Arthur Seale

Arthur Seale (born 1947), of Hillside, New Jersey, and his wife Irene were responsible for the kidnapping and murder of Sidney Reso, the Vice President of International Operations for Exxon on April 29, 1992, in Morris Township, New Jersey. The case garnered national notoriety.

Seale's father was a Hillside police officer. He attended A.P. Morris Elementary, and Hillside High School. Seale graduated from Admiral Farragut Academy in 1965.

In the 1970s, Seale was a police officer for the township. Art Seale also worked as Head of Security at Exxon Corporation at the Florham Park, New Jersey ECI - Exxon Company Int't location in 1982, and was promoted to Security Manager there in 1984. Art resigned from Exxon a few years later to begin his own furniture business in the Carolinas. After he and his wife went broke trying to start their own business in Hilton Head, they left town owing creditors and moved in with Art's parents.

Prior to the abduction of Reso, Irene jogged in his neighborhood frequently to monitor his daily routine, learning that he would usually pull out of his driveway every morning and get out of his car to pick up his daily newspaper before heading to work. On April 29, Irene jogged past Reso's driveway and deliberately kicked his paper away so he would be forced to walk a longer distance to pick it up. She then entered Arthur's white van with him in the passenger seat and drove to Reso's driveway as he got out of his car to retrieve his paper. Arthur got out of the van and took Reso in at gunpoint. When Reso saw a wooden box in the back of Arthur's van, he struggled to break free and was shot in the arm before being bound, gagged, and placed in the box before driving off. An hour later, a neighbor noticed Reso's car still in the driveway with its engine on and called police, who after being unable to find him in the surrounding area, concluded he had been taken for ransom.

The next day, police received a phone call from a woman claiming to be Reso's kidnapper directing them to a letter in a highway street sign. In it, the kidnappers claimed to be members of the Greenpeace Environmentalist group who were furious at Exxon after the Exxon Valdez oil spill three years earlier and 1985 deliberate Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior that killed Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira. The note demanded $18.5 million in used $100 bills for Reso's release. The money was to be put into several Eddie Bauer laundry bags and dropped outside a restaurant on River Road. Although the FBI had the money ready and waited outside the restaurant for over an hour, the kidnappers never showed up.

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