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Bronfman kidnapping
In 1975, Samuel Bronfman II, the 21-year-old heir to the Bronfman family trust then worth $750 million ($3.78 billion in 2021), was kidnapped after a gathering in Yorktown Heights, New York, and held for ransom. His kidnappers were caught and the ransom recovered, but the defendants' attorneys mounted a defense that argued Bronfman had been a co-conspirator, and the abductors were only convicted of extortion, not kidnapping. The defense attorney confessed in 2020 that he had been aware the defense was a lie and that Bronfman had been an innocent victim.
On August 8, 1975, Bronfman had dinner at his father's home in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, New York. He left alone in his car around 11:30 pm. At 1:45 am on August 9, he called the Yorktown Heights house to say that he had been kidnapped.
A ransom note claimed Bronfman was being buried alive with a ten-day supply of oxygen and threatened that if ransom were not paid, the abductors would kill Bronfman's father, Edgar Bronfman Sr., with cyanide bullets. It demanded a ransom of $4.6 million, at the time the highest ever demanded in a U.S. kidnapping. Portions of the ransom note were identical to one that had been used in the 1968 kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle. The demanded amount in the specified form (over half in $10 bills) would have weighed close to 1,000 pounds (450 kg).
The case played out in public, with reporters, photographers and curiosity-seekers camped out at the gates to the 180-acre (70 ha) estate and helicopters circling in a carnival atmosphere. Further communications from the kidnappers demanded that news reports stop.
Bronfman Sr. spent several days going from telephone booth to telephone booth in and around John F. Kennedy Airport following instructions from the abductors.
On August 16, Bronfman Sr. met one of the abductors in Woodside, Queens, with a $2.3 million ransom. FBI agents surveilled the handoff but did not make an arrest; they did get the license number of the car, which turned out to be registered to Mel Patrick Lynch, an Irish immigrant from Banagher who worked as a firefighter.
On August 17, police and FBI raided Lynch's Flatbush, Brooklyn, apartment and found Bronfman there, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Lynch's co-conspirator was a fellow Irish immigrant from Taughnarra, Dominic Byrne, who lived nearby. Lynch and Byrne were arrested and charged with kidnapping and extortion. They provided the location of the ransom, which was found in two garbage bags in the apartment of a friend of Byrne's who at the time was in the hospital and was not suspected to be involved.
Lynch and Byrne had planned the kidnapping for years, making dozens of trips to Bronfman's mother's house, where Bronfman lived, in Purchase. On the night of the kidnapping, Lynch was there when Bronfman arrived home from dinner at his father's house, and abducted him at gunpoint, handcuffing him.
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Bronfman kidnapping
In 1975, Samuel Bronfman II, the 21-year-old heir to the Bronfman family trust then worth $750 million ($3.78 billion in 2021), was kidnapped after a gathering in Yorktown Heights, New York, and held for ransom. His kidnappers were caught and the ransom recovered, but the defendants' attorneys mounted a defense that argued Bronfman had been a co-conspirator, and the abductors were only convicted of extortion, not kidnapping. The defense attorney confessed in 2020 that he had been aware the defense was a lie and that Bronfman had been an innocent victim.
On August 8, 1975, Bronfman had dinner at his father's home in Yorktown Heights in Westchester County, New York. He left alone in his car around 11:30 pm. At 1:45 am on August 9, he called the Yorktown Heights house to say that he had been kidnapped.
A ransom note claimed Bronfman was being buried alive with a ten-day supply of oxygen and threatened that if ransom were not paid, the abductors would kill Bronfman's father, Edgar Bronfman Sr., with cyanide bullets. It demanded a ransom of $4.6 million, at the time the highest ever demanded in a U.S. kidnapping. Portions of the ransom note were identical to one that had been used in the 1968 kidnapping of Barbara Jane Mackle. The demanded amount in the specified form (over half in $10 bills) would have weighed close to 1,000 pounds (450 kg).
The case played out in public, with reporters, photographers and curiosity-seekers camped out at the gates to the 180-acre (70 ha) estate and helicopters circling in a carnival atmosphere. Further communications from the kidnappers demanded that news reports stop.
Bronfman Sr. spent several days going from telephone booth to telephone booth in and around John F. Kennedy Airport following instructions from the abductors.
On August 16, Bronfman Sr. met one of the abductors in Woodside, Queens, with a $2.3 million ransom. FBI agents surveilled the handoff but did not make an arrest; they did get the license number of the car, which turned out to be registered to Mel Patrick Lynch, an Irish immigrant from Banagher who worked as a firefighter.
On August 17, police and FBI raided Lynch's Flatbush, Brooklyn, apartment and found Bronfman there, bound, gagged, and blindfolded. Lynch's co-conspirator was a fellow Irish immigrant from Taughnarra, Dominic Byrne, who lived nearby. Lynch and Byrne were arrested and charged with kidnapping and extortion. They provided the location of the ransom, which was found in two garbage bags in the apartment of a friend of Byrne's who at the time was in the hospital and was not suspected to be involved.
Lynch and Byrne had planned the kidnapping for years, making dozens of trips to Bronfman's mother's house, where Bronfman lived, in Purchase. On the night of the kidnapping, Lynch was there when Bronfman arrived home from dinner at his father's house, and abducted him at gunpoint, handcuffing him.