Bobby Greenlease

Case background and investigation

Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr., known as Bobby, was born on February 3, 1947, and was the son of a wealthy Kansas City, Missouri, car dealer. In September 1953 he was a six-year-old pupil at Notre Dame de Sion school in the city.

On the morning of September 28, 1953, a woman came to the school and said that she was the boy's aunt and that his mother had suffered a heart attack. The school released him to her. The woman was Bonnie Emily Heady, who was acting with her companion, Carl Austin Hall. According to accounts of the case, the pair drove the child across the state line into Johnson County, Kansas, where Hall shot him later that day. They buried his body in the yard of Heady's house in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Over the following days the kidnappers sent ransom demands to the Greenlease family, giving the impression that the boy was alive. The family paid $600,000, which was the largest ransom paid in the United States up to that time. Hall and Heady then travelled to St. Louis.

In St. Louis, Hall's heavy spending attracted attention, and a cab driver reported him. Police arrested Hall on October 6, 1953, and Heady was taken into custody that night at an apartment on Arsenal Street. Both made admissions, and on October 7 investigators recovered the child's body from the grave in St. Joseph.

The two were prosecuted in federal court in Kansas City. They pleaded guilty to kidnapping, and a jury was convened to decide the penalty. On November 19, 1953, the jury recommended death after deliberating for about an hour, and both were sentenced accordingly. Hall and Heady were executed together in the gas chamber at the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City on December 18, 1953, 81 days after the abduction.

Only about $288,000 of the ransom was ever recovered, leaving roughly $312,000 unaccounted for. According to published accounts, two St. Louis police officers involved in Hall's arrest were later convicted of perjury in connection with the handling of the money. The missing portion of the ransom has never been found. The murder itself is considered solved.