A housekeeper at the Colorado ranch of billionaire Michael Bloomberg was last week abducted at gunpoint by a man who forced her to drive them to Wyoming, where police later arrested the suspect and freed the woman unharmed, according to officials and court documents.
Joseph Beecher, 48, was on Thursday taken into custody and was jailed without bond in Cheyenne, Wyoming, facing multiple state charges, including kidnapping and felony menacing, a Colorado sheriff’s office said in an online statement
A federal kidnapping charge has also been lodged against the suspect, as documented in a criminal complaint filed at the US District Court in Wyoming.
The abduction took place on Wednesday near the town of Meeker, Colorado, in a rural corner of the state about 322km west of Denver, enforcement officials said, but it was not widely reported by media outlets until Saturday.
Bloomberg, a former New York City mayor and onetime US presidential candidate, was not present at his ranch at the time, nor were any of his family, authorities said.
No mention of a possible motive for the kidnapping was made by the sheriff’s office or federal officials.
However, the New York Times, citing court documents, said the suspect had initially asked the housekeeper about Bloomberg’s two adult daughters by name, and later said he had traveled to a nearby airport over the summer in search of the former mayor.
According to an FBI affidavit filed in the case, the abduction began after Beecher rammed his pickup truck through the gate of the Bloomberg ranch, entered the property and accosted the supervising housekeeper as she was working in an upstairs bedroom of the residence.
The housekeeper told authorities that the man pointed a rifle at her face, threatened to shoot her and forced her at gunpoint to drive them in her vehicle on a cross-state trek to the Denver area, making several stops along the way, the affidavit said.
The suspect ultimately demanded that the victim drive them to Cheyenne, where they rented a motel room under assumed names, and he ordered her to share a bed with him for the night, forcing her to sleep with her head on his chest and one arm over his waist, the FBI said.
Authorities in Colorado, alerted on Wednesday to the abduction, managed to track the pair to the motel, and police stormed the room the following day, arresting Beecher and rescuing the housekeeper, the affidavit said.
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