Q. Was he dead when you got there?
A. Yes.
Q. Where was the other man?
A. He was gone.
Q. How was he killed?
A. With a gun.
Q. Where was he shot?
A. I don’t remember. I don’t even know.
Q. What did you do when you found him in this condition?
A. I had to bury him.
Q. Where did you bury him?
A. In the backyard.
By extraordinary coincidence, the FBI had on file a name—Thomas John Marsh—that matched that of Hall’s fictitious associate. When agents showed Hall a photograph of Marsh, he would neither identify nor disavow that particular Marsh as his fellow kidnapper. Newspapers around the world, however, played up the manhunt for the real Marsh on their front pages, characterizing him as a tattooed sex degenerate who had eighteen arrests on his record. The real Tom Marsh had once been arrested in St. Louis, in 1950, and charged with a sex offense involving an eight-year-old boy, and later served five years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. According to FBI files, his left ring finger had been amputated at the joint, and a tattoo on his right forearm bore the inscription “In memory of sister—Tom Marsh.”
Acutely aware of the numerous implausibilities and inconsistencies in Hall’s confession, FBI agents pressured him to admit that he did not have an accomplice named Tom Marsh; and to admit that he, Carl Austin Hall, murdered Bobby. But Hall emotionally denied that claim, even while declaring, “I know that I’m going to die, and that I am more responsible than anyone else because I planned the kidnapping and it resulted in the death of Bobby Greenlease.”
Repeated questioning resulted in repeated denials, as he continued to insist, over and over, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” Rather, he said, Marsh was the one who killed Bobby, most likely in Heady’s basement. He said he had bought the lime poured over Bobby’s body two or three months earlier from a lumberyard because Heady wanted to revitalize the soil before planting tomatoes. When the FBI pointed out that tomatoes were normally planted in the spring, Hall replied that he was merely heeding Heady’s desire to plant some in the late summer months.
Bail for both Hall and Heady was set at $100,000 each, or about $1.5 million each in today’s money.
Around 4:30 A.M., police reporter John Kinsella, a big, friendly Irishman who worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed up at police headquarters on 12th Street downtown. A veteran newspaperman, he immediately sensed something in the air, a buzz. Before long, he learned that Chief O’Connell and an FBI agent had gone to the Newstead Avenue station in the middle of the night, and that they were still there. Most of the cops were Kinsella’s pals, but this time no one would tell him what was happening. Kinsella alerted his city editor, Raymond Crowley, who dispatched a reporter, James A. Kearns, Jr., to the Newstead station. Kearns quickly discovered that Hall and Heady had been arrested, and thought that he had a scoop, since he was the only reporter on the premises. But forty-five minutes later a swarm of reporters and radio and TV people rushed in, summoned by the police. All were brought into an office, where Hall and Heady were put on display as the kidnappers of Bobby Greenlease. A spokesman for the police department also announced that half of the ransom money was still missing.
At some point, Heady asked to go to the restroom. An FBI agent asked the receptionist, June Michael, to accompany Heady to make sure that she did not try to harm herself. Heady was weeping and mumbling, and in the bathroom said to Michael, “You know, he put his little hand in mine, and he was so trusting.”
Kansas City police arrested Sandra O’Day at 4:45 A.M. that morning in her room at the St. Regis Hotel, just forty-five minutes after she checked in. Upon arriving in the city, she had gone to a bar for a drink, fell in with a group of patrons, and joined them in a series of bar hops. Sharing her bed at the time of her arrest was another prostitute.
That same Wednesday morning, Hall was transferred to the City Jail downtown. Throughout his interrogation, he had not wavered on two key points: that neither Shoulders nor Dolan had asked him if he had a gun, even though a loaded .38 (the very one, of course, that he had allegedly given to Marsh) was in his telephone table drawer; and that he had not seen either the footlocker or metal suitcase from the time of his arrest. He remained quite emphatic that neither Shoulders nor Dolan carried any luggage to the car. Each had a hand on his elbow from the time they left the hotel until they got into the car, except for the brief time when Shoulders spoke to the mysterious third man in the corridor. He insisted that he had never opened the large metal footlocker after he originally filled it with the contents of the duffel bag, and had kept the keys to both cases in his possession until he was arrested. Further, he stated that he had opened only the smaller trunk on two occasions at the Coral Court, and at no point did either piece of luggage seem lighter than it had previously.
Heady at first was confused with another Heady who had been arrested in 1933 on prostitution charges in Danville, Illinois, and in Kansas City in 1935 on suspicion of being involved in a robbery, and also that same year for helping a prisoner to escape.
The vigil for Bobby ended very late Tuesday evening, or in the early hours of Wednesday morning. About seventy-five reporters and photographers from wire services, newspapers, national magazines, radio, and television were gathered outside the Greenlease home when a man passing by in his car announced that he had just heard a news bulletin over the radio that police had learned that Bobby Greenlease was dead. The newsmen rushed en masse to the door of the Greenlease home and asked the nurse who answered if they could speak to Ledterman. He appeared and said that the family had received no word about the police report. Moments later, he reappeared, walked slowly down the circular drive, as was his custom, and spoke to the reporters again. “The FBI has informed us that it is true,” he said. “That is all now.” Then he slowly walked back to the house.
Within minutes, telegrams began arriving. The messenger handed them to a policeman, who took them to the front door. The stunned reporters gathered around two car radios to hear the latest word on the kidnapping. Since much of the news was coming from FBI headquarters, the newsmen had to depend on the radio and, soon afterward, copies of extra editions of the Star to file their own stories.
Later, a man and a woman left the Greenlease home with Bobby’s sister, Virginia Sue. The man carried a suitcase, and presumably Bobby’s sister was being sent away for a few days.
At ten on Wednesday morning, the FBI formally announced that the body of Bobby Greenlease was found in a shallow grave at the rear of a home in St. Joseph, that two of his abductors were being held, and that a nationwide dragnet was being mounted for a third suspect named Thomas Marsh. The agency also confirmed that the family had paid a ransom of $600,000, and that about half of it was missing.
A half-hour later, Ledterman and O’Neill appeared in front of the Greenlease home, and announced that they had made contact with the kidnappers at approximately 12:05 on the previous Sunday morning, but declined to elaborate.
“But a man has confessed he killed the boy, so that is what it is,” Ledterman said, in an apparent reference to the fictitious Marsh. Hall had still not confessed to the murder. “We did all we could to get the boy back.”
Around 3 A.M., Kansas City FBI agent Richard Martin received a phone call telling him to go to Heady’s house and begin the search for Bobby Greenlease’s body. He and another agent entered through an unlocked bedroom window, and soon discovered blood on the floor of the basement garage. Going into the backyard, they used their flashlights to find the wilting chrysanthemums planted over Bobby’s grave. They then set about securing the area. Around dawn, a workman named Claude James walked by, and the two agents hired him to begin the digging.
It was a perfect autumn morning, with the wind gently rippling through the leaves of the maple and elm trees in front of the house. The grave was located on the north side of the porch of He
ady’s white house. A blacktop road passed in front, while the side street, Penn, was gravel. The white mailbox in front identified the owner as Bonnie Brown Heady. By ten o’clock, several hundred onlookers had crowded around to watch, and traffic on nearby roads was bumper to bumper. Only a honeysuckle hedge and ropes stretched along the road by the highway patrol kept them back. A few morbidly obsessed onlookers, not to be denied, brought ladders, while others lay on their stomachs in an attempt to peer under the hedge. Some even looked down from nearby rooftops. Neighbors described Heady as a quiet woman who kept to herself. No one could recall seeing her in the past week or so, and several local newspapers, still rolled up and tied with string, were scattered haphazardly on the gravel driveway.
Slowly, James began digging in an area measuring about four by six feet, gently scooping away the top dirt bit by bit. Withered flowers that had been blooming only days earlier were now mixed with the dirt and lime. About an hour later James reached the lime, which was about a foot beneath the surface. Bobby had been placed in the grave on his back, with the used lime sack thrown near his feet. Two undertakers, their pants legs rolled up, stepped into the grave, lifted the blue-shrouded corpse to the surface, and placed it on a white sheet. After the corpse was wrapped in the sheet, it was put on a stretcher, removed to an ambulance, and taken to the Meierhoffer-Fleeman Chapel. The blue shroud was not opened at the scene.
Waiting for the ambulance bearing Bobby’s body were Buchanan County coroner H. F. Moody and Dr. Hubert Eversull, the Greenlease family dentist. Bobby had visited the dentist shortly before going on the European vacation with his family. Dr. Eversull had brought Bobby’s chart, which showed six cavities, and positively identified the remains as Bobby’s. His body was badly decomposed, and his face all but obliterated.
The police also searched the basement where Bobby had been laid before he was buried. Despite Hall’s efforts to scour away all traces of the body, bloodstains were found on the floor beneath the steps leading down to the basement, on a fiber mat on the back porch, and on the handle of the screen door. The police also discovered bloodstains on Heady’s nylon blouse. A photograph of the basement garage published in The Kansas City Star showed a large oil stain from the station wagon on the floor; chicken wire that Heady had placed around the furnace to keep her boxer away from the hot metal; and a bushel basket containing several whiskey bottles.
The FBI laboratory later ascertained that a lead bullet recovered from a rubber floor mat in Heady’s Plymouth station wagon had also been fired from Hall’s Smith & Wesson.
On Wednesday afternoon, Dr. Fred B. Kyger visited the Greenlease home, and remained about forty-five minutes. When he left, there were tears in his eyes.
“I was here just as a friend of the family,” he told reporters, “and not on a professional visit. My wife and I had dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Greenlease the night before Bobby disappeared, and I delivered both of their children. Mrs. Greenlease is obviously disturbed about the events. That is about all I can tell you.”
Heady’s neighbor, Mrs. J. F. Hesselmeyer, was incredulous. “I used to call on her for Red Cross and Community Chest donations,” she said, “and she always gave.”
In Pleasanton, everybody was in disbelief that Zella Hall’s son had been involved in the kidnapping. Marsh Bradley, publisher of the Pleasanton Observer-Enterprise, said, “Everybody was just dumbfounded. They just couldn’t believe that a home-town boy had a part in the fiendish crime they had been reading and hearing so much about.”
Paul Greenlease, shown a photograph of his former classmate, remarked only, “He looks vaguely familiar.”
6.
Burial
The Greenlease family, their friends, many of Bobby’s schoolmates, and hundreds of sympathetic Kansas Citians offered solemn tribute to his memory at three religious services on Friday, October 9. The first was held at the Stine & McClure Chapel, where everyone simply knelt in silent prayer. Not a word was spoken. The funeral cortege then made its way to St. Agnes Church. Four pallbearers—Norbert O’Neill, R. T. Moore, attorney E. R. Morrison, and Robert Ledterman—guided the casket adorned with flowers to the foot of the altar. Virginia and Robert Greenlease, other members of the family, and close friends followed behind. Every seat in the church was taken, and the aisles and front steps were also crowded with people. About fifty of Bobby’s classmates from the French Institute sat on both sides of the church, while about twenty-five priests knelt in the sanctuary.
Archbishop Edward J. Hunkeler, prelate of the Kansas City diocese in Kansas, presided over the “mass of angels”—a requiem so called because it was often celebrated for children, with the altar decorated in white instead of the traditional black for adults. The Reverend Joseph M. Freeman, SJ, of Rockhurst College served as the assistant priest. A children’s choir comprised of students from St. Agnes Church sang throughout the service.
In his sermon, Archbishop Hunkeler told the congregation that Bobby’s suffering had been Christ-like. Directly addressing the family, who were seated in the front row, the prelate said, “Your sorrow is not in that the cheery person is gone. But in the agonizing fear that he was in the hands of evil persons.” He closed with the words: “His soul was blessed by God. Therefore, He has hastened to take it.”
At the end of the service, everyone stood on the church lawn with heads bowed as the funeral procession started for Forest Hills Cemetery. Upon arrival at the cemetery, the casket was carried up a long flight of stone steps to the abbey chapel, where about fifty family members and friends formed a circle for a brief “burial service for children” in the stone rotunda. Baskets of flowers were banked against the gray marble walls. The abbey contained only seven crypt rooms, and the Greenlease family had arranged for one only after Bobby’s death. Its doorway was draped in red velvet and tied with gold cords. The service began with a reading of Psalm 148, a song of praise, which in the Douay-Rheims translation used at the time began:
Praise ye the Lord from the heavens: praise ye him in the high places. Praise ye him, all his angels: praise ye him, all his hosts.
After a brief prayer, Bobby was interred in the crypt and the last of the mourners left the abbey. Shortly after the service, Robert Greenlease stood outside the family home and issued a statement expressing his appreciation to the Kansas City press and other news media, and to the Kansas City Police Department, for their cooperation.
“We want to thank the press, especially The Kansas City Star, for its fair cooperation in respecting family wishes in matters we could not discuss during the time of this trying ordeal,” he said. He specifically thanked photographer Dave Cauthen and reporter Franklin S. Riley, Jr. Referring to the Kansas City Police Department, he thanked it for showing “a willingness to go along with us in things we couldn’t have gotten on without.” By that he meant that he was grateful that the family was allowed to do whatever it thought best in its attempt to get Bobby back. He also thanked the city’s banks for their cooperation, and offered his “sincere appreciation” to the family’s many friends. “At times,” he said, his voice trembling, “I know we were rude, short, and curt to our dear friends.” Also included in the litany of thanks were the hundreds of people who had sent letters and telegrams of support, even from as far away as Cuba, France, Germany, and Italy, and to the many “fine neighbors” who permitted the use of their telephones and frequently fed the press waiting outside the Greenlease home.
Many newspapers around the nation devoted front-page coverage to Bobby’s funeral, and it was featured in a heartbreaking, two-page spread in Life. Some papers also published editorials condemning, in the strongest possible terms, the murder of an innocent boy, and expressing an inability even to comprehend the scale of depravity that the kidnappers had displayed. One of the most eloquent, and outraged, appeared in The New York Times:
The Kidnapping
Most of us lead sheltered lives, in the sense at least that among the people we know and even meet casually there operates a rel
atively high moral conscience. Whom do we know that would torture an animal, kill a child? Thus when a crime of almost incredible inhumanity comes before us, like the kidnapping and murder of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease, we are struck dumb. When extreme cruelty is perpetuated by single individuals we tend, most of us, to lay the thing to a deranged mind. But when several persons conspire to snatch a child from his parents, put a bullet through his head, and then go on to torture the parents for days, we go wanting for an answer to the reasoning that underlies the crime. One can look among the ways of the wildest beasts and not find parallels to such avariciousness, cunning and gratuitous cruelty.
Laid bare now are the histories of these people. It is a tale of drink and depravity, of police records and prison walls, in which the prime mover is a rich man’s son who squandered an inherited fortune and turned to crime, his latest being the most terrible and sickening of all. But even given such personal lives, still one is forced against the wall for an explanation to the mental processes and rationalizations of this kidnapping and slaughter.
There never seems much point after the deed is done to speak out vindictive stricture against the guilty. But this crime is so heinous, so contrary to all human feeling, that no punishment the civilized laws of this land allow seems quite adequate.
On Saturday, October 10, the day after Bobby’s burial, the St. Louis Police Department launched an intensive search for the missing ransom money. At the unofficial level, hundreds and perhaps thousands of St. Louisans were also combing the city, hoping to find the money and, presumably, to turn it over for a reward. Popular hunting grounds included the 1,293 acre Forest Park, site of the 1904 World’s Fair. Only a few blocks from the Town House apartment where Hall had been arrested, it seemingly offered numerous tempting hiding places in its ample wooded areas and secluded corners. Other popular spots for treasure hunters included Tower Grove Park, directly across the street from the apartment on Arsenal Street where Heady had been arrested; the spacious Missouri Botanical Garden directly behind the park; various alleyways behind any of the many South St. Louis taverns Hall and Heady had stopped at soon after their arrival in the city; and assorted farm acreage, cemeteries, and woods as Route 66 continued past the Coral Court motel. In 1953, that highway ran directly through St. Louis, exiting southwestward toward Oklahoma.
Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease Page 12
