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

Author:John Heidenry [Heidenry, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Mystery, History
ISBN: 9780312376796
Amazon: B00375LOJG
Goodreads: 6184569
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2009-07-21T05:00:00+00:00

By extraordinary coincidence, the FBI had on file a name—Thomas John Marsh—that matched that of Hall’s fictitious associate. When agents showed Hall a photograph of Marsh, he would neither identify nor disavow that particular Marsh as his fellow kidnapper. Newspapers around the world, however, played up the manhunt for the real Marsh on their front pages, characterizing him as a tattooed sex degenerate who had eighteen arrests on his record. The real Tom Marsh had once been arrested in St. Louis, in 1950, and charged with a sex offense involving an eight-year-old boy, and later served five years in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. According to FBI files, his left ring finger had been amputated at the joint, and a tattoo on his right forearm bore the inscription “In memory of sister—Tom Marsh.”

Acutely aware of the numerous implausibilities and inconsistencies in Hall’s confession, FBI agents pressured him to admit that he did not have an accomplice named Tom Marsh; and to admit that he, Carl Austin Hall, murdered Bobby. But Hall emotionally denied that claim, even while declaring, “I know that I’m going to die, and that I am more responsible than anyone else because I planned the kidnapping and it resulted in the death of Bobby Greenlease.”

Repeated questioning resulted in repeated denials, as he continued to insist, over and over, “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” Rather, he said, Marsh was the one who killed Bobby, most likely in Heady’s basement. He said he had bought the lime poured over Bobby’s body two or three months earlier from a lumberyard because Heady wanted to revitalize the soil before planting tomatoes. When the FBI pointed out that tomatoes were normally planted in the spring, Hall replied that he was merely heeding Heady’s desire to plant some in the late summer months.

Bail for both Hall and Heady was set at $100,000 each, or about $1.5 million each in today’s money.

Around 4:30 A.M., police reporter John Kinsella, a big, friendly Irishman who worked for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, showed up at police headquarters on 12th Street downtown. A veteran newspaperman, he immediately sensed something in the air, a buzz. Before long, he learned that Chief O’Connell and an FBI agent had gone to the Newstead Avenue station in the middle of the night, and that they were still there. Most of the cops were Kinsella’s pals, but this time no one would tell him what was happening. Kinsella alerted his city editor, Raymond Crowley, who dispatched a reporter, James A. Kearns, Jr., to the Newstead station. Kearns quickly discovered that Hall and Heady had been arrested, and thought that he had a scoop, since he was the only reporter on the premises. But forty-five minutes later a swarm of reporters and radio and TV people rushed in, summoned by the police. All were brought into an office, where Hall and Heady were put on display as the kidnappers of Bobby Greenlease. A spokesman for the police department also announced that half of the ransom money was still missing.

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