David Pepper was the most scared for the first five minutes and the last five. In front of his own house, in usually safe Mount Adams, he was abducted at gunpoint. Some 40 minutes later, he was riding in his SUV, a T-shirt over his head, while two men who threatened his life drove around trying to figure out what to do with him.

        For the half-hour in between, the first-term Cincinnati councilman thought he would at least try to talk his way out of being killed. He talked so much that his captors told him, more than once, to shut up.

        In a 90-minute interview in his 35th floor downtown law office Friday, Mr. Pepper told the story of his robbery and abduction.

        Mr. Pepper said he had gone to a lighting ceremony for the Elsinore Castle at the base of Mount Adams Thursday night. About 7:15 p.m., he drove his 1993 green Ford Explorer to his Hill Street home and parked on the street. He noticed two men coming from St. Gregory Street. He turned to get a friend's phone number out of the Explorer.

        “As I turned around, they were right on top of me.” One of them had a revolver. Their plan: to withdraw as much money as possible with Mr. Pepper's ATM card.

        “My first reaction was, these guys aren't kidding around.”

        Mr. Pepper drove, the man with the gun beside him in the passenger seat. The younger man, “Gino,” sat in the back - he was angrier and much more reckless.

        “I'm going to waste you. We're going to kill you,” he told Mr. Pepper.

        “You're crazy. Shut up,” the first man said, according to the councilman's account.

        They drove from Hill Street to Martin Street, to Eden Park Drive and Victory Parkway. They stopped at a Fifth Third Bank drive-through ATM.

        “My mindset was, I'm going to make this as easy for them as it can be,” he said. “My biggest worry was, they're going to get (angry) if I disappoint them, because they wanted thousands of dollars.”

        Mr. Pepper withdrew $400, the transaction limit for his account. He tried again, but the machine wouldn't dispense more.

        Thinking another ATM might be more generous, they headed back toward downtown. They stopped at a Provident Bank, but it didn't have an ATM.

        “The whole time I'm thinking, "Should I run?' ” Mr. Pepper said. “But it never seemed to be worth the risk.”

        They went to another Fifth Third ATM at Ninth and Main streets.

        It's there that ATM photos show Mr. Pepper trying to make a withdrawal at 7:52 p.m. One of his captors paced behind him, also caught on camera. He said hello to a homeless man.

        “Do you know him?” Mr. Pepper asked.

        “No,” his abductor said. “I just talk to everybody.”

        Figuring the men would be less likely to kill him if they knew more about him, Mr. Pepper told them who he was, explaining he was a councilman. One of the men recognized him from his “Just Add Pepper” television ads from last year's campaign.

        “This city is so screwed up,” one said. They talked about the police-involved deaths of African-American men. Mr. Pepper knew they were angry. He started talking about what the city was doing to address urban problems. He realized later it must've sounded like the speeches he gives at City Council.

        “I wasn't trying to win their votes,” he said. “But someone who would vote for you probably wouldn't kill you.”

        He told them how he was a key player in the “collaborative agreement” on police-community relations. He said he voted for a one-stop training center that will help people with criminal records to get jobs.

        “A couple of times they said, "Will you stop talking?' ” Mr. Pepper recalled.

        He drove back to the first ATM on Victory Parkway. There, they tried to get cash advances from his credit cards, to no avail.

        About that time, Mr. Pepper started asking the men about their “exit strategy.” He could drop them off somewhere, or they could have his car, he said. They pulled off on a side street to talk it over.

        At first, they decided to let Mr. Pepper walk. Then they changed their minds and put him in the passenger seat, blindfolding him with a T-shirt, and drove away.

        “They told me if there was a report, that they knew where I lived and they would come back and take care of me,” Mr. Pepper told a 911 operator later. They left him on Monastery Street in Mount Adams and told him to wait 10 minutes before making a move. He waited eight. They took his driver's license, his cell phone and about $470 - the $400 from the ATM and $70 he had with him.

        Mr. Pepper drove to his 35th-floor law office overlooking the Ohio River. He made three short calls - to his chief of staff, his parents and a friend - before calling 911 at 8:38 p.m.

        “I think I just wanted to talk to someone I knew and share it with somebody.”

        Mr. Pepper spent the next six hours talking to detectives and a police sketch artist, and then retracing his route from earlier in the evening.

        Police found ATM receipts at the Victory Parkway bank from Mr. Pepper's account, giving them an almost minute-by-minute timeline of where he was.

        Police spent the day Friday developing a sketch of “Gino,” one of the suspects, getting surveillance video from at least one ATM, checking Mr. Pepper's Explorer for fingerprints and other evidence. The crime drew extra police attention because of a combination of things, spokesman Lt. Kurt Byrd said: Mr. Pepper's position; the potential danger to others if the two men stay on the loose; and the rarity of the crime.

        Both suspects are African-American men 18 to 25 years old. One wore sunglasses and the other a hat. (“Neither one of them had masks. I don't know where that came from,” Mr. Pepper said Friday.)

        Mr. Pepper didn't curtail his schedule Friday. After a few hours of sleep, he had breakfast in Bond Hill with Norma Holt Davis of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. He talked to television reporters who had staked out his office at 10:30, then met with Eileen Cooper Reed of the Children's Defense Fund.

        After another session with detectives and an interview with a reporter, he was headed to a fund-raiser for Hamilton County Commission candidate Dr. Jean Siebenaler at his parents' Wyoming home.

        The 31-year-old Yale Law School graduate is the son of former Procter & Gamble Chairman John C. Pepper and YWCA president Francie Pepper.

        He won't be sleeping in his own home for the next few days, he said.

        Mr. Pepper was mostly calm talking about the incident Friday. But shifting the subject to talk radio callers and water-cooler detectives who doubt his story, he became more animated.

        “This city is a joke if something like this can happen and it becomes political,” Mr. Pepper said, stabbing a conference table with his finger. “This city is really losing it. - But in the end, you have to ignore it. It's a sideshow. We have issues in this city, and I came to work today to keep working on those issues.”

        Even before Thursday night, Mr. Pepper had been part of a coalition of conservatives on City Council who have voted to hire 75 additional officers and toughen laws from panhandling to prostitution.

        Last month, he proposed levying a tax on out-of-town athletes and performers to better equip police officers, treat drug offenders and step up enforcement of what he calls “quality-of-life” crimes.

        After Thursday night, Mr. Pepper said his attitude on crime hasn't changed much.

        “I won't sound different on crime next week than I did the week before,” he said. “But it will be more personal.”

        E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com and jprendergast@enquirer.com

        Excerpts of 911 transcript

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