Ransom Money Research Articles

The Significance of the Requirement of Double Criminality in the Law of Extradition

This was an appeal from a decision of the Tel-Aviv-Yafo District Court, declaring the appellant Ross to be liable to extradition on the Attorney General's petition presented at the request of the Government of the United States.The appellant had been indicted before the Federal Court of the Eastern District of Louisiana on two charges, namely, transportation of a person in interstate and foreign commerce and receiving ransom money, in contravention of, respectively, secs. 1201 and 1202, chap. 18, para. 55, of the Federal Criminal Code. It was alleged that on August 21, 1972, the said Ross, being in possession of a revolver had kidnapped the two and a half year old Diana Cando Creon from her parents' home in the town of Pueblo (Mexico); that between that date and September 12 of the same year he had taken the child across international and interstate borders, from Mexico to the United States and, within the United States, from New Orleans, Louisiana to Biloxi, Mississippi; that he had illegally detained her throughout this period for the purpose of obtaining ransom, conducting negotiations to that effect with her father; and that he eventually succeeded in obtaining, in return for her release, the sum of U.S. $ 105,000—after which the little girl was found safe and sound in a hotel in Biloxi.

The Second Capture of Sestos

In the ninth chapter of his Life of Cimon, Plutarch tells how Cimon, appointed to allot the spoils from Sestos and Byzantium, set the prisoners on one side, and the material booty on the other. The allies, invited to choose between the two, chose the latter as being much the more attractive in value, and Cimon's division was laughed at as ridiculous. But later, when the ransom money for the prisoners came in, the tables were turned, and the Athenians, thanks to Cimon's device, were seen to have had the best of the bargain after all.This story, which is repeated by Polyaenus, originally came from Ion of Chios, who said that Cimon himself told it to him at a dinner-party, and that he (Cimon) thought it one of the cleverest things he had ever done. The prisoners and booty, which he was allotting, came from Sestos and Byzantium. Now the information from Herodotus and Thucydides is that Sestos was besieged at the end of 479; when it fell is another problem to which I shall return. Byzantium was certainly captured in the summer of 478. But the commander at Sestos, when the Athenians were the backbone of the Hellenic forces (the Spartans having sailed home), was Xanthippus, the father of Pericles: while the commander at the siege of Byzantium was the Spartan Pausanias, the victor of Plataea. Subsequently Pausanias himself, as a refugee from Sparta, seized Byzantium and had to be driven out of it again by the Athenians in 477. On this occasion the Athenian forces, made up of the contingents of the new Delian Confederation, were commanded by Cimon. Are we to understand from this passage of Plutarch that, on this same campaign, Cimon also captured Sestos, and that Sestos had, like Byzantium, fallen into the hands of Pausanias since its original liberation?

The Handwriting Evidence against Hauptmann

Hauptmann, like other writers, had developed handwriting peculiarities by which he could be identified. He incorporated those identifying characteristics in the notes written to Colonel Lindbergh demanding the ransom money. Handwriting evidence may be presented so graphically that it is overwhelmingly convincing. The handwriting evidence against Hauptmann amounted practically to a demonstration-it was that conclusive.'