Words: Tom Ward
The story goes that on Sunday, December 8, 1963 1963, Frank Sinatra’s 19 year-old son, Jr was led out of his Lake Tahoe hotel room at gunpoint by mobster Barry Keenan before being locked away for four days during which Keenan and his two associates extracted a $240,000 from the elder Sinatra.
Keenan & co got their cash alright, but while they were collecting Sinatra Jr made his escape and walked from their Los Angeles hideout to his Bel Air home, unscathed. A widely reported case at the time, now,a new Wondery podcast, The Grand Scheme: Snatching Sinatra, tells the caper from the perspective of Keenan who was eventually caught and served time for the scheme.
It isn’t all movie-of-the-week mobster stuff, either. In the first episode Keenan talks about his own and his mother’s struggles with mental illness and drug addiction.
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