Richard Shenkman did not appear in court Wednesday to face charges on allegations he kidnapped his estranged wife and held her hostage in their South Windsor home before setting it on fire.
The hearing for the former advertising exec has been put off until Aug. 14.
The decision came the day after a judge made what lawyers are calling an unusual move by revoking a $600,000 bond. He was accused of setting fire to a beach house he was supposed to hand over to Nancy Tyler, the attorney to whom he was married.
The judge Tuesday also granted the protective order Tyler was seeking.
On July 7, Tyler said she was going down to a Hartford garage to get her car to go to court when she saw Shenkman’s vehicle. The two were due in court for a hearing in their ongoing, bitter divorce case.
Tyler did not know why his car was there are called a friend. When she got out of the elevator, he grabbed her, while holding a gun and forced her into her car and to drive to their house in South Windsor, Tyler said during an interview with the "Today Show" Monday.
She told her friend to call police, but Tyler and Shenkman were gone when police arrived.
Through the day, Tyler said, she went through a horrific ordeal, and Shenkman spent most of the day telling her that one or both of them, and police officers were going to die.
He also bolted her to a wall in the basement of the home, police said.
Her chance for escape came when Shenkman demanded that police remove robots from the yard and he ran from the room, Tyler said.
She too ran, risking her life, she said. Shenkman said the building was booby-trapped, Tyler said. She had no way at that time of knowing that they were not.
“I ran out of the room, across the basement to a door, a little used door that we had in the back, and I went out,” Tyler said. “I didn’t know if it was wired to explode, but at that point, it didn’t matter. It was either going to die with a gun to my head or maybe go out a door and die that way.”
Shenkman was arrested, arraigned on several charges, including kidnapping and arson.
He is being held in lieu of more than $12 million in bonds.
