It was “Dog Day Afternoon” in miniature, though with more loony-tunes firepower. On Feb. 8, 1977, Tony Kiritsis, a disgruntled resident of Indianapolis, walked into the offices of the Meridian Mortgage Company and took one of its executives, Dick Hall, hostage. He wired the sawed-off muzzle of a 12-gauge Winchester shotgun to the back of Hall’s head. One end of the wire was connected to the trigger; the other end was wrapped around Hall’s neck. This meant that if a police officer tried to shoot Kiritsis, or if Hall tried to escape, the gun would go off and kill him.

With that gun poised, at any moment, to blow Hall to smithereens, Kiritsis then walked him out of the building and into a car (trailed by random onlookers and a news camera), and they drove to Kiritsis’s home in the Crestwood

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