The Jacobs-Lucas Kidnappings

On December 1, 1983, Debra Jacobs was doing dishes at her home in the Colonial Manor subdivision when there was a knock at the back door.  Thinking her husband was returning from work, she sent her son, 5-year-old Joshua Jacobs, to answer the door.  Hearing a gasp from her son, she looked up to see her son being followed into the house by two masked intruders with pistols.

At first glance, Debra thought this was some prank.  “Who are you?  Quit teasing” was her first reaction to the intruders.  One intruder stayed silent; the other said, “Where’s the telephone?”

The kidnapper instructed Debra to call her husband Greg Jacobs, vice-president of Sunnyland Bank, and read a ransom note demanding $40,000 be dropped off at the Sundoer Club, which is now the Vietnam Veterans Club on Bittersweet Road.

Greg Jacobs did not answer his phone, so Debra called her father-in-law, Meyers Jacobs, the bank's owner. She read the note to him, and Meyers Jacobs then alerted authorities.

The kidnappers did have a soft side, ending their ransom note with “thank you,” playing with the family dogs, and assuring Debra that no harm would come to the kids.

The money was collected and placed at the Sundoer Club while the kidnappers were looking to find a place to hold the family securely.  They asked Debra for the location of a closet, but she said there wasn’t one nearby, so she suggested the basement.  Debra and her three children were then escorted to the basement. The phone was removed from the wall, and the basement door was locked.

Greg Jacobs returned home from work about that time, utterly oblivious to what was happening.  He was sequestered with his family in the basement.  The kidnappers then ran out the front door and into a nearby field, escaping capture.

The police arrived around the same time. Upon arrival, they had to work out some jurisdictional conflicts, as the home was in Washington, the bank was in East Peoria, and the drop-off point wasn’t in either. The police remained at the end of the long driveway while they worked these out, possibly during the kidnappers’ escape.

The family in the basement immediately started looking for a way out, which they found in a basement window.  Debra climbed out first, and then Greg handed her the kids.  They ran to hide in a nearby playhouse.  Greg Jacobs exited the basement window and started running from the house. Police could see him running and thought he was one of the kidnappers and yelled at him to stop.  At the same time, Jacobs felt the people yelling at him were the kidnappers, so he ran into a nearby field.  Police eventually caught up with Jacobs in the cornfield and correctly identified him, with Jacobs breaking his arm during the chaos.

Once the family was secure in a nearby house, the police surrounded the Jacobs home. They attempted to communicate with the kidnappers, to no avail and eventually entered the house to find no one but the family’s three dogs.

The money at the Sundoer Club was never picked up.  East Peoria police were staked out near the cash, and there were reports of someone approaching the area and fleeing through the woods of Farmdale Park on a motorcycle, but that person was never found. In addition, nothing was taken from the house.

For two years, even with FBI intervention because money was extorted from a federally insured bank, the case remained unsolved.

On October 30, 1985, a man knocked on the door of the home of Alan Lucas at 104 S. Meadowview Lane, expressing interest in his truck in the driveway.  When Lucas accompanied the man outside, a gun was drawn on him, and another attacker appeared.

Alan’s wife Jennifer and their son Brian were tied up in the house while Alan was escorted to Peoria by one of the attackers and dropped off at Bradley University, unharmed.  The other removed various items from the home before escaping.

It only took a few months for the perpetrators of the Lucas incident to be identified for the crime and other home invasions in the area.  Washington police, due to similarities in the crimes, also suspected they were involved in the 1983 Meyers kidnapping.

Eventually, a fingerprint on the 1983 ransom note was linked to one of the captured kidnappers, and guilty pleas followed.  Time was served, and the perpetrators are currently free citizens.

Special thanks to Debra (Jacobs) Gebhart for her help with this article.