Empain's Ordeal

"It's over. Let him go."

The haggard figure leaning against a lamppost outside a branch of Paris' famed Drugstore bore so little resemblance to the familiar newspaper photograph that no one even gave him a second glance. Yet for more than two months, thousands of police had been combing through much of France looking for a single trace of him. Then early last week, with authorities suddenly hot on the trail, Belgian Millionaire Baron Edouard-Jean Empain, 40, was released by his captors in a frenzied panic that contrasted sharply with their coolly professional capture of him 63 days earlier. Dropped off in suburban Ivry and handed 20 francs, Empain used the money to take a Metro to the Place de l'Opera and to call his wife Sylvana from a pay telephone.

Both luck and stubbornness had a part in Empain's release. Alarmed by the epidemic of kidnapings in Western Europe, the French government had established a firm policy of refusing to lay low during negotiations with kidnapers. Once it became apparent--from the sole ransom demand of $8.6 million--that they were dealing with professional criminals rather than political radicals, police grew bolder than ever. Though the Empain family was willing to pay off, police set up a phony ransom drop on a highway near Paris and ambushed a team of kidnapers who tried to retrieve the funds. Three gunmen escaped, one was killed and another, Alain Caillol, was captured. A few hours later, Caillol telephoned a terse message to his friends: "It's over. They'll never pay. Let him go."

By week's end police were closing in on Empain's other suspected captors, friends of Caillol with known police records, and had discovered the house where the baron had been confined during the last three weeks of his captivity. When he was led to the site, a modest two-story dwelling in suburban Savigny-sur-Orge, 15 miles south of Paris, Empain recognized a fork that he had used while held there and several empty packages of his American-brand cigarettes.

The victim's ordeal also included stays at two apartments, neither yet located. In the Savigny-sur-Orge basement, to prevent him from gaining knowledge of his surroundings, the kidnapers forced Empain to remain inside an unlit camping tent. He spent his lonely hours making the few mental notes that he could--two dogs barking, a child crying upstairs, some cracks in a plaster wall he could see. Heavy chains were padlocked around his neck, and the temperature was kept frigid. At mealtime one of the gang would alert the prisoner of his approach by coughing; Empain would then have to draw a hood over his head and cough to indicate that he was wearing it. His food came from tin cans, which the kidnapers tossed into the backyard when he was finished.

When the baron refused to sign a ransom note, the kidnapers lopped off a piece of the little finger of his left hand--using an ordinary kitchen knife without benefit of anesthetic--and sent it to his family as grisly proof of identity. Gang members provided some antiseptic and a bandage to stop the bleeding. They also warned Empain that unless he cooperated with them they would cut off another finger for each day the ransom went unpaid.

After two days in seclusion following his release, the baron was rushed to the American Hospital, barely able to walk. He had lost more than 20 Ibs., still bore marks from the chains, and was suffering from a muscular condition brought on by having been confined to a cramped position for long periods.

Though money was obviously the gang's motive, Caillol and his accomplices seemed to elude easy classification. Caillol, 36, the suspected ringleader, is the son of a prosperous furniture manufacturer and ran a branch of his father's business in Montpellier. Daniel Duchateau, 39, who died in the Shootout, was even more enigmatic. After serving a six-year term for armed robbery from 1966 to '72, he wrote a book about why he had become a criminal. A five-year army stint convinced him, wrote Duchateau, that money brings liberty. "It's nothing really, just little slips of paper, but I realized very quickly that it was everything." In the end, of course, he was right about those little slips of paper.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.