Associated Press | File 1963

Singer Frank Sinatra makes an appearance with his son, Frank Sinatra Jr., in 1963.

Related

The facts

• On Dec. 8, 1963, Barry Keenan and Joe Amsler, both 23, abducted Frank Sinatra Jr., 19, from a hotel room in Lake Tahoe, Nev.
• According to Keenan’s accounts, he was the ringleader of the scheme. He and Amsler, both carrying guns, at first pretended they were committing a robbery and didn’t know who Sinatra was.
• After a few mishaps, Keenan and Amsler brought Sinatra to Los Angeles. Keenan enlisted his mother’s boyfriend, John Irwin, to call Frank Sinatra Sr. at a number broadcast on the radio. The elder Sinatra offered the kidnappers $1 million, but Keenan wanted only $240,000.
• Eventually, Sinatra Sr. dropped off the money at a location specified by the kidnappers. Sinatra Jr. was freed unharmed. Within days, all three men had been arrested.
• Keenan and Amsler were given life sentences for the kidnapping, and Irwin received 16 years. The kidnappers’ defense suggested that the Sinatra family had staged the crime as a publicity stunt, which Keenan now says was a complete falsehood that he made up.
• All three men were released within five years.

Joe Amsler would have preferred that everyone forget the event that stuck him in the spotlight.

The neighbors who lived beside his tiny efficiency apartment in downtown Salem just knew him as a kindly old man who doted on his shaggy dog, Sparky.

Occasionally Amsler chatted with the 6-year-old boy next door, who loved to play with Sparky. He told the boy's grandmother, Stephanie Burton, that he'd had a hard life when he lived in California.

He never breathed a word about growing up among movie stars or working as a stunt double and bodyguard for Ryan O'Neal. And he never breathed a word about the bizarre kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. more than 40 years ago.

Amsler, 65, died May 6 from liver failure after having been an outpatient at the Veteran Affairs Medical Center in Salem for about two years.

Burton had suspicions that her neighbor could be the same Joe Amsler involved in the younger Sinatra's kidnapping -- on a whim, she had looked his name up on the Internet -- but she'd never asked him. He was a nice, friendly neighbor, and she felt no need to pry.

Her suspicions, however, were correct.

"Joe has been mischaracterized by media for 40 years," said Barry Keenan, Amsler's lifelong friend, who orchestrated the 1963 kidnapping caper. Now a successful real estate developer in Texas, Keenan claims full responsibility for the teenage Sinatra's abduction and maintains that Amsler, his loyal high school buddy, was reluctantly roped in.

Though 19-year-old Sinatra Jr. wasn't harmed, the colorful crime has remained high profile enough to resurface in the news from time to time. Recently it inspired a made-for-cable movie.

Keenan has accepted that the gossip won't go away and has occasionally spoken about the crime publicly.

Amsler, on the other hand, did everything he could to avoid publicity.

"He felt very guilt-ridden about being involved," said Keenan, who referred to the scheme as "our big mistake."

Reluctant schemer

Keenan and Amsler attended University High School in Los Angeles, along with classmates Ryan O'Neal, James Brolin and Nancy Sinatra. The two were blood brothers, Keenan said.

Amsler served in the U.S. Navy in the late 1950s.

Tall, handsome and athletic, Amsler was working as a deep sea diver fishing for abalone when he met Bette McCon- nell, who over the next decade would marry and divorce him twice.

He was the kind of person whose size allowed him to intervene in barfights and stop them without violence, Keenan said.

It was Keenan who hatched the kidnapping scheme. Broke and addicted to painkillers after a car accident, Keenan convinced himself that kidnapping a celebrity would reverse his fortunes. Amsler and John Irwin, Keenan's mother's boyfriend, agreed to be put on a $100-a-week retainer as assistants but didn't believe that the scheme would actually happen.

Yet Keenan did follow through. On Dec. 8, 1963, he and Amsler abducted Sinatra Jr. at gunpoint from a Lake Tahoe hotel room. According to Keenan's descriptions, Amsler reluctantly went along with the plan after repeatedly asking his friend to drop the idea. The kidnapping wasn't an organized affair, but one characterized by confusion and panic.

Sinatra Jr. was released three days later, unharmed, and the kidnappers collected a relatively paltry $240,000 ransom. The three men involved were arrested soon afterward, and most of the money was recovered.

Keenan described Amsler as being very protective of the teenage singer throughout the ordeal. Sinatra Jr., through his manager, Andrea Kauffman, declined to comment for this story.

Keenan and Amsler, both 23, and Irwin, 42, were all convicted and sent to prison.

The two high school buddies were reunited behind bars and even took up one of their favorite childhood pastimes, volleyball.

Despite having received life sentences, Amsler and Keenan were both released in less than five years, as was Irwin.

Once out of prison, they stayed out of trouble, except for one drunk driving arrest each in the 1970s, Keenan said.

The 6-foot-2-inch Amsler, with help from high school friend Ryan O'Neal, landed work as a stunt man in such O'Neal vehicles as "The Thief Who Came to Dinner" and "What's Up, Doc?"

But he had little interest in even watching the movies he appeared in. To him, it was just a job, Keenan said. Eventually Amsler left show business altogether and worked construction jobs.

In 2003, Showtime released a movie based on the kidnapping called "Stealing Sinatra," in which actor Ryan Browning played Amsler opposite David Arquette as Keenan and William H. Macy as Irwin. Amsler was deeply upset by the movie, which portrayed him as violent, Keenan said.

Moving closer to family

In a photo taken last fall at the O. Winston Link Railwalk, Keenan and Amsler sit side by side smiling. With chiseled features reminiscent of the late actor Robert Preston, Amsler looks as if he should be on horseback at a cattle ranch, his face shaded by a broad cowboy hat.

In fact, Amsler had a "dream job" working as a handyman on a big California ranch prior to his move to the Roanoke area two years ago, Keenan said.

He came to Salem to be closer to his family as his health waned. His son, Chris Amsler, a songwriter and musician, lives in Staunton. Joe Amsler was in prison when his son was born and missed out on the early part of his son's life, Keenan said.

Bette Amsler, Chris' mother, who moved to Staunton recently, called her ex-husband "a good-hearted man."

When Keenan visited his friend in September, the pair went up to the Mill Mountain Star and enjoyed the view. Amsler loved the historical aspects of Roanoke, hanging out at the sports bar at Corned Beef & Co., and walking Sparky along the Roanoke River, Keenan said.

Amsler lived in a white house subdivided into apartments on Academy Street in Salem until about January, when liver complications stemming from a case of hepatitis years ago kept him hospitalized.

His next-door neighbor, Meghan Jones, Burton's daughter, spoke to Amsler on the phone the day before he died. He told her he was going to hire someone to drive his RV and take him across the country, back to the West Coast.

"He was so happy and excited about going on that trip," Jones said.

News researcher Belinda Harris contributed to this report.