Detroit-area abductees pay for their own kidnappings

What a day. You’ve battled your way home through gridlock traffic after an excruciating day at work. Your boss caught you napping at lunch, your eyes ache from straining in front of a computer screen all day, and all you want to do is slip into your favorite recliner and flip on the television.

But instead of coming home to an evening of comfort food and schlock television, you find four masked men armed with pistols lounging around your living room. As they start yelling at you to put your hands in the air, your heart takes off and your stomach wrenches in knots. Remember, you paid for this.

After an hour’s car ride spent gangster-style in the back of their trunk, you feel the car stop. The men pull you out of the trunk, untie you and shove you into a nondescript room. This is the real deal – handcuffs, duct tape, the works. After four hours of subjecting you to solitary confinement and abusive language, the men decide to let you go. But before they speed off in their unmarked car, they hand you a receipt. You’ve just become another satisfied customer of one of Michigan’s most unusual entrepreneurial undertakings: Extreme Kidnapping.

“I have kidnapped 12 clients as a professional service,” said entrepreneurial abductor and Detroit-area rapper, Mr. Scrillion a.k.a. Adam Thick.

Thick’s entrepreneurial endeavor, Extreme Kidnapping, offers its clients the experience of being violently abducted for a few hundred dollars. He meets with his customers in advance to discuss the way they would like to be kidnapped.

What kind of clientele does a company like Extreme Kidnapping hope to attract?

Thick often has turned away several people wanting to initiate third-party kidnappings or S&M bondage fantasies. However, he’s hesitant to say that there’s no element of erotic appeal for his clients.

“A lot of people want to attach some sort of sexual fantasy to it,” he said. “We don’t really have to do anything but tie them up in a room and leave them there.”

Typically, his clients are middle-aged men with a few women thrown into the mix. Thick markets his services towards the adrenaline junkies that have fueled the recent popularity of other extreme sports.

“I knew [they] were eventually going to get played out with the usual jumping off buildings, skydiving, scuba, race cars and all that stuff,” Thick said. “The logical progression was going to have to be more interactivity.”

For those on a tight budget, the company offers an econo-kidnapping – four hours of sensory deprivation and mock torture for the low, low price of $500. For those with a bit more lining in their wallets, the deluxe package offers multiple kidnappings and an overnight stay in an abandoned location for only $1,200. And if all this service has to offer isn’t enough to get your adrenaline pumping, the company’s web site (www.extremekidnapping.com) promises that “torture is available upon request.”

In a few months, Thick will be equipped to offer an elite all-girl kidnapping team. He plans to put most of his promotion behind this new package.

“There’s a far greater market for men who want to be kidnapped by beautiful women than guys that want to be smacked around and tortured,” he said.

Now that’s just good entrepreneurial ingenuity. Perhaps Thick’s venture will pave the way for other fetishized criminal experiences such as extreme car jacking, extreme sexual assault or even extreme assassination. There’s even room for extreme experiences for pregnant women and people with heart conditions: extreme petty larceny, extreme traffic stops, or even extreme littering.