Monday, March 23, 1998 | 10:15 a.m.
Sen. Bob Bennett, R-Utah, was told by U.S. Embassy officials in Russia that a woman who called police and demanded the $300,000 ransom was the first to be arrested, then led authorities to others involved.
"I don't have details of how police used that contact to find her, but once they got her she began cooperating," Bennett said. A third suspect, a 20-year-old man, remained at large Monday.
Missionaries Travis Robert Tuttle, 20, of Gilbert, Ariz., and Andrew Lee Propst, 20, of Lebanon, Ore., were proselytizing at the woman's house when they were beaten and abducted, Bennett said.
Tuttle and Propst were dropped off on a country road Sunday afternoon after spending four days as hostages in the town of Saratov, about 450 miles southeast of Moscow. The ransom was not paid, Bennett and church officials said.
The two, roughed up but not seriously injured, hitched a ride to town and called church leaders. The missionaries spoke briefly to their families Sunday.
"He is elated to be alive. He knows that he is lucky," said Roy Tuttle, Travis' father.
The two missionaries, who spent several hours at police headquarters in Saratov, told their parents Sunday that they couldn't talk much about their ordeal because the case was under investigation.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Monday it was "pleased" with the arrests.
"Elders Propst and Tuttle will be reassigned from the Russia Samara Mission," the church said in a statement. "The church plans to continue its missionary efforts in the Saratov area, as well as in the rest of Russia." The church said it has seven Mormon missions in Russia and 6,000 church members.
Propst's father, Lee Propst, said he got to talk to his son for only about four or five minutes. He said the family would probably know in two weeks if the missionaries will return home immediately or finish their mission.
"We're not getting much information anymore," Propst said. "We would like to talk to him, but the biggest thing is that he's safe."
The woman suspect, whose age was not released, and a 45-year-old man confessed to taking part in the abduction, said a spokesman for the Russian Federal Security Service, who spoke on customary condition of anonymity. He said the suspects are residents of Saratov.
No other details about the suspects were immediately available.
Propst said the kidnappers ambushed the two missionaries as they arrived at a private Saratov home for a meeting Wednesday evening.
"As they went in the door, they were hit on the head with a gun or something. Both of them have a bump on the head," Propst said. His son also injured a finger while trying to ward off the blows. The only other injuries, Propst said, are sore hands from the handcuffs their captors used.
Bennett said the U.S. State Department and the FBI were mobilized to help solve the case. "But the local police got onto this woman quickly enough that the Americans were not called upon," he said.
Bennett said it appeared that the two missionaries had been moved from place to place during their four days in captivity and then taken out to the countryside outside of Saratov and "dumped."
Why the captors aborted their plans and released the missionaries without a payoff was not immediately clear. But Bennett said U.S. officials speculate that the involvement of American and Russian authorities may have frightened the kidnappers.
"They may have just got scared and said 'Gee, we stirred up a much bigger hornet's nest than we thought,"' Bennett said.
Bennett and Rep. Merrill Cook, R-Utah, said U.S. officials believe the motive appeared to be money and that the group was not trying to make a political statement or target the Mormon church.
"It just struck them as an opportunity to get rich quick," Bennett said.
There had been speculation earlier that the kidnapping was part of an effort to drive Mormons out of the area.
The Mormon church has 57,000 missionaries, most of them young men and women, deployed around the globe, about 500 of them in Russia.
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