12 Disturbing Ransom Notes with Strange and Tragic Consequences

Throughout history, ransom letters have been used to make fast cash, throw off the police, and inspire legions of graphic designers. If you’re going to be a famous criminal, you should study the creepy ransom notes that we’ve collected here. They range from the mundane yet horrific to the downright haunting.

Most of these terrifying kidnapping notes were just the beginning of a series of events that would usually lead to the death of the abducted, and sometimes the captor, as well. The sad truth of the matter is that most kidnapping victims rarely make it away from their captors; in fact, most of them are murdered before the ransom note is even sent. Keep reading to delve into the cryptic world of ransom notes.

Some of the stories behind the creepy ransom notes that we’ve put together actually have a happy ending; the families were brought back together, and no one got hurt. But most of the stories that you’re about to read end with someone getting killed, and a lifetime of speculation. Interestingly enough, only one of the ransom notes that we wrote about was put together with the cut-and-paste style of writing that we’ve come to associate with ransom letters. To find out which one it was, start reading this list of creepy and horrifying ransom notes. 

When you're the grandson of an oil tycoon, you're probably always 10 seconds away from being kidnapped. While on holiday in Rome at the age of 16, Getty was abducted by members of the 'Ndrangheta, a mafia-type organization that operates out of Italy, and taken to a mountain hideaway. Shortly afterwards, Getty's parents received a ransom note asking for $17 million. The family refused to pay the ransom, so the next letter they received came with one of Getty's ears and the threat, "This is Paul's ear. If we don't get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits."

Getty's family reluctantly paid the decreased ransom and their son was safely returned. Two of his kidnappers were convicted, but the rest of the men involved were acquitted due to lack of proper evidence. 

This is quite possibly the most famous and heavily debated ransom letter ever. On Christmas morning 1996, Patsy Ramsey discovered a 2.5-page letter on her kitchen staircase demanding $118,000 for the safe return of her daughter. Some of the letter reads:

You will withdraw $118,000.00 from your account. $100,000 will be in $100 bills and the remaining $18,000 in $20 bills. Make sure that you bring an adequate size attache to the bank. When you get home you will put the money in a brown paper bag. I will call you between 8 and 10 am tomorrow to instruct you on delivery. The delivery will be exhausting so I advise you to be rested.

The day after receiving the letter, Patsy's husband and JonBenet's father John discovered her body in the family's basement. Due to a mishandling of the investigation by local and federal authorities, the murder of JonBenet is still largely a mystery. However, there are a considerable amount of theories floating around the internet that range from accidental death to sex game gone wrong, and even to an international conspiracy. 

Marion Parker was a 12-year-old girl who was abducted from her school in Los Angeles in 1927. After the abduction, her kidnapper began sending letters to her father demanding to be paid in gold certificates, and signing them as "The Fox." One letter read, "Your daughter's life hangs by a thread and I have a Gillette [a razor brand] ready and able to handle the situation." Multiple attempts were made to pay the Fox for Marion's return, but their final confrontation ended in tragedy.

After changing meeting places multiple times, the Fox and Marion's father finally met on a street corner, where Marion's father could see his daughter sitting in the passenger seat of the kidnapper's car concealed up to her neck by clothing and unable to move. Once her father handed over the ransom, Marion's body was thrown out of the car and a coroner later testified that she'd been dead for 12 hours. Her body had been disemboweled and stuffed with rags, her arms and legs had been cut off, and her eyes were being held open by wires. 

Prior to the Jonbenet Ramsey case, the disappearance of the Linbergh Baby was the biggest child abduction case that the world had ever seen. The son of a world-famous pilot was only two when he was abducted from his home and replaced with a note that demanded $50,000 in exchange for the child and made a few veiled threats: "We warn you for making anyding [sic] public or for notify the Police The child is in gut [sic] care."

Over the course of more ransom notes the fee was bumped up to $70,000. 

After paying the fee, the kidnappers told the Linbergh's that the baby was on a ship named "The Nelly," but that was simply a lie to throw investigators off while they got out of town. The baby's lifeless body was discovered less than a mile away from its home. Coroners believed that the child had died the night of its abduction. 

In 1934, June Robles, daughter of Fernando Robles, owner of the Robles Electric Company, was abducted outside of her school by a "dirty and emaciated man." After the kidnapping, the mystery man paid a young boy 25 cents to deliver a note to Fernando demanding $15,000 for June's safe return. The emaciated mystery man only referred to himself as "Z" and instructed Fernando not to speak with the police.

After a lot of back and forth, "Z" cut contact with Fernando. But then the Governor of Arizona received a post card mailed from Chicago that gave him instructions as to where June was being kept in the desert. It took highway patrolmen two hours to find June, who was locked in a small metal cage and buried under some shrubbery but miraculously still alive.

In 1988, the wife of Robert Herrin, the owner Mississippi's largest gas distribution company, Mississippi Valley Gas Co. (among other properties), was abducted from their home after a violent attack. During the initial investigation, police found a typed ransom letter that read:

Mr. Robert Herrin, Put these people back in the shape they was in before they got mixed up with School Pictures. Pay them whatever damages they want and tell them all this so then can no what you are doing but dont tell them why you are doing it. Do this before ten days pass. Don't call police.

Rather than pay the ransom, Robert made a public appeal for his wife's return a few months later, and then he received a second note, this time allegedly from Annie, that read,

Bob, If you don't do what these people want you to do, they are going to seal me up in the cellar of this house with only a few jugs of water. Please save me, Annie Laurie.

Even after paying out the ransom, he never saw his wife again. 

What may quite possibly be the first ransom notes in American history were once thought to be love letters by the school librarian who had come into their possession.

In 1874, Charlie Ross was abducted from Northeast Philadelphia, and despite the police claiming that he'd accidentally fallen in with some drunks (which is definitely a thing people do), a ransom note appeared three days after the boy's disappearance that read: "You wil have to pay us before you git him from us, and pay us a big cent to. if you put the cops hunting for him you is only defeeting yu own end.”

And then a second letter appeared that raised the stakes. “This is the lever that moved the rock that hides him from yu $20,000. Not one doler les - impossible - impossible - you cannot get him without it.”

In spite of the Ross family's lifelong efforts, they were never able to find Charlie, and although William Westervelt was convicted of being complicit in Charlie's kidnapping, there's some debate about whether he was just a scapegoat or if he had actual knowledge of the abduction. 



 

When Virginia Piper was kidnapped, her ransom note led her husband on a hellish scavenger hunt across the Twin Cities in order to unload $1 million. According to the letter, if the person delivering the money made one wrong move, Virginia would be killed.

After depositing the cash, Virginia was released from a tree where she'd been chained up for two days. Despite two arrests for Piper's kidnapping, no one ever went to prison for the abduction and her family has differing opinions on who may have committed the crime.  

As far as kidnapping and murders go, this might be the douchiest crime of the 20th century. Leopold and Loeb were a pair of friends from the University of Chicago who were obsessed with Nietzsche's concept of supermen, who because of their higher intellect, could do as they pleased and ignore the rules of society.

In order to prove their superiority to the rest of the world, they orchestrated "the perfect crime," wherein they kidnapped one of their second cousins, murdered him in a rental car, and disposed of his body. Then they devised a series of steps that the boy's family would have to take in order to pay a ransom and discover that their son was dead. The ransom note was typed on a stolen Underwood 3 typewriter, which is pretty classy as far as ransom notes go. The note is mostly a description of a building, but it ends with "this is the only chance to recover your son," which is an incredibly evil thing to type, especially when you've already killed the kid with a chisel. 

Shortly afterwards, a police investigation began into Leopold and Loeb because Leopold's glasses were found near Bobby's body, and also Leopold couldn't stop talking to reporters about what he would have done had he killed Bobby. Ubermensches indeed. 

In 1945, the Lipstick Killer murdered two people before leaving a note for the police scrawled in lipstick on the wall of their second victim's Chicago-area apartment. "For heavens Sake catch me Before I kill more I cannot control myself."

One month after that message was left, six-year-old Suzanne Degnan was found missing from her room and outside her bedroom window, a ransom note was found that read, "GeI $20,000 Reddy & wAITe foR WoRd. do NoT NoTify FBI oR Police. Bills IN 5's & 10's" and on the back of the note, "BuRN This FoR heR SAfTY."

At the same time, the mayor of Chicago received a note that read, "This is to tell you how sorry I am not to not get ole Degnan instead of his girl. Roosevelt and the OPA made their own laws. Why shouldn't I and a lot more?"

After an anonymous tip suggesting they look in the sewer near the Degnan home, police found the severed head and torso of Suzanne Degnan. After a city-wide man hunt, and a few false starts, the police arrested William Heirens. Even though Heirens ended up going down for the crime (and dying in prison), there's still speculation as to whether he committed any of the murders or the kidnapping of Suzanne Degnan.