Kiritsis hostage, businessman Dick Hall dies
INDIANAPOLIS (WIBC) — Dick Hall, the man who was wired to a shotgun and held hostage by Tony Kiritsis in Indianapolis for three days in February 1977, has died.
Friends confirmed Hall’s death, saying he died in his sleep Friday morning after a brief illness.
Hall, who was stoic and soft-spoken, did not speak of the incident for 40 years, finally opening up about how he felt during the predicament in 2017. He co-authored the book, “Kiritsis and Me: Enduring 63 Hours at Gunpoint,” and released an interview.
Hall was accused by Kiritsis of defrauding him. Kiritsis owned property that he had failed to develop on the west side of Indianapolis. Hall’s company, Meridian Mortgage, held the mortgage of the property.
“He shut the door and he commented about he wanted to fix his shorts. I turned my back…and the next thing I knew he was holding a handgun on me,” said Hall, recalling the day he was taken hostage. “He says, ‘Dick, I’m gonna wire a shotgun to your neck and you get down on the ground and on your knees’. He removed my coat and wired the shotgun to the back of my head.”
Hall was then forced down the stairs and outside, in the freezing cold, with no coat.
“The thing I remember the most, I looked him in the eye and I thought to myself, ‘How could God let a man get this angry?’” he said. “I got the idea that I was in trouble when he paraded me down the stairway and by the police and they didn’t do anything.”
Hall was forced to drive Kiritsis in a police car to his west side apartment, where he was kept for three days, enduring insults and the constant threat of death, until Kiritsis agreed to come out, partly because of negotiations conducted with the help of WIBC news director Fred Heckman.
The end of the crisis was broadcast live on national TV, at the behest of Kiritsis. While it ended with Hall being released and Kiritsis in custody, it was unclear whether Hall would be killed with a shotgun on live TV.
The incident was most recently portrayed from the viewpoint of Fred Heckman in an audio drama titled “American Hostage”, with Hall as a character.