List of kidnappings (1950–1959)

The following is a list of kidnappings that occurred between 1950 and 1969, summarizing the events of each case, including instances of celebrity abductions, claimed hoaxes, suspected kidnappings, extradition abductions, and mass kidnappings.

List

Date Victim(s) Abductor(s) Location Age of victim(s) Outcome Notes
1950– South Koreans abducted by North Koreans Agents and soldiers South Korea Various Various Approximately 84,532 South Koreans were taken to North Korea during the Korean War.[1] Since the war's armistice in 1953, about 3,800 people have been abducted.
30 October 1950 Thomas Flynn Hukbalahap communist rebels Philippines 41 53 years An Irish missionary priest killed by Hukbalahap communist rebels; his remains were exhumed and interred in the family plot in County Clare in 2003.[2]
30 December 1950 Lee Archer Billy Cook Lubbock, Texas, U.S. 52 Escaped Archer was a mechanic who was kidnapped and robbed by career criminal Billy Cook; he was placed in the trunk of his own car at gunpoint, but escaped by prising open the trunk with a tire iron.[3]
2 January 1951 Carl Mosser Billy Cook USA Various Executed Five members of the Mosser family were kidnapped and murdered by Billy Cook.[4]
Thelma Mosser
Ronald Mosser
Pamela Mosser
Gary Mosser
6 January 1951 Robert Dewey Billy Cook Imperial County, California, U.S. 32 Murdered Dewey was a travelling salesman abducted and murdered by spree killer Billy Cook. He was shot to death in a desert close to Blythe, California, and his body discovered in an abandoned car near Ogilby, California, the day after his murder.[5]
21 February 1951 Luis Albino unknown Oakland, California, United States 6 Found alive (2024) Albino was playing at a park with his older brother when a woman approached them and offered him candy to go with her. In 2024, he was found to be alive and living in the East Coast after his niece took an at-home DNA test.[6]
24 August 1951 Beverly Potts unknown Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. 10 Unknown Beverly Potts was kidnapped and never heard from again.[7]
8 July 1952 Walter Linse Stasi East Germany 49 Executed A German lawyer for the Free German Jurists, an organization with links to the CIA, was kidnapped by the Stasi and held in Hohenschönhausen prison, before being handed over to the KGB who executed him at the Butyrka prison in Moscow on 15 December 1953.[8]
16 July 1952 Connie Smith unknown Lakeville, Connecticut, U.S. 10 Unknown Connie Smith was kidnapped and never heard from again.[9]
October 1952 Betty Alexander unknown Glasgow, Scotland, UK 4 Murdered Alexander was kidnapped and murdered in Glasgow.[10]
11 June 1953 Clem Graver Two unidentified men who drove a black sedan Chicago, Illinois, US 53 Unknown Celinus "Clem" Graver was an American politician who was kidnapped on 11 June 1953,[11][12] form his home in Illinois and was never seen again.
28 September 1953 Robert "Bobby" Cosgrove Greenlease Jr. Bonnie Heady and Carl A. Hall Kansas City, Missouri, US 6 Murdered Greenlease was kidnapped and immediately murdered. The murderers demanded and were paid a $600,000 ransom by the boy's father, a wealthy automobile dealer.[13] Over half of the ransom money was stolen by a corrupt police officer and never recovered.
24 October 1953 Evelyn Hartley unknown La Crosse County, Wisconsin, US 14 Unknown An American teenager who mysteriously disappeared on October 24, 1953, from La Crosse County, Wisconsin, and was never found.[14]
December 1954 Unidentified 11-year-old girl John A. Bennett Wals-Siezenheim, Austria 11 Survived Bennett, a U.S. soldier stationed in Salzburg, abducted an 11-year-old girl while heavily intoxicated and looking for a brothel and raped her before strangling her and throwing her into a stream. She survived the assault and Bennett was sentenced to death by a court-martial.[15]
15 June 1955 Curtis Chillingworth Floyd Holzapfel, Bobby Lincoln, Joseph Peel Manalapan, Florida 58 Murdered Circuit court judge Curtis Chillingworth and his wife Marjorie were abducted from their home by Floyd Holzapfel and Bobby Lincoln, who later testified that they had thrown them into the sea with lead weights tied to their feet on orders from Joseph Peel, a municipal judge who Curtis Chillingworth was investigating for corruption.[16]
Marjorie Chillingworth 47
28 August 1955 Emmett Till Roy Bryant, J.W. Milam Drew, Mississippi, U.S. 14 Murdered Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his great-uncle's home by two white men, Roy Bryant and his half-brother J.W. Milam, after Bryant's wife, Carolyn, accused Till of harassing her. Milam and Bryant beat and tortured Till, possibly with help from accomplices, before shooting him in the head and sinking his body into the Tallahatchie River.[17]
4 July 1956 Peter Weinberger Angelo LaMarca Westbury, New York, US 1 month Murdered LaMarca took the baby from his home for a $2,000 ransom. He told investigators he went to the first drop site the day after the kidnapping with the baby in the car, but was scared away by press and police in the area. He drove off, abandoned the baby alive in heavy brush near a highway exit, and went home. A search of the area by Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and Nassau County Police Department ensued.[18] An FBI agent spotted a diaper pin, then the decomposed remains of Peter Weinberger. The Weinberger case also resulted in new legislation, signed by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, which reduced the FBI's waiting period in kidnapping cases from 7 days to 24 hours.[18] LaMarca was executed via electric chair on 7 August 1958.
6 January 1956 Susan Cadieux Unknown London, Ontario, Canada 5 Murdered Five-year-old Susan Cadieux was playing outside St. Mary's School in London, Ontario, with her two brothers and a friend when a man approached the group and kidnapped her.[19] She was later found murdered and the perpetrator was never found.[20]
28 December 1956 Barbara Grimes Unknown Chicago, Illinois, U.S. 15 Murdered The Grimes sisters were taken while returning home from the cinema after a screening of Love me Tender. Their bodies were found the following January. Although an autopsy found they were killed five hours after they disappeared, numerous witnesses attested to seeing or contacting the girls long after their supposed deaths. The perpetrator remains unidentified.[21]
Patricia Grimes 12
2 September 1957 Judge Edward Aaron Ku Klux Klan members Birmingham, Alabama, US 34 Rescued African-American handyman who was abducted, beaten and tortured by seven KKK members who left him for dead. Aaron was rescued the same day, and several of his attackers were later convicted. His case inspired the 1988 film Mississippi Burning.[22]
3 December 1957 Maria Ridulph Unknown Sycamore, Illinois, U.S. 7 Murdered Maria Ridulph was abducted by a man calling himself "Johnny" while playing with her friend Kathy Sigman in December 1957. Her skeletal remains were found in Woodbine in April of the following year. Jack McCullough, a known sex offender living in the area, was convicted of the murder in 2012 but exonerated four years later when it was proven that he was in Rockford when the crime took place.[23] The true perpetrator was never found.
23 February 1958 Juan Manuel Fangio Rebels involved in the Cuban Revolution Havana, Cuba 46 Released The night before the non-championship Cuban Grand Prix, five-time Argentine Formula One champion Fangio was kidnapped by rebels involved in the Cuban Revolution. The abduction was planned by one of Fidel Castro's right-hand men, Faustino Perez, from a hotel in Havana. The abductors had also planned to kidnap fellow driver Stirling Moss, but Fangio had convinced the abductors not to. He was taken to three separate houses, and was offered various amnesties, including a radio to listen to the race. At midnight after the race, Fangio was dropped off at the Argentinian ambassador's home.[24][25]
November 1958 Olga Duncan Elizabeth Ann Duncan California Unknwion Murdered Olga Duncan was kidnapped and murdered by her mother-in-law Elizabeth Ann Duncan.[26]
24 April 1959 Mack Charles Parker A lynch mob Poplarville, Mississippi, U.S. 22 Murdered Parker, a black man, was accused of raping a pregnant white woman named June Walters. Two days before his trial was set to begin, a mob of white locals stormed the jail and dragged Parker out before taking him up to the Pearl River Bridge on the Mississippi-Louisiana border, where he was shot and thrown in the river. His body was found in the river on 4 May.[27]
2 May 1959 Betty Jean Owens William Collinsworth, Patrick Scarborough, and David Beagles, along with Ollie Stoutamire Tallahassee, Florida 19 Rescued An African American woman who was kidnapped and gang raped by three white men and a 16-year-old white boy in Tallahassee, Florida in 1959.[28]

References

  1. ^ 1953 Statistical Almanac, Statistics Bureau, Ministry of Public Information
  2. ^ Columban Martyrs Archived 18 May 2017 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ^ "COOK, WILLIAM EDWARD "BILLY" JR - Jasper County, Missouri | WILLIAM EDWARD "BILLY" JR COOK - Missouri Gravestone Photos". missourigravestones.org. Retrieved 24 February 2026.
  4. ^ "COOK, WILLIAM EDWARD "BILLY" JR - Jasper County, Missouri | WILLIAM EDWARD "BILLY" JR COOK - Missouri Gravestone Photos". missourigravestones.org. Retrieved 24 February 2026.
  5. ^ Lewiston Daily Sun, January 8, 1951, p. 8
  6. ^ Treisman, Rachel (24 September 2024). "A boy snatched from a California park in 1951 is found living on the East Coast". NPR. Retrieved 27 December 2024.
  7. ^ Child Kidnapping: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Juvenile Justice of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate, ISBN 978-0-788-18639-4 p. 63
  8. ^ "The Secret War for Germany: CIA's Covert Role in Cold War Berlin Explored through Recently Declassified Documents | National Security Archive". nsarchive.gwu.edu. Retrieved 9 February 2026.
  9. ^ "Connie Smith Missing from Salisbury, Connecticut age 10". crimesolverscentral.com. Retrieved 24 February 2026.
  10. ^ Dalgetty, Lee (13 March 2022). "The unsolved 1950s Glasgow murder of Betty Alexander and how Garnethill came together". Glasgow Live. Retrieved 5 October 2025.
  11. ^ Lindberg, Richard C. (15 October 2015). Gangland Chicago: Criminality and Lawlessness in the Windy City. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 277–282. ISBN 978-1-4422-3196-2.
  12. ^ Lindberg, Richard C. (August 1998). To Serve and Collect: Chicago Politics and Police Corruption from the Lager Beer Riot to the Summerdale Scandal, 1855-1960. SIU Press. p. 288. ISBN 978-0-8093-2223-7.
  13. ^ Cole, Suzanne P.; Engle, Tim; Winkler, Eric (23 April 2012). "50 things every Kansas Citian should know". The Kansas City Star. Archived from the original on 21 April 2012. Retrieved 23 April 2012.
  14. ^ Edmonds, Chris (27 October 1953). "Baby Sitter Abduction Shocks Town". Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph. Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. AP.
  15. ^ Serrano, Richard A. (12 July 1994). "Last Soldier to Die at Leavenworth Hanged in an April Storm". Los Angeles Times. p. 14. Retrieved 1 October 2008.
  16. ^ Kleinbergf, Elliott (2000). The Chillingworths:The murder and the law. Palm Beach Post. ISBN 9780965720038.
  17. ^ Huie, William Bradford (January 1956). "The Shocking Story of Approved Killing in Mississippi". Look. Archived from the original on 22 April 2020.
  18. ^ a b "Weinberger Kidnapping". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved 5 December 2017.
  19. ^ Zandbergen, Rebecca (11 January 2023). "Local sleuths hope to shed new light on 1956 death of 5-year-old abducted in London, Ont". CBC News.
  20. ^ Something, Someone Saw (8 October 2023). "The Unsolved Murder Of Susan Cadieux". Someone Saw Something. Retrieved 21 February 2026.
  21. ^ The Two Lost Girls: The Mystery of the Grimes Sisters ISBN 978-1-892-52398-3
  22. ^ W. Edward Harris (1 January 2004). Miracle in Birmingham: A Civil Rights Memoir, 1954–1965. Stonework Press. pp. 41–. ISBN 978-0-9638864-7-7. Retrieved 8 July 2013.
  23. ^ O'Neill, Ann (12 April 2017). "Man wrongfully convicted in 1957 cold case murder declared innocent". CNN. Retrieved 23 April 2024.
  24. ^ "Kidnapped in Cuba: F1 legend Fangio's run-in with revolutionaries". ESPN.com. 6 April 2020. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  25. ^ "That Time When The Five-Time F1 Champion Was Kidnapped In Cuba". WTF1. 24 January 2020. Archived from the original on 17 May 2021. Retrieved 17 May 2021.
  26. ^ "People v. Elizabeth Duncan | Ventura County District Attorney's Office". www.vcdistrictattorney.com. VENTURA (CA): Ventura County District Attorney's Office. Retrieved 2 February 2018.
  27. ^ Smead, Howard (1986). Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505429-6.
  28. ^ "'It Was like All of Us Had Been Raped': Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle" by Danielle L. McGuire, The Journal of American History (2004) 91 (3): page 906.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.