The True Story of the 1963 Kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.

globe life insurance - #1:The True Story of the 1963 Kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr.

  A couple of days after JFK’s November 1963 assassination, Barry Keenan led Frank Sinatra’s son, 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr., out of his hotel room in Lake Tahoe at gunpoint. He drove him to a house in Los Angeles, where he locked him away for four days while demanding $240,000 in ransom from his superstar father. Keenan and his co-conspirators got their money, but were caught and arrested soon after Junior was released, and later convicted in a widely covered court case. A new podcast produced and narrated by John Stamos called The Grand Scheme: Snatching Sinatra retells the kidnapping from the perspective of Keenan, the mastermind behind the now infamous scheme.

Keenan was 23 years old at the time of his plot. He was a UCLA student and a grade school classmate of Nancy Sinatra, Frank Jr.’s sister. After a car accident earlier that year caused a back injury and left him in chronic pain, Keenan became addicted to Percodan, muscle relaxers, and tranquilizers. His addiction bankrupted him, and so he concocted a plan to kidnap Frank Jr. for ransom—which he would invest, he said, and later, when he was back on his feet, pay back.

"I decided upon Junior because Frank Sr. was tough, and I had friends whose parents were in show business, and I knew Frank always got his way,” Keenan told the New Times Los Angeles in 1998. “It wouldn't be morally wrong to put him through a few hours of grief worrying about his son.”

So Keenan recruited his high school friend Joe Amsler and his mother’s former boyfriend John Irwin and together they planned the deed. After aborted attempts in both Arizona and Los Angeles, Keenan learned that Frank Jr. was heading to Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to perform a concert, and would set off for Europe after. Aware that it would be their last chance, Keenan and Amsler made the trip.

On Sunday, December 8, 1963 at nine, Keenan and Amsler entered Frank Jr.’s hotel room, pretending to be delivering a package. The young singer was eating chicken with John Foss, the trumpet player in his band, when Keenan pulled out a gun and demanded money from the duo. He and Amsler tied the band-member up, whose presence they had not planned for, and walked Frank Jr. out to their car. As soon as Foss got himself untied, he called the police.

The authorities were already on the lookout as Keenan and Amsler made their way to Los Angeles with Junior in the car. "I said, Frank, your friend's going to get up before we get out of Lake Tahoe, and I'm concerned that there's going to be gunplay,'" Keenan explained later to the New Times Los Angeles. "'There's one way that we can work this out, and that's if you play along with us, and we pretend that we're just guys out having a good time.'"

Junior complied and, at one point on the drive, Keenan talked his way out of a police roadblock with ease. 400 miles later, they arrived safely at their Los Angeles hideout, where Keenan called Irwin. Irwin, who had initially been involved in planning but hadn’t joined them in Tahoe, came to the outpost, and it was he who placed the phone call to Frank Sinatra Sr. on December 10, demanding $240,000 for the safe release of his son. On the morning of December 11, the FBI dropped the money off at the location Irwin specified.