Murder of Bobby Greenlease

American child kidnapping case in 1953

Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. (February 3, 1947 – September 28, 1953) was a six year old from Kansas City, Missouri, United States, who was the victim of a kidnapping and homicide on September 28, 1953. His father, Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr., was a multi millionaire auto dealer, and the demanded ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time. Greenlease Jr.'s kidnappers, Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady, had no intention of returning him to his family, the child having been murdered before the ransom demand was even issued. Both perpetrators were sentenced to death and executed in Missouri's gas chamber in December 1953. Heady was the third woman ever to be executed by U. S. federal authorities.

Robert "Bobby" Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. was born to Robert Greenlease Sr. (1882–1969) and Virginia Greenlease (nee Pollock; 1909–2001), his second wife, on February 3, 1947. (They were married in 1939. Greenlease's first wife was Betty "Bessie" Rush (1890–1950), whom he married on March 3, 1913.) The elder Greenlease was a multi millionaire car dealer and entrepreneur, having made his fortune by introducing General Motors vehicles to the Great Plains in the early 20th century, owning dealerships from Texas to South Dakota. He was 65 years old when Bobby was born in 1947. The Greenleases were said to have been devoted to Bobby. According to author John Heidenry, Bobby was said to be a trusting boy; Bonnie Heady later stated that from the moment she appeared at his school posing as his aunt to take him to his mother, he just took her hand and did anything he was told to do.

In September 1953, Carl Hall (34) and Bonnie Heady (41), kidnapped Bobby from Notre Dame de Sion, a Catholic pre school located in Kansas City, Missouri. Hall became convinced that police would trace him and Heady to St. Joseph, so he randomly decided to drive to St. Louis. The couple collected the ransom and fled.

Once in St. Louis, Hall left Heady in the middle of the night in a rented room. He contacted criminal associates to enlist their help in diverting police attention. One of the associates, a former sex worker named Sandra O'Day, was supposed to fly to Los Angeles and mail a letter Hall had written. It was thought that this would divert police attention from St. Louis. However, O'Day caught a glimpse of the ransom money. St. Louis police soon learned that Hall was flaunting a large sum of money, and they brought him in for questioning. Hall eventually implicated Heady. The police found her at an apartment at 4504 Arsenal Street and discovered Bobby's body in a shallow grave in her back yard.

Bobby's kidnapping and murder scandalized the nation. Because he had been taken over state lines, the crime became a federal case under the Federal Kidnapping Act. Hall and Heady both pleaded guilty to kidnapping. The jury deliberated an hour and eight minutes before recommending a death sentence. The two were executed together in the Missouri gas chamber on December 18, 1953. Only eleven weeks and four days passed between the time the crime was committed and the executions. Neither Hall nor Heady made any attempts to appeal. Heady is one of only four women to have ever been executed by federal authorities as of 2021: the others being Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Surratt in 1865 and Ethel Rosenberg, who, along with her husband Julius, was convicted of being a Soviet spy and executed by electric chair on June 19, 1953, just months before Heady. The fourth woman, Lisa Montgomery of Kansas, was executed by lethal injection on January 13, 2021, for the 2004 murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett. Since the federal government did not have any execution facilities, Missouri's state facilities, and thus the then legal gas chamber, were used to carry out the executions. This was the case for all federal executions in the 20th century, before the first executions at the federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, in 2001. Heady is the only woman executed by the federal government by gassing. Heady is buried in Clearmont, Nodaway County, Missouri, where she grew up. Only $288,000 of the ransom money was recovered. The missing $312,000 remained a subject of wide speculation. Some of the theories accounting for this were:
A cab driver who took Hall to the Coral Court Motel had tipped off local mobster Joseph G. Costello. Hall tried unsuccessfully to bury the cash near the Meramec River, though the FBI later searched that area in vain. Suitcases in Hall's possession upon his arrest were not brought to the 11th District Precinct Station by the arresting officers, Lieutenant Louis Ira Shoulders and Patrolman Elmer Dolan. Shoulders and Dolan told a grand jury that the $288,000 they turned over was the full amount seized from Hall when they arrested him. This statement was determined to be false; in fact, it was alleged that Shoulders had taken the balance of the $600,000 ransom that Hall had on him at the time of arrest. Both officers were subsequently federally indicted for, and convicted of, perjury. Shoulders was convicted on April 15, 1954, and sentenced to three years in prison; he died on May 12, 1962. Dolan was convicted on March 31, 1954, and sentenced to two years in prison: in 1962, he informed the FBI that he had perjured because his fear of Shoulders exceeded his fear of prison. Dolan received a pardon from U. S. President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 21, 1965.

The case was the subject of an episode of Investigation Discovery's series A Crime to Remember, "Baby Come Home" (season 2, episode 8) as well as an episode of the Investigation Discovery series Deadly Women entitled "Under His Control." During an episode of Ghost Adventures (Season 9, Episode 4) Zak Bagans and team investigates the hauntings at the Missouri State Penitentiary. During this investigation, it was explained that one woman was executed in the gas chamber of the prison (Heady). Max Allan Collins' novel, The Big Bundle (2023) features the Greenlease kidnapping. The historian Shelby Foote wrote a historical novel called September September about three misfits from Arkansas that kidnap the grandson of a rich African American businessman. The scalawags take their inspiration for the caper upon reading about the Greenlease kidnapping.