Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 18, 1993 TAG: 9308180142
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The New York Times
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
But they kept his hands tightly lashed to a pinion in the pit, according to the police, and made no other concessions over the 12 days that the millionaire, 68, was grotesquely imprisoned.
Below the roar of highway traffic, he remained hunched in the 4-foot-wide pit as his family and police frantically sought his freedom in nightmarish negotiations over ransom drops that proved fruitless until his release Monday.
Weinstein never knew where he was, detectives said. But his foxhole experience as a Marine decades ago served him well as he waited in the dank hole and lost 15 pounds on a diet of water and fruit lowered into his pit through a flexible vent duct.
"The U.S. Marine Corps," Weinstein confirmed Tuesday evening after he ducked out from his apartment for a private midtown stroll with his four children.
"I feel great!" he boomed. "I feel marvelous! But that's all I can say, at the request of the New York Police Department, to whom I owe my life."
As he survived below, more than 100 detectives had scoured the city above for clues to his location, misled by the background noise on a taped ransom message to suspect he was in an abandoned boat or a pumping station somewhere.
The one clue that made them think the abduction was an inside job came when kidnappers referred to him "Mr. Harvey" in telephone calls - a reference familiar among workers in the tuxedo factory he ran in Queens.
Fermin Rodriguez, 38, an employee, eventually was arrested, accused as the principal of the kidnapping plot. Police disclosed Monday that he personally showed them to the well-hidden pit.
"Thank God he's alive - he really is a nice man," the accused kidnapper declared when Weinstein was uncovered, said Capt. George J. Duke.
Police said the plot was hatched five months ago by Rodriguez and his brother, Antonio, 29. "It definitely was not a grudge," said Capt. Robert A. Martin. "This guy knew that Mr. Harvey has quite a lot of money. It's probably something that started as just a little scheme."
The pit and the victim remained the object of wonder in New York as the police sought other suspects. Weinstein was waiting until the case was wrapped up before coming forth to personally describe his ordeal, but associates said he was eager to resume work, as soon as this morning.
The chief negotiators who achieved his freedom were Ed Weinstein, his cousin, and Harvey Weinstein's daughter, Lori, said detectives, who noted that the two took heartfully to playing "good cop, bad cop" with the kidnappers.
Ed Weinstein, a business executive, played "bad cop" and learned to push the kidnappers for time and details. "He got tough, very tough on the phone, and forced the call we got from Harvey that showed us he was still alive," Duke said. "He turned the tables on them where they were playing a psychological game on him."
Ed Weinstein's spirited haggling, peppered with vulgarities at one angry moment, sparked the kidnappers to suddenly slam down the phone and not call again for 50 hours. This was an excruciating time in which doubts about the victim's survival grew as the family and the police waited for further word.
Eventually it came and, in the fourth attempt at a ransom drop by Lori's brother, Mark, the money - $3 million - was handed over at a park in northern Manhattan.
by CNB