toadspaghetti
Full Member
- Dec 19, 2014
- 183
- 135
- Detector(s) used
- Garrett AT Pro
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
The afternoon of July 27, 1972, was just another Thursday afternoon in the garden for 49-year old Virginia Piper. That all changed in the blink of an eye.
Two armed, masked men show up at her sprawling estate in Orono not far from Lake Minnetonka. They threw a hood over her head, stashed her in the back seat of a car and took off. It sets in motion a kidnapping-for-ransom crime that to this day is officially unsolved and nearly a million dollars remains unaccounted for.
"This was a huge deal," says William Swanson, author of a new book called "Stolen from the Garden: The Kidnapping of Virginia Piper." "This was a story that was on the evening news. It was on the front page not only of Twin Cities papers, but papers across the country."
Why so much attention? There are many reasons. Piper was the beautiful wife of a millionaire stock broker who ran a prominent Minneapolis brokerage, "Piper, Jaffray and Hopwood." She was kidnapped from an idyllic estate in broad daylight. Ultimately, the kidnappers demanded a million dollars for the safe return of their victim.
"This case was planned and orchestrated by some very, very intelligent people," said Swanson, who pored over thousands of pages of FBI documents and interviewed dozens of people connected to the case. "This was not committed by ordinary stumblebums."
However, Swanson doubts they were career criminals.
"They came up with a brilliant plan despite some bonehead, amateurish mistakes they were lucky enough to get away with," he said.
Before it was over, Virginia Piper's husband, Harry "Bobby" Piper, was driving around the Twin Cities with a million dollars in unmarked 20-dollar bills in the trunk of his car. The kidnappers led him on a kind of life-or-death scavenger hunt trying to drop off the ransom.
"If you saw it in a movie you wouldn't believe it," Swanson said, "It would just defy explanation."
After the ransom was paid, the kidnappers randomly picked a man's name out of the phonebook and called him to say where Piper could be found. They directed him to call police and tell them she was in Jay Cooke State Park near Duluth. Within hours, the FBI found her alive, chained to a tree where she'd been held captive for two nights.
"They left me Friday night chained to the tree and didn't come back," Virginia Piper said at an extraordinary news conference on that Sunday. "So I figured nobody would ever find me again."
The FBI spent tens of millions of dollars investigating the case, interviewed thousands of "persons of interest" and created at least 80,000 documents. Two men were eventually charged, just days before the five-year statute of limitations expired in 1977.
Donald Larson and Kenneth Callahan were found guilty at their first trial in 1977. They won an appeal for a new trial and were found not guilty in 1979. So, officially the case is unsolved. Both men denied any involvement until their deaths.
As for the money, about $4,000 was recovered when the kidnappers started trying to exchange the money at banks in southern Minnesota. The rest of the million dollars is still missing.
After investigating the case and writing about it, Swanson is convinced Larson and Callahan didn't commit the crime. He explores some alternate possibilities in his book.
OK here's my interest in this story....
If you look up the name Donald Larson you will also notice that he is also the perpetrator of what is considered the worst mass murder in Minnesota history..... (difrerent story)
However.... his farm, where the murders happened is less that a mile from where my great great grandfather originally setteled in MN. We still own a bunch of hunting land there. Donald Larson's house and farm are gone now. My dad always said the ransom $$ is probably buried out there. Now every time I drive by that place I think of that loot.
I know this is a metal detecting forum, and the ransom is in marked $20 bills.... Even if Donald Larson wasn't involved in the kidnapping, there is $996,000 dollars out there somewhere.
Donald died in prison a few years back and I don't know when Kenneth Callahan died.....
Two armed, masked men show up at her sprawling estate in Orono not far from Lake Minnetonka. They threw a hood over her head, stashed her in the back seat of a car and took off. It sets in motion a kidnapping-for-ransom crime that to this day is officially unsolved and nearly a million dollars remains unaccounted for.
"This was a huge deal," says William Swanson, author of a new book called "Stolen from the Garden: The Kidnapping of Virginia Piper." "This was a story that was on the evening news. It was on the front page not only of Twin Cities papers, but papers across the country."
Why so much attention? There are many reasons. Piper was the beautiful wife of a millionaire stock broker who ran a prominent Minneapolis brokerage, "Piper, Jaffray and Hopwood." She was kidnapped from an idyllic estate in broad daylight. Ultimately, the kidnappers demanded a million dollars for the safe return of their victim.
"This case was planned and orchestrated by some very, very intelligent people," said Swanson, who pored over thousands of pages of FBI documents and interviewed dozens of people connected to the case. "This was not committed by ordinary stumblebums."
However, Swanson doubts they were career criminals.
"They came up with a brilliant plan despite some bonehead, amateurish mistakes they were lucky enough to get away with," he said.
Before it was over, Virginia Piper's husband, Harry "Bobby" Piper, was driving around the Twin Cities with a million dollars in unmarked 20-dollar bills in the trunk of his car. The kidnappers led him on a kind of life-or-death scavenger hunt trying to drop off the ransom.
"If you saw it in a movie you wouldn't believe it," Swanson said, "It would just defy explanation."
After the ransom was paid, the kidnappers randomly picked a man's name out of the phonebook and called him to say where Piper could be found. They directed him to call police and tell them she was in Jay Cooke State Park near Duluth. Within hours, the FBI found her alive, chained to a tree where she'd been held captive for two nights.
"They left me Friday night chained to the tree and didn't come back," Virginia Piper said at an extraordinary news conference on that Sunday. "So I figured nobody would ever find me again."
The FBI spent tens of millions of dollars investigating the case, interviewed thousands of "persons of interest" and created at least 80,000 documents. Two men were eventually charged, just days before the five-year statute of limitations expired in 1977.
Donald Larson and Kenneth Callahan were found guilty at their first trial in 1977. They won an appeal for a new trial and were found not guilty in 1979. So, officially the case is unsolved. Both men denied any involvement until their deaths.
As for the money, about $4,000 was recovered when the kidnappers started trying to exchange the money at banks in southern Minnesota. The rest of the million dollars is still missing.
After investigating the case and writing about it, Swanson is convinced Larson and Callahan didn't commit the crime. He explores some alternate possibilities in his book.
OK here's my interest in this story....
If you look up the name Donald Larson you will also notice that he is also the perpetrator of what is considered the worst mass murder in Minnesota history..... (difrerent story)
However.... his farm, where the murders happened is less that a mile from where my great great grandfather originally setteled in MN. We still own a bunch of hunting land there. Donald Larson's house and farm are gone now. My dad always said the ransom $$ is probably buried out there. Now every time I drive by that place I think of that loot.
I know this is a metal detecting forum, and the ransom is in marked $20 bills.... Even if Donald Larson wasn't involved in the kidnapping, there is $996,000 dollars out there somewhere.
Donald died in prison a few years back and I don't know when Kenneth Callahan died.....
