POINT MARION, Pa. -- A physician dressed as Santa Claus helped kidnap and torture a stockbroker for 12 days because he believed his victim treated him unfairly in a business deal, police said Tuesday.
Police found Robert J. Haye Monday night handcuffed and chained to a bed in an abandoned concrete block building on a farm four miles from Point Marion, near the West Virginia border in southwest Pennsylvania, said Pittsburgh police Lt. Leo O'Neill.
Haye, 49, had been drugged, tortured and interrogated. He was treated and released from Uniontown Hospital following his rescue, police said.
'We were very lucky to find him alive,' O'Neill said.
Dr. Grover Phillippi, 46, and Michael Conklin, 43, both of Waynesburg, were arrested later Monday and charged with kidnapping and conspiracy.
Phillippi apparently was involved in a stock deal Haye had negotiated and believed Haye had not treated him fairly, said Stephen Joyce, assistant superintendent of the Pittsburgh police.
'I don't know how he thought he could resolve it this way,' Joyce said.
Haye, of the Pittburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon, and the two suspects attended a Dec. 21 Christmas party in downtown Pittsburgh, police said. Phillippi was dressed as Santa Claus and his friend as a chauffeur.
The three, along with a friend of Haye's, left the party about 12:30 a.m. on Dec. 22 and walked to Phillippi's rented van, where Haye and the friend accepted a ride to their respective homes, police said.
The unidentified man was dropped off at his home, but Haye, a commodity broker at A.G. Edwards & Sons, was driven to a rural area four miles east of Point Marion, police said.
Haye was kept in a small trailer inside the building that contained the bed, an electric chair and a pine box with spikes that resembled a coffin, police said. He had been drugged and shocked repeatedly, police said.
'He had been given junk food to eat and kept handcuffed and chained to the bed,' O'Neill said. 'His nose was broken. He was placed in the chair at various times and interrogated.'
Phillippi, who is retired from active practice, and Conklin were arraigned and held in the Allegheny County jail on $100,000 bond.
