Customer Reviews

Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In ZERO AT THE BONE, author John Heidenry has produced a well researched and densely written account of a notorious crime, the September 1953 kidnapping and murder in Kansas City MO, of 6 year old Bobby Greenlease by a pair of morons named Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady. There is considerable background on both of the perps, particularly on Hall, so that the reader gets a feel for the kind of people they were. Both came from seemingly normal childhoods and neither was raised in poverty, but by the time of the kidnapping, Hall in his middle 30s and Heady her early 40s were severely alcoholic and stayed drunk all day every day, with Hall adding as well to his repertoire a little drug habit.

The immediate act of the kidnapping itself was actually reasonably well planned and effectuated, but due to a combination of stupidity and alcoholism, Hall and Heady had no real plans after the almost immediate murder of Bobby. What followed were a series of ludicrously incompetent attempts to the take delivery of the money. Hall would require that Greenlease's representatives go to various locations, but he'd get the addresses wrong. Or on several occasions he couldn't find drop-off locations he himself had selected .On one occasion he instructed the representatives by phone to make a call from a specific hotel pay phone. But while he had the pay phone's number for them, he couldn't remember the name of the hotel. If the situation weren't so tragic, it would have been funny, and one of the Greenlease representatives is finally quoted as telling Hall, "This idea of climbing the tree and looking in a bird's nest for a note, then climbing on your belly somewhere looking under a rock with a red, white, and blue ribbon around it - that's getting tiresome." But eventually and amazingly Hall got the money - $600,000, a fortune by 1953 standards, and, any semblance of forethought officially ended, randomly drove with Heady to St. Louis. There, after depositing a passed out Heady in a rented apartment, Hall spent two profligate days in the Coral Courts Motel with the money, a hooker, and an underworld-connected cabdriver. The cabbie, figuring that the befogged Hall would be an easy mark, contacted his boss, cab company owner and small time mobster, Joseph Costello. Costello in turn contacted his friend, corrupt St. Louis detective Louis Shoulders, and the robbery of the kidnapper was on.

Except for the background material on Hall, a man who didn't like to work and ludicrously considered himself smarter than the common man and to a lesser extent on the remarkably shallow Heady, ZATB covers a 3-month period from September to December 1953. A large portion of the book relates in minute detail the movements of Hall in St. Louis over a three-day period. This was my favorite part of the book, partly due to the fact that I live in St. Louis and am familiar with the locations mentioned, but also because I found fascinating the presentation of the extreme and continuing stupidity of a not very bright man, who had somehow managed obtain a large amount of money, attempting to operate while in a drug and alcohol induced haze.

Heidenry writes very well, and while there are a few quotes that I think must have been made up, he has delivered a fast paced story that has a feel of immediacy throughout.
The book contains no filler, little repetition, and Heidenry is thankfully too good to have resorted to the all too frequent lame attempt at "creative writing." And he does a fine job of presenting the tenor of the Midwest in the early 1950s.
A reviewer on this site whom I respect, MJS, found fault with the book in that, "Hall and Heady are not criminal masterminds. They are monumentally stupid. They are not sympathetic." She is absolutely 100% right. But she then writes, "They are not even interesting."
And that's where my taste differs from hers. I find the behavior of impaired low-life idiots who try to implement extraordinary plans far in excess of their capabilities to be as interesting as it gets.
So to each his own, but I really enjoyed reading ZERO AT THE BONE

Once upon a time, the kidnapping of young Bobby Greenlease was second only to the Lindbergh case in terms of publicity and general outrage. The boy was murdered, as planned, before the first ransom demand was sent. The kidnappers, unlike Leopold and Loeb, got their ransom and left town, seemingly on their way to escaping without a trace. Instead epic inebriates Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady go off the deep end, lose the ransom and end up in an electric chair built for two.

This is dark material. John Heidenry does a good job of depicting the crime and the abysmal human beings who committed it. For my taste, he over does the details on the stealing of the ransom money. Certainly it takes a rare specimen to steal the proceeds from a child murder but other than being a proof point for utter corruption of the St Louis police I couldn't bring myself to care who had the money. It's return wouldn't bring the Greenleases' any comfort nor would it make Hall and Heady any less guilty.

There's something vaguely Coen Brothers about this case. From the French-speaking nuns in the Midwest to the motel with a national reputation for shady business to the moronic drunks to the "Who's Got the Ransom?" antics, the whole thing plays like a grimmer, entirely laugh-free version of Fargo at times. Hall and Heady are not criminal masterminds. They are monumentally stupid. They are not sympathetic. They aren't even interesting.

That may be the biggest obstacle for this book - other than telling the story, there isn't a whole lot to be gained from this exercise. Unlike the Lindbergh case the Greenlease case is not a microcosm of the times. It's the venal, depraved act of a couple of drunks. The end. Society's reaction to the crime and the criminals isn't especially illuminating either. Even as a tale of the dangers of demon alcohol it isn't much. If you're interested in the case then you likely won't be disappointed by this book. Otherwise this isn't a must-read.

My first recollection of hearing about the child abduction and murder of Bobby Greenlease was about 12 years ago when I was visiting Kansas City. Considering the time we live in, I thought it strange that such a long forgotten crime was so notoriously remembered even in the city where it took place. Unfortunately, child abductions and murders have become far too commonplace.
This book revisits not only the crime, but thoroughly recreates the time in which it took place and the media frenzy it generated. It very deliberately looks at murderers and their blundering attempts to extort money and cover their tracks to divert detection and also looks at the involvement of organized crime and law enforcement in the obstruction of justice.
This book is true crime at its absolute best.

I wasn't overly thrilled with author John Heidenry's last book on the St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, but I did find this book to be somewhat better. I was ten years old when Bobby Greenlease was murdered and I do remember when it took place in addition to the two individuals charged with his murder. There are no winners in this story. We have a murdered boy, two people executed, a broken-hearted family, and a teacher who regretted releasing a young boy from school to a woman posing as a distant aunt.

Neither Carl Hall nor Bonnie Heady wanted to earn money legitimately. Both had what they needed financially, but squandered their money on alcohol and other drugs. When this duo left Kansas City, Missouri, for St. Louis following the murder the book makes it appear they never had a sober moment. Hall left Heady in search of a prostitute and a place to stash the money. It is questionable as to what became of half of the ransom money. The author states two crooked St. Louis police officers and gangster Joe Costello ended up with the money. Both Hall and Heady went to their deaths in Missouri's gas chamber without divulging what they may have known regarding the ransom money.

I did find it hard to keep track of the events in the book once the city of St. Louis entered the picture. In addition, the author does not distinguish between Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas, which are separated by the Missouri River. Both cities are involved in this story.

This murder was presented in book form several years ago with the title A Grave For Bobby. I feel both books come up somewhat short in explaining the unfortunate events of this case. A lesson to be learned here is that schools release their students only to authorized designated individuals.

The Greenlease kidnapping was a fascinating yet tragic event that took place in Kansas City. The book is well written and details the whole story from start to finish. If you want to know everything that happened on that fateful day in 1953 read this book.

Zero at the Bone is a fast,compelling read. You will find yourself shaking your head at the brutality and stupidity of the kidnappers and then cheering for the scum that preys on them once they have the money. In the end you find yourself comforted by the curse the tainted money has on all who touch it. My husband and I were lured to this novel by a review in the NY Times that compared it to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. John Heidenry is in fact at his best when he simply lets the facts tell the story because what is most fascinating about the cliched two dimensional characters that inhabit this novel is the fact that they are real. As I read I couldn't help but wonder if the " cold blooded killer" or the "lonely prostitute" or the "mob boss" or even the "crooked cop" realized that they belonged in a Pulp Fiction novel. Yet they were real. And so is the storytelling.

This brief account of the infamous Bobby Greenlease kidnapping in 1953 is chilling to read in this true crime page turner. As a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, I grew up hearing the tale of his murder and the FBI manhunt for the two alcoholic criminals who bungled everything except the actual kidnapping itself. Justice was swift in those days and they were executed before the year was out. The book paints a different America where front doors were left unlocked and schools allowed students to leave with strangers pretending to be relatives with no ID. In Missouri, this all change and people (and schools) were less trusting in the future.

What the book provides in detail ~ and it is considerable ~ it lacks in emotional depth. The descriptions of the kidnapping, the devastation of the Greenlease family, and even the final disposition of the kidnappers is affecting.

However, beyond that much of the book reads like entries from a calendar or appointment book ~ i.e. time, place, names; time, place, names.

It's not that this is a bad book ~ far from it ~ rather, it seems to rely too heavily on a staccato, linear recitation of times, places, and names.

Terrific story, written in "just the facts" style, but the Kindle Edition does not include the "8 pages of b&w photos!" Why not? I've purchased other Kindle Editions that included photos and had no expectation the photos would not be included. Am I going to have to think twice before ordering Kindle Editions in the future? That's not getting the full book! I called Kindle Support, my account was credited (and book removed from my Kindle), but that's hardly the point.

John Heindry sure had a lot of material to work with in this story. Millionaire's child kidnapped, murder, fascinating criminals, corrupt cops. Yet he somehow drags it all out and makes it dull and drab and lacking any real fire or passion. Rather than taking us back to the time and going in detail about how the first major crime of the TV age played out, he just seems like someone who went to the library one weekend, took what others wrote and presented it as his own.

The characters are muddled and very poorly explained. All of the loose ends are not explained by the end of the story. Heindry seems interested in only filling pages and not telling a compelling story. There is much true crime out there than this book.