At my station in Sacramento, the popular news anchorman Dick Cable was kidnapped by one of his fans. The news director who engineered this fiasco was Tom Capra, son of famed Hollywood film director Frank Capra.
Here’s what happened.
One day the phone rang in the newsroom, it was a man asking if he could speak to Dick Cable. “It’s a desperate situation,” the guy said.
Turns out the man on the phone had just escaped from jail. Police were looking for him all over Northern California. The escapee said he was concerned that police would shoot him during a capture. He went on to say that he trusted anchorman Dick Cable and offered to turn himself in to the anchorman at a diner in West Sacramento.
News Director Capra agreed to this. He understood this was going to be a big story and, let’s face it, in addition to being a public service in helping police capture the escapee, it was also going to be a great exclusive scoop. Also, great promotion for the newscast which was running second in the Sacramento market.
This was such a major story that Capra decided he ought to cover it himself, just to make sure that everything went right. So Tom, Dick, and a news cameraman got into a news vehicle and headed for the diner where the escapee was waiting.
When they arrived at the diner, ten minutes away, Tom made sure they got video of Dick walking into the place.
The cameraman was told to be ready to roll because at any second now they’d get video of Dick and the escapee walking out of the diner together. This was going to be “The Money Shot.” Capra already thinking of the promo: “Jail Escapee Turns Himself in to Our
Anchorman.”
The cameraman was ready to roll. They waited five minutes, then ten minutes. Finally after fifteen minutes Tom went into the diner and asked the man at the
register if he had seen Dick Cable and some guy. He said they had left the diner through the back door.
They were gone. No sign of them. The escapee had kidnapped the anchorman. Dick Cable was missing in action. It was at this point that Capra had to face a number of sensitive issues that probably no local television news manager in America had ever faced before. Frank Capra could have made a movie out of the choices facing his son at that moment.
First he had to call the anchorman’s family to tell them that Dick had been kidnapped. Naturally, this upset the Cable family which had a house full of kids. Then he had to notify the Sacramento Police that the guy they were searching for had kidnapped the station’s anchorman. The cops were furious because the station had known the whereabouts of the jail escapee and failed to report it to the police. Of course, the FBI had to be notified since this was a kidnapping, which is a federal crime. Agents came to the newsroom and began monitoring the phones.
Finally, there was the sensitive question of how to explain Dick’s absence at the top of the Eleven O’clock News. “We just decided to say ‘ Dick has the night off.’
We couldn’t tell viewers that Dick had been kidnapped,” said Tom, laughing as he recalled the incident a couple of years ago. During several tense hours, the small newsroom filled up with FBI agents, police officers, Dick’s family members, station managers, and news staffers. Every time the phone rang, a big crowd monitored the incoming call.
It all ended after several hours, the newsroom phone rang and it was Dick. He said the guy had dropped him off at a pay phone in West Sacramento.
“He just wanted to tell me his life story, “ said Dick, sounding quite calm. “What kind of car is the guy driving?” asked the officers.
A couple of hours later, the escapee was picked up by police and taken back to jail.
Dick Cable went on to have a long successful life as a popular anchorman in Sacramento. This incident didn’t impact Tom Capra’s rising career, years later he was named Executive Producer of NBC’s “Today Show.”