Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease
by John Heidenry
On This Page
Description
In this riveting account, John Heidenry crafts a haunting narrative of the 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease by two grifiters. Bobby, son of Robert Greenlease, a wealthy automobile dealer, turned up in a geranium patch with a bullet in his head after the 600,000 ransom-the highest U.S. ransom ever paid up to that point-was met. The kidnappers were Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady. Hall inherited 200,000 at the end of WWII, losing it all in six years, and spent more than a year show more in the Missouri State pen. After his release he met Heady, an alcoholic supporting herself as a prostitute. When they met it was like rubbing two flints together. Little did they know that mobster Joe Costello would steal half the ransom and that they would both be executed, strapped together in the gas chamber. Like a combination of "True Confessions" and the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, John Heidenry has written a story of grifters and stalwart citizens of the American heartland that has all the lurid detail of the greatest film noir classics. In this riveting account, John Heidenry crafts a haunting narrative of the 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease by two grifiters. Bobby, son of Robert Greenlease, a wealthy automobile dealer, turned up in a geranium patch with a bullet in his head after the 600,000 ransom-the highest U.S. ransom ever paid up to that point-was met. The kidnappers were Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady. Hall inherited 200,000 at the end of WWII, losing it all in six years, and spent more than a year in the Missouri State pen. After his release he met Heady, an alcoholic supporting herself as a prostitute. When they met it was like rubbing two flints together. Little did they know that mobster Joe Costello would steal half the ransom and that they would both be executed, strapped together in the gas chamber. Like a combination of "True Confessions" and the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, John Heidenry has written a story of grifters and stalwart citizens of the American heartland that has all the lurid detail of the greatest film noir classics. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Reviews
Carl Hall had a great fall. The scion of a prominent family in my mother's hometown of Trading Post, Kansas (his grandfather Austin survived the Marais des Cygnes border massacre) had a less-than-stellar career in the Marines, including a stretch in the Quantico brig, then ran off with Irene Holmes, who watched him squander his fortune. Things did not improve when Irene left. After robbing a series of cab drivers at gunpoint, Missouri sent him to the state pen, where he hatched a scheme to kidnap Bobby Greenlease, nephew of a former military school classmate. The subtitle is a spoiler: Hall hooks up with a hooker and kills their captive by page 7. This account of the notorious 1953 case follows their boozy improvisations to collect a show more $600,000 ransom. Many clues suggest that no one fares well. show less
Other reviewers are right; this is a pretty dry, unimaginative retelling of the Greenlease kidnapping. I kept waiting for the gun that appears in the first act to go off in the third act but no, there really are just a lot of inconsequential facts included for the sake of inclusion. Still I love true crime and this is a really well researched book. It's set between Hyde Park, Mission Hills and St. Louis, places where I live, work, and have lived (respectively) so it's hard for me not to take interest. A good but not great book.
I was thrilled to find this book when I was browsing. I was a child when Bobby Greenlease was kidnapped. Like Bobby I attended a private Catholic school run by an order of French nuns. the kidnapping was frightening to me. I was afraid of being kidnapped so the case became very real to me. not long after Bobby was kidnapped the young Peugeot boy was kidnapped in St Cloud a suburb of Paris. Because of my fears I followed carefully these kidnappings. I learned many years later that at about the same time a woman called my school to ask if I or any of my brothers were in school that day. Apparently alarmed the Mother Superior called my mother and then accompanied each of us as we exited the school and watched us until we were out of sight.
Meticulously detailed, but very detached.
Ratings
Members
- Recently Added By
Published Reviews
ThingScore 75
As a boy in St. Louis, Mr. Heidenry came into close enough proximity to the kidnapping of 6-year-old Bobby Greenlease in 1953 to have developed an enduring fascination with it. That fascination has yielded a tough, gripping chiller of a book, written straightforwardly yet cloaked with the trappings of pulp fiction.
added by Shortride
Author Information
9+ Works 303 Members
John Heidenry is a contributing editor to The Week, founding editor of St. Louis Magazine, and author of several books, including The Gashouse Gang and What Wild Ecstasy. He lives in Hoboken, New Jersey.
Some Editions
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2009
- People/Characters
- Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Jr.; Carl Austin Hall; Bonnie Emily Brown Heady
- Important places
- St. Louis, Missouri, USA
- Important events
- Bobby Greenlease kidnapping
- Epigraph
- But never met this Fellow
Attended, or alone
Without a tighter breathing
And Zero at the Bone--
-- Emily Dickinson, A Narrow Fellow in the Grass - First words
- On the morning of Monday, September 28, 1953, Carl Austin Hall, a thirty-four-year-old ex-playboy just five months out of prison, and his forty-one-year-old mistress, Bonnie Brown Heady, a prostitute, woke up early.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)Like all of the other nuns at the school, she eventually returned to the congregation's motherhouse in Paris.
- Publisher's editor
- Flamini, Michael; Lame, Vicki; Chase, Fred
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, Politics and Government, General Nonfiction, History
- DDC/MDS
- 364.152 — Society, Government, and Culture Social problems and social services Crime Criminal offenses Offenses against the person Homicide
- LCC
- HV6603 .G74 .H45 — Social sciences Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Social pathology. Social and public welfare. Criminology Crimes and offenses
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 61
- Popularity
- 505,364
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.40)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 4
