Second Meeting Planned On Kidnaping Charges

Second Meeting Planned On Kidnaping Charges

BY WILLIAM TREML News Courts Reporter

A second meeting between local and federal authorities has been scheduled for next week to decide if state kidnaping charges will be filed against three Ann Arbor men already charged with extortion.

The trio has been implicated in the kidnaping last Monday night of Mrs. Ruth Schulenberg and her three sons from their home at 3930 Waldenwood Lane.

Mrs. Schulenherg's husband, William, was held at gun point throughout Monday night in the family home and forced to make arrangements by phone for the payment of $54,000 in ransom for the release of his wife and children.

Charged with violation of the federal Hobbs Act covering extortion is Daniel G. Wirth, 21, Kenneth J. Royce, 18, and John (Todd) Szynwelski, 20. Wirth was arrested Wednesday noon at 2291 Dhu Varren Road in Ann Arbor Township. Royce was apprehended early Thursday morning in the village of Edgerton in northwestern Ohio while Szynwelski was arrested as he got off a bus in Cleveland
at 4 a.m. Thursday.

Friday afternoon Ann Arbor Police Chief Walter E. Krasny and Deputy Chief Harold E. Olson met in the County Building with Chief Assistant Prosecutor Jerome Farmer III and Assistant U.S. District Attorney Brian McCormick to discuss the filing of state charges against the three suspects.

After the meeting Prosecutor Farmer said the issue was not settled but a second meeting will be held early next week to pursue the matter.

"We don't know what's going to happen on this right how,” Farmer said. "If we charge it's a matter of which count will go to court first.”

He said Prosecuting Attorney William F. Delhey, who has been out of the city, is expected to sit in at next week’s meeting and participate in the decision on a state charge. Conviction under Michigan law of kidnaping can bring any number of years in Southern Michigan Prison up to life. Federal statute provides a 20-year prison term on conviction of extortion.

If the three defendants are charged under the state law they will be returned here temporarily to appear at District Court examination hearings and later for trials in Circuit Court.

While FBI agents declined to say where Wirth, Royce and Szynwelski are now being held, it was learned that they have been separated pending trial on the extortion charge. Wirth is in the Oakland County Jail in Pontiac while Royce, returned to Michigan from Ohio on Thursday, is confined to the Federal Correctional Institution at Milan.

Szynwelski had been a prisoner at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland until Friday but apparently has been returned to a Michigan institution. Szynwelski signed an extradition waiver to return to Michigan on the day of his arrest. A sheriff’s deputy at the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland said this morning that U.S. marshals removed Szynwelski from their institution on Friday but they did not know where he was taken. Federal authorities were unavailable for comment today on Szynwelski’s whereabouts. He had been on a $750,000 bond in Cleveland while Wirth and Royce must post $100,000 bonds to be released.