Demand for $3M ransom

Press, 12 November 1977, Page 8

Demand for $3M ransom

NZPA-Reuter Vienna The Austrian police are working in secrecy to secure the release of a lingerie millionaire snatched from his car on Wednesday night by kidnappers demanding a 50 million schilling (about SNZ3M) ransom. Mr Walter Michael Palmers, aged 74, one of Austria’s richest men, was dragged from his black Volkswagen when he arrived home late in the evening. The kidnappers, left a typewritten ransom note in ! the car, giving the Palmers’s family until today to pay the money in French, Swiss, West German, and Austrian banknotes, police sources said. The police believe the kidnapping was criminal, not political. They have imposed a news black-out on the kidnapping which follows a rash of abductions of wealthy businessmen in Western Europe. Mr Palmers, who is reported to suffer from heart trouble and asthma, is head of a family-run business which controls a chain of several hundred women’s underwear stores throughout Austria. Police sources said that no word had been heard from the kidnappers since the ransom demand was discovered by Mr Palmers's wife, Gunilla. The sources said the ransom note warned her not to contact the police, but she decided to call a police inspector who was a close family friend.