Emails said to be from 'gentleman' kidnappers demand apology for police hoax conclusion
A lawyer for California woman Denise Huskins isn’t the only person publicly proclaiming that her kidnapping was no hoax.
One of the purported kidnappers sent a series of emails to the San Francisco Chronicle saying the kidnapping really happened and Vallejo police should apologize for calling the March 23 kidnapping a hoax, the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times report.
Unless there is an apology, the purported kidnapper said, “I/we may be the direct agent of harm.” A later email to lawyers for Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, retracted that threat. “Police do not deserve to be targeted, even ones who make poor calls about how to treat victims,” the email said.
Earlier emails said the kidnappers were car thieves and burglars, but they decided that kidnapping for ransom could lead to a better payoff. One email said the perpetrators were Ocean’s Eleven-type “gentleman criminals” with knowledge of computers and electronics. Details in the emails could only be known by the kidnappers, lawyers for the couple said.
The kidnapping “was a training mission to test means and methods that would be used on higher net worth targets,” according to an email from the purported kidnappers to the Los Angeles Times. A ransom of $8,500 was sought, the email said, “because it was below the $10,000 reporting threshold, and far enough below that it likely would not be flagged as part of a structured transaction under that prong of the reporting law.”
Quinn told police the kidnapping took place during the early morning hours of March 23, but he couldn’t report it until after noon because he had been drugged and bound. The ransom wasn’t paid, but Huskins says she was released two days later in Huntington Beach where her mother and father live.
While Huskins was still missing, the San Francisco Chronicle received an email said to be from the kidnappers that had an audio file of a woman’s voice. Huskins’ father said it was his daughter.
