnap a child for money, kill the abductee in a rental car, and dispose of the body. They decided on Loeb’s cousin, 14-year-old Bobby Franks. The duo then devised a series of steps the boy's wealthy family would have to take in order to pay the $10,000 ransom. 

  Leopold and Loeb typed the ransom note a stolen Underwood 3 typewriter. The note is mostly a description of a building, but it ends with "this is the only chance to recover your son." Shortly afterward, a police investigation began into Leopold and Loeb because Chicago authorities had found Leopold's glasses near Bobby's body.
   

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