Frank Sinatra Jr. was held hostage for just over two days before the kidnappers became anxious, and set him free before retrieving their ransom.
Everett Collection Inc / Alamy Stock PhotoFrank Sinatra Jr. with his mother Nancy after his kidnapping, which took place over several days in December 1963.
By the end of 1963, 23-year-old Barry Keenan was hopelessly broke and addicted to painkillers. He needed money — and fast. So he decided to kidnap a celebrity and demand a ransom. With the help of two accomplices, he and the others pulled off the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., the 19-year-old son of the famous ‘Ol Blue Eyes.’
Or, they almost did.
Keenan’s kidnapping scheme was flawed from the beginning, and it didn’t take long for the entire operation to fall apart. Just days after Frank Sinatra Jr. disappeared from a gig in Lake Tahoe, he was found — safe and unharmed — walking through Bel Air.
And then one of the kidnappers started to talk.
The Kidnapping Of Frank Sinatra Jr.
Public DomainFrank Sinatra, his first wife Nancy, and their children: Nancy, Tina, and Frank Sinatra Jr.
The kidnapping of Frank Sinatra began with Barry Keenan, a UCLA student who’d gone to grade school with Frank Sinatra Jr.’s sister, Nancy. By 1963, Keenan was struggling with an addiction to painkillers following a car accident. He started thinking of ways to make money fast, and came up with a kidnapping and ransom scheme. After some debate, he decided that 19-year-old Frank Sinatra Jr. could be the perfect candidate.
“I originally thought of Tony Hope, but Bob Hope had been very active with entertaining the troops and seemed like an all-around good guy. Kidnapping Tony didn’t seem like a very American thing to do,” Keenan explained to the Washington Post in 1998.
Keenan continued: “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. It wouldn’t be morally wrong to put him through a few hours of grief worrying about his son.”
According to Keenan, he did not intend to keep the money from the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. He planned to invest it, make enough to help himself and his family, and eventually pay it all back to Frank Sinatra Sr.
In any case, the first thing he needed accomplices. Keenan tapped his high school friend 23-year-old Joe Amsler, who was newly married and strapped for cash, and his mother’s ex-boyfriend, 42-year-old John Irwin.
FBIBarry Keenan, Joe Amsler, and John Irwin, were behind the Frank Sinatra Jr. kidnapping of 1963.
After aborted attempts in Phoenix and Los Angeles, Keenan plotted for the kidnapping to take place on Nov. 22, 1963. However, the plan was foiled when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated that day in Dallas.
Instead, Keenan planned to kidnap Frank Sinatra Jr. in Lake Tahoe. Frank Jr. was trying to follow in his father’s footsteps and launch a music career, and the 19-year-old had a concert scheduled at Harrah’s Club Lodge. After that, he was going to Europe — which would mean the end of the plot.
However, the plan went wildly awry.
How The Kidnapping Of Frank Sinatra Jr. Fell Apart
On Dec. 8, 1963, Keenan and Amsler went to Harrah’s Club Lodge to kidnap Frank Sinatra Jr. They snuck up to Room 417 at around 9 p.m., where Frank Jr. was eating chicken with John Foss, his trumpet player, before their evening show. Keenan and Amsler pretended to be making a delivery before Keenan whipped out a gun and started making threats.
Getty ImagesFrank Sr. adjusts Frank Jr.’s pocket square before a show at the Sands.
“I said, Don’t make any noise and nobody’ll get hurt, don’t make any noise and nobody’ll get hurt,’ sort of like a stuck record,” Keenan told the Washington Post. “Then I started taking charge. I said, Both of you get over and lie on the floor, this is a robbery. Where is your money?'”
Foss had no money; Frank Jr. had just $20. Keenan and Amsler took the cash, then bound Foss with adhesive tape. Pretending that they didn’t know who Frank Jr. was, they blindfolded him and took him down to their car.
However, Foss freed himself within minutes — and immediately notified the authorities. Despite this, Keenan and Amsler made their way through police roadblocks and brought Frank Jr. to a quiet suburb of Los Angeles. There, Frank Jr. refused to cooperate by giving them his father’s phone number.
“Shoot me, beat me up, whatever,” Frank Jr. purportedly said. “I’m not giving you a phone number. I’m not scared of you guys.”
In fact, Frank Sinatra Jr.’s kidnappers didn’t need a phone number. They learned that Frank Sr. — after being offered assistance by Attorney General Robert Kennedy and mobster Sam Giancana — was working with the FBI and had set up headquarters at Mapes Hotel in Reno. They found the number for the hotel, and Irwin called Frank Sr. with instructions.
Though Frank Sr. offered $1 million dollars for his son’s safe return, Keenan only wanted $240,000. The FBI reports that on Dec. 10, Irwin told Frank Sr. to drop off the money between two school buses in Sepulveda, California. Early the next day, on Dec. 11., Frank Sr. complied.
FBIThe $240,000 demanded by Frank Sinatra Jr.’s kidnappers. Keenan allegedly planned to invest the money and pay it back.
However, while Keenan and Amsler went to pick up the cash, Irwin started getting nervous about the whole plot. Rather than wait for his collaborators to return, he decided to let Frank Jr. go.
Frank Sinatra Jr. was found a few miles away in Bel Air. He walked up to a security guard, who put Frank Jr. in the trunk of his car to avoid the press, and drove him to his mother Nancy’s house.
Though their victim had escaped, the kidnapping had never really been the point of the plot. Keenan, Amsler, and Irwin, celebrated the successful ransom with glee as Frank Jr. was reunited with his family.
“We laid all the money out, danced on it, lit cigarettes with it, did all the things we’d seen in the movies,” Keenan told the Washington Post. “We had a money war, throwing wads of bills at each other.”
But it wouldn’t take long for the FBI to track the kidnappers down.
The Aftermath Of The Failed Kidnapping
Frank Sinatra Jr. couldn’t tell the FBI much about his kidnappers. But he didn’t have to. Irwin stopped in San Diego on his way to New Orleans, and confessed everything to his brother. Irwin’s brother, in turn, told the police — who arrested him, Amsler, and Keenan.
On February 10, 1964, the three men were put on trial. Though Keenan claimed that the whole thing had been a publicity stunt concocted by people close to the Sinatras — a claim Keenan later recanted, though it followed Frank Jr. for the rest of his life — he and the others were found guilty.
Keenan and Amsler were sentenced to life in prison plus 75 years, and Irwin was sentenced to 75 years. However, after undergoing psychiatric evaluations and appealing their sentences, all three ultimately served far less time. Amsler and Irwin were released after three and a half years, and Keenan was released after four and a half years.
Incredibly, Keenan went on to make millions of dollars through real estate. That meant that he was soon rubbing elbows with L.A.’s wealthiest citizens, including Frank Jr. himself (though the Washington Post reports that the two men never spoke when they crossed paths).
And in the end, the Frank Sinatra Jr. kidnapping made Jr. famous — but not in the way he’d wanted at the age of 19.
“The criminals invented a story that the whole thing was phony,” he told The Guardian in 2012. “That was the stigma put on me.”
After reading about the botched kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr., read about the true story of the John Paul Getty III kidnapping. Then, check out the mysterious Detective X who helped solve the Lindbergh kidnapping.
