Frank Sinatra Jr. Kidnapping

Case background and investigation

Frank Sinatra Jr., the 19-year-old son of the singer Frank Sinatra, was at the start of his own music career in December 1963 and was performing at Harrah's Club Lodge at Lake Tahoe, on the Nevada-California border. According to the FBI, two 23-year-old former high school classmates from Los Angeles, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, had been following him from city to city for several weeks with a plan to abduct him and demand money from his father.

At about 9 p.m. on December 8, 1963, the FBI's account states, Sinatra was resting in his dressing room with a friend when Keenan knocked, pretending to deliver a package. The two men tied up the friend with tape, blindfolded Sinatra and took him out a side door to a waiting car. The friend freed himself and raised the alarm. Roadblocks were set up and police actually stopped the car, but the men talked their way through and drove to a house in the Canoga Park area of Los Angeles.

The FBI's Reno office joined the case within the hour, and agents advised the elder Sinatra to wait for a demand, pay it and let the bureau trace the money. A third participant, John Irwin, acted as the contact. On December 10 he passed on a demand for $240,000. The FBI photographed the bills and left them, as instructed, between two school buses in Sepulveda, California, in the early hours of December 11.

While Keenan and Amsler collected the money, the FBI says, Irwin became nervous and released the victim. Sinatra walked a few miles and alerted a security guard in Bel Air, who drove him to his mother's home hidden in the trunk of a patrol car to avoid the press. He was not physically harmed.

Agents traced the hideout in Canoga Park and gathered evidence there. Irwin then confided in his brother, who called the FBI's San Diego office, and Keenan and Amsler were arrested within hours. Nearly all of the ransom was recovered. At trial the defense argued that Sinatra had staged the kidnapping for publicity; the FBI says the evidence, including a confession letter Keenan had left in a safe-deposit box, contradicted that claim. All three men were convicted in March 1964, The Guardian reported. According to CBS News and the Associated Press, Keenan was sentenced to life plus 75 years, but his sentence was later reduced after he was found to have been legally insane at the time, and he was paroled in 1968 after about four and a half years. Frank Sinatra Jr. continued performing and died on March 16, 2016, aged 72.