The 11 most infamous abductions in modern history
The taking of Savannah Guthrie’s mother, Nancy, is the latest in a long string of high-profile kidnappings
When “Today” co-host Savannah Guthrie’s 84-year-old mother, Nancy, was kidnapped on February 1, 2026, it was the first major kidnapping to spark a media frenzy in many years. Such episodes, prior to the ubiquity of surveillance cameras and advances in forensics, were much more common, including these watershed events.
Charles Lindbergh, Jr. (1932)
The abduction and murder of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh’s infant son on March 1, 1932, was at the time considered the “crime of the century.” Lindbergh’s 1927 journey from New York to Paris was the first successful solo transatlantic flight and made him a household name.
“Awareness of the case was such that anyone seen with a small blonde child was looked at twice,” said Kase Wickman at Vanity Fair. Despite a frantic search that involved more than 100,000 people, the boy had likely been killed the night of the kidnapping, and his body was discovered 72 days later near the family’s home in Hopewell, New Jersey. A German immigrant named Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried, convicted and executed for the crime.
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Adolph Coors III (1960)
On February 9, 1960, 44-year-old Adolph Coors III, the grandson of the company’s founder, vanished. His car was found on the Turkey Creek Bridge near Denver, where he had been abducted by an escaped murderer, Joseph Corbett, looking for a quick get-rich scheme.
“The attempt went awry though and ended right there on that bridge” when Corbett shot Coors to death, said Colorado Public Radio. His wife, Mary, received a $500,000 ransom demand the next day, and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover dispatched an enormous operation to find the beverage heir. Coors’ body was discovered on September 15, 1960, and the FBI later traced a car matching a witness description to Corbett. Corbett was convicted and sentenced to life in prison but released on parole in 1980.
Frank Sinatra, Jr. (1963)
19 year-old Frank Sinatra, Jr., the son of one of the most renowned musicians and actors of his generation, was kidnapped from a hotel in Lake Tahoe, California, on December 8, 1963. Two men, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, tied up Sinatra, Jr.’s friend, John Foss, and spirited the singer to Canoga Park, California, where they contacted his father and issued a demand for a $240,000 ransom, which Sinatra delivered early in the morning on December 11.
A third conspirator, John Irwin, spilled the beans to his brother, who contacted the police. The three men were sentenced to life in prison, though none served even five years. At his trial, Keenan “testified that the crime was a hoax, a publicity stunt coordinated with people tied to the family,” an allegation that was later disproven, said Esquire.
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Paul Fronczak (1964)
A woman posed as a nurse at Chicago’s Michael Reese hospital and made off with a 1-day-old infant named Paul Fronczak on April 27, 1964, triggering what was then the largest manhunt in the city’s history. Two years later, the FBI found a child that they believed to be Paul in New Jersey and he was returned to his parents, Dora and Chester Fronczak.
But in 2012, Fronczak took a DNA test that proved he was actually Jack Rosenthal, an Atlantic City child who had vanished in 1965 along with his twin sister, Jill (who has still not been found). In 2019, it was revealed that the real Paul Fronczak had been raised as Kevin Baty by a woman named Lorraine Fountain. By then, both Baty and Fountain had passed away, and the original kidnapper remains unknown. Rosenthal still goes by Paul Fronczak and published a memoir in 2022.
John Paul Getty III (1973)
Getty III, the grandson of petroleum magnate John Paul Getty, was abducted by Italian gangsters in Rome on July 10, 1973, when he was 16. The kidnappers demanded $17 million, but the elder Getty initially refused, suspecting his wayward grandson of complicity and saying “If I pay one penny, I’ll have 14 kidnapped grandchildren.”
He only agreed later to dispatch $2.2 million — after he received his grandson’s ear in the mail — the highest amount that could at the time be considered tax-deductible. Getty III struggled with drug and alcohol abuse and suffered a stroke in 1981 that would leave him disabled for the rest of his life until his death in 2011. The story was made into a 2017 film, “All the Money in the World,” as well as a 2018 FX limited series, “Trust.”
Patricia Hearst (1974)
On February 4, 1974, 19 year-old Patricia Hearst, the heiress to William Randolph Hearst’s media dynasty, was kidnapped from her apartment in Berkeley, California, by members of the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA), a far-left radical group. Two months later, she participated in a bank robbery, after which she was considered a fugitive until her September 1975 arrest.
Hearst maintained that she was coerced, but she was convicted and sentenced to 35 years in prison. “Hearst’s decision to stay with her kidnappers was a deeply symbolic transgression, one that articulated the anger so many felt against the American establishment,” said Smithsonian Magazine. She was released in 1979 after President Jimmy Carter commuted her sentence, and she went on to perform in a number of Hollywood films, including the 1990 film “Cry-Baby.”
Shin Sang-ok (1978)
On January 11, 1978, South Korean actress Choi Eun-hee was abducted in Hong Kong by North Korean agents and taken to the North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang. Six months later, North Korea succeeded in kidnapping her husband, renowned director Shin Sang-ok, in Hong Kong as well.
Held for eight years at the behest of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung’s son and heir apparent, Kim Jong Il, Shin was forced to make seven films for his captors, including “Pulgasari,” a movie known as the “socialist Godzilla.” Kim “sought to create a film industry that would allow him to sway a world audience to the righteousness of the Workers’ Party of Korea,” said The Guardian. In March 1986, Shin and Choi escaped while in Vienna, Austria, where they were ostensibly seeking funding for a new project.
Aldo Moro (1978)
On March 16, 1978, during Italy’s so-called “Years of Lead,” former Prime Minister Aldo Moro was kidnapped by the far-left terrorist group The Red Brigades while he was trying to broker the inclusion of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in a coalition government. He was executed by the Brigades on May 9, and his body was discovered in the trunk of a car in Rome.
There are still “unanswered questions” about the episode that remains “arguably the darkest episode of Italy's postwar history,” said The Guardian. Widespread revulsion at the assassination led to a crackdown on the Red Brigades and the beginning of the end of the group’s influence.
Abilio Diniz (1989)
Diniz, the co-founder of the Brazilian grocery chain Pão de Açúcar, Diniz was kidnapped on the morning of December 17, 1989, when the country was holding its first democratic presidential election after decades of autocracy. The 52-year-old Diniz was “dragged out of his Mercedes-Benz as he went to work and taken away in a station wagon disguised as an ambulance,” said The New York Times, and then held in a house in São Paulo before he was freed by authorities a week later.
The kidnappers were part of an ongoing abduction ring that had netted around $65 million. The group was connected to and included several members of the Chilean radical group the Movement for the Revolutionary Left.
Jaycee Dugard (1991)
11-year-old Jaycee Dugard was walking to a school bus stop in Lake Tahoe, California, when she was abducted by a couple, Phillip and Nancy Garrido. Phillip, already a convicted sex offender, and Nancy held Dugard for 18 years in a hidden backyard structure.
She was repeatedly raped and forced to carry two of Phillip’s children. The case attracted even greater attention when she was found in 2009. Authorities “discovered a hidden backyard compound made up of ramshackle tents and sheds, including a small, sparsely furnished two-room building” where she and her children were held, said The New York Times. Dugard founded a non-profit to help people recover from similar horrors and has understandably kept her daughters’ identities a secret. The Garridos remain in prison.
Elizabeth Smart (2002)
On June 5, 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was abducted from her bedroom in the family’s Salt Lake City home by Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee. Mitchell, who had religious delusions, had previously worked as a roofer on the family’s house.
Though the case drew widespread national scrutiny, Smart remained in captivity for nine months, suffering daily sexual assaults, until she was recognized in Sandy, Utah, on March 12, 2003, and rescued by police. “Smart had to summon tremendous physical stamina to survive her captivity,” said Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker. Smart founded a non-profit to combat sexual exploitation and is now married with three children. Mitchell remains in federal prison; Barzee was granted parole in 2018.
David Faris is a professor of political science at Roosevelt University and the author of "It's Time to Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics." He's a frequent contributor to Newsweek and Slate, and his work has appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic and The Nation, among others.