You're listening to the Mind over Murder podcast. My name is Bill Thomas.
I'm a writer, consulting, producer, and now podcaster. I am now
trying to use my experience as the brother of a murder victim to help other
victims of violent crime. I'm working on a book on the unsolved Colonial Parkway
murders, and I'm the co administrator of the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook group together
with Kristin Dilley. My name is Kristin Dilley. I'm a writer, a
researcher, a teacher, and a victim's advocate, as well as the social
media manager and co administrator for the Colonial Parkway Murders Facebook page with my partner
in crime, Bill Thomas. Welcome to Mind of a Murder. I'm Kristin
Dilley and I'm Bill Thomas. We're joined today by other Ron Peterson, who
is here to talk to us about his fantastic book, Chasing the Squirrel.
Ron. Thank you for joining us. Thank you, Kristin, and thanks
Bill. It's great to be with you both. It's funny that this feels
like Old Home Week now. It sure does. You guys have been very
kind over the years to have me on your show now several times, and
we definitely want to make sure that we spend a little bit of time right
at the end of this having you catch us up on all the developments in
the Gina renee hawcase and the documentary and all of the great work that you're
doing on your end as well. Thank you. I'll be happy to do
that. So let's go ahead and dive into this by talking about the case
at the heart of your book, Chasing the Squirrel, and that is the
case of Wally Thrasher. It's gonna be a little hard to summarize, but
give it a go. Can you summarize Wally Thrasher and his exploits for our
listeners? I sure will. Wally Thrasher his full name was Wallace Samuel Thrasher.
He was a notorious drug smuggler, more specifically a drug smuggling pilot who
lived in southwest Virginia. If he's alive today, he would be eighty three
years old. And we'll talk more about that about that big if it's the
caveat, we'll dig into that a little bit. Wally story. He was
born in nineteen forty. He grew up in southwest Virginia and Kulaski, A
good old boy growing up. Laski is a place near and dear to me.
My first book, Under the Trustle was about a murder case that took
place there. We'll touch on that in a minute. Wally was the guy
I graduate high school in nineteen fifty eight. He was somebody and probably all
of this newson one like him. In high school. He was this good
look and charismatic guy that everything just came easy for him. Really athletic,
really popular with the girls and guys, the kind of guy all the women
wanted to be with him, and all the guys wanted to be like him.
Right. And he was also I guess what we call nowadays an adrenaline
junkie, before that term was popular, and that he would. He was
a guy always doing the dangerous things. He had no fear of failure,
whether it was swimming across a half mile long lake in the winter, climbing
a pine tree when he was a kid, scaling a cliff, or so
forth. I we'll mention his appearance a few times, but he's worth it.
If any of the listeners wanted to do an Internet search of Wally Thrasher,
several pictures of them will come up. And I say that because certainly
he had these kind of movie star looks that were a big part of his
whole persona and even his smuggling career. Graduate from high school, didn't know
what he wanted to do, spend about three years in the Navy, enrolled
at Virginia Tech and only lasted a semester, and then sometime in his mid
twenties, just on a whim, he took a flying lesson. He learned
that aviation was really his thing. Just like some people are musicians who can
play by ear, I'm told in my research, I learned that some pilots
are just natural born pilots and they're just good at it. They pick up
the skills very quickly, and just they're keen aesthetic awareness and so forth.
They're just really good pilots. And now that was Wally Thrasher. He went
through several jobs. He did some modeling for a clothing company out of New
York. He sold men's clothing, and then bit by the aviation bug,
he wanted to get a job in LA where there were more jobs in aviation,
specifically in commercial aviation, so he moved down to the Pompano Beach Air
which was by a cool hip surftown on the Pacific coast of Florida. Took
several jobs involved flying. One was as a crop duster chemicals on the orange
groves that were a little bit inland, and really honed his flying skills due
and that they're flying low and avoiding telephone poles and trees and so forth.
He worked as a pilot taking up skydivers for dives, worked as a transport
company transporting goods to and from the Caribbean, and then also ran an air
cargo service where he'd fly wealthy tourists to and from the Caribbean and somewhere along
the line. In the early nineteen seventies, Wally Thrasher, who I mentioned
before, he was an adrenaline junkie who just enjoyed the thrills of flying.
Someone presented him the opportunity to make some money flying back marijuana from the Caribbean,
and he was all in. Most indications are he did it just for
the thrill, but then the money when he made that, he learned he
made seventy thousand dollars for that particular flight. He was hooked great deal of
the information in me writing the book comes from his wife, whose name was
Olga, and we'll talk more about her. She was originally from Portugal,
beautiful young lady that had the looks certainly to match and keep up with Wally.
So a lot of the information about his career comes from two days of
federal grand jury testimony that she eventually presented in the eighties. As she told
it in detail chapter and verse, about a lot of his exploits, came
close to death several times, crash landed a few times, but was arrested
twice. Once he bribed his way out in the Bahamas and another time spent
over a year in a Mexican prison, and the book details that. So
things were going good for Wally in the early eighties and his wife. They
had two young children at that time, and he started to think about getting
out of the business. He'd been doing it for about ten years, which
is tremendous longevity for a drug smuggling pilot. So they decided they were going
to move to Virginia, and in Bland County, Virginia, he bought this
huge hundred acre property built a beautiful home there. Instead of getting out of
the business, he more or less moved his operation to Virginia. Up to
this point, he'd been the guy. There were other people who set up
the deals and all Wally would do. He was just like the taxi driver
of the plane. He would fly the drugs from point A to point B
and then get away from the plane and let other people unload it, which
was one of the reasons why he never got caught. But for doing that,
he would typically make anywhere between seventy five thousand to one hundred fifty thousand
dollars per load. His comfort zone was about fifteen hundred pound loads of marijuana.
He generally avoided other drugs a cocaine. This was in the time the
movie's Scarface was out. It was not too much of a stretch of what
was going on in Miami and other places in the cocaine trade. He was
more comfortent in marijuana. It was a less violent group of players that he
was involved with. So his operation moved to Virginia. The Virginia State Police
opened a case file on him in nineteen eighty and several three years went by
and they pretty much knew what he was doing because he had this flashy lifestyle.
He paid cash for his house, paid cash for all his fleet of
vehicles that he and his wife had, but they could never catch him with
the drugs or the cast just because he was so good at doing what he
did. And again the book details that his nickname was the squirrel, hence
the name Chasing the Squirrel. That was an old high school football nickname because
he was really elusive on the football field. Really suited him well, and
as a drug smuggler as well. But he would what he would do.
He'd fly these planeloads of marijuana, typically smaller planes, you know, sometime
he had a Beechcraft Bonanza that he flew in and he'd fly the drugs from
points south, the countries like Colombia. Will talk more about Belize is a
big part of the story. And he'd fly them directly to Virginia. So
there was a lot of drug interdiction in Florida going on that time, and
he'd fly right past that out to little airports in southwest Virginia where typically the
distributors from northern cities from New York, Work or Philadelphia or Detroit would meet
him and then they would they would take the drugs from there, so it
would Things really went well for him for about ten years, but then in
October of nineteen eighty four, he was scheduled to pick up a load of
marijuana from Belize, had to attend a funeral of a relative. He was
actually a Paul bearer in an Ans funeral. So he led an associate of
his fly his plane, his Beachcraft Bonanza and the smuggle ended tragically, and
that on the return trip, the pilot who was in an associate of his
name, Nelson King, crashed Wally's airplane into Fancy Gap Mountain Coaches out in
southwest Virginia. And writing the book, I went through the FA and NTSB
crash report on It was just a spectacular crash and miraculously Nelson King got away
from the plane. Passenger copilot was killed. Nelson King managed to walk away
and then the train was airplane was traced back to Wally Thrasher and at that
point the Virginia State Police had the evidence they needed to move forward and indict
to Wally Thrasher conspiracy to import drugs. Then at that point he disappeared.
He left behind and his two kids will talk more about one of them,
Montana, his son, who was six years old at the time, at
least in the United States, there's never been any credible sightings of Wally Thrasher
since his wife was also She was not directly involved in what Wally did in
Wally's activities, but she was privy to a lot of it, so she
was charged as being involved in the conspiracy. The federal government came after her
and she was facing lengthy prison senates. She ended up cooperating with the authorities,
became a federal witness and provided them with a lot of information not only
about her husband, Wally, but about the other people, a lot of
international conspirators. And we can talk more about how that ended up, but
she was the witness who brought down was actually responsible for a huge drug bust
as a result of all that is actually an international bust that was one of
the largest ever in the Mid Atlantic States. Then, the central event of
the took place on November fourth, nineteen eighty four, And what happened then
was Wally Thrasher allegedly was involved in a fatal airplane crash in Belize. He
had gone down to Belize to pick up a load of marijuana, and on
takeoff, a plane suspected of being overloaded. According to the crash report,
crashed in the jungle. There there was auxiliary fuel tanks on the plane that
caught on fire. Of course, the marijuana burned very hot as well,
and fire was so intense, according to the crash report, that it actually
melted the substructure of the plane. Wally Thrasher's body was burnt to ashes.
A few weeks after that, one of wales associates shows up at Olga's house
with his wedding band, and according to the story, the band was the
wedding band was found in the wreckage. He was given back, and so
the federal authorities pretty much knew that if the fire was hot enough to burn
a body to ashes and melt an airplane, clearly it would have melted a
wedding band as well. One of several indications that the crash was bogus,
it was a staged plane crash, and that they came to believe this is
a da as well as US marshals then spent the better part of the next
twenty years actually looking for Wally Thrasher. They believed he was maybe in a
tropical land somewhere in South America. Or the Caribbean or even Portugal was mentioned.
But then I would want to say also with respect to his family,
his wife, Olga, who I worked closely with writing the book. She
family believed that he died either in the crash or shortly thereafter and did not
live. There's probably no one who knows more about it than her, and
that's her belief. Anyway. There's there are several different theories on what happened
to Wally, but certainly the romantic and they would find it interesting to believe
that he could still be alive at age eighty three. Yeah, and I
guess even just starting with the most basic fact, you could have knocked me
over with a feather. And this is probably just my now you fatag going
that there is a drug smuggling scene in Virginia. I had no idea.
And again this is clearly just not even tay on my part. But I
was like, wait, there's drug smuggling in southwest Virginia. But that was
very interesting to me. How much did you learn about drugs smuggling for this
book run? It must have been quite a lot. It was really interesting.
Yes, indeed, and now you're right here in Virginia I think you
went to Virginia Tech. I went to Radford, I went to Hollands,
and you can certainly remember examples of drugs being present and say marijuana for example,
And I always thought that was the stuff that people brought with them from
Hampton Roads or Richmond, and I know that it was coming out of that
area. But it would seem from my research from the book and working with
the DA folks who worked on the case in the Virginia State Police like folks,
that a lot of this was big quantities of the drugs that they chose
southwest Virginia because it was it was rural and a little bit sleepier, and
people weren't expecting that kind of thing. Yeah, then it was the folks
from the big cities up north who would then come and get it bring it
north in vans I'm not sure how much of those drugs actually found its way
to the college campuses in Virginia, but it is an interesting thing for sure,
given the long history of other types of smuggling in Virginia. Certainly closer
to home, Kristen, we've heard a lot about Gloucester County and all of
the smuggling of drugs are not mentioned as often as is cigarettes, alcohol and
illegal firearms, but drugs probably part of that mix as well. Boats rather
than airplanes. But I think the principles are all the same, don't you
think. I think so. Again, that is my naivete talking because it's
family in Southwest Virginia. Grew up there, spending time with my grandparents,
and as you said, Ron, it's just so sleepy and rural, it
would just never have occurred to me. There are major bits of drugs smuggling
going on there that was crazy to me, but it was very interesting to
learn about it, absolutely, and a few of the state police agents who
worked on these cases, they made comparisons with Wally Thrasher with the Moonshiners from
Yeah, exactly, Moonshiners that was set in Southwest Virginia still maybe active,
but those folks were a manticized a little bit, and there was that same
attitude toward Wally or other marijuana pilots that they were guys almost had this robin
hood image. And Wally Thrasher going to church bake sales and the cake that
would normally sell for forty dollars he'd buy for four hundred dollars. And then
give it to an old lady or a single mom. There he began.
It's kind of manufacture this Robin hood image. And I think a lot of
people who could have probably dropped the dime on him. I thought he was
a great guy and he'd adhered himselves to them, So that was another thing
I think that contributed to his longevity. How did you hear about Wally?
He came onto your radar somehow, and he's such a great story you all
of your books have been about wonderfully interesting cases and people. How did Wally
ultimately make his way unto your radar? I'm glad you asked that because it
has a special place in my heart. But while I was writing my first
book Under the Trestle, one of the sources for that book who I came
to be real good friends with was Austin Hall, who was a retired Virginia
State trooper and he was the lead investigator in the Gina Hall murder case and
ultimately played a big role in convicting Steve Uperley of that murder. Austin Hall
and I were having lunch one day and near Radford, and he said to
me, hey, he was talking about my first book. He said,
hey, if this book turns out good, you ought to write about Wally
Thrasher. And I said it was Wally Thrasher. And he gave me about
a five minute monologue like I just told you guys, and right away I
was hooked. I said, absolutely, you know that sounds like a great
story. I said, can you introduce me to the people on the law
enforcement side. And it turned out one of his old bosses was Dave Dean,
who was a higher up with Virginia State Police who worked on this case.
And then he gave me an introduction to Dave and went from there to
the US Marshall Wayne Pike, who was really instrumental in me writing Chasing the
Squirrel, and as well as Don Lincoln, who was a DA agent who
worked on the case. But but oh, it to Austin Hall. He
was the one who told me about it and Sadley Austin Hall passed away.
It's been I guess coming up on two years. But so I'm really grateful
to him for putting this case on my radar. You know, this is
a massive case in that it involved multiple law enforcement agencies. You mentioned just
a couple of them. What were some of the challenges that you find in
working on a book that involves, Hey, I got to go talk to
the d EA, know the US Marshals, know the FBI, know the
VSP actually all of them all at the same time. How do you juggle
all of that? I guess, first off, it took a while.
Generally my books have taken about a year to write. The fact is that
the three books I've written so far have been cases that took place in the
eighties. Nineteen eighties have kind of kind of become my wheelhouse. And my
wife would say I'm stuck in the eighties in terms of fashion, music and
things like that. But another wrong with the eighties there is. There's a
reason for that though. It's folks and law enforcement who work those cases are
now retired. They're in their sixties and seventies, so their memories are still
good at those cases and they have a little more latitude to speak freely about
them. Yeah, if I were writing about current cases, like for example,
the thing that was on Netflix about the Alec Murdock cases, when it's
an active case, folks don't talk and local law enforcement sertling out the state
police and absolutely not I made the mistake of some current cases I wanted to
write about of getting in contact with the FBI, and you don't get anywhere
with that. You can submit a Freedom of Information Act of FOIA request,
and that's a lot of times getting information about current cases is really challenging because
of that right. Those kind of things don't lend themselves well. And that's
why I have found my niche in writing about old cold cases. To answering
your question, Kristin found that those folks are just really willing to share their
experiences. Like all of us as we get older, we've got memories that
we want. We want to remember them, but we also want other people
to know about them. When the knucklehead like me comes along, it wants
to write about it and wants to interview them. In most cases, they're
really happy to talk. That's been my experience in dealing with retired law enforcement
people. Run from a practical point of view. I know you have a
background as a journalist, Well, these retired law enforcement folks, well they
let your record a conversation or do they expect you to take notes? How
does it work logistically? Because you talk to a lot of people in putting
your books. I do, and I've done it both ways. I've recorded
some and what I found out, and I know other people have had this
problem too, is when you record someone, a lot of times they hold
back things they don't want to say right. Generally, what I'll do is
I'll tell them, hey, I'm not going to record this, but I'm
going to take notes, and I'll take those notes, and then once I've
written it the passages of the book with their information, I'll circle back to
them and say, hey, this is what I wrote from our interview.
Tell me if this is accurate. And occasionally they'll make some changes, and
a lot of times one word can make a big difference, so they'll do
that, or I'll circle back to him with a second interview. About a
week ago, I talked to a forensics guy, a guy named Al Burns
who was a senior forensics guy in the city of Chesapeake. So we spent
about an hour on the phone, and then I will circle back to him
and follow up on some of those questions and then say, hey, now
they send him a written copy this is what you told me. I just
want to make sure all of this is accurate. So I found for me
that works, that tends to work pretty well. Was there any law enforcement
agency that basically said, nah, sorry, we're not talking about this.
Yeah. That would be the US Marshals, and they're under the Department of
Justice, as is the FP. But I came to be really impressed with
them. The one guy who's a source for this book, Wayne Pike,
who's a retired US marshal, he shared a lot of information with me,
and I actually went to his house one day and then we interviewed him for
a documentary that I'll share a little bit about maybe a bit later. What
he was sharing was pretty much things that are on the public record. There
were things we would ask him and he would say, I'm sorry, but
I can't talk about that. And then what I learned in about my research
about the US Marshals and they are better than anyone in federal law enforcement and
keeping a secret. And their biggest and best secret is the Witness Protection Program
WHITSAC. What they administer wit SEC. It's under their jurisdiction. Witness Protection
has been around since nineteen seventy and they have never lost a client. Wow,
Wow, that amazing. Now they've had people, you know, what's
interesting is about seventy percent of people who go into wit SEC, who go
into witness protection, they're criminals. So a lot of them when they're in
witness protection, they'll go back to their criminal ways and they get and they'll
cut out them said where they are and what they're doing, and some of
them have gotten harmed and actually left witness protection, I think. But for
people to comply and who keep the low profile, they're supposed to have a
one hundred percent success rate. And I'm knocking on a way to think I'm
going to jinx them, but I'm amazed at how well they can keep a
secret. And there were two of their active folks that I called about the
Wally Thrasher case. I'm asking about something from forty years ago, and they
were quick to say, I can't talk about that. I can't can't even
acknowledge that you're listening to Mind over Murder. We'll be right back after this
word from our sponsors. We're back here at Mind over Murder. Just tremendous
amount of respect for US marshals and their ability to keep a secret like no
one I've ever known. While we're on the subject, could Wally Thrasher have
been put into witness protection. He could. Yet, Yes, indeed,
Bill he could. I tend to not think so because I know that at
least the optics appeared that the US marshals were spending a lot of time looking
for him, and Wayne Pike told me that, and again that was on
the record. There were wanted post They went out of their way to go
to all these foreign countries and islands in the Caribbean and post wanted posters.
So they spent a lot of time and manpower doing that. And I don't
think they'd have gone to that length if they were also hiding him. Really,
with this case, who knows. That could certainly be. There were
several conspiracy theorists I talked to both when I was writing the book, and
since it's come out, it's probably exaggeration to call them conspiracy theorists, And
they think that there's a chance that the federal authorities turned their back and let
Wally get away. Said Hey, as long as long as we don't see
you again, we're going to let you go. Wally took pride in not
being a snitch. There's no evidence he ever cooperated or snitched on any of
his associates. But there's always that possibility that he shared some information, he
cooperated, and for doing that, they let him go, let him leave
the country and said, hey, don't come back again. Now, his
family and people that know him would say he would have never done that,
He would have never left his family. He had two young kids, not
to mention his wife. Keep in mind, he was facing a lengthy prison
sent here in the United States. So yeah, I think that, or
some variation of it, could be one of the many possibilities. I got
this sense at the end of it that the US marshals were doing a certain
amount of whaling and gnashing of teeth and going we haven't caught him yet.
It seemed like it must have been a very frustrating thing for them. There
are so many different facets and levels to this book. I loved reading it
because it's so complex. We've talked a little bit about the law enforcement side
and the people that you worked with for law enforcement, but let's do talk
about Olga Thrasher and Montana Thrasher. What kind of I imagine they were receptive
to doing this book. What kind of working relationship did you have with them
as you worked through the process of doing the research and the writing. Yeah,
we had a great relationship. I spent many hours on the phone with
Olga. I would call her to ask just a few questions or to get
clarification on something, and then we would end up talking for two hours.
She was living in Georgia at the time and she is now in her sixties.
And to set the ages here, so when they met and got married,
and I might be a year off both ways here, but Olga was
twenty three and Wally was thirty seven, so there was an age gap there,
I guess. More to your question, they were both very helpful.
They'd had several people contact him over the years wanting to do a movie.
There was someone who wanted to do a not a documentary but an actual movie
production movie. Several people wanted to write a book and even got started and
just never quite finished it. So they were really, really receptive to it.
The fact that I'd written another book that took place in that area I
think gave me a little bit of credibility with both of them, but they
just wanted me to tell it as accurately as I could. And then Montana,
in particular, I really came to have a lot of respect and admiration
for him. A really cool part of the story is that. And again
just to recap, so, Wally had a son named Montana, who was
six years old when Wally died or disappeared. Just like the bother you can
imagine, Montana became a police officer, only grew interesting. Yes, was
a career police officer. And last I spoke with him, that's been a
few months ago, but he's still still with the police department in suburban or
in Georgia, I should say. So that was really interesting. So he's
used some of his law enforcement skills as he's called around and tried to he's
talked some of his bothers, old associates, old So, yeah, Montana
and Olga had both been really helpful and we continue to correspond on social media.
And then Montana talked to about every few months. So he was six
years old in nineteen eighty four, forty four or maybe. Yeah, he's
a little older than I am yet some mid career. You'd mentioned earlier that
Olga believes that while he did in fact die in that plane crash in beliefs,
does Montana believe that as well, or is he actively trying to find
his death. He is, and I think he went through a period of
time where he was actively falling up on leads and talking talking to old people.
Not so much anymore. I don't want to speak for him, but
I would say, and again not speaking for him, he's more open to
possibilities of what may may not have happened. He's more open. Olga and
her conversations with me, she was, while she didn't comment directly on the
alleged plane crash, she feels strongly that if he didn't die in that he'd
died shortly thereafter there was he'd had a the analogy he was like if he
was a cat with nine lives, which he was, he had probably used
eight of them up to that point in terms of the crash, as he
had in the arrests, and he'd had eighty three and eighty four. He'd
had a string of just incredibly bad luck. He lost two loads of two
fifteen hundred pound loads of marijuana that he would have had to pay for,
did someone fleece him out of some money, and one deal which was something
that had just had never happened to him, just because you know, the
gentlemanly way he did business. And there was a guy we can talk about
a little bit who toward the end of Wally's smuggling career, he worked closely
with a man out of Belize named John angel Zabene, who was one of
the largest growers Belize at that time. Had just interesting the country. Belize
the population is only about half the size of Virginia Beach, but at one
they were the fourth largest producer of marijuana in the world. So it was
at least the country and the Jungles were one great big marijuana farm with about
twenty runways that oriented toward the Caribbean Sea where American pilots could land, get
loaded, and fly out. It was just an amazing operation. The drug
ward I guess he could call him that he dealt with. There was John
angel Zabine, who still alive today in his seventies. There were some of
the folks I talked to who felt the t because Wally owed him money,
he could have potentially done Wally harm. And so that's certainly a chance as
well. Okay, I can see that DV. Cooper and Wally Thresher would
probably have gotten along fairly well together. It was that like an obvious parallel
that you saw between them as you were doing the research or is that just
a me thing? Yeah, No, I think that's a great comparison both
of the cases. They're ones that we don't know exactly what happened, exactly
what happened to the person, And they're both they're both people that are both
criminals, but they've become heroes in modern folklore kind of folks exactly they are,
which is just funny how our society is. But yeah, it's very
interesting, and we both again we think both of them, we imagine them
getting away with millions of dollars. And one thing I didn't say about Wally
is that he had money in foreign bank accounts. It was confirmed in the
Cayman Islands, which are in terms of secrecy and security, could pretty much
would be his to go back to if he ever did. Were those funds
ever withdrawn quietly by a retiree from Portugal or something? Yeah, I'd like
to think so, who knows. Run. I think that romantic notion that
we all have it is often attached to smugglers, and I fought the law.
Pirates, pirates, smugglers, moonshiners, they all fit that sort of
outlaw character that we often root for. Rare that you're watching an old show
with Moonshiner's rum runners zooming down back roads, and who's rooting for the cops
to catch the revenue or the revenue or is to catch the smuggler. You're
rooting for them to get away, aren't you? Absolutely? And you know
who in pop culture who has really glorified these guys as Jimmy Buffett. Yeah,
I'm not a parrot head, but I am a Jimmy Buffett fan.
He's on my playlist some of the songs. He's probably written a half dozen
songs that are either about smugglers or referred to smugglers. And you know the
song A Pirate and I mentioned in the book, A Pirate looks at forty
Yes, smuggling. I've run my share of grass, made enough money to
buy Miami, but I pisted it away so fast it would have been writing
about Wally Thrasher in that song. It is a very popular notion we all
have after writing this fantastic book. What are some of the questions that you
still have in regard to Wally outside of is he still alive and he's not
wasting away in Margaritaville, but probably somewhere along the line. What are your
questions other than is wal he's still out there? And I like the idea
that he is by the way, I think that's fun. I guess that
that really would be the big one there. There was also related to this,
just some other investigations the information Olga provided. But really for me,
I guess when I set out to write it, I got most of my
questions answered about about Wally, He's just a guy you'd like to have a
beer with, the one he could tell these stories all the time about his
gosh. The book touches on about eight or ten brushes with death. He
had these flights either crash landings or in Columbia, the crew that was loading
his plane that was all coked up, that turned around and started attacking him.
But I guess, in terms of unanswered questions, you'd like to ask
Wally why he did this? I think he could have been successful anything he
tried. Yeah, really we certainly had a sales personality, but he could
have been a great attorney as well, basically anything he put his mind to.
But he's just somebody you'd like to have a beer with and just let
him go and tell stories. Do you feel like there's any way forward to
confirm whether Wally's alive or not? Only if I had wondered if he was
alive, if there would come a time and I should mention first of federal
warrants for him have expired, but he's no longer and a scheme of things.
What he did back then, it was like we got to catch these
marijuana smugglers and put him in prison for the rest of their lives. And
you look how things have changed now. By no means in my pro marijuana,
but nowadays it's certainly not looked down on by the law nearly as much.
No, not at all, really exactly getting back to your question that
the only thing would be if if Wally came forward, came back to the
United States and said, hey, here's my story he died, and someone
else came forward and said, hey, he was my best friend for years
here or whatever, that would certainly be interesting. But yes, he would
be eighty three. I should say he had a very good family history.
He had I think parents and brothers and sister. He had an uncle who
lived to be one hundred and three. Wow. Wow, that crazy,
and he was really active. He didn't smoke. He was just a social
drinker. And for most of his life he was a runner. He would
run every day, a go out for a runner or beck and I guess
in the day they called that jogging, And I would think if he were
around, he'd probably be in pretty good help. He actually looks like the
actor George Peppard in some of these photographs, and old guy is stunningly beautiful.
They're really a very handsome couple in these photographs. They sure are.
And that was the other thing when I thought of writing the book. I
would show their pictures. People would ask me, you, guys, what
are you writing about next? I mean, writing about this guy. And
I'd show Wally and Olga's picture and they'd be like, oh my god,
that's a Hollywood couple. Yeah, exactly, both of them. And Wally
when he would he walked through a commercial airport and people would point out him
and think he was a celebrity. Yeah, and very often he'd go along
with it. People would think he was Merle Haggard or one time even Burt
Reynolds. Yeah, he does look like those guys. He's got he's got
Burt back rock vibes for me. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, a young,
younger, good looking Burt backrack. Absolutely. And then in the book,
Olga tells a story that's in the book about when they were dating and
he took her to Vegas for a weekend. He flew her out to Vegas,
scored some tickets for a Frank Sinatra concert and really good seats, like
right up front, and they were seated right next to Frank Sinatra's personal table,
his family table where Frank Sinatra had some family members and friends. So
Wally being Wally, he wore a tuxedo to the that night. He walked
over to himself, Hey, I'm Wally and these beautiful blue eyes and looking
like he did. And they were like, hey, Wally, and they
thought he was someone famous they were. They said, hey, why don't
you come after the concert, come on backstage. We're gonna go and have
a drink with Frank. The concert ends in Vegas and they're like, yeah,
come on, Wally and Olga and they go backstage and Wally introduced himself,
Hey Frank, I'm Wally, and just really nonchalant, and Olga tells
his story and meanwhile Olga's like, oh, my god, we're here having
a drink with Frank. So that was just how he rolled. And I
guess one of the things that made me want to write about it. You
think this book, which is absolutely wonderful, could ever be made into a
movie or a limited television series. It sure feels like it, I think,
to both Christian and to me, yeah, thank you. And it
does the story itself even and that was so many people I talked to even
before I started writing it, saying wow, this story needs to be a
movie. I did about six months after it came out. I sold the
movie rights, though I should say the documentary film rights to a company out
of Los Angeles called Urban Legends Film Company. The CEO of that company is
a guy named Doug Tower, who he does a lot of work actually with
Investigation Discovery with He's filmed a lot of the Joe Kenda things that you see.
Okay, But a networked like ID or even HGTV or Discovery Channel,
they outsource a lot of their content, and a company like Doug's Urban Legends
Film Company will they'll produce a thirty minute or hour long show that Bill Air
and Bill, I know that you worked in that in you know a lot
more about it than me. So Doug has never done a full length documentary
piece, but he envisions this as a multi episode of television series. Yeah,
obviously Netflix would be like the Holy Grail. Obviously, but realistically maybe
a long shot. Although these things who knows. But the timing was to
write and when the book came out, this was right during the peak of
COVID, the pandemic hedios it shut down, so companies like that were pushing
outside Hollywood because they couldn't make movies like they used to. For these stories
documentaries they could make out. Doug and his Urban Legends crew had put a
lot of resources into it. It's been over a year ago. He bought
brought a whole crew out and did interviews down in Florida. We went and
interviewed some of Wally's old associates. One of the guys we mentioned in the
book, a guy named Dicky Sennett who flew with Wally. We interviewed him
and done some other folks down there. Stopped off in Georgia and interviewed Olga
and Montana. Yeah, and then also in South Carolina and North Carolina.
We talked to one of his attorneys, Keith really, who worked closely with
Olga in her legal defense, and then finally in Virginia interview in the folks
in Virginia who worked on the case. I'm not that involved in it.
It's he. I'm letting him do his thing with that in California, along
with a lot of his other projects. But I know he's had some high
level meetings with some of the streaming services. This would, I should say,
it doesn't look like it'll be something in a theater or release, more
like a streaming service, which is so much of the documentary content I mentioned
earlier, the Netflix series about the Alec Murdock case, which I thought definitely
all done with recreations. You couldn't tell the recreations were the real thing or
not. Yeah, it was very well exactly that would be in terms of
my hopes and expectations. He's something like that with integrating a lot of the
flying and the Yeah, I think it'd be very cool and so forth.
Yeah, it's looks like it would be a little ways off though, if
something were to happen with that, But it was good to at least get
that going in that direction. I know that they documentary for Under the Trestle
that you're doing with Scott McTavish has come in along swimmingly. Can we expect
to see it hit the airwaves before two terribly much longer? I hope,
So I don't have an exact timetable. There was a point where I was
hoping by the end of the summer fall. We'd originally envisioned that as a
just a one off documentary in ninety minute or two hour documentary, and then
a recent trip to Nashville about six weeks ago I did some narration with it,
and Scott and I talked about it. He had some interest from an
interested party who may get involved, who would like to see it as a
four episode series. Talked about that, and certainly there's enough content there with
that case, with the background and then the investigation and then the trial and
then the ongoing search for Gina Hall's remains. Yes, where early enough content
you could see four sixty minute episodes with that. But Scott's been nice enough.
He worked previously out of New York City, now he's out of Nashville.
But I've been closely involved with that working with him, and he's been
nice enough to let me bide input each step of the wood that process I'm
a lot more involved in. I think we're a lot closer finishing that up.
As far as the timing, it still remains to be determined, but
that like the others, like the other I mentioned, would be a lot
of on camera interviews with the key people involved. We may also will do
some re enactments with that, as well as a lot of the scenery in
and around the New River Valley that was a big part of this story.
Once that does come out, of course, we will have you and we'd
like to have Scott as well come on and talk about the process and the
finished product. That would be awesome. That would be great. As I
think I said this on camera, but I'm really grateful for all the help
you guys have given me over the years and certainly helped me a lot,
and I appreciate it. It's been awesome to see your success with your podcast
as well. Oh thank you. So go ahead and just give us a
quick rundown of all three of your titles and where everybody can find them,
please sure. My books are available now at Barnes and Noble and also Amazon,
as well as independent booksellers that are, it's great to support those.
My first book under the Trust is about the Renee Hall murder case. It
was the first nobody murder conviction in Virginia. The killer, Steve Apperley,
was convicted of first degree murder has been in prison forty three years. And
the big question in that case is where our Gina Halls remains, which,
according to Virginia State Police, are still undiscovered. In the second book we
talked about was Chasing the Squirrel. And then my third book that came out
in twenty twenty one, that was called Eyes of a Monster. That's about
a series of cold case murders in my hometown of Hampton, my old hometown
of Hampton, Virginia, when in twenty fifteen detective named Randy Mayer, who's
now retired and living in Alaska, reopened the cases and managed to link three
murders to a killer who was in his sixties and brought him to trial on
one of the murders and he was convicted and now in prisons. But it's
a great cold case story. Then I should tell you my latest book,
which I had one more round of final editing and it should be out this
summer. But the title is in the Wind and it's another true crime book,
and it was very fortunate I had a retired female detective who's in her
late seventies get in touch with me. Her name is Kay Shucker. Her
back when she worked the case, her name was Kay Lewis. Her background
and the early chapters in the book. We'll talk about it a great deal.
Kay was one of the first female police officers in Hampton Roads back in
the seventies. Also the first female detective in Chesapeake and one of the first
in Hampton Roads. So a big part of the story is her challenges back
then with discrimination as a female and even some harassment. For example, when
she was working as a police dispatcher and wanted to be a police officer and
went to the human resource office in Chess speak and said I'd like an application
to be a police officer, and they said, I'm sorry, but we
don't hire women. So a lot of it is about her challenges and how
she came to be a detective. And then in nineteen eighty one, she
was the lead detective in a just a fascinating case when an old in university
student by the name of Janie Starr went missing, he disappeared, and it
fell in Chesspeak's jurisdiction because she lived just in an apartment just across the Chesspeak
line in Chesapeake, but a lot of the action in the book takes place
at Odu, so Kay was the lead investigator in that case, along with
a few male detectives who backed her up, and she had her own theory
on the case. She believed the missing student, Jannis Starr, was having
an affair with one of her professor. The other detectives did not think that
and told her she was barking up the wrong tree and told her not to
go after this professor, but she gradually, over the course of a few
months built a case against him, making really dramatic twists and turns from there
in terms of the investigation and in terms of this professor, I can't give
it away, but by bizarre and also quite sensational then come to find out
the Unfortunately, the student was murdered, and then months go by her remains
have not been found, and Kay is working hard on trying to find what
she thinks is a clandestine grave, and eventually, just through some awesome detective
work, does find an area where she thinks that Janice was buried. That
brings a team of people out there to look for her, and then the
book ends with what they either do or don't find sounds amazing. Thank you,
and i'd written it, and then I had an editor and publisher telling
me, but the crime story is good, but you've got to do a
better job of talking about the challenges that the detective went through as a female.
So then I got some actually some more female input on that, and
rewrote that part of it. And I think it's a good story that anyone
would relate to, but certainly in this current climate we live in, it's
a great book with regard to women's issues and the ongoing equality for women.
We will make sure that we have you back on to talk about that as
well. We'll do the whole Ron Peterson quartet of books, two kinds.
That's going to wrap it up for this episode of Mind Over Murder. Thank
you so much for listening. We'll see you next time. Mind Over Murder
is a production of Absolute Zero and Another Dog Productions. Our executive producers are
Bill Thomas and Kristin Dilley. Our logo art is by Pamela Arnois. Our
theme music is by Kevin McLeod. Mind Over Murder is distributed in partnership with
Coral Space Media. You can follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
You can also follow our page on the Colonial Parkway Murders on Facebook,
and finally, you can follow Bill Thomas on Twitter at Bill Thomas. Five
six. Thank you for listening to mind Over Murder m