His father, Robert Cosgrove Greenlease Sr., was a multi-millionaire auto dealer, and the demanded ransom payment was the largest in American history at the time.

Greenlease Jr.'s kidnappers, Carl Hall and Bonnie Heady, had no intention of returning him to his family, the child having been murdered before the ransom demand was even issued.

The elder Greenlease was a multi-millionaire car dealer and entrepreneur, having made his fortune by introducing General Motors vehicles to the Great Plains in the early 20th century, owning dealerships from Texas to South Dakota.

According to author John Heidenry, Bobby was said to be a trusting boy; Bonnie Heady later stated that from the moment she appeared at his school posing as his aunt to take him to his mother, he just took her hand and did anything he was told to do.

[3] In September 1953, Carl Hall (34) and Bonnie Heady (41), kidnapped Bobby from Notre Dame de Sion, a Catholic pre-school located in Kansas City, Missouri.

In the early 1930s, Hall had attended Kemper Military School in Boonville with Paul Robert Greenlease, Bobby's adopted older brother.

Heady visited Bobby's school and persuaded a nun, Sister Morand, that she was his aunt, telling her that his mother had suffered a heart attack and was in St. Mary's Hospital.

When another nun from the school rang to inquire about Virginia Greenlease's condition, she discovered the truth and her husband contacted the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).

After the murder, Hall and Heady sent Bobby's father messages in the mail and phone calls demanding a ransom of $600,000 ($6.8 million today).

One of the associates, a former sex worker named Sandra O'Day, was supposed to fly to Los Angeles and mail a letter Hall had written.

The fourth woman, Lisa Montgomery of Kansas, was executed by lethal injection on January 13, 2021, for the 2004 murder of Bobbie Jo Stinnett.