He Kidnapped His Own Attorney: The Story of Putt

[0:01] Welcome back. Steve Rhoad. True crime cases you haven't heard. [0:07] And this week, I don't know what to tell you. Let's just get into it. A 72-year-old attorney parks in the same lot he's used for the last 35 years. Same routine, same law office, same walk from his vehicle to the building on 4th Street. You know what routine looks like. [0:32] He feels something pressed against his back. It's a thin handgun with a long silver barrel. And a voice behind him, Don't move or I will shoot you. The man with the gun wears a Halloween-style mask, black gloves, a ball cap pulled low, and he orders the attorney into the passenger seat of his own car. Face down. What follows 55 hours of a captivity chains a shed with floors painted red eyes wrapped in gauze so he can't tell day from night in a ransom demand one million dollars, but here's what makes this case different from every kidnapping for ransom I've ever looked into. The man holding that gun? He was 79 years old. And the attorney he kidnapped? Had been his defense lawyer 40 years earlier on kidnapping charges. [1:52] I'm Steve Rode. I've spent 30 years as an investigative writer tracking financial criminals, from Ponzi schemers to corporate fraudsters. I also worked in emergency services, two years as a police dispatcher, surveillance photography with law enforcement, and chief pilot for public safety search and rescue operations. This is a case you haven't heard. A 79-year-old career criminal, a 61-year pattern of using crime to solve, or try to solve, every problem. And a revenge kidnapping that forces us to ask, how does a life go this wrong? [2:39] The question I kept asking, was there ever an off-ramp for Putnam Darwin Richardson? Or did he just spend six decades driving past every exit? If you're new to the podcast, welcome. I cover cases that flew under the national radar. Cases with documentary evidence, complete outcomes, and stories that deserve to be told. If you've been here before, you know the approach. We dive deep. This episode takes you through a 61-year career criminal's life, two kidnappings separated by four decades, and one of the saddest trajectories in true crime. You can find me at truecrimeunheard.com. That's truecrimeunheard.com. And be sure to subscribe wherever you're listening so you don't miss what comes next. [3:48] Before I tell you what happened in that shed, you need to understand who Mel Shillander was. Not as a victim, but as a person. Mel Shillander practiced law from the same building in his Beaumont, Texas office for 35 years. 245 North 4th Street. downtown, same building, same practice, and his clients knew where to find him. He graduated from Beaumont High in 1970, finished his bachelor's at Lamar University in three years instead of four, and completed law school at South Texas College of Law in just two and a half years. By 1976, he was a licensed attorney. But Mel Shalander wasn't just a lawyer, he was a father of five, a youth basketball coach for ten years, a baseball coach for nine. He served as president and director of the Cradle of Life Adoption Agency, dedicated to matching children with good families. [5:02] He was a Settlement Week mediator. That's a volunteer program where attorneys help resolve civil disputes before they go to trial. He was an attorney mentor helping up-and-coming attorneys. And he was a man who devoted decades to helping families come together and stay together. At 72 years old, he showed up to work every morning. Same parking lot, same routine. On the morning of July 15, 2024, Mel Schillander had no idea his past was about to catch up with him in the form of a client he'd represented four decades earlier. [5:49] This was a client who'd spent those 40 years blaming everyone. [5:59] To understand what happened in 2024, you have to go back 61 years to a bright-faced 17-year-old kid named Putnam Darwin Richardson. Everybody and his friends called him Putt. June 22, 1963. Orange, Texas. Richardson broke into McGill Supply Company, an auto parts store. at 210 Front Avenue. Over two nights, he took about $500 worth of merchandise, a racing manifold, tools, spray paint, and an acetylene tank. When a reporter from the paper, the Orange Leader, asked him why he had done it, Richardson had an answer. He said he was trying to fix an old car after the motor blew up. Just a 17 year old kid trying to fix his car and that's how this story started. [7:03] Three years later, in June 1966, Putt was convicted of burglary at another auto parts location. This time he got two years in Huntsville Prison. By 1968, he made the front page. Sheriff's deputies raided a garage on 4th Street and recovered more than $10,000 in stolen automotive parts and equipment. Richardson was indicted by two grand juries. In two different counties within 24 hours. And then in April 1972, something that jumped out to me when I researched this case. Richardson burglarized McGill's Supply again. The same business, the same target as in 1963. Just nine years later. I've investigated criminals for 30 years, and when someone returns to the same target after nearly a decade, that's not coincidence. That's compulsion. That's a pattern of thought that says, this is the only way I know how to solve a problem. And that pattern would define Putt's entire life. [8:32] In August 1983, Richardson was arrested for shoplifting at a Joskey's department store in the Parkdale Mall in Beaumont, Texas. It was a minor theft case, a misdemeanor, the kind of charge that might mean probation and maybe a fine. But the store investigator who caught him, a woman named Kathleen Ann Bosca, well, she testified against him. Kathleen Ann Boska was a single mother of two. She worked as an investigator for Joski's department store, and her job? Catching shoplifters. And when Putnam Richardson stole from that store, Boska did her job. She testified. She told the truth. [9:22] Richardson could not accept that. One night in January 1984, before the lights went out at Kathleen Bosca's mobile home. Power cut. And when the trailer park manager came to investigate, he found a man waiting, armed with a gun, wearing surgical gloves. Richardson later admitted under oath that he wore those gloves. And I'm quoting from the court record. To avoid leaving fingerprints should anything happen that could lead to further criminal charges, unquote. He ordered the manager inside Bosca's trailer, handcuffed him to the floor. Kathleen Bosca's two minor children were there in the trailer, watching this all go down. [10:16] Richardson forced Bosca to sign letters. false letters recanting her testimony against him. [10:24] And then he kidnapped both Boska and the manager, leaving the kids behind. He drove them to his business, a place called the Car Care Clinic, and he handcuffed the manager to a car lift. [10:54] A misdemeanor shoplifting charge, something that might have meant probation, became a 50-year sentence. Not because the system was unjust, but because Richardson's response to a small. [11:10] Consequence was to commit a massive crime. A witness told the truth about him, and he couldn't accept it. So he terrorized her and her children. This was a pattern, crime as the only tool. And when the tool didn't work, he reached for a bigger one. One of the attorneys who represented Putnam Richardson in that trial, who tried to keep him out of prison, Mel Shalander. Richardson received that 50-year sentence, and he obtained mandatory release in 2001 after serving roughly just 17 years. His parole supervision was scheduled to run until 2034. [12:08] During those years, the pattern continued. July 2005, theft charge. 2009, Arrested as a Habitual Thief at a Department Store 2014, Criminal Trespass and Theft May 2015, Convicted 180 Days in the Orange County Jail The same pattern, the same tool, Decade. [12:41] He operated a car lot in Orange, Texas, married a woman named Bonnie, 15 years his junior, who would later suffer multiple strokes, leaving her paralyzed and dependent on him as her sole caregiver. By 2024, Putt Richardson was 79 years old. His home was valued at $332,000. He owed $228,000. His monthly expenses were approximately $9,000, but he had equity growing, and he was finally building a nest egg. And then came Hurricane Barrow, July 8, 2024. The hurricane made landfall in southeast Texas. According to defense filings, it caused catastrophic damage to Richardson's property. His defense attorney would later tell the court, He just snapped. [13:48] But I don't think he snapped. I think he did what he'd always done. He'd reached for the only tool he had. One week after the hurricane, Putnam-Richardson, put on a halloween mask and drove to downtown beaumont to the same parking lot where mel schalander had parked for 35 years mel schalander walked towards his law office the same walk he'd made thousands of times and according to the fbi's factual basis document schalander felt something pressed against his back. It was that thin handgun with the long silver barrel. He instinctively turned around. Richardson, masked, gloved, cap pulled low, was already barking out orders, don't move, get in the car, face down in the passenger seat. [14:57] Richardson drove away from downtown Beaumont toward his property in Orange, Texas, about 20 miles east. When they arrived, Richardson led Shalander at gunpoint to a structure in the backyard. It was a shed. According to the FBI's factual basis document, a summary of evidence filed with Richardson's guilty plea, the shed had floors painted red with chains attached to studs in the wall. [15:37] Richardson chained Mel Shalander by the hands and feet to the floor, spread eagle, and then wrapped his head to cover his eyes in gauze and bandages. For the next 55 hours, Mel Schillander lay on that red floor, chained, blindfolded, unable to tell if it was day or night. But Richardson wasn't alone in that house. His wife, Bonnie, was there. [16:12] And according to the FBI's factual basis document, Bonnie Richardson, quote. [16:25] The court record doesn't tell us exactly what she said or did. It doesn't tell us whether she pleaded with her husband to stop, whether she threatened to call police, whether she tried to reason with an unreasonable man. But what we know, Bonnie Richardson was 64 years old. She had suffered multiple strokes, she was partially paralyzed, and according to court documents, she depended on her husband as the sole caregiver. She was trapped in that house with a man holding a hostage in a shed in the backyard. Whatever intervention she attempted, whatever words she said, whatever appeal she made, it just wasn't enough to stop what her husband had said in motion. But she tried, and the record is clear on that. She tried. The consequences of that attempt of being married to a man who would do this, would become clear months later. [17:41] At 9.22 that same morning, less than two hours after the kidnapping, Mel Shalander's wife received a phone call from her husband's cell phone. The caller was disguised. Voice altered. The demand? One million dollars. within 48 hours. According to court records, the caller said, and I'm reading directly from the federal document, Mel Shalander would die if Mel Shalander's family did not do what Richardson instructed. [18:24] Seven minutes later, 9.29 a.m., another call. This one revealing where Shalander's vehicle had been left. at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Parking Lot. Over the next two days, six calls in total, six opportunities for the family to hear Mel Shalander's voice, and six reminders that the clock was ticking. But on Tuesday, the second day of captivity, something changed. At 2.09 p.m., Richardson made another ransom call, and this time, according to the factual basis document, he accidentally said something that cracked the case wide open. He told Mrs. Shalander that her husband, quote, was being held hostage because the victim had not done his job many years ago, unquote. Had not done his job many years ago? Ah, that's when everything clicked. [19:38] Tuesday, July 16th, the Shalander family contacted the FBI's Beaumont Resident Agency. And during interviews with agents, family members mentioned something crucial. That phrase had not done his job many years ago. It triggered a memory. Mel Shalander's law office still had files, old files, from 1984. And one of those files contained the name Putnam Darwin Richardson. The family recognized the name. Forty years later, they remembered, because Richardson wasn't just any client. He was a convicted kidnapper that Mel had tried to defend. And now, according to court documents, Richardson blamed Shalander for that 50-year sentence. He blamed the man who tried to help him. [20:39] The FBI now had a suspect, and they moved fast. [20:51] The FBI in Houston mobilized immediately. Crisis negotiators, surveillance specialists, agents from across southeast Texas converged on that area. They already knew who they were looking for. Then, they knew where he lived, Hunwick Street in orange, The question, where was Mel Schalander? And was he still alive? I need to pause here because I've responded lights and sirens to search and rescue calls. I've coordinated aerial searches for missing people. I know what the first 48 hours mean. Every hour that passes, the situation compounds. Evidence degrades. Leads go cold. In a kidnapping for ransom, the deadline creates its own pressure. Either the money appears or the kidnapper has a decision to make. By Tuesday afternoon, they were past the 24-hour mark, and the 48-hour deadline Richardson had imposed was approaching. [22:09] This wasn't just an investigation. This was a race. [22:19] FBI agents established surveillance on Richardson's property in Orange. On Wednesday, July 17th, turning the third day, agents watched the house. They waited. Every minute that passed was another minute without confirmation that Sherlander was still alive. But then in the early afternoon, movement. Richardson emerged from his house, got into his vehicle, and started driving. Surveillance teams followed at a distance, and then they saw him. In the passenger seat of Richardson's car, someone else. Someone with a bandage wrapped around his head. Someone with something white around his head that was obstructing his vision. Mel Shalander was alive He was blindfolded And he was in plain sight. [23:22] Approximately 2.32 p.m. on Wednesday, July 17 Richardson pulled into a gas station near his orange home The FBI surveillance team held their position They watched, They waited for the right moment and Richardson got out of the vehicle. Agents moved in. Putnam Darwin Richardson, age 79, was taken into custody without incident and Mel Shalander, still blindfolded, still bound, was rescued from the vehicle. 55 hours after being kidnapped, at gunpoint from his own parking lot, Mel Shalander was free. [24:10] That evening, Mel Shalander was reunited with his family, and according to the FBI's factual basis, he was rescued unharmed. Well, physically at least. Mel Shalander has not spoken publicly about what happened during those 55 hours. His silence is his own, and we've got to respect that. And given what he endured, chained to a floor, blindfolded, listening to his captors' decades-old grievances? That silence deserves our respect. [24:49] Richardson was transported to the Jefferson County Jail, and the next day, July 18th, he appeared before Magistrate Judge Hawthorne for his initial hearing. He claimed indigence. His home, he said, was about to be foreclosed, and the court-appointed attorney, Tom Berg from Houston, was sent to represent him. [25:15] July 23rd, 2024 Richardson's detention hearing, FBI Special Agent Ryan Long took the stand and laid out the evidence the Halloween mask, the chains the shed floor painted red the six ransom calls the gauze-wrapped blindfold, Defense Attorney Berg did his job and argued that Richardson at 79 years old posed no threat He requested house arrest. But the judge wasn't convinced. No. Richardson was ordered held without bond as a flight risk and a danger to the community. And then there was this one other little thing. Richardson was still on parole for kidnapping when he committed this kidnapping. [26:10] He'd been released from prison in 2001, 23 years of freedom on parole, and he used that freedom to kidnap again. [26:23] We're going to pause here, because if this case is resonating with you, if you want to understand how a 17-year-old kid who stole car parts becomes a 79-year-old kidnapper, well, stay with me. [26:37] The sentencing hearing reveals the full cost of a life spent making the same damn mistakes. This is True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard, and I'm Steve Rode. If you're finding value in this deep dive, subscribe wherever you're listening. Leave a review. It helps other listeners to find these overlooked cases. And if you visit truecrimeunheard.com and subscribe to the site email, when this show drops, you would have received the behind-the-scenes court documents. So don't miss that for the next show. Subscribe today. [27:25] November 20th, 2024, four months after the kidnapping, Putnam Darwin Richardson stood before the court and pleaded guilty to two federal charges, kidnapping and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. Under federal sentencing guidelines, he faced the possibility of life in prison. And the factual basis document filed with his plea laid bare every detail. The gun pressed to Shalander's back, the chains attached to the shed wall, the ransom calls threatening death, and the 55 hours of captivity. And there was that phrase, had not done his job many years ago. Richardson wasn't just kidnapping for money. He was settling a score against the man who tried to defend him 40 years earlier. [28:28] Because in Richardson's mind, Mel Shalander was responsible for that 50-year sentence. Never mind that Shalander had been his attorney trying to help him. Never mind that Richardson was guilty. And never mind that Richardson's own escalation from a misdemeanor to a kidnapping had created that sentence. He blamed everyone but himself for 61 years. [28:57] April 9th, 2025 at the Federal Courthouse in Beaumont, Texas U.S. District Judge Crone presided over Richardson's sentencing The defense had filed a sentencing memorandum days earlier and reading it I found language I've rarely seen from a defense attorney, Tom Berg, Richardson's court-appointed lawyer wrote, and I'm quoting directly from the filing, Mr. Richardson acknowledges that the kidnapping of Mel Shalander, his former defense lawyer, was a mindless calamity of colossal proportions with no possibility of success. A mindless calamity of colossal proportions. That's Richardson's own defense attorney describing what he did, very accurately I might say. [30:02] The memo continued, quote, his quest for forgiveness and redemption, albeit sincere, is likely to be futile. The reality is that Mr. Richardson does not have much time left, unquote. And then this, we only bring these to the court's attention because nothing about his pending imprisonment will alleviate the misery he faces as a consequence of a life misspent. Yeah, a life misspent. I think we can all agree with that. Judge Crone sentenced Putnam Darwin Richardson to 294 months in federal prison. [30:52] 294 months. 24 and a half years. Richardson was 79 at sentencing. If he serves the full term, he will be released at approximately 103 years of age. The defense had asked for 132 months, 11 years, arguing that that would even keep Richardson imprisoned until he was 90. And they called it sufficient, but not more than necessary. But the court disagreed. The sentence also included five years of supervised release, if he survives that long. And there was also a forfeiture order. That .22 caliber high standard pistol he pressed against Mel Shalander's back now belongs to the United States government. [31:49] Acting U.S. Attorney Abe McLaughlin Jr. Released a statement after sentencing, and he said, quote, This case serves as a reminder that violent predators come in all shapes, sizes, and age ranges. And to always stay vigilant and aware of your surroundings. Unquote. I guess that's good common sense advice. The FBI Houston special agent in charge, Douglas Williams, added, quote, Putnam Richardson clearly failed to learn from his previous imprisonment for kidnapping. And he definitely underestimated FBI Houston's capacity to mobilize critical resources when a life is at risk. Unquote. Yeah, got that right, too. And then Williams said something that stayed with me. We're in the business of saving lives, and cases like this are why we exist. Yeah. Amen. [32:58] Putt Richardson was 17 years old. He broke into an auto parts store in Orange, Texas and stole a racing manifold, some tools, some spray paint, and about $500 worth of merchandise. And when that reporter from the Orange Leader asked him, why? He said he was trying to fix an old car after the motor blew up. A kid. Trying to fix his car. That's how it all started nine years later he burglarized the same damn store, same target same crime like he couldn't imagine any other way to solve a problem, and that's what I keep coming back to not whether Richardson was evil though the things he did caused real harm to real people Kathleen Bosca's children and watched their mother get kidnapped. Mel Shalander spent 55 hours chained to a floor. That harm is real and the victims are real. [34:07] But here's what haunts me. Richardson apparently only had one tool. When his car broke down, he stole parts. When a witness testified against him, he kidnapped her. When a hurricane destroyed his property, he kidnapped for ransom. 61 years, the same response to every problem. Crime, apparently, as the solution. The only solution he could see. His own defense attorney called it a life misspent. Not a life of evil, but a life misspent. Wasted. Lost to a pattern that started when he was 17 and it never broke. I don't know if anyone ever showed him a different way. I don't know if he could have seen it if they had. Some people get off ramps and take them. and some people get off ramps and drive right past and some people never see the off ramp at all. [35:15] While Richardson awaited sentencing, his life outside the walls collapsed. The defense memo revealed that Richardson suffers from untreated prostate cancer, hypertension, depression, and anxiety. He wrote a handwritten letter from prison seeking a commutation of a sentence. In shaky handwriting, he mentioned his wife. At 76 years old and a multi-stroke survivor, paralyzed, she needed everything to survive without me. But that letter was written from Federal Correctional Complex Medium in Forest City, Arkansas, a hundred miles from Orange, Texas. [36:02] And Bonnie Richardson, the woman who had tried to intervene, the woman who had watched her husband hold a man hostage in their backyard, the woman who had depended on him for care, she made a decision of her own. [36:23] The defense sentencing memo contains one sentence that landed harder than any other in this case. It says that Bonnie Richardson, quote, re-evaluated the status of their marriage and elected to move on with her life, unquote. She left him. After everything, the strokes, the paralysis, the dependence, she looked at what her husband had done and decided she couldn't carry it with her the memo described his family as incredulous at what he had done, incredulous, unable to believe it unable to reconcile the man they knew with the man who chained a 72 year old to the floor of a shed. [37:19] In 1963, a 17-year-old kid in Orange, Texas, broke into an auto parts store because his car wouldn't run. 61 years later, that same person, facing foreclosure, his property destroyed by a hurricane, put on a Halloween mask and kidnapped the attorney who tried to defend him. Four decades earlier. Same person, same pattern. Crime is the only answer to every question life asked him. [37:55] I keep thinking about that 1984 case. You know, that shoplifting charge. Misdemeanor. The kind of thing that might have meant probation and a fine. But Richardson couldn't accept that a witness had told the truth about him. So he cut the power to her trailer, waited with a gun, terrorized her children, and kidnapped two people. A misdemeanor becomes a 50-year sentence. Not because the system was unjust. It is at times. But because Richardson's response to a small consequence was to commit a massive crime and then spend all those years blaming everyone else. The witness who told the truth, the lawyer who tried to help him. His defense attorney wrote that Richardson's family was incredulous at what he'd done. Such a perfect word. They were unable to believe it, unable to reconcile who he was. And Bonnie, his wife of many years, the woman who'd suffered and was dependent on him, looked at what her husband had become and made that decision and left. [39:12] That's the last straw, isn't it? When the person who needed you most, who stayed through everything, finally says, Enough is enough. I can't carry this anymore. [39:30] Richardson wrote from prison that she needed him to survive. But she decided that surviving without him was better than surviving with what he had done. I don't know if Putt Richardson could have lived a different life. I don't know if someone failed him at 17 or dropped him as a baby. Maybe he just failed himself. Or maybe the answer is both and neither. I mean, we're not going to know. What I know is this, he had 61 years to find a different tool, to learn that when life breaks something, the answer is not to break something bigger. He never learned that lesson, and now the man who spent decades imprisoned by his own patterns lives in concrete and steel. The prison he built in his mind finally matches the one the government built around him. Now, that is a life misspent, and I can't think of a sadder epitaph. [40:43] Mel Shalander survived, and he returned to his family. And according to Shalander's family statement, there is no doubt in our minds that the FBI's quick response, alongside their local police partners, saved Mel's life. He's chosen not to speak publicly about the experience. That choice belongs to him. Putnam Darwin Richardson will spend the rest of his days in federal prison. And this case, a case that made barely a ripple in the national news because it didn't, stands as a reminder that some people spend their whole lives reaching for that same broken tool in that same broken toolbox. And by the time they realize, hey, this doesn't work, there's nothing left to fix. [41:40] This has been True Crime Cases You Haven't Heard. I'm Steve Rode. And if this episode meant something to you, subscribe. Leave a review on the platform you're listening on. I appreciate that. Tell someone who should hear stories like this. And visit truecrimeunheard.com and subscribe to the site email so you get full source documents for every case I cover. And remember, the cases that go unheard are often the ones that matter most. Until next time, stay curious, stay safe, and stay subscribed.