It was a Wednesday night, 9:15, and The Atlanta Constitution’s chiefs were in managing editor Jim Minter’s office sorting through a busy news day, debating the next day’s front page: Gov. Jimmy Carter was mad at legislators. Inflation was roaring. The Watergate investigation was accelerating. Hank Aaron was chasing the home run record. And the FBI thought kidnapped newspaper heiress Patty Hearst might soon be released.
The meeting was winding down when Minter’s phone rang. It was Reg Murphy, the paper’s editor.
I've been kidnapped, he said.
Well, then you're in a helluva shape, Reg, the gruff and unflappable Minter said. No one's going to pay anything for you.
After hanging up, Minter cracked that the dashing, erudite Murphy must be out drinking, drawing a round of laughter.
The call was a put-on, he figured, but Minter had a gnawing feeling. He told an aide to call Murphy’s wife, Virginia, and ask if he was home.
Credit: COPY
Credit: COPY
He wasn’t and she was worried.
She said he left their Druid Hills home two hours earlier with a strange man who wanted to donate 300,000 gallons of fuel oil to a charity and needed Murphy’s help.
Minutes later, a man calling himself “the colonel” called WAGA-TV to say Murphy had been kidnapped.
Don't alert the FBI, he warned.
Minter called Publisher Jack Tarver.
I think we have a problem, Minter said.
Within the hour, FBI agents descended on the newsroom at 72 Marietta St., and one of the strangest sagas in Atlanta history was underway.
2. A strange request
Minter may have figured Murphy was pranking him that night of Feb. 20, 1974, because of a call the two newsmen received just days earlier from an FBI agent. The agent told the two editors arrangements were being made for the release of Patty Hearst, who had been kidnapped in California two weeks earlier by the Symbionese Liberation Army, a violent left-wing revolutionary group.
She was to be released at Atlanta’s Hartsfield Airport, the agent said. He asked the newspaper to run a classified ad saying “PAT IS OKAY” as a signal to the kidnappers. Murphy and Minter did so and waited excitedly, believing they had the inside track on the biggest scoop in America. But nothing happened.
Days later, Murphy got the call from a man saying he wanted to donate the fuel oil, then a valuable commodity because of the recent Arab oil embargo that caused severe shortages. The call was odd but, as the face of the newspaper and a man who had written about explosive topics such as politics and race, the 40-year-old editor knew his job left him open to strange requests. Murphy lined up agencies for the donation.
That night, a man representing himself as Lamont Woods arrived at Murphy’s home around 7:30 p.m. He was a big, red-faced, lumbering fellow with a Southern lilt and long sideburns. Murphy thought his outfit — a rust-colored hat, green wind breaker and maroon pants — was garish, even by ’70s standards. The visitor seemed nervous, causing Murphy, the father of two girls, to quickly usher him out of his house.
They drove off in the man’s Ford Torino to meet with his attorney. When he turned the wrong way on Briarcliff Road, he asked Murphy if he had ever heard of the American Revolutionary Army.
Murphy hadn’t.
Driving north up I-85, the man started rambling about a Jewish domination of business, government and newspapers. Murphy’s mounting fears were realized when Woods pulled a nickel-plated revolver from his jacket and cocked it.
Mr. Murphy, you have been kidnapped, he announced.
“My family doesn’t have any money,” Murphy protested.
Yeah, but the newspaper does, he said.
Credit: undefined
Credit: undefined
The man declared himself a "colonel" in that previously unheard of army, adding, We're going to stop the lying, leftist liberal media.
Murphy was instructed to bind his feet with clothesline and cover his eyes with adhesive tape. The kidnapper stopped the car, ordered Murphy to shuffle to the back, where he was shoved into the trunk and hog-tied before the lid slammed down on him.
Choking on exhaust fumes, Murphy was jarred by the bumpy roads and sharp turns. He felt foolish for letting this happen. He reflexively raised his head and banged it into the closed trunk lid. The pain exacerbated his growing dread and claustrophobia. He thought of Barbara Jane Mackle, the Emory University student kidnapped in 1968 and rescued three days later, buried in a ventilated box in Gwinnett County after her wealthy family paid a $500,000 ransom. Her kidnapper had been caught and imprisoned, but the blind-folded Murphy could not shake the thought that his last vision on earth might be a badly dressed galoot aiming a pistol at him.
The car finally stopped at what looked like a carport. The kidnapper brought Murphy a phone, held it to the editor’s head while he still lay in the trunk and dialed Minter.
3. Cusp of change
Susan Murphy, 12, woke up the next morning and saw strangers standing in her yard. Seeing her daughter awake, Virginia Murphy took her aside.
Remember that meeting your father had last night? Virginia asked the seventh grader. Well, he didn't come home.
Downstairs, the home was full of FBI and GBI agents, friends, neighbors and family. Virginia alternated between pacing the house in her stocking feet and huddling under a quilt on a sofa near the phone. From time to time, she peeked at the growing crowd of reporters and camera crews outside the home. The same was the case downtown at the newspaper. The Constitution, out of caution, left news of the kidnapping out of Thursday morning’s paper but the word got out and the media arrived like a horde.
FBI agents drove Susan and her older sister Karen to school. They wanted life to remain as normal as possible for the children. However, it was anything but. Susan’s class — as well as much of the city — spent most of the day watching the minute-by-minute details unfold on TV.
Atlanta in 1974 was at the cusp of becoming the city it is today. The battles of desegregation were largely over; Atlanta had recently sworn in its first black mayor, Maynard Jackson; the city was busy attracting new businesses and was now home to four major league teams. Atlanta was growing into a major metropolitan city, but it still retained a small-town feel and the idea that the editor of the local newspaper had been kidnapped by suspected revolutionaries was a distinctly foreign concept.
FBI agents immediately hooked up a state-of-the-art, yet large and cumbersome, contraption to Minter’s phone to record calls from the kidnapper. Agents sat alongside the managing editor in his office. Veteran reporter Jeff Nesmith was allowed to stay in the office for the inside story. It was the Constitution’s story, after all.
At the time, the Journal and Constitution were separate operations with fiercely competitive staffs, although they were both owned by Cox Enterprises. Minter, a scowling, cigar-chewing sports editor for the Journal had been put in charge of daily news operations at the Constitution in 1971, and he was perceived as either an invader or a traitor by some.
Minter and Murphy, whose job was to write a daily column and shape the Constitution’s editorial position, had bumped heads several times over stories and personnel. They generally did not get along. But now Minter was the point-man for the operation to get Murphy home alive, an outcome some FBI agents believed might be doubtful.
Credit: ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Credit: ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
4. Held for ransom
On Thursday morning, Murphy woke up still bound and blindfolded, squeezed between a bed and a dresser. The morning TV broadcast was abuzz about his kidnapping. The colonel sounded pleased. He sat Murphy up and had him record a tape.
Around noon, someone identifying himself as “American Eagle One” called the newspaper to say a tape recording could be found at an office in Dunwoody. On the 900-word tape, Murphy explained that his kidnappers were an organized militia who intended to conduct guerrilla warfare and wanted $700,000 in cash to help fund their cause. He said metro residents would be called at random from the phone book and given further orders.
The tape was played on the evening news across the nation, and Minter’s office number was broadcast. Murphy’s message ended with him addressing his wife: “Remember what William Faulkner said. He said life and man endures, and man does endure, and this will work out and I look forward to seeing you in the future.”
After recording the tape, Murphy was stuffed in the car trunk again and hogtied. The kidnapper said they were headed to Knoxville. It was a stuffy, hot and painful drive and a mental video of Murphy’s life kept flashing before his blind-folded eyes, with frequent visions of his family. But those thoughts left him imagining a widow and fatherless children. So instead, he forced himself to focus on golf, dreaming of playing every hole of every course in his mind, of raking out sand traps and dropping perfect putts.
The claustrophobia of being packed in the trunk was starting to get to Murphy. He was on the verge of a panic attack.
“Colonel, I’m not going to make it,” he shouted.
Soon they stopped and the kidnapper opened the lid.
Come on now, Mr. Murphy, you're nearly cracking up, he blithely told his captive.
Hours later at about 9:30 p.m., they stopped at a motel. Murphy, a silver-tongued fellow used to giving speeches, used the opportunity to humanize himself in hopes it would save him from harm. He told the kidnapper every joke he could recall; he talked about his family and asked the kidnapper about his. The kidnapper, an engaging guy by many accounts, warmed up to his victim. He told Murphy he grew up in Florida and was beaten so badly by his father he was ashamed to go to school. He said Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” was his favorite song, and he was a huge fan of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.
At one point the kidnapper told Murphy the “army” considered kidnapping Mayor Jackson but decided against it.
“He wouldn’t fit in the trunk of the car,” he said. “You tell him that when you see him.”
The joke about the city’s heavyset mayor gave Murphy a ray of hope. The kidnapper had let on that he might not end up in a ditch with a bullet in his head.
5. Two suitcases of cash
Friday morning, Murphy, still blind-folded, woke up in a motel to his first meal — bacon, eggs and hash browns. On the TV Murphy heard his friend, journalist Tom Brokaw, on the “Today” show talking about him.
The kidnapper walked Murphy from the motel room to the car, wedged him on the floor in the back seat and covered him with a pink blanket. Then he drove from phone booth to phone booth, making calls and listening to the car radio, delighting to hear FBI agents and newspaper executives address his demands over the air. When asked for clues about Murphy to prove he was still alive, the kidnapper would lob questions to Murphy, who would shout back his answers: Murphy lost his watch playing tennis. His secretary had to cancel two speeches at colleges.
Then random and bemused Atlantans started getting strange calls from the kidnapper, who was worried the FBI would trace him if he called the newspaper directly. The code word to verify his legitimacy was “Susan,” Murphy’s younger daughter’s name.
At 11:30 a.m., a secretary in Buckhead received a call telling her Murphy would be released if instructions were followed.
At 1:30 p.m., a 17-year-old high school student working at a law firm was told to call Minter and instruct him to deliver the money in an open-air Jeep wearing only pants, gym shoes and a short-sleeved shirt.
If anyone is behind you, then it's all over, he told her to say.
At 3 p.m., the kidnapper, getting increasingly nervous, broke his protocol and called Minter directly.
We are all tense and sitting on the ready. Now we don’t want to rock the boat.
The call was recorded, but he didn’t stay on the line long enough to be traced.
At 4:18 p.m., a steel executive was contacted and told to tell Minter he was to drive up to the end of “the new north Fulton highway,” Ga. 400, almost 30 miles north of downtown, turn around, drop two suitcases by the first road sign and drive off.
Newspaper executives obtained $700,000 from the nearby Federal Reserve and filled two suitcases. They were surprisingly heavy.
As he got set to leave, Minter turned to an FBI agent.
There’s a good chance I won’t be coming back, right?
The agent glanced down.
Yup.
Credit: ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
Credit: ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION
6. Mission accomplished
Minter was tough and brave but not the best candidate to be the bag-man. He was a southsider who had never driven up the newly constructed Ga. 400. He had a poor sense of direction. Worse, he was leaving downtown late (4:50 p.m. for a 5:30 drop off), heading into rush hour, then a growing problem.
A driver wearing a T-shirt in a yellow, open-air Jeep in plummeting late-afternoon temperatures draws attention. That he was also speeding, cutting off other motorists and driving on shoulders and medians drew even more. A few miles north of I-285, police had blocked all other traffic from Ga. 400. Minter would drive a lonely final 10 miles.
As he neared the empty road’s end, he noticed an old farmer attending to a truck with its hood up, and then saw a man in a field chasing a horse. Near the drop site, he eyed a Yellow Cab with two people in it. All odd, he thought. And all FBI, he later learned.
As he neared the drop site, he noticed a slow-moving sedan behind him. He stopped at the site and reached back to grab the heaviest suitcase containing $500,000. He jerked it but it was stuck behind the seat. His heart beating hard, he worried he was messing up the mission. Finally, he got out of the car and dropped the bags onto the road’s shoulder as instructed. He wanted to wait to see if the car behind picked it up but didn’t dare.
Minter exited at the next ramp and stopped at a drugstore to call the office to report mission accomplished. He then came upon an Army surplus store and stopped to buy some warm clothes. The couple who owned it were glued to the TV, watching an anchorman announce that Minter had dropped off the money.
The woman turned to welcome her red-faced, shivering customer.
You must be from up North! she said.
Minnesota, he responded.
He bought a jacket, gloves and an imitation fur-lined Russian hat for his drive back to Atlanta.
From the backseat floor, Murphy could sense the kidnapper’s mounting anxiety as they approached the drop site to pick up the money.
I don't like that car following us, he told Murphy at one point. And later, I have a feeling it's not going right.
But minutes later, money in hand, he unzipped a suitcase.
You ever smelled any filthy lucre? he asked.
Terror began to surge through Murphy. He suddenly realized the kidnapper no longer needed a live hostage. Will the kill shot come in the head or in the chest? he wondered.
But around 6:30 p.m., Murphy’s luck started to change. The kidnapper called reporter Jeff Nesmith from a phone booth to say Murphy would be released around 9 p.m. He continued driving a circuitous route, worried about surveillance. Eventually his mood brightened, and he asked Murphy where he wanted to be dropped off.
“A phone booth, Colonel,” he said.
The car screeched to a halt and the kidnapper helped Murphy stagger to his feet. He jabbed the gun in Murphy’s back and untied him.
Stand here, and don't move for five minutes, he ordered.
The blindfolded man stood in the parking lot of a Ramada near the Shallowford Road exit at I-85. He tore the tape from his eyes as the car screeched away, and the dazed, unshaven former captive in a crumpled blue blazer staggered into the hotel to call his wife.
Suspicious, Virginia demanded he give her a clue.
“You want Karen’s phone number?” he asked.
Darlin'! she said with relief.
A friend rushed to the inn to retrieve the former hostage and minutes later they pulled into the Murphy family driveway. Murmurs grew in the house, Reg is back! Reg is back!
The family had a brief, private reunion on the back porch before Murphy showered, changed and walked out the front door to address the scores of applauding media members, neighbors and curiosity seekers on his front lawn.
It was late and Murphy, ever the newsman, flashed a tired smile.
“I know you all have deadlines,” he said before answering questions.
Back at the paper, publisher Jack Tarver, who wore a pistol to work during the ordeal, approached Nesmith, the reporter embedded with the FBI in Minter’s office during the high-stakes negotiations. Tarver noted that every major American media outlet was in Atlanta. He then pointed at Nesmith, who was to write the next day’s front-page article recounting the drama.
This is our story and the best story I read tomorrow better be ours, he said.
Nesmith hurried to his typewriter and, on a tight deadline, banged out the most closely read story of his career.
Credit: COPY
Credit: COPY
7. Manhunt for a kidnapper
Less than six hours after Murphy stumbled into the Ramada, FBI agents raided a Lilburn home and arrested a burly, 33-year-old drywall installer named William A.H. Williams and his wife, Betty. Williams was asleep and wearing nothing but a bathrobe when his door was kicked in. The ransom money was in his home.
There was no “army,” just a con man.
Despite his carefully laid plans, Williams failed to change the license plate on his car, which was spotted near the drop point by an FBI surveillance team. Authorities tracked the car to Williams, found mug shots of him from an old arrest and identified him as the man who came to the Murphy home, claiming he had a load of fuel oil to donate.
“He was a lone operator,” said FBI agent James Guess, who managed the investigation and rousted Williams from bed, “and not a learned individual.”
Williams contended he was insane, but he was convicted of federal extortion charges. Because it was unclear if he had crossed state lines, he was not convicted of kidnapping. But an appeals court threw out the conviction, stating the prosecutor used an improper closing argument and the trial, held one block from the newspaper’s office on Marietta Street, should have been moved because of excess publicity. The judges also noted Murphy’s front-page, first-person account of the kidnapping that ran two days after his release.
Tried again, Williams was convicted in a Key West, Fla., courtroom. He served nine years and upon his release told a reporter he had changed. He sold cars in El Paso, Texas, for a while, and later moved to Nebraska and then Las Vegas.
Attempts to track him down for this story were futile. But an ex-wife (not the one from 1974, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges) turned up, and if her allegations are true, Williams hadn’t changed much. She said she met Williams at a Las Vegas newspaper where they both sold subscriptions. She claims he convinced her to divorce her longtime husband and then cleaned out her life savings of $35,000.
“I left a beautiful home to live with him in a hovel, that big, ugly, fat creep,” said the woman, who did not want her name revealed. “He ruined my life.”
Murphy suffered a mild heart attack later that same year while playing tennis, but he went on to have a distinguished career. A year after the kidnapping he left Atlanta to become editor and publisher of the San Francisco Examiner, then owned by the Hearst family. From there, he went on to head the Baltimore Sun, the U.S. Golf Association and the National Geographic Society.
After the kidnapping, Minter was asked what it felt like carrying $700,000 in cash.
“Like Furman Bisher on the first day of spring training,” he joked, referring to the legendary sports columnist who loved an expense account.
Minter later became editor of the combined edition of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and retired to write a column. He now lives near where he grew up in Fayette County.
Murphy is now retired and remarried and lives with his wife, Diana, in a spacious home on a golf course on St. Simons Island. He was at the helm of the Baltimore Sun when it was sold to Times Mirror in 1986. He reportedly made nearly $15 million in the deal.
Hearing of the windfall, Minter sent him a note: “Next time you get kidnapped, don’t call me, write a check.”
HOW WE GOT THE STORY
One of the most riveting stories from the archives of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the 1974 kidnapping of former Atlanta Constitution editor Reg Murphy. Staff writer Bill Torpy had heard versions of the story over the years and asked Murphy about it while working on an unrelated story last year. He soon realized it would make a good Personal Journey. In addition to reading 40-year-old newspaper accounts on microfiche, Torpy interviewed Murphy and Jim Minter, the former managing editor who helped free Murphy. Torpy also interviewed former newspaper staffers, family members and FBI agents. It’s a thrilling story filled with intrigue, and it speaks to a different era when Atlanta was just beginning to bust out of its small-town mindset and take its place on the national stage.
–Suzanne Van Atten, Features Enterprise Editor
Credit: Stephen B. Morton
Credit: Stephen B. Morton
