Robert Hearin had been president of a company called School Pictures. The company sold franchises to photographers throughout the United States to produce photo portraits of school children. Between 1981 and 1983, in an effort to collect money owed to them, School Pictures filed lawsuits against twelve franchise owners in eight states, including Florida.
A man in a suit holding an envelope.
Annie is still missing
On the day Annie was kidnapped, witnesses reported seeing a white cargo van with Florida plates in the neighborhood. Police soon discovered that the twelve names on the kidnapper’s ransom note were the same twelve people who had been sued by School Pictures. J.L. Black doesn’t believe that this necessarily implicates all twelve people:
“It’s possible that these 12 people had absolutely nothing to do with this abduction. However, you can’t rule out the fact that maybe somebody whohad the knowledge of School Pictures and its operation could’ve been involved with it.”
As a result, letters were then sent out to the 12 individuals. Robert Hearin Jr.:
“School Pictures was requested to look into the files on these 12 people. The transactions were reviewed and letters were, of course, sent out to these people trying to determine what damages they had, and what they’d wanted. At that point, we didn’t get a response except from several of them saying ‘We don’t want anything’.”
Eight days after his press conference, on August 15th, Robert received a letter. He recognized the handwriting immediately: it was from his wife, Annie. For Robert Jr. and the family, this came as quite a relief:
“This gave us quite an emotional lift because it meant that Mother apparently had survived the initial struggle. But it still was extremely vague as to what we were to do. At that point, dad, in order to do something to show our good faith effort to comply with these demands, instructed his attorneys to find out how much School Pictures had sued these 12 individuals for.”
Robert sent out checks totaling nearly one million dollars to the 12 people on the list. Half of the checks were returned. The letter in Annie’s handwriting would be the last word that her family or police would ever receive from the kidnapper. For Robert Jr. and the Hearin family, the search and the struggle continue:
“It’s been our sincere desire from the very beginning, from the moment of the kidnapping, that we do everything possible to comply with these demands. We want Mother back.”