For 17 years, an attractive mom of two from what’s been described as an “average family,” has been in the Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, teaching Pilates and serving time for a tragic kidnapping that led to the death of an Exxon executive. Today, she is free.
In 1992, Irene Seale and her husband grabbed Sidney Reso, the 57-year-old president of Exxon Co, in the driveway of his Morris Township, New Jersey home.
The New York Times covered the story at the time and called it a “twisted tale of a kidnapping and of dreams gone wrong.”
The reason for the crime was likely an inability to sustain their expensive lifestyle, the Times reports.
Reso was shot in the arm during a struggle, He died days later, hidden in a box, but the Seales pretended their victim was still alive and demanded $18.5 million in ransom.
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"The Seales dangled Sidney Reso's life around but he had died and the Seales kept up the charade he was alive,'' Michael Chertoff, who was U.S. Attorney for New Jersey at the time and went on to become U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, told the Daily Record.
Seale’s husband, Arthur, was a former police officer and an Exxon employee in charge of supervising guards supplied to the company by a contractor, the Times reports.
The Seales were captured less than two months after the kidnapping, as the couple began to betray each other, according to the Times.
Irene led investigators to a state park, where she and her husband had buried Reso's remains.
Irene Seale, now 63, spent most of her time behind bars in the. In June 2009, she was transferred to a halfway house in the Midwest. according to the Daily Record.
She will be supervised by the U.S. Probation Office in Illinois for the next five years. Arthur Seale also pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
Copyright The Associated Press
