Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images
Exxon executive Sidney Reso died in a storage vault in New Jersey. Four days earlier, he was abducted from his driveway in Morris Township.
Reso was shot in the arm, bound and gagged, and then placed in a wooden box that was hidden in a storage space. virtually airless storage. Despite his death, the kidnappers continued with their rescue plans.
The hijackers’ remarkably complex ransom notes that demanded 18, 5 million dollars in bills of 100 used dollars, sometimes called themselves as “Rainbow Warriors”.
Detectives were able to obtain DNA samples from both the ransom notes and the pay phones at the Exxon stations where the hijackers made their calls, leading them to Arthur and Irene Seale.
The couple was arrested on 19 June 1992, after a prolonged persecution involving more than 100 FBI agents.
Arthur Seale was a former Exxon police officer and security consultant who was fired at 1987. Apparently choosing Reso as his victim was due in part to his hatred of Exxon.
Seale tried to sidetrack the FBI by pretending the kidnapping was the work of radical environmentalists. However, the Seals were primarily motivated by their desire to finance a lavish lifestyle. After racking up a mountain of debt living in a couple of resort towns, they were forced to move in with Arthur’s parents.
Irene Seale was finally persuaded to testify against her husband, and she led the officers to the body of Reso, who had been dumped in a remote area of southern New Jersey’s Pine Barrens.
Since New Jersey law prevented a person from testifying against their spouse in a court, a federal court, which allows spousal testimony, tried Arthur Seale instead. he was found guilty and sentenced to 100 years of imprisonment and a fine of $1, 75 million. Irene Seale received a sentence of 20 years.
In an interesting parallel that occurred later that year, Sol Wachtler, the chief judge of New York’s highest court, copied some of Seale’s tactics to terrorize his ex-lover, Joy Silverman.
Researchers who examined the letters Wachtler sent anonymously to Silverman were so similar to those written by Seale that at first they thought Seale was related in some way. In fact, it turned out that Wachtler was so fascinated by Reso’s kidnapping that he purposefully mimicked the style of Seale’s ransom notes.
In this strange case, Judge Wachtler was found guilty of stalking Silverman and his teenage daughter and was sent to prison after resigning from office.
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