WASHINGTON -- A man charged in the kidnapping of millionairess Edith Rosenkranz, abducted from a bridge tournament and freed after a ransom was delivered, was only a marginal suspect in the murder of his homosexual lover, police said today.
Glenn Wright, 42, of Houston was arrested with two others Saturday night minutes after Mrs. Rosenkranz was freed. He and Orland Tolden, 25, also of Houston, and Dennis Moss, 26, were held in the District of Columbia Jail and faced arraignment today.
All the ransom money, reportedly about $1 million, was recovered, the FBI said.
Mrs. Rosenkranz, the 60-year-old wife of retired drug company magnate George Rosenkranz, said Sunday her kidnappers warned her she 'probably would be killed' if their ransom demands were not met. She said they kept her blindfolded most of the time, but indicated that she was otherwise well cared for.
The couple was competing in the 10-day Summer North American Championship of the American Contract Bridge League at the Sheraton Washington Hotel, where Mrs. Rosenkranz was abducted shortly before midnight Thursday. Wright has played in some tournaments and holds life master rank.
Houston Police Sgt. Greg Neeley said today Wright was initiall considered a suspect in the slaying last year of his lover, Tony Ivey, 23, of Niagara Falls, N.Y., who was found shot to death in Wright's bathroom.
But Neeley said no evidence was established tying Wright or anyone else to the shooting and no charges have been filed in the case.
'We had no reason to believe he was in the middle of it at the time and although his arrest in Washington does raise some questions, we have no more reason to believe it today,' Neeley said. Mrs. Rosenkranz, who was greeted with cheers and applause at a news conference Sunday, was visibly shaken but calm as she answered questions quietly and with brief answers.
She simply replied 'no' when asked about reports that her captors did not feed her.
'I was blindfolded so I couldn't see much. They told me that I should not talk,' she said.
Asked if the ordeal would change the couple's lives, she said, 'I hope not.'
Mrs. Rosenkranz said had the ransom not been paid, her abductors said 'they would probably kill me.'
'They said that they might kill me or that they might bring me back. There was a person who said, 'No matter what happens, I'm going to see that you will be back,' she said.
Authorities said Mrs. Rosenkranz had been held at an undisclosed location outside the city.
'The motive is money. They selected her because the family had money to pay the ransom,' said Norman Zigrossi, special agent in charge of the FBI's Washington office.
Mrs. Rosenkranz was released after the second of two ransom drops. Wright and Moss were arrested driving a black van nearby. Tolden was arrested at a hotel about one mile away.
Zigrossi refused to say how much ransom money was involved, but several news reports put the amount at about $1 million.
Her husband, founder of the Syntex Corp., pioneers in the development of the birth control pill, said he 'always had great hope that (the kidnapping) would end well.
'I never thought anything like that would ever happen in my lifetime,' he said.
Tournament spokesman Robert Bonomi said Wright 'is a known bridge player to people in Houston.' Rosenkranz said he may have met Wright in the past, but could not 'put the name with a face.'
The tournament was in its 10th and final day Sunday, and play continued uninterrupted except for a brief celebratory pause as word of her release swept the hotel.
'Everybody just stopped playing,' Henry Francis, publisher of the league's newsletter, said Sunday. 'Some of them smiled, some of them cried. Some of them, enemies for years, were smiling at each other.'
