Florida housewife fakes own kidnapping with lover, asks for $50K
It sounds like the sort of romantic-mystery potboiler that keeps readers on the edge of their summer beach chairs: A strikingly pretty Florida housewife with a handsome husband and two beautiful young daughters is kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and held for $50,000 ransom.
Or was she?
Prosecutors contend the strange case of 37-year-old Quinn Gray, who claims she was abducted and held for four days in hellish captivity, is a cleverly planned ruse. They claim her supposed abductor, a 25-year-old Bosnian immigrant, was actually her lover, and that the pair plotted to extort cash from Quinn’s well-heeled husband, Reid.
Quinn Gray and her alleged lover, Jasmin Osmanovic, are charged with extortion. But two of her lawyers appeared on TODAY Tuesday to say that Gray, who has a history of mental illness, is a terrorized victim, not a scheming co-conspirator. The case has set the community around Jacksonville, Fla., abuzz.
No one is arguing the basics of the case. Quinn Gray went missing the Friday of Labor Day weekend. A ransom note, written in Quinn’s handwriting, was found tacked to the front door of the Gray’s $4 million home, stating: “There are three men holding me right now, and they want $50,000 cash. Stay at the house NO COPS! Keep your cell phone on you. Keep the kids with you. Please do this honey, please!”
But authorities believe it was all trickery. They believe Gray was having an affair with Osmanovic that began when the two met in June at a gas station where Osmanovic worked, and that the pair cooked up a fake kidnapping plot.
“It became more and more evident to really everybody involved that there was something far more complex and involved than a kidnapping,” St. Johns County Sheriff David Shoar told NBC. “Quinn Gray was not kidnapped.”
Authorities cite, among other things, the manager of the hotel where Gray was allegedly being held saying she “didn’t seem to be in distress at all,” and a 90-minute audiotape they say captured the sounds of Gray and Osmanovic in the throes of passion, and then plotting the details of a fake kidnapping.
More on this story here.
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