Hostage of Tony Kiritsis tells his story
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - Believing he'd been cheated in a business deal, former Pontiac salesman Anthony G. Kiritsis entered his banker's office 40 years ago this month with a loaded shotgun.
But he didn't shoot.
He had something else in mind on Feb. 8, 1977, a plan so well-calculated that for the next 63 hours the Indianapolis Police Department and Indiana State Police couldn't stop it and so weird and potentially violent that the people of Indianapolis couldn't turn away from it.
How often, after all, does a man - wild-eyed, ranting and raving - hold a shotgun to another man's head and march him through Downtown Indianapolis at 9 a.m. on a Tuesday - and later, his gun still fixed on his hostage, hold a "news conference" that, at his insistence, is broadcast on live TV?
"Ladies and gentlemen, when I picked up this shotgun Tuesday morning, all the hell I've been through." Kiritsis told a gathering of reporters, photographers and police officers, the cameras rolling. He went on for nearly half an hour, his mood shifting between calm and crazed. "I was in trouble, friends. When you . kidnap somebody, I tell you, it's . a narrow, one-way road." Now he was in tears. More than one person was certain Kiritsis was leading up to a messy, public execution.
The hostage was Richard O. Hall. Hall looked straight ahead. He had a wife and four children. He was 42. The Halls were occasionally in the newspaper society pages for hosting parties. He was an executive at the lending institution Meridian Mortgage, where his father was president.
As Kiritsis rambled and shrieked profanely, his finger always on the trigger of the shotgun, the gun barrel wired cleverly around Hall's neck, Hall appeared "like he was either courageous, angry, fearful, humiliated or willing to accept whatever was going to happen," said Skip Hess, a reporter for the Indianapolis News. "It looked like he was tired of everything. But he kind of had his head up. He sort of, you know, seemed defiant. . I just wondered: 'What was going through his mind?' "
Answering the question, 'Why talk now, after 40 years?': Hall mentioned he was getting up in years and if he was going to tell his story he'd better do it now. Also, he said, "One of my sons said, 'Dad I don't want my kids to think of you as a wimp or (that) I can't tell the story."
Of his initial encounter with Kiritsis the morning of Feb. 8, 1977: "I looked in Kiritsis' eye early on and thought to myself, 'How can God allow someone to get so angry?' He had a wild look in his eye ... It was astonishing to me."
Upon being taken to Kiritsis' apartment: ?"He said, 'Dick, we're going to have a little trial here, and I'm going to be the judge, jury and executioner.'"
At trial, Kiritsis was found not guilty by reason of insanity, but he did not go free. For the next decade, Kirtisis remained in custody at several mental institutions. He was released in 1988. He lived the next 17 years in an apartment on Indianapolis' west side. Kiritsis died in 2005 at age 72.
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Source: The Indianapolis Star, http://indy.st/2jVl0qq
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Information from: The Indianapolis Star, http://www.indystar.com