With Joe Amsler in the passenger seat, Sinatra in the back, and Keenan at the wheel, they drove off in his 1963 Chevrolet Impala into a full-blown blizzard. Their destination: Los Angeles, 425 miles away.
“I was impressed by Junior’s coolheadedness,” said Keenan. “He was scared, but cool all the way. I wondered what was going on in his mind. I knew it wouldn’t be long before there would be major police confusion. So I told Junior, ‘Frank, somebody is likely to die tonight, and there’s no need for it to have to be you. Play like you’re drunk and passed out in the car if we get pulled over. If you say anything, there’s gonna be gunplay.’ ”
“You don’t have to worry about me,” Frank said, frightened. “I’ll play along. In fact, somebody might recognize this ring,” he said, taking off his “FS” signet ring. “So, here.” He wanted to demonstrate that there would be no trouble from him. Keenan was surprised by his cooperative attitude. “Okay, Frank, what I need you to do is take a couple of swigs of whiskey,” he said, handing him a bottle. “And then”—he opened a plastic container—“take these sleeping pills. If we get pulled over, you’ll look drunk.”
Frank did what he was told. “Is this a . . . kidnapping?” he asked.
“No,” Barry lied. “This is a robbery. But it’s gone all wrong. So we’re taking you as a hostage.”
“But to where?”
“We’ll take you to San Francisco,” Keenan lied again. “Then we’re going to let you loose.”
Meanwhile, John Foss freed himself and ran to the front desk in the lobby, where the receptionist sat, thumbing through a magazine. “Call the police,” he shouted. “Frank Sinatra Jr. has been kidnapped.” The operator called Gene Evans, one of Bill Harrah’s assistants, who telephoned the Douglas County sheriff’s substation at Zephyr Cove, five miles away. By 10:20 p.m. the hotel was swarming with police officials and state troopers. It fell upon Frank Jr.’s manager, Tino Barzie, who was staying in the room next to Sinatra’s, to call Frank Sr. Afraid of Sinatra’s reaction, and knowing his reputation for taking out his temper on the bearer of bad news, Barzie called Nancy Sr. instead.
Nancy was having dinner at her home in Bel-Air with Hollywood reporter Rona Barrett when the telephone call came. “Good Lord, Rona,” Nancy said, holding her hand over the telephone. “They’ve kidnapped Frank Jr.!”
“What?” Rona exclaimed, taking out her pad and pen.
“This isn’t a story, Rona,” Nancy said, upset. “They have my son! They have my son!”
“Well, my God! You have to call Frank,” Rona said, putting her writing tools back into her purse.
“Oh my God,” Nancy said, crumbling into a chair. “I can’t do it.”
“Should I?” asked Rona.
Nancy knew that Frank had ambivalent feelings about Rona. In fact, he was never sure it was a good idea having a reporter in the inner circle. She could only imagine his reaction to hearing from Rona Barrett that his only son had been kidnapped! “No, it has to be me,” Nancy quickly decided. Then she went back to the telephone. “I’ll call Mr. Sinatra,” she said, trying to keep calm. “How can we reach you?” She jotted down a number and hung up. Then, with trembling hands, she dialed Frank’s number at the compound in Palm Springs.
“Frank, they have Frankie,” she said. There was a pause. “They’ve kidnapped him,” Nancy said, now breaking down. “They’ve kidnapped our son!”
“Kidnapping My Kid?”
Frank Sinatra somehow always knew something like this would happen to his family; his greatest fear was that because of his fame, one of his children would be abducted. In fact, when Nancy was just two, there had been such a threat. An FBI agent named Peter Pinches posed as the Sinatras’ gardener for weeks to protect her. Nothing ever happened, but still, it was frightening for the entire family. And there had been other “crackpot” threats along the way, which is not uncommon with celebrities, so Frank was always on high alert. “Be aware of everything around you,” he always told his children. (On the Saint Christopher medal he gave Nancy when she first started driving were the words he had inscribed: “Be Aware.”) For his son to now be kidnapped felt as if one of his worst nightmares had come to pass.
Quickly chartering a plane, Frank flew to Reno, where he met with William Raggio, Washoe County’s district attorney and an old friend of Frank’s. He had wanted to go straight to Lake Tahoe but was unable to because of the blizzard. Arriving in Reno after 2:15 in the morning, he was distressed to find his plane greeted by reporters and photographers. The news was out. “I got no comment to make,” Frank said angrily. “Just get away from me.”
Sinatra and Raggio were joined by four FBI agents, Mickey Rudin, publicist Jim Mahoney, Jilly Rizzo, Jack Entratter, and Dean Elson, special agent in charge of the FBI in Nevada.
Sinatra called John Foss in Lake Tahoe. “Did they say anything about a ransom?” he asked. “I mean, what the hell is this?”
Foss was still so shaken he could barely speak. “No, Frank, no ransom was mentioned,” he said. “It coulda been me, Frank,” he added.
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t think they knew they were kidnapping your kid specifically,” Foss said. “I think it was random. It could’ve been me.”
“Yeah, right,” Frank said, unconvinced.
The Sinatra contingent then spent the next sixteen hours waiting for a call from the kidnappers. During that time, of course, Frank made numerous telephone calls to Nancy Sr. and Tina to make sure they were all right. He was also concerned about Nancy Jr. She was in New Orleans at the time with her husband, Tommy Sands, who was appearing at the Hotel Roosevelt. Panicked, she had wanted to come home, but the FBI decided it was best to keep her out of town and guard her in New Orleans in case there was some sort of conspiracy afoot targeting Sinatra’s offspring. “Just stay put, Chicken,” he told her, using her pet name. Nancy was frantic, though. She could always read her father; they’d always had that kind of relationship. It was as if she knew exactly what he was going through, and it tormented her. But she decided to pay heed to the warning and stay away.
Of course, Frank also kept Dolly and Marty abreast of what was happening; both became frantic back in New Jersey when they got the call from their son. He told Dolly the whole thing was a big mix-up. Only to his father did he actually use the word “kidnap.” Marty told Frank he believed all of it would work itself out. “I hope so, Pop,” Frank said. “I pray to God it does.” It wasn’t long before Dolly heard the truth on the television news: Her grandson had been abducted. “Marty and Dolly absolutely adored their grandson,” Nancy Sinatra would say. “He was their favorite. He could do no wrong. He represented immortality to them. He would carry on their name, their traditions. Grandma always called him ‘my boy,’ and vowed to leave him all her possessions. Now she never stopped praying for him. Her rosary beads were never out of her hands.”
After speaking to his parents, Frank sat next to the phone for the rest of the night into the next day with no sleep, chain-smoking, frightened, talking nervously to the agents about his life and career . . . whatever he could think of to take his mind off the unfolding nightmare. “Why don’t they call?” he kept asking. “Why don’t they call? What do we do? What do we do?”
At one point, Bobby Kennedy called. The two spoke for about five minutes. Bobby promised to do what he could to spearhead the FBI’s investigation. “We’re on it,” he told Frank (this according to what Frank later told his daughter Nancy). “I’ve got 248 men on it. There’ll be more by tonight.” Immediately following Bobby’s call, Sam Giancana called. What could he do to help? “Nothing,” Frank said. “Please. Don’t do anything. Let the FBI handle it.”
When Frank and Sam hung up, Sinatra said to FBI agent Dean Elson, “My God. I can’t breathe. I’m dying here.”
“You have to pull it together,” said the agent. “We’ll get him back. I promise you, we will get him back.”
“Kidnapping my kid?” Frank asked, bewildered “Tho
se sonofa-bitches have lost their minds!”
Close Call
Barry Keenan had problems. Roadblocks had gone up along the entire Lake Tahoe perimeter, which was under heavy police guard. A check was being made of every car entering or leaving the state. “About an hour out of town,” he said, “we came around a sweeping turn to U.S. 50 and Highway 395, and there was a roadblock way down the hill, about five hundred feet away.”
Keenan pulled over and got out of the car, acting as if he was about to take the snow chains off his tires, his mind racing as he tried to determine how to proceed. Meanwhile, a police car began to approach. Keenan ordered Amsler to “scram!” realizing that the authorities would be looking for three people. Amsler, at full gait, ran off into the heavy snowfall and head-on into a fencepost, knocking himself unconscious.
As Keenan began taking off the snow chains, the officer pointed a shotgun at him and demanded to know what he was doing on the road at that time of evening in a blizzard. Then he shone a flashlight in Frank Sinatra Jr.’s face, but he didn’t recognize him. Sinatra, drugged but conscious, said nothing. (By this time, Keenan had removed the blindfold and the tape from his hands.) The officer then got back into his patrol car and proceeded to the roadblock. How he didn’t recognize Junior and rescue him in that moment has always been one of the biggest mysteries of the case.
After Keenan got the chains off the car, he hollered out for Amsler, who was about fifty feet down the mountainside and just regaining consciousness. When Amsler climbed back up the hill, Keenan ordered him into the trunk of the car, realizing that they would have a better chance of getting past the roadblock if there were only two people visible in the automobile. Then Keenan got back into the driver’s seat and began heading toward the roadblock, proceeding cautiously. He hoped the authorities would let him pass through, but they flagged him down.
Keenan rolled down the power window of the car on the driver’s side; in an instant, a police officer shoved a shotgun into the opening. “But we’ve already been searched,” Barry Keenan protested.
“Well, boy, we’re gonna search you again.”
“I knew then that it was over,” Keenan remembered. “I knew that if they opened the trunk and found Joe in there, it was all over. We were so close to getting caught. Just as I was about to tell the cop that there was somebody in the trunk, the first officer who had seen us came over and said, ‘Oh, just let ’em go. I’ve already checked them. They’re okay.’ ”
“Okay, boy,” said the other wary officer. “Next time you come to a roadblock, you’d better stop, hear me?”
“Asshole,” a frustrated Frank Jr. muttered under his breath at the cop.
As he drove off, Barry Keenan breathed a sigh of relief.
“Shoot Me and See What Happens”
Back at the Mapes Hotel in Reno, J. Edgar Hoover telephoned Frank Sinatra and told him, “Just keep your mouth shut. Don’t talk to anyone but law officers.” But Frank did what he thought was best—he issued a statement. “Sinatra is ready to make a deal with the kidnappers,” his publicist announced, “and no questions asked.”
“They know that I would give the world for my son,” Frank added. “And it’s true. But they haven’t asked for money. I wish they would. Frankie wasn’t dressed too warmly, and if they have him out in the cold, what chance does he have?”
“There are fears for the life of the young Sinatra,” added Sheriff Carlson to the reporters who had swarmed over the Mapes Hotel. “There always is in every kidnapping.”
Meanwhile, Keenan drove along Route 395 in his 1963 Chevrolet Impala headed toward Los Angeles, his kidnapping victim in the backseat. Junior’s blindfold was put back in place and his hands taped behind his back.
Nineteen hours passed.
It was now December 9, 1963. “We finally got back to Los Angeles and to the hideout house on Mason Avenue in the San Fernando Valley, recalled Keenan. “By this time, Joe wanted to call the whole thing off. I had to keep Joe medicated just to keep him from blowing the whistle. ‘We’re going to go to prison for the rest of our lives,’ I told Joe. ‘Our only chance is to get the money and get the hell out of here.’ ”
“Frank, I got a confession to make,” Keenan told Frankie now that they were in Los Angeles. “This isn’t a robbery and you’re not a hostage. This is a kidnapping.”
“What are you saying?” Frank asked, still blindfolded with his hands tied.
“We kidnapped you,” Keenan repeated. “We’re not going to San Francisco, either. We’re in Los Angeles now,” he said as he pushed Sinatra along a pathway into the hideout house in Canoga Park, California, about twenty miles from Beverly Hills. Once inside, he took off the blindfold and pushed Frank into a chair, his hands still tied.
“You big dummies,” Frank yelled, his dark eyes now blazing, all of this according to Barry Keenan’s memory. “Are you stupid? You kidnapped Frank Sinatra’s son? Are you crazy?”
Keenan was not equipped to handle Sinatra’s rage. It was the first time he had seen it. “It’s gonna be all right, kid,” he said, trying to calm him. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”
“Untie me now,” Frank ordered. “I swear to God, you’d better untie me right now.”
“Give me your old man’s telephone number,” Keenan said, ignoring the demand. “We’ll call him, get some money from him, and get this thing over with.”
“No. The hell with you,” Frank Jr. said contemptuously. “I’m not cooperating anymore. Go ahead, shoot me. You want to kill Frank Sinatra’s son? Do it then. Just shoot me and see what happens.”
Instead, Keenan shoved Frankie into a back bedroom of the house and padlocked the door. Then he crumpled into a chair.
The Ransom Demand
After thinking it over, Barry Keenan remembered that Frank Sinatra Sr. wasn’t even in California, so he didn’t need the number after all. News reports he’d heard on the car radio indicated that Sinatra was at the Mapes Hotel in Reno. Keenan got that telephone number from directory assistance.
The next afternoon, December 10, John Irwin—who the kidnappers felt had the harshest, most adult-sounding voice—made the call. At 4:45 p.m., the phone rang in Frank Sinatra’s hotel suite.
“Is this Frank Sinatra?”
“Speaking,” said Frank—all of this according to FBI transcripts.
“It doesn’t sound like Frank Sinatra,” John Irwin said.
“Well, it is,” Frank replied anxiously.
Irwin asked if Frank could be available at nine the next morning. Frank said yes. Irwin then told him that his son was in good shape, that there was no reason to worry about him. Frank then suggested that he trade places with Frank Jr. “Bring him back and take me,” Frank said. “You know you don’t want him. He’s a kid. You want me.”
“No,” Irwin responded. “I don’t think so.”
“Look, you give me back my son,” Frank said. “Or I’ll tear you apart with my bare hands,” he threatened. “You give me back my kid.”
Irwin hung up the telephone. Frank sank into a chair. It would be another sleepless night for him.
The following morning, the phone rang again. Now the kidnappers had decided to let Frank talk to Frank Jr. Unbeknownst to them, the FBI was again taping the conversation.
“Hello, Dad.”
“Frankie?”
“Yeah.”
“How are you, son?”
“I’m all right, Dad.”
“Are you warm enough?”
No response.
“You okay, Frankie?”
No response.
“Are one of you guys there?” Sinatra asked, referencing the kidnappers. “Are you there?”
“Yeah,” John Irwin said, taking the phone from Frank.
Frank said he wanted to make a deal. In fact, he wanted to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. What was it that the kidnappers really wanted? Irwin said that, of course, they wanted money. How much? Irwin said he wasn’t sure; he needed to think abou
t it. Now Frank was losing his patience again. “I don’t understand why you can’t give me an idea so we can begin to get some stuff ready for you,” he pressed. Irwin said that Frank was now making him nervous. “Don’t rile me,” he warned. He said he would call back with further instructions.
“Wait! Can I talk to Frankie again?” Frank asked. Irwin hung up on him. “Jesus Christ,” Frank exclaimed as he slammed down the receiver.
A few hours later, John Irwin called back.
“So, what do you want?” Frank asked. “Just name the amount.”
Irwin said $240,000. “That’s what I’ve decided we needed.”
“What the hell?” Sinatra asked. “What kind of figure is that? You kidnapped my son for a quarter of a million dollars? I’ll give you an even million, nice and clean and easy,” he said.
“But we don’t need that much,” John Irwin said. “We’re not gonna take advantage of you, Mr. Sinatra. We just need $240,000.”
“You guys are nuts,” Frank exclaimed. “Fine, then. I’ll do it.” This time it was he who hung up the phone.
Frank then telephoned his friend Al Hart, president of City National, a Beverly Hills bank, and asked him to make the necessary arrangements; each and every bill would be photographed by the FBI. Then, because the FBI sensed that Frank Jr. was now in Los Angeles, Sinatra flew back to the city and waited for another call, now at Nancy’s home at 700 Nimes Road in Bel-Air. The estate was completely surrounded by reporters and photographers. Twenty-six FBI agents and over a hundred local police were assigned to the kidnapping case. This was big news—comparable in scope and attention to the notorious 1932 Lindbergh baby kidnapping—and at the center of it were three hapless young men who were just barely pulling off a Keystone Cops–like caper.
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