Mystery: Powerful, Private Man Vanishes -- No Clues In Disappearance Of Key Exxon Executive

NEW YORK - Neighbors knew him mostly as a private man who talked about the weather and took out his own garbage.

But Sidney J. Reso, a blond, blue-eyed, smooth-as-oil New Orleanian who grew up to be the president of Exxon International, was arguably the most important and most powerful player in the mega-conglomerate.

"He's Mr. Exxon," said William Holden, a professor at Louisiana State University who has stayed in contact with Reso since he was a student.

"He just isn't a high-profile Mr. Exxon."

On April 29, dressed in a suit and wearing a dark red tie, Reso drove to the end of his driveway in Morris Township, N.J., and vanished.

"In all honesty, we have no proof it was an abduction, a kidnaping," said Monica Baldwin of the FBI. "Despite the fact of his financial situation, the way he is a family man does not lend itself to his disappearing, taking off somewhere, going to Tahiti. It's frustrating."

Reso, who made at least $500,000 a year, not including stock options and bonuses, and his wife lived an uneventful suburban life in a pale brick, French colonial home on three wooded acres, a 15-minute drive from his office in Florham Park.

But highly placed Exxon corporate sources said he was a fast-tracker who ran all of Exxon's oil and gas activities and subsidiaries outside the United States and Canada. He was, in company jargon, a career "up-streamer" well schooled in "E & P" - exploration and production - the glamor side of the oil industry.

"The areas he has responsibility for account for substantially more than half of Exxon's worldwide assets and its operating profits," said a top corporate official and colleague, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "In terms of profits, Reso's management area brings in close to 75 percent."

Last year, Reso-managed foreign ventures yielded $6.9 billion of the corporation's $8.4 billion pre-tax earnings. More than $50 billion of the company's $87.5 billion net assets were under his control.

For every 65.9 million barrels of oil consumed worldwide each day in 1991, Exxon sold 4.77 million. Of these, Reso generated more than 3 million barrels. Put another way, last year Exxon sold 1 out of every 14 barrels of oil consumed daily worldwide. Reso's operations accounted for slightly more than five of every eight Exxon barrels.

Wednesday, April 29, was a township recycling day.

Cottie Benson, who lives a few doors away, was putting out her recyclables. She saw a blond woman she did not recognize walking down the street toward her, she told police. The woman, who wore a dark blue sweatsuit with her hair pulled back in a low-slung ponytail, stared straight at her. It was about 7:15 a.m.

They seemed to be the only early risers along the sleepy cul-de-sac where Reso's $680,000 home nestles in the trees set back about 250 feet from the street. Easter lilies had bloomed that week. The green summer foliage that normally keeps neighbors from seeing one another was still sparse. The newspapers already had been delivered. The recycling truck, which was sometimes early, sometimes late, had not arrived. The mailman wouldn't drive up until 11 a.m.

At 7:30 a.m., after a light breakfast, Reso walked out of his house, got into his car and and drove down his long driveway.

At 8 a.m., a neighbor, whose husband also works for Exxon, saw Reso's car idling in the driveway. For some reason, she called the Exxon office in Florham Park to see if Reso was there.

He wasn't, said his secretary, who then called Reso's wife.

Patricia Reso walked down the driveway. The driver's door to the car was slightly ajar. Reso's briefcase and overcoat were inside. She told police that she opened the door with tissue from her pocket, turned off the engine and removed the key. There was no sign of a struggle.

Morris County Prosecutor W. Michael Murphy Jr. will not comment on the specifics of the case, but his office has been flooded by callers claiming to be responsible for Reso's disappearance or to know of his whereabouts. Investigators are telling callers to provide a videotape or voice recording. So far, they have come up empty.

Experts on terrorist kidnapings are pooh-poohing theories that Reso, 57, 5 feet 10, 180 pounds, muscular, was abducted for political or environmental reasons, especially in this country. But Exxon officials have not discarded the possibility.

Exxon insisted that its top executives in the Morristown area install elaborate "talking" alarm systems in their homes. After Reso's disappearance, the company, which last week offered a reward for information on Reso, stationed guards at some executives' homes.

"I'm just trying to go on," said Norma Longwell, whose Summit, N.J., house is on the market because her husband, Harry, who worked for Reso, was recently named president of Exxon USA and transferred to Texas. "I don't want to talk about all of that," she said, her voice trembling.

The FBI's Baldwin confirmed that a group calling itself "Rainbow Warriors" sent a letter or note to authorities claiming it had Reso. "It is a group we're not particularly familiar with. Obviously we're investigating," she said.

Steve D'Esposito, executive director of Greenpeace, whose flagship, Rainbow Warrior, was blown up in 1985 in New Zealand, said he was visited twice last week by FBI agents who assured him Greenpeace was not under investigation. "They were interested in knowing, was there anybody we knew of or had worked with who might consider something like this," he said. "My answer was no."

Less than a week before he disappeared, the Resos attended an Exxon friend's retirement at the Grand Cafe in Morristown, where they dined Saturday nights, three times a month. They liked to sit side by side, holding hands in a corner booth in the back room, sharing a rack of lamb and a good bottle of Bordeaux.

Afterwards, they'd go to the bar for cognac, have intense philosophical conversations and listen to pianist Linda Ferri play Beethoven and Mozart, his favorites. He had told Ferri about his heart attack three years ago.

"He talked with a great deal of wisdom about what was real in life," she said. "I didn't know he was such a, quote, `big shot.' "

Reso grew up in New Orleans, the pride and joy of a family of six, a devout Catholic and a high-school football player with smarts.

In the late 1950s, he was accepted into the petroleum-engineering program at Louisiana State. "He was confident and streetwise," said Holden. "He'd stand people down, put you in your place right quick. He certainly wasn't a wimp. He was a pretty rugged-looking guy. Women would find him attractive, you bet."

He married, and the couple had the first of their five children before he finished college. "He was in pretty close financial straits going to school," said Holden. Scholarships and summer jobs helped foot the bills.

In 1958, a year after graduation, Reso landed a job as a junior engineer with Humble Oil.

"If you want one single thing he did," said Dr. Zaki Bassiouni, head of Louisiana State's petroleum-engineering department, "he was responsible for the development of newly discovered, major offshore oil and gas reserves in the Bass Straits in Australia."

Five years ago, Reso's son Gregory died of AIDS. For long months he lay dying in a Houston hospital, his mother at his side; his father flew down each weekend. Patricia Reso subsequently became active in local AIDS work.

No one, from his professors to his neighbors to his Exxon colleagues, believes Reso, whose claim to fame in the corporate world was being cool, collected and controlled, could have staged his disappearance for the sake of love or money.

"I'm not naive," said Grand Cafe owner Alice Lloyd. "But you can tell a phony, and if Sid Reso's a phony, it'd blow my mind."

Said Holden, "He's not Bible-thumping and all of that, but Sid and Pat are one of those dying breeds, once committed to each other, committed forever."

But equally preposterous, everybody also agrees, is the notion that terrorists snatched him. Both ends of the spectrum - Greenpeace's D'Esposito and Exxon officials - agree that he wasn't working on any out-of-the-ordinary Exxon project. His latest bid to obtain rights off the Russian island of Sakhalin was unsuccessful, Exxon said.

"With Sid, you don't think you're in the presence of God," said Holden. "He breathes different air than I do, but, hey, it's hard to believe this guy controls the pulse of a multinational company. If somebody does have him, my first question would be, `Why him?' "

Last week Exxon offered a reward, the amount unspecified, for information. "To date, there are no takers," said the FBI's Baldwin. She said Patricia Reso's initial plea on television for her husband's return had reaped no information.

At Spring Brook Country Club, Reso paid his annual $3,000 membership dues in advance, in January.

His brown golf shoes (size 8), four hats (two tan, one blue, one yellow), a green and tan windbreaker and a tan sweater are still neatly placed in his locker.