Ad Exec Kidnaps Wife, Urges Cops Kill Him (and Demands Skype!); Hostage Blames the Media
Richard Shenkman, a Connecticut ad executive whose company produced a TV show for Oprah friend Gayle King, was arrested and hospitalized Tuesday after he took his wife hostage at gunpoint, demanded the police shoot him and get a priest to adminster the last rites, before he finally burned down his house. His wife, Nancy Tyler, left the house unharmed after a 9 ½ hour kidnapping.
Gunshots and explosions were heard at the home, which went up in flames before Shenkman was pulled out.
The best part, though, was when Shenkman called a reporter at the New London Day, and she taped the whole thing. Here are some highlights. (Note how resourceful the reporter is on the call — good job! — and how calm the wife seems to be. She even blames the media coverage for worsening their divorce case):
Shenkman: No, no. The police would never allow that. I would never allow that. The only ones I want to die are cops. That’s it. I don’t want anyone else to die. Just cops. And the more you print that, the more they are going to want to kill me.
To me a success, this would be the ultimate success: I get my 12 demands and Nancy walks out of here. The cops challenge me, they try to shoot me, then 68 cops lose their life, plus I die. That would be the ultimate success.
Florin: Richard, they don’t have to kill you. They don’t want to kill you, Richard.
Shenkman: They don’t have a choice. They enter the property, they’re dead, we’re all dead.
Florin: What made you call me?
Shenkman: I trust you.
(Phone rings in the background.)
Florin: Get your line, I’ll hold on.
Shenkman (talking to police negotiator): Hello. Hey. No, marriage license. Wait a minute, wait a minute. How are you doing with the news media? … You have a command center set up near here? Can you find out where it is for me? All they did was send me the policy manual. … Judge is on his way, all right. How are we doing getting Skype set up?
Shenkman (to his hostage wife): Is there anything about the divorce that you want to say?
Nancy: There were things that I thought were unfair and that Richard thought he had been treated unfairly, so it seemed like it was a wash to me.
Um, and it seems like a lot of this is stemming from all the different media coverage. Things that were misunderstandings were repeated.
Jim Edwards, a former managing editor of Adweek, has covered drug marketing at Brandweek for four years, and is a former Knight-Bagehot fellow at Columbia University's business and journalism schools. Follow him on Twitter or send him an email.
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