Man Pays $5,000 to Free Wife Held by Intruder

An intruder bound a 63-year-old woman to a chair in her home Friday morning while her husband followed instructions and paid a $5,000 ransom, police said.

Police said that Myrna Peterjohn came downstairs and encountered a man wearing black gloves, a black mask and a baseball cap.

He bound her with electrical tape and told her that he had spent the night there waiting for her husband to leave for work.

“This appeared to be pretty well planned,” said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman Jim Amormino.

At 9:30 a.m., Robert Peterjohn, 71, got a call at his Buena Park business, Aerofit Products, from a man who said he was holding Peterjohn’s wife hostage. He told Peterjohn to get $5,000, go to the drive-through of a Jack-in-The-Box restaurant on Los Alamitos Boulevard, order food and replace the food in the bag with the money.

He was supposed to leave the bag full of cash in an undisclosed “grassy area,” then drive to an adjacent Texaco station and buy gas.

The suspect allowed Robert Peterjohn to speak to his wife.

Peterjohn then called his son, but it was unclear late Friday who notified authorities. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department relayed the information to the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

A sheriff’s SWAT team surrounded the house, unsure whether the intruder and hostage were still inside. At 12:45 p.m., however, Myrna Peterjohn walked out of the house unharmed after freeing herself.

By that time, Amormino said, Peterjohn had delivered the money.

“The money was picked up by someone, we don’t know who,” he said.