“It's over. Let him go.” The haggard figure leaning against a lamppost outside a branch of Paris'
famed Drugstore bore so little resemblance to the familiar newspaper
photograph that no one even gave him a second glance. Yet for more than
two months, thousands of police had been combing through much of France
looking for a single trace of him. Then early last week, with
authorities suddenly hot on the trail, Belgian Millionaire Baron
Edouard-Jean Empain, 40, was released by his captors in a frenzied
panic that contrasted sharply with their coolly professional capture of
him 63 days earlier. Dropped off in suburban Ivry and handed 20 francs,
Empain used the money to take a Mtro to the Place de l'Opra and to
call his wife Sylvana from a pay telephone. Both luck and stubbornness had a part in Empain's release. Alarmed by
the epidemic of kidnapings in Western Europe, the French government had
established a firm policy of refusing to lay low during negotiations
with kidnapers. Once it became apparent—from the sole ransom demand of
$8.6 million—that they were dealing with professional criminals rather
than political radicals, police grew bolder than ever. Though the
Empain family was willing to pay off, police set up a phony ransom drop
on a highway near Paris and ambushed a team of kidnapers who tried to
retrieve the funds. Three gunmen escaped, one was killed and another,
Alain Caillol, was captured. A few hours later, Caillol telephoned a
terse message to his friends: “It's over. They'll never pay. Let him go.” By week's end police were closing in on Empain's other suspected
captors, friends of Caillol with known police records, and had
discovered the house where the baron had been confined during the last
three weeks of his captivity. When he was led to the site, a modest
two-story dwelling in suburban Savigny-sur-Orge, 15 miles south of
Paris, Empain recognized a fork that he had used while held there and
several empty packages of his American-brand cigarettes. The victim's ordeal also included stays at two apartments, neither yet
located. In the Savigny-sur-Orge basement, to prevent him from gaining
knowledge of his surroundings, the kidnapers forced Empain to remain
inside an unlit camping tent. He spent his lonely hours making the few
mental notes that he could—two dogs barking, a child crying upstairs,
some cracks in a plaster wall he could see. Heavy chains were padlocked
around his neck, and the temperature was kept frigid. At mealtime one
of the gang would alert the prisoner of his approach by coughing;
Empain would then have to draw a hood over his head and cough to
indicate that he was wearing it. His food came from tin cans, which the
kidnapers tossed into the backyard when he was finished. When the baron refused to sign a ransom note, the kidnapers lopped off a
piece of the little finger of his left hand—using an ordinary kitchen
knife without benefit of anesthetic—and sent it to his family as
grisly proof of identity. Gang members provided some antiseptic and a
bandage to stop the bleeding. They also warned Empain that unless he
cooperated with them they would cut off another finger for each day the
ransom went unpaid.
