Was Bronfman kidnap a hoax? Trial ends

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. P Testimony in the Samuel Bronfman 2nd kidnaping trial ended yesterday after 33 days of testimony. The jurors must determine whether the abduction of the Seagram-fortune heir was real or, as the defense claimed, a hoax.

The state presented a witness to contradict defense testimony that pictured Bronfman as a homosexual who plotted his own kidnaping to extract ransom of $2.3 million from his father.

Defendant Mel Patrick Lynch, a New York City fireman, contended that he had been Bronfman's lover and that the young man forced him to participate in a phony kidnaping by threatening to expose him as à homosexual to the Fire Department.

Bronfman, 23, denied this during four days on the stand, saying he never knew Lynch before the abduction on Aug. 8 of last year.

Lynch, 38, and Dominic Byrne, 54, a limousine-service operator,

were charged with kidnaping Bronfman and holding him nine days in Lynch's Brooklyn apartment.

Bronfman was blindfolded and loosely bound when rescued from the apartment by FBI agents, who were alerted by Byrne.

In testimony, Lynch put his word against that of Bronfman. To back up his claim that they had been lovers, he described in detail the inside of a pool house on the Bronfman estate in Purchase, N.Y.

He said he became familiar with it because he and Bronfman "had sex" together there several times.

The state maintains he learned of the place during surveillance trips, and Harrison town patrolman Roger Walther, the prosecution's 52d and last witness, testified yesterday that Bronfman did indeed report on Aug. 8, 1973, that he saw a prowler there.

If convicted, Lynch and Byrne could get maximum terms of 15 years to life.