Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease

Zero at the Bone: The Playboy, the Prostitute, and the Murder of Bobby Greenlease by Heidenry, John. paperback edition. ISBN: 9780312641962.

In this haunting true crime tale, John Heidenry brings to life the 1953 kidnapping and murder of Bobby Greenlease by two grifters with bone-chilling precision. Bobby’s killers, Carl Austin Hall and Bonnie Heady, met in the seedy underbelly of the Missouri crime world. Hall lost a $200,000 inheritance and ended up in the State pen for holding up taxicabs. Heady—whom he met on his release—was the former wife of wealthy livestock breeder now turned prostitute. Bobby, the son of a wealthy automobile dealer, was but six-years-old when he turned up dead in a geranium patch right after a $600,000 ransom was paid. With the ransom in hand, Hall panicked and set off a chain of events that ended when mobster Joe Costello arranged to steal half the ransom. It was never recovered. After their arrest and quick conviction, Hall and Heady died manacled side by side in a rare double execution in the Missouri gas chamber.