While we did our best to reclaim normalcy inside the fortress, the FBI and Nassau County police conducted their manhunt for my kidnappers. In fact, without our knowledge, they had launched their massive effort just moments after I sat safely in the backseat of an unmarked Bureau car outside the Jade East Motel.
Fifty to sixty agents, detectives, and uniformed policemen had flooded the Jade East. Flashing red and blue lights were everywhere. More squad cars were on the way. A small army of law enforcement officials scoured the property and the surrounding area near Kennedy airport where the Keeper had dumped me. They took over the lobby, combed the guest registry, and demanded registration documents dating back several days before I was abducted. They knocked on the doors of all sixty-four units and peered inside, hoping to discern a connection on that cold November midnight. But nothing came of it.
Infighting had already begun. More than 450 federal, local, and city-wide law enforcement partners had tracked Janet and Buddy through Times Square and into Penn Station for the ransom payment. Some witnessed the pickup, and others watched the money-man stroll through one surveillance point after another until he disappeared. Despite their best efforts, the kidnapper and the ransom slipped away. How?
The official line was that the ransom-kidnapper was allowed to escape because it was too risky to follow him. This was true. But an unnamed FBI source leaked to the press that the man got away because of a critical technical oversight: no one tested the communication equipment prior to the surveillance operation. If they had, they would have discovered that the all-important radio transmitters didn’t work underground. The station’s steel beam framework and concrete walls rendered them all but useless.
Agents and officers continued to prowl my Long Island neighborhood, while others approached suspicious characters and groups throughout Times Square and Penn Station. The police detained several suspects in the early hours after my release. They had been spotted earlier that evening in a limousine that trailed behind Buddy’s car on Broadway near 42nd Street. They were questioned, released, and wholly innocent.
From top brass to bottom-rung patrolmen, they worked their respective beats. They plotted strategies, interviewed informants, and searched for the tenement apartment where I was imprisoned.
The strongest lead, they believed, was that someone from inside Acme Steel Partition was involved—someone with knowledge that the company had access to large amounts of money and someone who knew my personal habits. I left the plant every day at the same time and went straight home. I never went to a bar after work or left early for a round of golf. I left around 6:30 p.m. every weekday and was home in time for dinner. But we had numerous employees, and not one of them stood out to me.
The FBI released a composite sketch of the man who picked up the ransom from the Penn Station locker. It depicted a bearded African-American male with glasses and a fedora-style hat. He reportedly stood about five feet, nine inches tall, weighed around 200 pounds, and was approximately forty years old.
The sketch wasn’t very helpful. What if the bag-man shaved? I thought. What if he took the hat and glasses off? It could be almost any average-height, middle-aged man.
After some time, Janet and I decided to offer a reward. Our attorney, Martin Rosen, set up an organization that would shield our involvement and handle any incoming information. The police announced the $20,000 reward for information leading to the capture of the kidnappers and return of the ransom money.
Reward fliers outlined key aspects of the case: the kidnappers’ noisy getaway car, the tenement apartment next to an elevated train, and the Keeper himself. “Anyone possessing information relative to the kidnapping is requested to contact the Nassau County Police Department or the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All information will be kept confidential,” the fliers said.
Police also released a picture of the black ransom bag. The kidnappers had placed one of the bags in a trash can near Buddy’s house, and an identical empty bag was in the coin-locker at Penn Station. The police announced they were looking to speak with anyone who might have sold two of the black bags to a single person.
A flurry of leads soon poured in, but all of them led to dead ends.
By mid-December, police had questioned dozens of suspects. But in each instance, the men were cleared and released.
The FBI also took me on a tour of car dealerships to match automotive similarities to identify the car used in my abduction. We looked at two-door cars, four-door cars, sports cars, and luxury sedans, both American and foreign. We looked at dozens of vehicles over the course of several days: Peugeot, Renault, Alfa Romero, Fiat, Triumph, Saab, a Camaro, an MG, a Jaguar Type 12.
We test drove all of them. I sat in the backseat trying to recall new information. “Does anything seem familiar? How about this one? This one over here?” I listened to the engines. Some were too quiet. Others were too loud. We examined headlights. But nothing seemed to ring a bell. We must have looked at more than forty cars.
Toward the end, we test-drove a Porsche 911. I sat in the back thinking it was a complete waste of time. A Porsche? Really? But the truth was that none of it was a waste. We had to do anything and everything to break the case. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was a gnawing fear that the kidnappers might get away.
Sometime after my release, Buddy remembered two odd occurrences that had taken place before I was kidnapped. Both scenarios involved attempts to get him alone. The first happened in August three months prior to my abduction. A man named Larry Garrett had called Buddy and claimed he worked for the U.S. State Department. Garrett was supposedly representing “a government in exile” who needed steel doors and other steel building items. A meeting was arranged for 7:30 p.m.—the same time I was kidnapped—at the Westchester County Airport. Garrett said he would be traveling on a State Department airplane. But when Buddy arrived at the airport and searched for the appropriate terminal, he was informed that there were no State Department planes on the premises and that none were expected.
No one showed up to meet Buddy at the appointed rendezvous.
“I felt something was wrong,” Buddy said. “It was an eerie sensation.”
Police detectives thought a possible kidnapping plan may have been aborted because Buddy unwittingly brought his family, including our son, who had a sleepover at his house, and a large dog to the airport.
The following evening, Garrett called Buddy and apologized for not making it to the meeting. “We were all set to arrive in Westchester, but the plane had some last minute trouble flying out of Philadelphia,” he said.
“I have an important package to deliver to you. We need you come back to the airport again and pick it up,” Garrett added.
“What’s in the package?” Buddy asked.
“Well, that’s what we need you to come out there for. We can look at it together. It won’t take long,” Garrett said.
The back and forth persisted until Buddy reached his limit. “Enough! Tell me what’s in the package, and stop the cloak and dagger stuff,” he said.
Garrett became agitated at his response and hung up.
Buddy said it was strange but that he didn’t know what to make of it. When he finally told the FBI during the manhunt, a background investigation revealed that there was no one named Larry Garrett who worked at the State Department, and that there was no evidence of any interest in contracting with Acme Steel Door and Partition Company.
The kidnappers tried to ensnare Buddy a second time about a month later. Someone called his home around midnight claiming to be a “Sergeant Muldoon” of the 94th Brooklyn police precinct where Acme Steel was located.
“Mister Teich, this is Sergeant Muldoon of the 94th Brooklyn police precinct. There’s been a terrible accident at your company. One of your employees has been badly hurt, and we need you to come down here immediately and identify him.”
We did have a night shift of workers at the plant at that time, but Buddy was instantly suspicious. My name, not his, was listed with the plant’s security company.
“How did you get this number?” Buddy asked.
“Mister Teich, you’re the only one we could reach tonight. This is serious. We need you to come down here and identify your employee. This is an emergency.”
“Okay,” Buddy replied. “Give me your number, and I’ll call you right back. I’ll find the right person to meet with you. They’ll be there soon.”
But the caller refused to give Buddy his number. He pressed for Buddy to give in but sounded less like a police officer with every try. The next day Buddy checked with the Brooklyn precinct. There was no Sgt. Muldoon to be found, and no one had been injured at the plant.
Detectives were convinced that Buddy’s new information showed a deliberate conspiracy to kidnap a member of the Teich family by someone who had knowledge of Acme Steel Partition.
I became concerned about Buddy’s safety. I had around-the-clock personal security. He didn’t. Then again, he lived in Westchester County, not Nassau where Chief Curran vowed to protect my family. Since the kidnappers had gotten the ransom money, and Buddy wasn’t the ultimate victim, the bet was that they wouldn’t come back and hurt him. But there were no guarantees.
As the investigation continued, several weeks after my release I received a call at home from the investigators.
“Jack, would you mind coming into the FBI office in Manhattan? We’ll pick you up. Inspector Guido would like to see you.”
Inspector Daniel Guido was one of the smartest, most decent men I met during that period. Guido was razor sharp. He had a brilliant law enforcement mind. He was always thinking, always a few steps ahead. He saw the big picture and methodically filled in the blanks. He would be promoted to commissioner during the course of the investigation, and in turn, he’d promote Det. Dick McGuire. The two of them sank their teeth into my case and never let go.
An agent from my home security detail drove me to FBI headquarters. Guido was waiting patiently.
“Hello, Jack. Let’s spend some time together. Just you and me. Would that be okay?”
“Fine,” I said.
Guido wanted to know everything. Things I knew, things I wasn’t sure about, and things I didn’t know. I had already been interviewed for dozens of hours, but Guido wanted to go deeper. Every detail was important to him. That was his attitude.
“What was the temperature in the closet, Jack?”
“Was there any squeaking in the floorboards of the apartment?”
“Were they wooden floors? What type of wood? Were they soft? Hard?”
“What other sounds did you hear? What about sounds from the street?”
“How about smells? Inside smells? Outside smells? Smells when you walked into the building? Out of the building?”
At one point we broke for lunch. There was an excellent kosher style deli on the same street.
“What do you want, Jack? I’ve got this,” Guido said, handing me a menu.
“A corned beef sandwich,” I said, without looking. I loved corned beef sandwiches. Always have. We waited until someone finally brought the food. I took one bite, but couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t eat. I was too upset.
Guido finished his food and started asking detailed questions again. I did my best to answer. I don’t know if any of it helped. I just know I left completely drained.
A short time later I received another call. “Inspector Guido would like to see you again.”
“Jack, in cases like this, we want to eliminate any possibility that we’re wrong or that we don’t know everything that’s going on,” said Guido. “So we’re asking you and Buddy to take a polygraph test.”
I knew what a polygraph was. I had never taken one, but I knew it was a lie-detector test. I wasn’t lying, so I figured what’s the big deal? “Sure, I’ll take it,” I said. The test was a frozen moment where I couldn’t believe what my life had come to.
The polygraph was taxing.
“Jack, did you take the money? Do you know the kidnappers? Did you fake your own disappearance?”
The test was to determine whether Buddy and I cooked up my own kidnapping and then lied to the police about it. The polygraph examiner probed my personal life, the company’s finances, and whether Buddy and I were extorting money from my father.
I came out clean as a whistle, of course, as did my brother Buddy.
As weeks turned to months, the police were still contacting me to revisit old leads. FBI agents and police detectives believed the kidnapping lair was critical to the investigation, and they narrowed it down to somewhere in the Fordham and Tremont sections of the West Bronx. I already told them about the address on a paper coffee cup. That information came from a hypnosis session.
Fordham and Tremont were consistent with the tollgate and steep hill along the path from my driveway to the apartment, and the elevated train line I heard while chained to the bed. The tollgate and corresponding drive-time mostly ruled out Brooklyn and Queens. The police felt like the kidnappers wouldn’t have taken a roundabout trip either to the Southern State Parkway or through the Rockaways just to introduce a tollgate red herring. It’s much more likely, they surmised, that they took the Throgs Neck Bridge from Long Island to the Cross Bronx Expressway to the Bronx. Plus, the eight-by-eight-foot room with two-by-five-foot closet and single window is standard for many of the abandoned tenements in the West Bronx.
I drove with agents and detectives many evenings listening to the sounds…trying to recognize anything familiar to the place where I had been held. I even rode nearly all night with Assistant FBI Director John Malone trying to find the location in the Bronx. They looked and looked, but it was all for naught. They didn’t find the apartment.
Months later, I received a call at my office. The voice immediately reminded me of the Keeper. It was uncanny. It wasn’t the Keeper, but the voice reminded me of him. My blood ran cold. The police had asked since the beginning if I could provide more information about the main kidnapper’s voice. “What was the voice you heard? Can you describe it?” It was always difficult for me to explain. Now, I could point to a similar voice.
I rushed to call the police and told them that the man’s tone and verbal cadence reminded me of the Keeper. “It wasn’t a Southern accent, New York accent, or foreign accent. It was a clear speaking voice. He thought before he spoke, and he spoke with a distinct intelligence. He was articulate. He didn’t use slang,” I explained.
I was so excited, but I was grasping at straws. Long periods were passing by without any updates. It was confounding.
On the one-year anniversary of the kidnapping, reporters began contacting me for comment. “What’s new, Jack? Are you still confident the police will find your kidnappers? What can you say about the case?” they asked.
What could I say about the case? I didn’t know anything new. I didn’t know if the police did, either. And I wouldn’t have told them anyway. I was reluctant to speak. It was still too dangerous as far as I was concerned. The Keeper’s threats were clear, and he was still out there, somewhere. Plus, I wasn’t about to compromise the investigation, and I was trying to move on with my life.
One thing I did know, however, was that hundreds of law enforcement officials were initially assigned to hunting down the kidnappers. Now, a year later, hundreds had dwindled into a handful. The case was a mystery, even though Chief Curran was telling the press that Nassau County police were still fielding plenty of leads.
A year and a half later, there’d been no visible progress at all. The FBI had reduced its commitment to just five agents. Only Nassau County detectives were working on the case full-time.
“To be truthful, we never really got off the ground, Jack,” said Chief Curran. “We haven’t located the place of confinement. That would have been a big help.”