Miss Ellen Maria Stone, a Congregationalist missionary and her pregnant fellow missionary friend Katerina Stefanova?Tsilka are kidnapped on 3rd September 1901 in the Ottoman Balkans by an Internal Macedonian-Adrianople Revolutionary Organisation detachment led by the voivoda Yane Sandanski and the sub-voivodas Hristo Chernopeev and Krastyo Asenov seeking independence from the Ottoman. The rebels demanded a ransom be paid of $110,000. In February 1902, the captors, after initially refusing, accept a reduced sum, and the women were released. Widely covered by the media at the time, the event has been often dubbed "America's first modern hostage crisis".