A Grave for Bobby: The Greenlease Slaying

The 1953 kidnap-murder of six-year-old Bobby Greenlease in St. Louis, Mo., was one of the most publicized crimes of the decade. The victim's father, a wholesale auto distributor, paid a ransom of $600,000 in small bills to alleged kidnappers Carl Hall and Bonny Heady, who were quickly caught, tried and executed--but only half the ransom money was recovered. Hall, who had embarked on a drunken odyssey around the city after the crime, had no recollection of the missing cash, which Deakin, a St. Louis Dispatch reporter, attempts to trace in this flat, occasionally tedious volume. He concludes that the loot was seized by a corrupt cop and a low-level Mafioso and found its way into the hands of the Chicago mob. At a remove of four decades, however, few readers are likely to care. Photos not seen by PW. Author tour. (Feb.)