And the Sea Will Tell (34 page)

“Did he say what he meant by ‘walk the plank’?”

“Yes, walk off the edge of the boat.”

“Did he ever tell you whose boat he used when they made this man walk the plank?”

“It was my understanding it was the man’s boat, because I believe that Buck and his girlfriend were invited by this couple to dinner.”

“Did Mr. Walker tell you that this man said anything as he was being made to walk the plank?”

“He mentioned that the man was crapping all over himself and sniveling when he was being made to walk the plank.”

“When Mr. Walker told you about this man sniveling and defecating, what was his demeanor?”

“He was laughing.”

“Did Mr. Walker ever say that he did, in fact, murder this couple?”

“There was a statement made about—I don’t recall the term—offing, or knocking them out of the box, or blowing them away, some jailhouse term like that.”

“Did he mention this term with respect to just the man or with respect to both of them?”

“I think to both of them, but I’m not sure.”

If
the jury believed Ingman’s testimony, this, of course, was the fall of the blade for Buck.

Ingman testified that in a motor home in Tijuana, Mexico, at a later date, he asked Walker if he was worried about rumors that his girlfriend might cooperate with the authorities in turning state’s evidence against him, and that Walker “seemed concerned about it, but he didn’t think she would.”

Ingman went on to testify that shortly after the press reported discovery of “bones in a box on Palmyra,” he’d gone to Mexico to give Walker ten thousand dollars to complete a transaction in their drug-smuggling operation. Walker, Ingman said, had a house in Puerto Escondido, a small fishing village near the southernmost tip of Mexico, and was living with a “younger girl.” He said he told Walker about the accounts of a “box floating up with a woman’s remains in it. I said something about how strange or fantastic it was that a box could come floating up after that much time.”

“And what did Mr. Walker say?” asked Schroeder.

“He said that it was bullshit, that he didn’t put her in a box.”

“Did he say what he did with her body?”

“No, he didn’t.”

On cross-examination, Partington got Ingman to admit that he was stoned on grass when Walker told the bloody tale in the McNeil prison powerhouse, as well as to share a fact of prison life: “There is a lot of storytelling that goes on in prison, things that aren’t true.”

Ingman also admitted that he once supported a four-hundred-dollar-a-day habit by dealing drugs, and had supplied heroin to his two sons, one of whom subsequently died of an overdose.

Partington established Ingman as a “professional witness” by pinning down the amount of Government money he had received over the years for testifying against various individuals—$7,800 before he even entered the federally funded Witness Protection Program, $28,000 afterward. The money, Ingman said, was only to help defray his subsistence, housing, and medical costs.

“If the Government did not believe you were cooperating with them, you would not have received this money, isn’t that correct?” Partington asked.

“I suppose so.”

Richard Taylor, who with his brother Carlos had planned to sail to Palmyra in the fall of 1974 to resupply Buck and Jennifer, came to the stand as a prosecution witness, but the sullen scowl frozen on his long, pinched face left little doubt that he was only reluctantly testifying against his old pal.

He confirmed that he had received the letter Buck and Jennifer had written on Palmyra. “Buck asked me to bring epoxy,” Taylor said. Asked what it was used for, he replied: “For patching fiberglass.” He recalled that the couple also needed food supplies, “mostly flour and sugar.”

Why had he and his brother never arrived to rescue their friends? According to Taylor, they had lost their storm jib during a severe blow on a cruise off the Hawaiian Islands.

He said he next heard from Buck and Jennifer when they reappeared in Oahu. In fact, he visited them on their new boat in Ala Wai harbor on October 27—just two days before the federal dragnet pulled tight on the repainted
Sea Wind
and her passengers.

“What did Buck tell you about their new boat?” Schroeder wanted to know.

Taylor looked as if he’d just swallowed vinegar. “Buck said they were down on Palmyra,” he began uneasily, “and there wasn’t much to do. He had played a lot of chess with a man on the other boat. After a while, the man owed him so much money that they—traded boats.”

“During this conversation, did he ever mention anyone on Palmyra drowning or capsizing or disappearing?”

“No, sir, he did not.”

On cross, Findlay elicited that Taylor had spent three weeks on Palmyra in 1977. When he said he had a “foreboding feeling about the island,” Findlay asked why.

“It was more than just the fact that it was a ghost-type island,” Taylor said. “It was more than that. It seemed to be an unfriendly place to be. I’ve been on a number of atolls, but Palmyra was different. I can’t put my finger on specifically why. But it was not an island I enjoyed being on. I think other people have had difficulties on that island.” Intended translation: maybe the island itself, not Buck Walker, had mysteriously done Mac and Muff in.

After establishing that Taylor had owned and operated Zodiac dinghies, Findlay next asked: “From your experience in operating a Zodiac, can you tell us whether it is possible for someone to be thrown from a Zodiac; for example, in a situation where a sharp turn is made?”

“
Absolutely
.” Taylor brightened, as if this was just the kind of question he had been waiting to hear. “In fact, we had to rig our own Zodiac with safety lines, because there is really nothing to hold on to.”

Buck Walker still had some friends in the world.

T
HE JURY WOULD NOW
hear testimony on the key issue at the Walker trial. To prove that Muff Graham had been murdered, thus refuting the defense’s main argument that she had died accidentally when the Zodiac overturned in the lagoon, the Government called to the stand a platoon of medical and scientific expert witnesses. Their often complex and abstruse testimony would consume hundreds of pages of transcript.

Dr. Oliver Harris, a forensic odontologist (a specialist in the study of teeth and their surrounding tissue) with a sparse, balding crown and reading glasses that he kept putting on and taking off, testified to his examination of the skull and its mandible, or lower jawbone, which was detached (“fractured out by blunt trauma”) from the skull when found on Palmyra. He cited other evidence of blunt trauma: fractures to an upper left molar in Muff’s skull and a lower right molar in the jawbone, as well as to the crown of tooth number 13 at the gumline and the apices (tips) of the roots of tooth number 30. There were also “fracture lines” in the lower jaw. He asserted that these fractures most probably occurred either pari mortem (at or near the time of death) or postmortem (after death).

“Could the fractures have occurred antemortem—prior to death?” asked Enoki. In other words, could the trauma have been sustained in a nonhomicidal context, like a fall or some other accident?

“In my opinion, they could not. The pain of the fractured tips of the roots of the molars would be so severe, so intolerable, that the subject would immediately want to seek the services of a dentist. And the fracture to the jawbone was of such a nature as eventually to cause death unless the person sought out a physician for treatment.”

The jury knew that Mac could always call for medical or dental help on his radio or sail the
Sea Wind
to Fanning or some other island for assistance.

Enoki asked the dental expert what degree of force would have been necessary to cause these fractures. To split the jawbone from the skull, the expert said, and fracture the roots of teeth, which are “deeply embedded in bone,” would require “extreme force. It’s not characteristic of an automobile accident. It would be more characteristic of a sledgehammer, a ballpeen hammer, or some other heavy round object.” Multiple blows were involved, Dr. Harris added.

One juror bowed her head…another stared directly at Buck Walker. The others seemed to retain their focus on the expert, who had assumed the affectless monotone of a dispassionate observer inured to testifying about such matters.

On cross-examination, Partington asked if anything in the marine environment or any other natural phenomenon could have caused the “blunt trauma” to the teeth and jawbone.

“I know of nothing in the marine environment that could cause fractures like that.”

The curator of anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., was called to the stand next. Douglas Uberlaker was the FBI’s sole consultant in forensic anthropology since 1977.

The tall, professorial Uberlaker, dressed like a Princeton faculty member in tweed jacket, wool slacks, and Weejuns, stated that he had examined the skull, jawbone, and other skeletal remains at the request of the Government. “The skeleton was not complete, as there were a few missing parts,” he explained. “So, it was not possible to put it all completely back together.” But the find was sufficient, he asserted, to conclude with confidence that the skeletal remains derived from one individual, “a Caucasian woman approximately five feet four inches tall.”

Enoki read into the record a stipulation that the remains were those of Eleanor Graham.

“There appears to be a whitish area on the top portion of the skull. Do you see that?” the prosecutor asked.

Uberlaker owlishly regarded the skull he held in his hands. “Yes. There is a white area, what we call calcination, on the upper left part of the skull that extends more or less from the eye area back over the left top of the skull, and then back down to about the center [of the rear] of the skull.”

“Did you reach a conclusion as to what caused that area to be white?”

“Yes. Given the extreme whiteness of that area, the best causal factor I would attach to that is extreme heat applied to that very localized area over a period of time.”

“Could this intense heat be caused by direct sunlight?”

“I don’t think so. You might get that extent of bleaching from the sun with years of exposure, but you would also get a type of erosion that we don’t see here. That suggests to me that the heat source was something more intense than the sun.”

“Greater than a fire?” Enoki asked.

“It would not be a bonfire or a wood-burning fire, but some sort of heat source that could generate extreme temperatures.”

“Would an acetylene torch have that kind of heat capacity?”

“Yes.”

Another horror.

Partington objected that Enoki was leading the witness. With a shrug, the judge gave the prosecutor a perfunctory warning. But the image was indelible:
an acetylene torch
. There was now scientific testimony which indicated that Muff’s beloved husband’s own implements had probably been used on her by her murderer. The horror was cruelly refined.

Their thinking clearly legible in their unguarded expressions, jurors could not resist studying Buck Walker, stoically unmoved at the defense table. Was this rather ordinary-looking fellow capable of such savagery toward Muff? And had he done the same to Mac?

Enoki’s direct examination of the anthropologist proceeded implacably with the cadence of a slow march. The witness briskly ignored the sensational nature of his testimony, as if giving the basics to undergraduates in an anatomy class rather than revealing dramatic evidence at a major murder trial.

“Were you able to determine when this heat was applied to the skull in relation to death or decomposition?”

Uberlaker sat back in the hard wooden witness chair and crossed his long legs, as if dying to retrieve a meerschaum pipe from his pocket, clamp it between his teeth, and strike a match while pondering further. This man clearly enjoyed supplying the missing pieces of a forensic puzzle, but stingily, one at a time.

“Well, it’s difficult to say exactly,” Uberlaker answered cautiously. “The borders of the calcination area suggest that something had to have been present to protect the nonaffected bone from also getting that extreme heat. In other cases that I have seen like this, that has
always
been flesh.”

Could the whitening have been caused by fossilization, Enoki asked, seeking to eliminate all possible natural causes. The answer was no. Fossilization, Uberlaker explained, is a “very long-term process.”

“Did you note any wear or erosion by some other source on the skull?”

“Yes. On the front left side of the skull, across the face, are five very flat abraded areas that we term “coffin wear.” There also appear to be several smaller areas on the right side of the face. If a skeleton has been in a coffin for many years, the slow movements caused by gyrations of the earth could cause abrasion of the bone against the flat surface that it’s lying against.”

The jury didn’t have to be told that the “coffin wear” was from the container.

Still seeking to negate a defense argument in support of accidental death, Enoki asked: “And did you see any evidence of a shark attack or bite on the skeletal remains that you examined?”

“No.”

“Would you have expected to see such evidence if a shark had attacked this individual?”

“Yes. Sharks will attack with a tremendous amount of force. They will rip and remove large sections of flesh and even bone, leaving behind very chiseled-like imprints of their teeth.”

To conclude, Enoki asked the anthropologist if he had reached a conclusion as to what caused the hole in Muff’s left temple.

“No. It’s in a part of the skull that’s very thin and is one of the most easily damaged areas.”

During cross-examination by Partington, Uberlaker admitted he hadn’t been at all surprised to find a hole in the skull, or fractures to some of the other bones—the
long
bones of the skeleton. “There are natural phenomena, such as abrasion, that can produce a hole in the skull and…I can think of a lot of natural circumstances that would produce breakage of bone that don’t involve foul play or criminal activity.”

A new mystery surfaced without warning on cross-examination. Uberlaker testified that he had observed “several blackish deposits on the top of the skull” which appeared to be “remnants of burn material.”

Partington eagerly asked, “Didn’t you express the opinion to me when I spoke to you at the Smithsonian that the burning which caused the black deposits, as opposed to the whitening, had taken place
years after death
?”

“Yes,” the anthropologist answered casually just before stepping down.

But the implications were not casual. Was it possible that someone had set fire to Muff’s remains years after she was murdered? If so, who? And why?

A pasty-skinned man with thick glasses and unruly hair sticking up like bulrushes hurried forward to the stand. He was the man who in every homicide case is supposed to tell the jury with scientific precision how the victim died. But Dr. Boyd Stephens, chief medical examiner and coroner for the City and County of San Francisco, testified that on examining the skeletal remains at the request of the Government on April 16, 1985, he found “no recognizable cause of death.”

Enoki asked the witness if he had made any “findings” in regard to the damage to the skeletal remains.

“Yes. The radius and ulna—the forearm bones—on the left forearm have transverse fractures, meaning they are broken across. Both the right and left tibia—the lower leg bones—have a twisting fracture.”

“What amount of force is required for a twisting type of fracture?”

“A considerable amount of force in a living individual. It’s usually a rotational force, frequently seen in skiing accidents. It usually implies that some part of the extremity is fixed or restrained while the body is rotated around it, or the body is fixed while the extremity is rotated.”

As this latest expert continued on, I realized that all of us—the jurors, the attorneys, the judge, and the spectators—were anxiously hanging on every word of what, for the most part, amounted to nothing more than sophisticated, argot-ladened speculation. I gazed hard at Buck Walker. Through it all, there he sat, taciturn and still, the only person on the face of the planet, in my view, who knew
exactly
what had happened. Yet he sat there like the rest of us, giving the impression he was being educated or tantalized along with everyone else. I wondered whether he could be thinking,
What stupid jerks all of them are. That’s not how I did it
. Or was he thinking how very lucky he was to be living in the United States of America, where authorities who
knew
he had committed the murder had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and sink years of investigation into the effort to prove his guilt to a jury? (Of course, the same authorities were equally certain that my client was involved in the murder.)

In addition to the various fractures, Dr. Stephens testified that the five flat areas on the skull near the left eye and left cheek were flattened to the extent “that a ruler can be placed” across them.

Asked by Enoki if, in his expert opinion, the abrading surface could have been the container, Stephens replied that indeed the inside walls of the container were “consistent” with the abraded areas on the skull.

Dr. Stephens confirmed that there was evidence the skull had been exposed to heat. “This is not the type of heat we see from sun exposure,” he said, obviously getting into it with relish. “We are talking about an accelerant or a gas that is burning. To burn something like that, you would need about eleven hundred degrees Fahrenheit or higher.” Stephens was more categorical on the next important point than Uberlaker had been: “
This burning took place while there was tissue on the skull. The tissue and moisture protection are the explanation for the irregular margins. The burning, I believe, happened at or near the time of death
.”

Enoki: “Is there enough gas given off by a human body’s decomposition to float a container the size of Government exhibit 28?”

“Yes,” Stephens answered. He explained that the most common gases given off by decomposing human remains are methane, hydrogen sulfide, and carbon dioxide. As they displaced the water inside the box, they would “literally make the body a lifting force. We have had cases here in San Francisco Bay where a human body floated to the surface with as much as two hundred pounds of weight attached to the body.”

“Those weren’t in concrete boots, were they?” Judge King asked.

Soft chuckling filled the courtroom.

“Various types of weights were added to the body,” Dr. Stephens responded with a smile, “for reasons other than good health. The average body in San Francisco Bay will float in about ten days. Obviously, if the weight is added, it takes a longer time.”

Enoki, tenacious as a terrier, returned to the possibility that the hole in the skull
might
have been caused by a bullet. Again, Dr. Stephens was more accommodating than the previous witness.

“Did you reach any conclusion as to the hole in the left side of the skull?” the prosecutor asked.

“No. But I don’t believe it is an abrasion.”

“Have you ruled out the possibility that this hole was caused by a gunshot?”

“No, I have not.”

Primed for damage control, on cross-examination Partington elicited the medical examiner’s admission that he had tried to determine the presence of “foreign material” around the hole by taking X-rays and films. “With lead bullets, when they penetrate a bone, lead is deposited, isn’t that true?” he asked.

“That is correct.”

“You found no evidence of lead [around the hole], did you?”