Kidnaping of Media Heir Held ‘Botched’

The kidnapers who abducted a member of a prominent media family “botched it themselves,” police said in describing how garbled, rambling ransom messages were put through to the family and how an air supply system rigged for Stephen B. Small, who died after being buried alive in a homemade box, was likely to fail.

After kidnaping Small, Deputy Police Chief Robert Pepin said, the kidnapers first dictated their instructions for delivery of a $1-million ransom on tape, then held the tape recorder to the telephone after calling Small’s wife, Nancy.

“It wasn’t understood (by Nancy Small), and they couldn’t decipher any type of instructions,” Pepin said. “They (the kidnapers) were shaky about staying on the telephone” for fear the call would be traced by police, he said.

Buried in Sand

The body of Small, 40, was found late Friday in a wooden box buried in sand southeast of Kankakee, about 60 miles south of Chicago.

The kidnapers aparently bungled their attempt to keep Small alive because the pipe hookup they wanted him to breathe through was a “Mickey-Mouse rig,” the Kankakee County coroner said Sunday.

Although results of an autopsy Saturday were inconclusive, Coroner James Orrison said Small probably suffocated after a short time. He said laboratory results on the cause of death were expected within three weeks.

Orrison said the pipe that Small was supposed to breathe through probably allowed him little, if any, oxygen.

The pipe, which was 1 1/2 inches in diameter, did not go all the way into the box, but only up to the edge, where several slots were cut into the wood.

‘So He Couldn’t Yell’

“It was placed that way so he couldn’t yell through it,” Orrison said. But the coroner said the ground was very sandy, and that “there’s a great possibility that the pipe could have been clogged.”

The former media executive was kidnaped Wednesday when his abductors lured him to a building he was renovating.

Three people have been arrested in the case, and police were searching Sunday for at least two more suspects.

Pepin said the abductors were able to make the amount of their ransom demands clear in the first call to Small’s wife at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday. During that call, Mrs. Small was played a tape of her husband’s voice, saying he had been kidnaped, police said. But she was unable to make out how they wanted the money delivered.

About 6 p.m. that evening, Jean Alice Small, the victim’s aunt and publisher and editor of the Kankakee Daily Journal, received a call from one of the abductors, which was not taped.

Double-Cross Claimed

The caller rambled for about 20 minutes, complaining that family members had double-crossed the abductors by alerting police. The caller said Small would be killed unless his family followed instructions.

Although the family never understood the instructions on when or where to drop the ransom, the aunt said the caller told her a drop-off plan for that night was “off.”

“The family was ready and willing to comply with their demands,” Pepin said.

Authorities said the kidnapers made five calls to Small’s wife, but it was not clear how many of them involved tape recordings.

Small was the son of the late Burrell L. Small, who was president and chairman of the Mid America Media Group, which once owned 11 radio stations and two television stations, and nephew of the late Len. H. Small, who was president of Small Newspapers Inc., which owns eight daily newspapers and five weeklies, including the Palisadian-Post in Pacific Palisades in Los Angeles.