John Patterson (1942 or 1943 – 1974) was a diplomat who served as the United States vice consul in Hermosillo, Mexico where he was abducted and murdered.
Patterson moved to Washington, D.C. where he worked with the ad hoc commission implementing the Economic Stabilization Act of 1970.
The disclosure of his kidnapping came after U.S. Attorney General William Saxbe was questioned by reporters at to why he postponed his planned trip to Mexico.
[1] On July 8, 1974, Patterson's badly decomposed body was found in the desert 345 miles (555 km) north of Hermosillo by a peasant looking for fruit.
[10] FBI agents in Southern California identified Bobby Joe 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.