Frank Sinatra Jr. Kidnapping - Reality or Hoax?
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Thirty-five years ago, just after the death of President Kennedy and just before the arrival of the Beatles, three West Los Angeles men kidnapped 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. from a motel in Lake Tahoe. He was held in a hideout in the San Fernando Valley for four days; the price of his release was a ransom of $240,000. During that time, the family was distraught, and because of who his father was, the headlines were big and black and screaming across front pages around the country. Attorney General Robert Kennedy offered his governmental support, J. Edgar Hoover activated the FBI, and mob boss Sam Giancana volunteered his own special brand of crime solving. Frank Jr made it through the ordeal. The kidnappers were caught, brought to a trial that may as well have been staged by Ringling Bros., duly sentenced, and carted off to prison. Though it was a heinous offense, the kidnapping was far from a criminal masterwork. In fact, it was a bizarre, absurd event riddled with incompetence and profound confusion from its inception to the last bang of the gavel, perpetrated by amateurs.

Part One: Who Will It Be?

In an attempt to avoid hitting and killing a dog crossing a road in Ohio, a driver slams on the brakes, loses control, caroms off several parked cars, and finally collides with a retaining wall. The man behind the wheel is Barry Keenan. A successful young businessman with a fiancée riding shotgun on the way to his mother's house, a clever fellow with a bright future, a diligent UCLA student with plans that do not include crashing his car to avoid killing a mutt or sustaining a back injury that will cause chronic pain that will soon have him addicted to Percodan, muscle relaxers, and tranquilizers. Drugs will send his career into a shambles and, mixed with desperation, alter his thinking to the point that he will concoct an elaborate scheme to save himself by kidnapping Frank Sinatra Jr. and lead him to envision this kidnapping as not so much a crime as a resplendent act of good will. One that would bring the estranged Sinatra family together again, and strengthen the bond between father and son. The ransom gained in this act would be invested in carefully chosen stocks and development deals that would yield maximum profits, which would put an end to his and his family's financial woes, line the wallets of his accomplices, and ultimately allow him to pay back the senior Sinatra's capital contribution, a chunk of money that law enforcement officials will refer to as ransom.

In an attempt to solve his economic crisis, he thought that he could raise a lot of money in a kidnapping. Keenan did his homework, heading to the library to read crime articles written by J. Edgar Hoover, studying kidnappings dating to Biblical times to determine where others went wrong. Covering all the bases, devout Catholic Keenan also spent time regularly petitioning God for help. Though unfortunately there is no patron saint of kidnappings.

Confident though he was, in the early planning stages, Keenan wrote a letter of confession to be revealed if things went bad. In part, it read, "If I had succeeded, I would have netted approximately $100,000, which would have enabled me to become a millionaire in 10 to 15 years, barring a war or depression." Keenan had attended St. Paul the Apostle grade school and then University High School with Nancy Sinatra. West L.A.'s Uni High was filled with children of the rich and famous; he had many classmates to mull over as potential victims. He originally thought of Tony Hope [adopted son of Bob], but Bob Hope had been very active with entertaining the troops and seemed like an all-around good guy. Kidnapping Tony didn't seem like a very American thing to do in Keenan’s mind. He decided upon Jr because Frank Sr. was tough, and always got his way. He didn’t think it wouldn't be morally wrong to put him through a few hours of grief worrying about his son. Frank was adoring of his daughters, but he seemed distant with Jr, who was at boarding school.