Bobby Joe Keesee

[1][2] He returned to the United States in 1953 and decided to make the U.S. Army his career, becoming a sergeant and serving on bases in Japan, Germany and Iceland.

On March 23, 1962, he rented an airplane under the guise of visiting a sick relative but instead flew to Havana, Cuba and requested political asylum.

A note was left at the consulate general hours after his disappearance, demanding a ransom of $500,000 as well as a news blackout on the case.

[11] The case caused confusion, with Mexican officials refusing to even call it a kidnapping, simply saying that Patterson had disappeared.

[1] Patterson's badly decomposed body was found in the desert 345 miles (555 km) north of Hermosillo by a peasant looking for fruit.

[14] FBI agents in Southern California identified Keesee as a person of interest after finding that he checked into the Hotel Gandara in Mexico near the consulate.

Keesee confessed that he wrote the letter instructing Patterson’s wife to go to the Rosarito Beach hotel to bring the ransom, but claimed he did so only to provide her with a sense of hope.

During pretrial preparations prosecutors, offered Keesee a plea deal allowing him to plead guilty to a single count of conspiracy to kidnap.

[1] On January 4, 1996, Keesee pleaded guilty to impersonating a FEMA official in Long Beach, California while distributing fraudulent purchase orders that were purportedly to buy equipment to fight disasters.