On Jan. 16, a movie about a 1977 kidnapping case that happened on Indianapolis’ west side is set to premiere.
“Dead Man’s Wire,” directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Bill Skarsgård and Dacre Montgomery, focuses on the three-day period when westsider Tony Kiritsis kidnapped Meridian Mortgage president Richard Hall and held him hostage in his Chapel Hill/Ben Davis apartment.
Kiritsis secured a sawed-off shotgun to Hall’s head using a “dead man’s line,” a wire coathanger tied to the trigger that would ensure it went off if police tried to take him down.
In 1977, photographer Jeff Atteberry was a “newbie” at the Indianapolis Star. The 25-year-old had only been at the paper three years, and he worked mainly nights. Now 73, Atteberry remembers when he heard about the event.
“I was taking an aunt and uncle to a doctor’s appointment,” Atteberry told Mirror Indy. “So, you know, I was sort of like, ‘Man, I want to be a part of this,’ but I couldn’t go. I had to go take care of them.”
When he clocked in the next two nights, there wasn’t much to do on the Kiritsis story. But, on the third evening, he was assigned to photograph the press conference Kiritsis was going to hold in his apartment building on the final day of the kidnapping.
Kiritsis and his half brother, George Ergo, walked into the common room while Hall was held at gunpoint. Before answering questions from the dozens of journalists there, Kiritsis made Hall read a statement.
The body heat from all the people in the small room was fogging up his lenses, making him wipe them clean every two photos. Atteberry’s only concern was doing his job right.
“I don’t remember having any sort of internal feelings,” Atteberry told Mirror Indy. “I was trying to get pictures.”
But his search for the right shot put him in dangerous territory.
“I was trying to find a better angle, and I ran around and I saw this one side where nobody was there. I remember thinking, ‘Well, this has got to be a good angle then.’ When I got there and took a shot or two, I realized I was looking at the shotgun barrel. And, I thought, ‘Oh, maybe this isn’t such a good place to be.’”
Soon after the press conference, Kiritsis released Hall and was taken into police custody.
Kiritsis died in 2005. Before you see Hollywood’s version of this period of Indianapolis history, Mirror Indy wants to take you on a tour of some of the places involved and what they look like today.
Growing up on the west side
Anthony G. Kiritsis was born Aug. 13, 1938, to Greek immigrants George and Magdelina Kiritsis. He had three brothers and two sisters. Their childhood home was at 5119 W. Vermont St. It no longer exists, but the property it stood on is just north of the Freedom Missionary Baptist Church.
His father, George Kiritsis, opened a small ice cream manufacturing plant, called the Dantros Ice Cream Co., downtown at 21 S. West St. in 1924. The site of the former plant is now the Indiana Government Center parking facility across from the JW Marriott.
Kiritsis moved the plant next to their home. Later, the boys would help out by selling ice cream out of carts.
In the late 1940s, the Kiritsis family bought and operated a mobile home park, named the Dantros Trailer Park, at 5353 W. Vermont St. The park still exists, but it is now listed as the Gonzalez Mobile Home Park.
As a teen, Kiritsis attended dances at the Municipal Gardens Community Center, now the Municipal Gardens Family Center. He graduated from Ben Davis High School in 1950. The old Ben Davis High School is now part of Ben Davis University High School, at 1155 S. High School Road.
After high school, Kiritsis joined the U.S. Army, where he worked as a small arms instructor at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. He rose to the rank of corporal.
Managing a trailer park, selling cars
Kiritsis left the army after two years and later joined the family business, becoming manager of the Dantros Trailer Park.
Former residents told the Indianapolis News in 1977 that he would patrol the park with a shotgun to enforce the park’s 5 mph speed limit.
In 1968, he left the trailer park and worked as a car salesman at various dealerships, including Wiese Buick & Opel at 1016 N. Meridian St. The site is now home to Indianapolis NBC affiliate WTHR.
In 1973, Kiritsis took out a $110,000 loan from Meridian Mortgage Co., which had its offices on the fourth floor of 129 E. Market St.
The building, known as the J.F. Wild Building, was built in 1923 and closed a few years later after robbers made off with $275,000 in bonds. Over the years, the building was occupied by banks and law firms. In 2016, after being vacant for a few years, developer Loftus Robinson bought the building and renovated it. Its main tenant today is the liquefied natural gas supplier Kinetrex Energy.
Kiritsis used the loan to buy a 17-acre property on the northwest corner of Rockville Road and Lynhurst Drive. His plan was to convert it into a shopping center.
He was unable to secure development deals and fell behind on his payments. Kiritsis blamed Meridian Mortgage, saying they were sabotaging his plans by showing businesses he planned to make development deals with competing sites.
Kiritsis began planning his next move — one that would involve the threat of violence.
‘I’ve just taken a prisoner’
On Feb. 8, 1977, Kiritsis walked into the J.F. Wild Building with his sawed-off shotgun and a wire coathanger concealed in boxes.
He was there to meet company chairman Millard Hall, but was told Hall was on a vacation in Florida. Kiritsis waited for Hall’s son, Richard, to show up.
When he did, Kiritsis asked, “Have you got a minute?” and they entered Hall’s office. Soon after, people heard someone being slammed against the wall. That ruckus was Kiritsis placing the dead man’s line on Hall.
Kiritsis had Hall call 911. Then he took the receiver and spoke to police for 25 minutes.
“Sir, this is a dire emergency, a real serious thing. I’ve just taken a prisoner,” he told police.
Police showed up, and around 9 a.m., Kiritsis walked out of the building with Hall, telling him, “You put me out in the cold. Now I am going to take you out in the cold and blow your head off.”
He commandeered a police vehicle near the Indiana Statehouse near Washington Street and Senate Avenue and made Hall drive him to his apartment in the Crestwood Village apartment complex in the Chapel Hill/Ben Davis neighborhood. Most of the complex residents were senior citizens.
His building, at 220 Welcome Way Blvd., is still there today but is now known as the Pinnacle West Apartments.
He told police he wired the apartment’s windows and doors with dynamite, so officers evacuated the residents of about 110 apartments in his building.
Kiritsis kept Hall hostage for nearly 63 hours, calling into radio station WIBC-AM repeatedly to speak with Indianapolis Broadcasters Association Hall of Fame member Fred Heckman, who helped negotiate Hall’s release.
Kiritsis held a press conference, the one Atteberry was at, which was carried live. At the end of the nearly 30-minute, expletive-filled media event, Kiritsis apologized before walking out of the common area.
“I’m sorry about my language, and I’m sorry that this thing had to happen,” he said.
Atteberry and other media members waited as Kiritsis continued negotiating Hall’s release with police officers.
“We were waiting on the other side of the building, and then we all heard a shotgun go off. We all thought, ‘This is not ending well.’ It turns out he was demonstrating that the shotgun really was loaded after all,” Atteberry said.
Hall was released and immediately taken to Wishard Memorial Hospital, now the Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital, for a medical checkup and treatment.
During the kidnapping, the Indianapolis Star confirmed Kiritsis’ suspicions that the Hall family’s companies were involved in suggesting sites other than Kiritsis’ for future development. The paper found that Richard Hall’s brother, Jack, had written to two supermarket companies and suggested other sites for them to develop.
Death of natural causes, burial in Crown Hill Cemetery
Kiritsis was charged with kidnapping, armed extortion and armed robbery and was held at Marion County Jail I, which was demolished in January 2025 to build the Indiana Fever Sports Performance Center.
A jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity at his trial in October 1977, and he was handed over to the Indiana Department of Mental Health, which placed him in Larue Carter Memorial Hospital.
The hospital was originally located at 1350 W. 10th St. It closed in 1996 and was moved to the former Veterans Administration Hospital at 2601 Cold Spring Road. That location closed in 2019 and was purchased by Marian University for use as an educational hub called the Riverside Education Innovation District.
A judge ordered Kiritsis to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, but he refused. In 1981, Kiritsis was committed to Logansport State Hospital and Indiana Reformatory in Pendleton, now known as the Pendleton Correctional Facility.
In 1987 a separate judge ordered him moved to Central State Hospital. The hospital closed in 1994, partly due to decades of patient abuse that resulted in at least 2,000 patients dying. Only a few Central State buildings remain. Most have been razed to make room for new houses and apartments on the 160-acre campus.
Kiritsis was released in 1988 and moved to Speedway. He died of natural causes in 2005 in his home at 1529 N. Mickley Ave., and is buried at Crown Hill Cemetery, Section 224, Lot 1143.
Mirror Indy, a nonprofit newsroom, is funded through grants and donations from individuals, foundations and organizations.
Mirror Indy reporter Enrique Saenz covers west Indianapolis. Contact him at 317-983-4203 or enrique.saenz@mirrorindy.org. Follow him on Bluesky at @enriquesaenz.bsky.social.
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