An armed man broke into the Colorado ranch of former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and kidnapped a housekeeper, asking her for the whereabouts of Bloomberg’s two adult daughters, authorities said in court documents filed this past week.
The man, Joseph Beecher, 48, faces state and federal charges including kidnapping after he was accused of ramming his pickup truck through the main gate of the Westlands Ranch in Rio Blanco County on Wednesday. Bloomberg and his family were not present at the ranch at the time, officials said.
But Beecher told the female housekeeper that he had hoped to “make an international scene” with Bloomberg, who was the mayor of New York City from 2002-13, or with his daughters, before kidnapping the worker at gunpoint, according to court filings.
She was forced to drive Beecher in a pickup truck about 230 miles east, to the Denver area, and later to a town near the southern border of Wyoming, before authorities tracked them both to a motel there early Thursday, officials said. The woman, identified as a supervising housekeeper at the ranch, was found unharmed.
Beecher was arrested, authorities said, and an AR-15-style rifle and several magazines were located inside the room. He was taken to a jail in Cheyenne, Wyoming, where he was held without bail. As of Saturday morning, it was unclear if he had a lawyer.
The Sheriff’s Office in Rio Blanco County, in northwestern Colorado, said in a statement Thursday that Beecher had no apparent connection to the Bloombergs.
But according to court documents, he had initially asked about the former mayor’s two daughters — Emma, 42, and Georgina, 39 — by name.
Ty Trippet, a spokesperson for Bloomberg, said in a statement that the former mayor was “deeply grateful” to authorities for “ensuring that no lives were lost and that the victim has been rescued and safely returned to her family.”
Beecher was also identified as the suspect in a burglary in Craig, Colorado, a small town about 70 miles from Bloomberg’s ranch, where officials said he had been given a place to stay in exchange for doing repair work. The day before authorities said he kidnapped the employee, he was told he would be terminated from his role and was required to move out, according to court documents.
This article originally appeared in .
