Zero at the Bone

May 4, 2009
This true crime caper by Heidenry (The Gashouse Gang
) of a 1953 Kansas child kidnapping gone bad carries a solid punch. The young victim, Bobby Greenlease, the six-year-old heir of wealthy businessman Robert Greenlease, never had a chance when Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady—both formerly wealthy ne'er-do-wells making one last stab at making their fortune—botched the snatch and demanded a ransom of $600,000, the largest ever in U.S. history up to that time. Heady took Bobby from his Catholic school, claiming to be his aunt and that his mother had had a heart attack. Bobby inexplicably went quietly with the strange woman and met his violent end. Heidenry, a contributing editor to the Week
, aptly describes Hall, the down-on-his-luck playboy; Heady, the former horsewoman turned prostitute; Robert Greenlease, the woeful car magnate; and a sordid cast of supporting players, including coldhearted mobster Joe Costello and the two corrupt cops who stole much of the ransom. Heidenry neatly tells this harrowing tale and its impact on all involved. 8 pages of b&w photos.

May 1, 2009
St. Louis Magazine founding editor Heidenry (The Gashouse Gang, 2008, etc.) delivers a lean, mean account of an infamous 1953 kidnapping and murder.

The victim was Bobby Greenlease, the six-year-old son of a wealthy Kansas City car dealer. On Sept. 28, the boy was kidnapped by one of the most dysfunctional and tragically inept crime couples on record: Carl Hall, a dissolute sociopath and congenital failure, and his girlfriend Bonnie Heady, an alcoholic and prostitute. Heidenry's narrative is meticulously detailed and devoid of sentiment or attitudinizing. The horrific actions of Hall and Heady, their outrageous bungling and the web of deceit and betrayal following their crime play out with the cold-eyed terseness and resigned nihilism of classic film noir entertainments like Detour or Born to Kill. After successfully snatching Bobby from his tony private school—an operation that depended heavily on luck—Hall and Heady embarked on a series of snafus that would seem funny if not for the sickening crime at their center. Hall couldn't even manage to strangle Bobby, as he had planned, because the length of rope he brought was too short. Paranoid and awash in alcohol and drugs, he compulsively complicated plans for the delivery of the ransom money—a staggering $600,000, the largest ever payout—sending the Greenlease's representatives on a series of wild goose chases undone by Hall's inability to get an address right or formulate coherent demands. After finally successfully retrieving the money, Hall went on a spending spree, aligning himself with another hardened prostitute and an ex-con cab driver, who quickly cottoned to Hall's situation and colluded with a prominent mobster and a couple of crooked cops to take the prize for themselves…with predictably botched results. All the while, the distraught Greenleases desperately clung to hope, not knowing that their son was already dead

Harsh, chilling, lurid and gripping.

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