Kiritsis and Me: Enduring 63 Hours at Gunpoint

Description

On a raw February morning in 1977, Indianapolis police radio frequencies crackled with the first acts of what was to become a bizarre and frightening, three-day-long psychodrama. A man named Tony Kiritsis had wired a shotgun to the back of Richard Hall’s head. In a type of manic march, Kiritsis nudged and shoved Hall from his downtown Indianapolis office over piles of snow on midtown streets. Kiritsis was belligerent. Hall’s throat was bound and it appeared as though the harness device strapped to the shotgun might choke him. Kiritsis fingered the trigger with his right hand as he held the barrel in his left, prodding Hall. It was cold. Both men were in shirtsleeves. Citizens and police were simply stunned by what they saw.

The cursing and screaming Kiritsis commandeered a police car and sped off to the west. Something was about to change in American media coverage, and forever in the life of Richard Hall. For three days his angry, ranting captor threatened to kill him as radio, television, wire service and newspaper reporters covered every turn of event.

We have waited four decades to hear more of the story. Richard Hall now shares his singular experience of being the victim of an historic act of terror that seized the world’s attention and ushered the media into an unpredictable new world.

Dick Hall is a retired Indianapolis business executive. In 1977 he was kidnapped, marched through the streets of Indianapolis with a shotgun wired to his neck and held hostage at gunpoint for 63 hours by a disgruntled client named Anthony Kiritsis. Law enforcement agencies and an Indianapolis radio broadcaster frantically negotiated to save Hall’s life. The story made national headlines and earned a Pulitzer Prize for an Indiana photographer. In this book, he reveals the details of the incident he has not discussed publicly for 40 years. Hall is a graduate of Purdue University and a U.S. Navy veteran.