(5 of 6)
SATURDAY. "Where is he? Where is he?" asked an angry kidnaper in an early-morning call to the Yorktown house. "He's f----d up again." A family spokes man told the caller that Bronfman was where he was supposed to be, waiting at the Burger King. Soon a phone rang in a booth near the hamburger place. Bronfman was told to drive to a nearby location, park, and stay at the wheel. He did so.
At 2:50 a.m., a white man, wearing gloves and a stocking mask, jumped into Bronfman's car. He directed Bronfman to drive through an alley and circle the block twice while he checked for any tailing cars. Apparently satisfied that they were unobserved, the man ordered Bronfman to pull alongside a car parked at a curb. Bronfman did so, then opened the trunk of his car. The kidnaper quickly transferred the bundles of cash to the trunk of the other vehicle. Said the man: "Your son will be returned. Go home and keep quiet." Then he drove off.
Unknown to the kidnaper, FBI agents had observed the ransom exchange and got the license number (969KXJ) of the kidnaper's car. Incredibly, neither the car nor the plates seemed to have been stolen. The number checked out to a Mel Lynch, 37, a New York City fireman, who lived in a six-story apartment house in a middle-class area of Brooklyn. Agents quickly staked out the house.
SUNDAY. Shortly after midnight, another kidnaper became nervous. Identified later as Dominick Byrne, 53, an Irish-born operator of a Brooklyn limousine service, he saw FBI agents near the Lynch apartment building. Apparently assuming that the kidnap plot was crumbling, he decided to fend for himself. Byrne sent someone to deliver a note to a police precinct in Brooklyn. Police notified the FBI and went to Byrne's apartment. He told them where Sam was being kept. When police rushed there, they found the building already under surveillance by other FBI agents.
The agents kept watch on the house for hours, awaiting Sam's release. As the time dragged on, the fearful Bronfman family finally agreed that he should be rescued. Guns drawn, local police and 30 FBI agents rushed into the first-floor apartment at 4 a.m. They found Lynch, who offered no resistance, although a .45 automatic was near by. More important, Sam was indeed there, blindfolded and bound. He was undernourished, but well. He had spent the entire time in the apartment, usually tied to a bed or chair.
The ransom was recovered from under a bed in an apartment rented by a friend of Byrne's. The tenant was in a hospital at the time and was not a suspect. Also found with the cash was another gun.
The two men being held, who for the time being were charged only with extortion, were cooperating with authorities. They told the unlikely story that two unidentified men had hired Byrne to drive them by limousine into Westchester County on the night of the abduction. Lynch, a friend of Byrne's, went along. The strangers then pulled guns, the arrested men said, and later forced them to pick up young Bronfman and another kidnaper, who apparently had seized Sam at his mother's house.