Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease

Arrived as promised and ahead of schedule! As a Kansas City resident, this book was a good read.

I wasn't overly thrilled with author John Heidenry's last book on the St. Louis Cardinals Gashouse Gang of the 1930s, but I did find this book to be somewhat better. I was ten years old when Bobby Greenlease was murdered and I do remember when it took place in addition to the two individuals charged with his murder. There are no winners in this story. We have a murdered boy, two people executed, a broken-hearted family, and a teacher who regretted releasing a young boy from school to a woman posing as a distant aunt. Neither Carl Hall nor Bonnie Heady wanted to earn money legitimately. Both had what they needed financially, but squandered their money on alcohol and other drugs. When this duo left Kansas City, Missouri, for St. Louis following the murder the book makes it appear they never had a sober moment. Hall left Heady in search of a prostitute and a place to stash the money. It is questionable as to what became of half of the ransom money. The author states two crooked St. Louis police officers and gangster Joe Costello ended up with the money. Both Hall and Heady went to their deaths in Missouri's gas chamber without divulging what they may have known regarding the ransom money. I did find it hard to keep track of the events in the book once the city of St. Louis entered the picture. In addition, the author does not distinguish between Kansas City, Missouri, and Kansas City, Kansas, which are separated by the Missouri River. Both cities are involved in this story. This murder was presented in book form several years ago with the title A Grave For Bobby. I feel both books come up somewhat short in explaining the unfortunate events of this case. A lesson to be learned here is that schools release their students only to authorized designated individuals.

The Greenlease kidnapping was a fascinating yet tragic event that took place in Kansas City. The book is well written and details the whole story from start to finish. If you want to know everything that happened on that fateful day in 1953 read this book.

Zero at the Bone is a fast,compelling read. You will find yourself shaking your head at the brutality and stupidity of the kidnappers and then cheering for the scum that preys on them once they have the money. In the end you find yourself comforted by the curse the tainted money has on all who touch it. My husband and I were lured to this novel by a review in the NY Times that compared it to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. John Heidenry is in fact at his best when he simply lets the facts tell the story because what is most fascinating about the cliched two dimensional characters that inhabit this novel is the fact that they are real. As I read I couldn't help but wonder if the " cold blooded killer" or the "lonely prostitute" or the "mob boss" or even the "crooked cop" realized that they belonged in a Pulp Fiction novel. Yet they were real. And so is the storytelling.

This brief account of the infamous Bobby Greenlease kidnapping in 1953 is chilling to read in this true crime page turner. As a native of St. Joseph, Missouri, I grew up hearing the tale of his murder and the FBI manhunt for the two alcoholic criminals who bungled everything except the actual kidnapping itself. Justice was swift in those days and they were executed before the year was out. The book paints a different America where front doors were left unlocked and schools allowed students to leave with strangers pretending to be relatives with no ID. In Missouri, this all change and people (and schools) were less trusting in the future.