Bonnie Heady

Bonnie Heady

Bobby Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. was a 6-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, who was the victim of a kidnapping and homicide on September 28, 1953. Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady sent Bobby’s father messages in the mail and phone calls demanding a ransom of USD 600,000. The requested ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time. Hall and Heady were condemned to death and executed in Missouri’s gas chamber in December 1953.

About Bonnie Heady in brief

Summary Bonnie HeadyBobby Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. was a 6-year-old from Kansas City, Missouri, who was the victim of a kidnapping and homicide on September 28, 1953. His father Robert Greenlease Sr. was a multi-millionaire auto dealer, and the requested ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time. Before the ransom demand was issued, he had already been murdered by Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady. Heady and Hall were condemned to death and executed in Missouri’s gas chamber in December 1953. The kidnappers were drug-addicted alcoholics then living together in nearby St. Joseph. Hall had planned for years to victimize his former classmate’s wealthy family.

The couple took Bobby across the state line to Johnson County, Kansas, where Hall shot him dead with a revolver. They then took the child’s body to St. Joseph and buried him in the backyard of Heady’s house, at 1201 South 38th Street. After the murder, Hall and Heady sent Bobby’s father messages in the mail and phone calls demanding a ransom of USD 600,000. Greenlease, desperately trying to save his son, held off the police and the FBI, paying the money. At that time it was the biggest ransom ever paid in US history, and remained so until the 1972 kidnapping of Virginia Piper.