J. Allison Conley, 84; FBI Official, Consultant

J. Allison Conley, a retired FBI inspector and deputy assistant director who worked on several famous kidnapping cases in the 1960s and 1970s, died Feb. 21 at Morristown Memorial Hospital in New Jersey of complications from hip replacement surgery. He was 84.

Mr. Conley worked in the field in the early 1960s and chased down leads into the kidnappings of Adolph Coors III, the Coors beer scion who was killed, and Frank Sinatra Jr., the singer's son, who was released for a ransom.

In the late 196os and mid-1970s, Mr. Conley played supervisory roles in the cases involving the abductions of Barbara Jane Mackle, the heiress who spent three days underground in a fiberglass box, and Patty Hearst, the newspaper publishing magnate's daughter who ultimately joined her captors from the Symbionese Liberation Army.

Throughout a career that lasted almost 30 years, and later as a security consultant and private investigator, Mr. Conley most enjoyed interviewing and talking to people. It came naturally to him, said son Derek James Conley of Westfield, N.J.

"He would always strike up conversations with people, complete strangers," Conley said. "He was always interested in people's backgrounds and how they got where they were."

James Allison Conley, who was born in Elizabeth, N.J., and raised in Cranford, N.J., enlisted in the Army after graduating from high school. During World War II, he served in England and France, where he had encounters with enemy as well as friendly fire as he drove staff officers to meetings near the front lines.

Originally scheduled to be sent to the Pacific theater, Mr. Conley was sent instead to the European theater after breaking a leg shortly before shipping out. In England, he met his wife-to-be, a Londoner, who served him tea at a USO-sponsored Eagle Club in Leicester Square. They married in 1945.

He returned home and graduated from Western Maryland College (now McDaniel University) in 1947. He immediately joined the FBI after hearing a pitch from a fraternity brother. Mr. Conley initially ran one-agent stations in Yakima and Vancouver, Wash., and Marysville, Calif.

In 1949, he joined the FBI's Major Case Squad in the San Francisco office and was later promoted to supervise the team that investigated the interstate transportation of stolen property.

He transferred to bureau headquarters in 1960 and oversaw the general investigation group. He also was a senior official of the identification, administration and inspection divisions. He was assistant special agent in charge of the Tampa office from 1969 to 1970 and was president of the FBI Recreation Association.

After retiring in 1976, Mr. Conley worked as a security consultant and private investigator for law firms, and he helped manage security for East Coast soccer venues for the 1984 Olympics. He was a member of the Session at the Church of the Covenant in Arlington County for many years.

Mr. Conley, who was active in the Society of Former Special Agents, worked on the defense teams of high-ranking FBI officials W. Mark Felt and Edward S. Miller in 1980. Both agents were convicted of violating the civil rights of innocent citizens by authorizing secret break-ins into houses during the Nixon years. Former agents raised more than $1 million for the duo's legal defense.

Mr. Conley, who was known to friends as Al, lived in Arlington and McLean for more than 40 years. He moved to Mountainside, N.J., in 2004.

A son, Dean Allison Conley, died in 1974.

Survivors, in addition to his other son, include his wife of 62 years, Edna May Conley of Mountainside.