While moving this summer, Betty Sue Allen sorted through a lifetime of memories. At 95, she had plenty.
She found keepsake reminders of her childhood as a Navy brat, her years as a flight attendant and her career as a Wyoming newspaper columnist.
But the keepsake that made Betty Sue smile most was a letter threatening to kidnap her family and kill her husband.
It was dated July 1, 1972, and addressed to her husband, Bill Allen, then president of Cheyenne National Bank.
"Sir, Don't forget to deliver on Monday, July 3rd, 2,000 dollars in plain envelopes to Albany Hotel by 10 a.m.," the handwritten letter begins.
"I know you love your family. Your home is being watched, and if you don't deliver the money by 10 a.m. on Monday your family will be kidnapped and I will Kill you myself. Don't say anything to the police."
The writer underscored the word “Kill,” then signed it: Frank Sewell.
Now more than a half-century later, it makes Betty Sue laugh.
"It's just funny," she said. "One thing that hit me was that he decided our whole family was only worth $2,000."
In 1972, nobody in the Allen household was laughing, least of all their 7-year-old daughter, Susan.
Stay Away From Windows
The family lived in a white-brick Colonial on Pioneer Avenue, where Betty Sue’s daughter Susan Allen remembers childhood as an unbridled time of bike rides, swimming trips and neighborhood adventures.
"I would say I had no fear at that age," she said. "I think fear is learned."
If so, her first big lesson came on July 3, 1972, when she was 7.
She was preparing for a day at the swimming pool when her mother gathered her, her older brother and a neighborhood friend for an unexpected conversation.
"My mom said, 'I just got a call from your father. You guys are not going anywhere,'" Susan recalled, explaining that her mother told them everything.
"I remember being absolutely terrified, and I was most worried about my father being killed,” she added.
Outside, neighborhood life carried on quietly. Inside, the children mobilized. Susan and her brother grabbed golf clubs and took it upon themselves to defend the house.
Bill warned Betty Sue to keep the children away from the windows, lock the house down and stay inside.
"I told them to stay away from the windows,” Betty Sue said. "Of course, being kids, the first thing they did was run to the windows."
Susan remembers running from room to room, searching for signs of danger.
“We pressed our noses up against the window to try and make sure we could see from all angles … to see if there was anybody strange outside," Susan said.
Money Drop
Meanwhile, Bill had until 10 a.m. to get an envelope to the Albany Hotel.
The $2,000 sum struck Betty Sue as surprisingly modest, which would be equivalent to about $16,000 in today’s dollars.
Bill also couldn’t come up with it, according to family recollections.
"I can remember the frustration Bill had,” Betty Sue said. "Here he is the president of a bank, and he gets this letter, and he wants to quickly put together $2,000 and take it to the Albany.
"But for some reason the bank didn't have $2,000 in cash for him to take,” Betty Sue said.
So Bill improvised.
According to Betty Sue, her husband cut paper to the size of currency and sandwiched it between real bills to create the appearance of a thick stack of cash before sealing it in an envelope.
It was classic Bill Allen, whom family members described as resourceful and steady under pressure. A former Air Force officer and University of Colorado football player, he was not easily unsettled.
"He was one that didn't get rattled very often,” said Susan.
Yet the Albany Hotel presented an unexpected complication, because according to Betty Sue, hotel employees wanted nothing to do with the envelope when Bill arrived.
“He went to the Albany to give them the money and they said, 'Well, we can't take this,’” Betty Sue explained. “Bill shoved the envelope at them and he said, ‘You've got to take it! You've got to take this!’”
Later that day, Bill Allen finally returned home.
"I remember being very relieved when my dad walked through the door that night," Susan said. "I definitely was a daddy's girl."
So what happened at the Albany Hotel?
After more than half of a century, no one remembers.
“I assume Bill must have called the police, and maybe they caught him at the Albany, but I just don’t remember now,” said Betty Sue.
Jack Speight, Bill’s closest confidant and former assistant U.S. attorney, now 86, said he can’t recall either.
Susan remembers, "All I was told was (Sewell had) just been released from prison and that he did this so he could go back to prison. But I never heard the details on the other side of it."
Bill Allen was president of Cheyenne National Bank when he was targeted in a $2,000 extortion scheeme that included a threat to kill his family. (Betty Sue and Bill Allen family) 
Bill Allen was president of Cheyenne National Bank when he was targeted in a $2,000 extortion scheeme that included a threat to kill his family. (Betty Sue and Bill Allen family)
Who Was Frank Sewell?
Archival newspaper accounts and court records identify him as Bernard Frank Sewell, a 51-year-old drifter with a long criminal history.
By the end of that same week, Sewell turned himself in to authorities — for a separate crime.
According to newspaper reports from the time, Sewell had been released from a federal prison in Atlanta just six weeks earlier. Before arriving in Cheyenne, authorities in Missouri had issued a warrant accusing him of threatening a federal judge.
It was that Missouri case that first brought Sewell back into custody. Investigators later connected him to the attempted extortion of Bill Allen.
A criminal docket sheet held by the Wyoming State Archives show Sewell was charged Aug. 2, 1972, with “mailing threatening communications.”
He was sentenced to 10 years in prison. It wasn’t his first time there.
The 1950 U.S. Census lists Sewell as an inmate at Kilby State Prison in Montgomery, Alabama, where he was serving time for grand larceny.
Records show he gained his freedom that year only to return to custody months later.
A Dec. 21, 1950, article in The Montgomery Advertiser reported that Sewell burglarized a post office in Prattville, Alabama, opening letters and packages before leaving with a single wristwatch.
He didn’t cover his tracks.
“After Sewell broke into the post office, he caught a bus back to Montgomery, where he realized he had lost his Social Security card in the post office,” an Inspector Nelson explained in the Advertiser. “He then went back to Prattville and gave himself up.”
He committed that crime, turned himself in, got sentenced and sent back to prison all in less than 24 hours. He was 29 at the time.
Twenty-two years later, authorities in Cheyenne dealt with Sewell quickly too. He wrote the extortion letter to Bill Allen on July 1; he was arraigned two weeks later.
Another Bank, Another Threat
The extortion threat wasn't Susan's last encounter with danger at a bank.
At 18, she took a job as a teller at Western Bank in Cheyenne. One day, a customer approached her window and asked an unusual question.
"Do you have any Susan B. Anthony dollars?” he asked.
"No sir," Susan replied. "Can I get you anything else?"
"Yeah," the man answered, pulling out a gun. "The rest."
Susan dropped beneath her teller station.
"I was shaking so bad my metal trash can was rattling up against the metal of the cabinet," she recalled.
The robber eventually ordered bank employees into a back room.
"My life flashed before my eyes, because I had heard stories about robberies where everyone did everything [the robber asked], but then they take you to the back room to shoot you,” Susan said.
That robber made off with a good deal of cash. He was apprehended a year later in Arizona, Susan said.
The threats against both her father and herself sparked a fascination with criminal psychology, and seeing that old extortion letter for the first time has invited more questions than answers.
"I want to know why people do what they do,” she said. "What is the motivation of a man (like Sewell)?"
Susan Allen had her memories stirred up when her family recently rediscovered a 54-year-old extortion letter. (Susan Allen) 
Betty Sue and Bill Allen and their family had their memories stirred up when they recently rediscovered a 54-year-old extortion letter. (Susan Allen) 
Betty Sue and Bill Allen and their family had their memories stirred up when they recently rediscovered a 54-year-old extortion letter. (Susan Allen) 
Bill Allen was president of Cheyenne National Bank when he was targeted in a $2,000 extortion scheeme that included a threat to kill his family. (Susan Allen)
Helps Close A Door
Susan said that when she learned from Cowboy State Daily about Sewell’s history and conclusion in Cheyenne, it brought her a measure of closure.
"This helps close a door," she said.
Yet the door is still open for interpretation in other respects.
For Betty Sue, the letter incites pleasant nostalgia now decades removed from a situation that wasn’t at all pleasant at the time.
"It was kind of exciting, because you don't get a threat like that every day," she said.
“But the excitement probably lasted no more than an hour, because it all got resolved so quickly — and before long we were more excited about Frontier Days than about that letter,” Betty Sue added.
Her daughter remembers it differently.
When Betty Sue handed her the letter this summer, it was the first time Susan had ever seen the original document, and one detail specifically caught her attention.
"The thing that struck me was how he underlined ‘kill,’” she said. "That was a little disturbing."
The rediscovered letter has prompted Susan to reflect anew on her father's death in 2022.
It has also reminded her of the bond that compelled her 7-year-old self to clutch a golf club and press her face against the windows of that house on Pioneer Avenue, waiting for her father to come home.
Contact Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.
