Missing Developer Found With 'Thief' Carved on Face

An Irish millionaire who vanished eight months ago has turned up disheveled on a country road saying kidnappers held him for ransom, the Guardian reports. Barefoot with the word "Thief" carved in his forehead, 68-year-old Kevin McGeever told Irish police that he couldn't remember what had happened or why his captors released him. But he said they gave him a cell phone to hold at all times. "He was very well educated, well spoken and polite and articulate," says the woman who found him. "He was just skin and bones."

The Daily Mail reports that he had been kidnapped and tortured by the IRA and Russian mobsters to whom he owed money. Before all this, McGeever lived in a $4.7 million mansion called "Nirvana" and sold properties, including luxury homes in Dubai to British and Irish clients. He drove Hummers and a Porsche but liked mixing with locals in the town pub. "It's just the most bizarre thing ever," says a resident in his village of Craughwell. "The mystery thickens." One possible clue: In the 1970s and 80s, the IRA liked kidnapping rich businessmen for ransom money. (More kidnapping stories.)