Kidnapping ! Some famous cases.

In CELETERRA, the hero Vance falls victim to a brutal and ingenuous kidnapping. In law, kidnapping is the removing away or transportation of a person against their will, in many cases to hold the person in confinement (without lawful authority). In most cases, this  may be done for ransom or in connection with a child custody dispute – or, as in the case of Vance's abduction - in furtherance of another, more obscure criminal motive.

Here are a few famous, intriguing, real-life kidnapping cases:

 

• In 1836, Cynthia Parker, a nine-year old Caucasian girl, was taken from her family by Comanche raiding her home in Texas. She lived 24 years among the Comanche and married the war chief and give birth to three children, one of which was the last Comanche war chief Quanah Parker.

• Charley Ross, was the first American to be kidnapped for ransom that received wide public attention (in 1874).

• Brooke Hart, the son of a San Jose businessman, was kidnapped on November 9, 1933, and murdered. His kidnappers were lynched by a mob, the last public lynching in California.

• Evgeny Miller, an anti-Bolshevik Russian general was kidnapped from Paris by NKVD agents in 1937. They smuggled Miller to Moscow, where he was tortured and shot in 1939.

• Peter Lorenz, a German conservative politician was kidnapped in February 1975, just days before the elections. Possibly the first abduction of a politician in modern times. Was released unharmed in exchange for five imprisoned leftist extremists, held in South Yemen.

• James Lee Dozier was a US general working for NATO in Italy. He and his wife were kidnapped by the Red Brigades in 1981, and freed by a NOCS commando.

• Mordechai Vanunu was an Israeli nuclear whistleblower, last seen in London in 1986, before being abducted by Mossad and brought back to Israel, where he was convicted of treason and espionage, and served 18 years in prison.

• Walter Kwok was kidnapped by the notorious gangster "Big Spender" Cheung Chi Keung in 1997. He was released seven days later without police intervention. Following his arrest in Guangzhou, Cheung confessed that he had put Kwok in a wooden container for four days, and fed him regular meals of roast pork with rice, until the ransom was paid.

• Ingrid Betancourt, the Colombian presidential candidate, was kidnapped in 2002 by the FARC movement and freed six years later.