May 28, 2021 • 38 mins
A mobster marries the widow of one of the missing men.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
From my Heart Media. This is Missing in Alaska, the
story of two congressmen who vanished in nineteen two and
my quest to figure out what happened to them. I'm
your host, John Wallzac, March fourth, ninet, Tucson, Arizona. The
(00:29):
sun is setting. The temperature sinks below sixty. There's a
light breeze. It's early in the evening. At the El
Dorado Lodge, a luxurious desert resort. A gorgeous tree line
road leads up to a complex of old stone clad buildings.
Tranquil mountains lurk in the distance. Sitting at a bar
(00:50):
is Tom Davis, a detective with the Arizona Department of
Public Safety. He's joined by a supervisor and a reporter.
They're all undercover. And that's say you shaped bar, and
on one side is the public side. On the other
side is a room and it's just you know, it's
(01:12):
just an alcove. Well, if you set on the public side,
you could see what was going on in the alcove.
Lo and behold, here comes this party and it's Jerry
and his wife and his one of the people that
he had gone to Anchorage with. And you know it
(01:34):
for me being a brand new guy. This was fascinating.
Jerry is Jerome Jerry Max Paisley, a thirty three year
old murderer and bomber with close ties to two prominent
mafia families. So we sat there and we just kept
making notes and watching all the activities and the pictures
being taken, and boom, it's noted that Jerry married Peggy.
(02:00):
Peggy is Peggy begat the widow of Congressman Nick beget
at the time of the wedding. Did you know who
Peggy was? I probably did, but I probably didn't put
any significance to it. Were you aware at the time
of the wedding that Peggy was the widow of a
missing congressman? Uh? Yeah, but it didn't take it seriously.
(02:24):
Why because it was it was an accident plane crack
pause for a minute. Let this sink. In. Sixteen months
and sixteen days after her husband, a U S congressman,
disappeared in Alaska, Peggy Begett married Jerry Paisley, a mobster,
(02:45):
at a wedding in Arizona. It sounds sensational, It is sensational,
but I want to be clear it's true. It's not
some baseless conspiracy. It did happen. I have a copy
of the marriage license and photos of the reception. In fact,
I have the original photos. Tom Davis gave them to me.
(03:06):
The pictures I gave you with Jerry. That's the last
I have unless I resurrect. Uh. Those are the originals
I took and sent to you. But you can look
at the paper and tell that that came out of
the book, out of the Bible. This is from your bible. Yep.
(03:28):
That's the last existing piece. Davis, who had to distinguished
thirty six year career in law enforcement, worked on a
small team that battled organized climb in Arizona. He had
a secret book, a so called bible, which listed about
a hundred local mobsters and their associates. In the bible
was Jerry Paisley. Man Paisley, Where to start? He's so
(03:53):
important to this story. I need to tell you about him,
his history, his personality, his shocking laims. But I don't
want to glorify him. He was a murderer and a bomber,
an abusive, violent man. He doesn't deserve glory. Paisley was
(04:14):
born in Detroit in nineteen forty one. He grew up
in a bad neighborhood. As a teen, he enlisted in
the Navy. I don't know much about his early years,
just bits and pieces I picked up along the way.
But I can share with you an incident that occurred
when he was nineteen, a violent attack that illustrates the rough,
jagged nature of his life from birth to death. On
(04:37):
May three, nineteen sixty, Paisley was hitchhiking in California when
four men accosted him using either a razor or a
sharp piece of glass. Paisley wasn't sure which. They carved
a four inch cross and two letters ZS into his arm. Thankfully,
the wounds were superficial he didn't need stitches. Two years later,
(04:59):
after the Navy discharged him, Paisley returned to Detroit. That's
where he started working for the lick of Oli Family,
an organized crime syndicate led by Pete Horseface lika Oli Senior.
That's also where he befriended pete seniors sons, especially Pete Jr.
In fact, the two men got close enough that in
nineteen seventy four, Pete Locooli Jr. Attended Paisley's wedding to
(05:22):
Peggy Begat Pete Jr. And his wife Cathy even traveled
with Peggy and Paisley on their honeymoon in Mexico. The
lick of OLiS were a mid tier mob family, nothing
special mid century. They moved from Detroit to Tucson. Paisley
went with them. Soon thereafter, another much more famous mafia
family also moved to Tucson, The Bananas. Remember Vito cor Leoni.
(05:46):
Marlon Brando's character from the Godfather. Cor Leoni was based
in part on famed mafia don Joe Bonano Senior. During
the sixties in Tucson, Paisley befriended Banano's sons Bill and
Joe Jr. He was captivated by the family's flashy infamy
and gritty glamour ine. He even made a brief cameo
(06:07):
and honor thy father. A best seller on the Bananas
written by legendary author Gay Talise. I asked Talise, who's
eight eight, if he remembers Paisley. He said he doesn't.
That was a long time ago. The Bananas were not
only celebrities in Tucson, they were well known throughout the nation.
(06:27):
Joe Sr. Was quite literally the Big Cheese, a nickname
he got by sinking his teeth into the dairy industry. Laugh,
go ahead, but there was a lot of money to
be made in the cheese trade, counterfeit, mazzarella, money laundering,
stuff like that. Bonano was a big deal, one of
the most important mafioso's in American history, the patriarch of
(06:49):
one of the so called Five families which dominated organized
crime in New York City during the early twentieth century.
Bonano saw himself as a gentleman. He liked to say
that he lived by old school values. Booze but not narcotics. Murder, sure,
but only if you deserved it. But he distorted reality.
The Banano family was brutal. They were violent gangsters. They
(07:13):
maimed and murdered, and bombed and extorted and kidnapped and
committed fraud. Later, they tried to rehabilitate their image, But
Joe Banano didn't become Joe Banano by being a polite
man who just dabbled in bootlegging. For three decades from
the nineteen thirties to nineteen sixties, Banano held an iron
grip on his family. His stranglehold began to unravel in
(07:35):
the mid sixties when he got greedy and tried to
assassinate rival mob bosses. The plot failed, igniting a bloody
mob war called the Banana War, or, as the press
sarcastically dubbed it, the Banana Split. See. One of Banano's nicknames,
which he absolutely hated, was Joe Bananas, hence the name
of his signature war. At one point during the war,
(07:58):
Banana was kidnapped and for while he disappeared. It's thought, though,
that he staged the kidnapping in order to avoid testifying
before a grand jury. When he eventually resurfaced, he decided
to make a strategic retreat to Tucson, where he quote retired.
But that was bullshit. He was diminished, but not dead,
and he certainly wasn't retired. I know, I'm throwing a
(08:22):
million names at you, so let's recap. We have a
Jerry Paisley, who married Peggy Beget, the widow of Congressman
Nick Beget, in nineteen four b The Lick of OLiS,
a mid tier mob family from Paisley's hometown of Detroit
who relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley worked. And
see the Bananas, a famous mob family from New York
(08:46):
who also relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley also worked,
Jerry Paisley, the Lick of Olies, the bananas, They're all
tied together. But why Tucson. It seems random, right, an
odd place for the mob to me. Not really, It's sunny,
it's pretty removed from the violence of Chicago and New York.
(09:08):
In Detroit, it makes sense, and Arizona had lacks laws
which allowed the mob to easily launder money. Arizona was
Switzerland in the United States. Arizona had a blind trust
system in his banking system that allows people to hide
moneys here just as effectively as they could in Switzerland.
(09:28):
And the blind trust accounts that could be set up
with laundered money the bank accounts themsels could also own
real estate. And when I first began working over here
in nearly seventies, Peccati was owned by number and nobody
knew who owned anything. It was all through blind trust
accounts at a bank. That's Don Devereaux a seasoned investigative
(09:50):
reporter in Arizona who covered organized crime for decades. He's
best known for his never ending investigation into the nineteen
seventy six assassination of reporter Don Bowles, who was killed
in Phoenix by a car bomb. Something will cover later.
Devereaux also dug into both the Banano and Locavoli families.
With two major mob families in Tucson, you'd figure there
(10:10):
would be some bitter rivalry, so many angry egos crammed
into a small desert city, but that wasn't the case.
We're looking Holy moved out here from Detroit, and he
was a friend of Joe's and and and writed The
Look of Religion. Lots of rolling people from around the
country to move to Tucson and the Phoenix to retire.
(10:31):
Look at really largely came to the Tucson area to retire.
But Ana was still active when he was at me too,
so but look a Holy largely had left Detroit behind.
And there was a retired bob guy living comfortably in Tucson,
um on a place called the Grace Ranches they called
with his family. Uh and close friends and close enough
(10:54):
they know they shared the same accountant um they were.
You know, there were secrets between those guys. They were
both friends and not competitors, and you know, happily you know,
seeing each other as good friends. Yeah, even though the
Bananas and Look of OLiS maintained peace between their respective families,
their presidence was detrimental to Tucson as a whole. In
(11:16):
the late sixties, the city became a hot spot for
mob violence, most notably a series of high profile bombings.
Many of these bombings were tied to extortion attempts, insurance scams,
and vigilante payback. The motivation behind some, though, was more complicated.
In July, the homes of both Joe Banano Senior and
Pete Lacavoli Senior were bombed. There was a war started
(11:39):
between Banana and Lukavoli by a rogue FDIH named David Hale.
Back in the day, Hale began planning bombs on most
of Banana and the look of Holy people as if
they were fighting back and forth between themselves, trying to
start some sort of an internet scene mob war between
Lukaolian and It obviously didn't work, and David Hale got
(12:02):
exposed as having you know, done this himself as an
FBI agent. David Hale denied that he was behind the bombings.
Hale was never convicted of any crime tied to the bombings.
He didn't respond to interview requests in night, someone also
bombed the house of a prominent judge named Evo Diconcini.
(12:25):
DeConcini had been friends with Joe Banano, but later, when
his son Dennis was elected to the U. S. Senate,
he distanced himself from the mob boss. I just said
someone bombed Judge Deconcini's home. But guess who that someone was.
Jerry Paisley, the same Jerry Paisley who only six years
later would marry Peggy Baggage. Several sources told me Paisley
(12:49):
was behind the DeConcini bombing. Paisley was something of a fixer,
they said, a wanna be gangster. He was technically a mobster,
but low and seniority, more the guy you turn to
to break some legs or chuck some dynamite over a
fence than the mastermind of any operation. To my knowledge,
he was responsible for at least three bombings, including the
(13:10):
DeConcini bombing. So how on earth did Jerry Paisley, a
(13:40):
mobster who bombed to judge's house, end up marrying Peggy Begett,
the widow of a missing congressman. How did they meet?
The official story is this in late nine About a
year after Nick Beggetts vanished, Peggy was with a friend
at the holiday in an Anchorage when she ran into Paisley,
who was tending bar. They hit it off, and a
(14:00):
few months later, in March nineteen seventy four, they got
hitched in Tucson. I've already told you why the mob
was in Tucson. But why was the mob in Alaska
in the seventies. Why was Jerry Paisley in Alaska in
the seventies? One word oil. After the discovery of oil
in nineteen sixty eight at Prudeo Bay, Alaska boomed. Everything
(14:24):
in modern Alaska history can be split into pre nineteen
sixty eight and post nineteen Pre nineteen sixty eight, Alaska
was scenic and had timber and bears a stereotype, sure,
but people in the lower forty eight didn't really care
about it except for its natural beauty, some of its resources,
and at the height of the Cold War, it's strategic
(14:44):
location near the Soviet Union. Post ninety eight, Alaska was
an oil state, a state with immense wealth waiting to
be tapped, a state with mounds of money just waiting
to be pumped into people's pockets. Pre nineteen sixty eight,
there was crime, but wasn't exorbitant. Post ninety eight, it boomed.
Pre ninety eight, you could still find affordable housing. Post
(15:08):
night with a crush of new workers, you couldn't. It
was during this boom atmosphere in nineteen seventy that Alaskin's
first elected, Nick Baggetts, to the u. S. House. Beggetts
had run a campaign promising to maximize oil prosperity, but importantly,
he also acknowledged the problems that stirred up. Here's an
ad he ran in nineteen seventy. You don't have to
(15:30):
be an economist to know that we have a critical
housing shortage. All you have to do is try to
find a place to live. Five years ago, the typical
monthly payments for a twenty thousand dollar home would be
about one Now, a twenty thousand dollar home that's if
you can find one, would be well over two dollars
(15:50):
a month. America's leading housing official recently stated that less
than of Americans can really afford to buy a home.
That's the problem nationwide. The last situation is worse. There
are practical solutions. Nick Beggatch finds practical solutions as a
(16:11):
state senator. He's been doing it for eight years, and
he's been vocal about it. Nick begat has always wanted
you to know where he stood. He still does. Nick
beggat is Alaska's man for Congress. Beggatte went on to
help pass the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act or ANKSA,
(16:32):
a monumental piece of legislation that removed a major obstacle
blocking construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, but the pipeline
still faced countless legal, political, and environmental hurdles. It wasn't
until March nine, two and a half years after Beggett's vanished,
that construction finally began. Poor morning. After years of planning,
(16:52):
court fights, and stockpiling of materials, construction of the Alaska
Oil Pipeline begins. It will run almost eight hundred miles
from the North supe of Alaska to the port of Valdes.
The pipeline is supposed to be finished in about two
years at a cost of at least six billion dollars.
The Big boom is already underway in Alaska. Asked the
(17:13):
people in the city of Fairbanks, for example, Jack Perkins did,
and here is his report. It used to be in
fair Banks that keeping the snow shoveled half the roof
was one of the main problems. But today, with the
coming of the pipe loving, Fairbanks is a boomtown and
there are new problems they never thought of here before.
(17:37):
Used to be in Fairbanks you can make a telephone
call right away without having to try for an hour
without getting buzzed off. But with the pipeline, the local
phone system is flooded with more calls than a year
(17:57):
ago and can't handle them. Used to be, you could
get an apartment, nothing fancy, but sheltered for a couple
hundred dollars. Now rents have doubled and tripled, one bedroom
five hundred a month and hardly anything available. Vacancy rate
in Fairbanks about zero. And consider crime rates. Always a
(18:21):
drinking town, but arrests for drunkenness now up a hundred
and thirty five percent, juvenile arrests up fifty robberies up
a hundred and twenty three percent, and with all the
pipeline workers passing through town with their rolls of money,
prostitution arrests up seven percent. Many of the people who
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moved to Alaska long before the oil boom were upset
to see the pristine home changing so rapidly. What you're
getting here, of course, is what is what they call progress,
isn't it? Now that's one name for it. I've heard
other names for it which might not be arable. It
happens to sit. Is this bursting and straining toward what
is sometimes called progress? But maybe nowhere has it ever
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happened so much and so fast. And it's not just
the people of Fairbanks weren't ready for it is there?
Many of them don't want it at all. Jack Perkins,
NBC News, Fairbanks, Alaska. Two years later, in June nine,
construction on the pipeline wrapped up. Oil Mania reached a
(19:28):
fever pitch. Now the richest could really flow. There's oil
in the pipeline, the Trans Alaska Pipeline. This evening pump
station number one at Prudeoe Bay, two hundred and fifty
miles north of the Arctic Circle today began pushing heated
crude oil into the pipe. Don Oliver was there here.
It is finally finished after eight years of planning and building.
(19:51):
The oil companies rattled off all sorts of superlative statistics
about it. Eight hundred miles long, built by a peak
workforce of more than tw thousands from one end to
the other, it will hold three hundred and eighty million
gallons of oil. The cost nearly eight billion dollars, the
largest most expensive project ever attempted by a private enterprise. Okay,
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so again, by this point it should be blatantly obvious
why the Mob and Jerry Paisley specifically came to Alaska
in the seventies. Oil oil is what drew the Mob
to Alaska. Oil is what drew Paisley to Alaska. It
was a black gold rush. Here's Mike Grimes, a retired
cop who worked for the Anchorage Police Department. That was
(20:38):
the period when Alaska was just booming. It was like
a goal rush count because of oil pipeline being constructed,
so much money up there. They had such a dramatic
increase in population, and everybody coming from somewhere else, uh
to get rich in Alaska. And so it was a
(21:01):
very fascinating time to be working vice. And there was
only three of us on the vice squad at that time.
And uh, we had such an influx of prostitutional vainly
off the West coast. So the prostitution industry was just
booming up there on the gambling that we were having
(21:24):
people come from all over with organized crime behind them
from other states and set up underground gambling joints in
Anchorage and uh and then after hours clubs that were
illegally serving alcohol. So we were inundated for the three
(21:45):
man vice squad. It was a wild time and Paisley
and the mob wanted to cash in drugs, sex work,
you name it. Paisley moved to Alaska nineteen seventy three
with his close friend Sal Spinelli. Like Paisley, Spinelli was
a mobster with ties to both the lick of Oli
and Banano crime families. When Paisley wed Peggy beget in
(22:06):
March n Spinelli was his best man After the wedding.
When Peggy, Paisley, and Spinelli returned to Anchorage, Spinelli opened
a jewelry store with Peggy's oldest son, Nick Begett's Jr.
Multiple law enforcement sources told me the store was a
front for stolen jewelry, including turquoise traffic from Arizona to Alaska.
(22:26):
Nick Begats Jr. Now a well known conspiracy theorist, was
only a teenager at the time. He declined interview requests.
He was never convicted of any crime pertaining to the
theft of jewelry, and again, he was only a kid,
a kid who lost his dad and ended up with
a violent new stepfather, Jerry Paisley. As Paisley settled into
(23:13):
married life, Peggy Begett now Peggy Paisley, showered him with money.
After Nick, her first husband, disappeared, Peggy had received a
windfall of cash. According to documents I found archived at
the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, there was a fifty five
thousand dollar life insurance policy which had a double indemnity
clause for accidental death, so a hundred and ten thousand
(23:34):
dollars from that, and there was a one time forty
five dollar benefit from Congress, plus the balance of Nick's
checking in retirement accounts. Altogether, Peggy got at least a
hundred and fifty eight thousand, four hundred and thirty one
dollars and seven cents, about a million dollars today when
adjusted for inflation. She inherited other things too, including apartment buildings.
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Peggy spent much of that money on her new husband
and Paisley. The newlyweds honeymoon in Mexico. They were joined
on that trip, as I said earlier, by Pete Lacavol Jr.
And his wife Cathy. Peggy bought Paisley expensive jewelry and
fancy cars too, including a Cadillac El Dorado and a
Jaguar x K. She also bought him a bar. In
(24:19):
May nineteen seventy four, two months after Peggy and Paisley wed,
they started a business called Max Inc. I obtained the
company's records from the state of Alaska. Peggy was the president,
Paisley was the secretary treasurer, and another man whom I'll
discussed later was the vice president. Max Inc. Operated a
bar and anchorage called the Alaska Mining Company, the type
(24:41):
of watering hole that minted money during the oil boom.
It had previously been called the Green Dragon. Here again
is Mike Grimes, the retired Anchorage cop who worked vice
in the seventies. I heard Paisley was involved in the
it's called Laska Mining Company before it was a reading dragon,
that he was involved in that place with the Beggy
(25:04):
just and I said, God, what are they doing this scumback?
You know, because uh, I mean, I was a lifelong
Alaskan Nick Beggy towards my congress. Peggy and Paisley's marriage
wasn't exactly common knowledge, at least to the general public,
but a good number of politically connected folks and members
of law enforcement knew about it. Perhaps this is a
(25:26):
good time to pause to examine why the marriage is
even newsworthy at all, because I know what people will say.
They'll say I'm reporting it because it's salacious. They'll say
I'm trying to sex up this story in order to
sell it. But that's not true. They don't know what
I know. At first glance, Peggy Begett seems to be
(25:46):
a sympathetic character, a woman whose husband vanished, a woman
who became a single mother to six kids, a woman
who's now a grandmother in her eighties. Typically her personal
life would be none of my business. Sure, she ran
for Congress several times after Nick disappeared, so she was
for a while a public figure. But that's not why
(26:07):
I'm reporting this, So bear with me. We have a
ways to go. I also want to be clear about
something else. I'm not reporting everything I know. I learned
a lot, but certain things, while salacious, aren't pertinent to
this story, and I'm purposely leaving them out. Also, one
more thing, Mark beget, Peggy's son, served for six years
(26:29):
in the U. S. Senate. So let me say too
that I have no political agenda here. In fact, I
think Mark was a good senator, and he was just
a kid when all of this happened, a kid traumatized
by the loss of his father. Peggy Beggett and Mark
Beggett declined multiple interview requests. Living large on Peggy's money,
(26:50):
Paisley spiraled out of control by nine six. He was
heavily into drugs, was married to Peggy. He just couldn't
leave a cocaine alone. And it's since the cocaine and
the women and this and that, and it just it
was terrible to to watch the deterioration of his and
(27:13):
Peggy's relationship. I felt sorry for Peggy, you know, and
she got herself into something that she probably had no idea.
Do you know if she knew of his background really
when they got married. I would say she did not,
but I have no way of knowing for sure. That's
(27:35):
Paisley's friend. George Schaefer. I've known Paisley since the early sixties.
I probably knew him better than anybody in Alaska. Schaefer
met Paisley in Arizona sometime around nineteen. He owned a bar,
it was called the Cabaret Lounge in Tucson in Arizona,
(27:59):
and at that time, there was a lot of things
going on with the well, there was all those bombings
in Tucson. They were there was a group of people
that were coming in and trying to get a protection
(28:20):
racket on with some of the local bar owners around
the town. And I was kind of brought in and
used as a little bit of a muscle for them.
Just they were coming in and intimidating the bar owners
themselves and just trying to get them to pay protection
(28:43):
money like they did back east. Who doesn't work that
well in the West. So that's how I originally met Paisley.
He was kind of on the other side, and we
kind of became friends, but not not to any great extent.
(29:05):
When you say he was quite of on the other side,
what do you mean by that, Well, he was associated
with several of the so called mafia people, mainly the
Nanos and and Lickabli. Paisley, Shafer said, was a quote
(29:31):
crazy person wherever he went because trouble as far as
the deal with Peggy she did by him that mining company,
which is the bar. I guess you don't. You're well
aware that I got shot there. I don't know the details.
I do know that you were shot there. Okay, Well
(29:54):
I was shot there by somebody. You know that no
one knew. I mean, it was just a an incident
that I was in the wrong place the wrong time. Pasically,
he had a partner in the bar long you know,
his wife gave him that more or less as a
wedding gift. As far as the ownership in the bar,
(30:15):
his partner was a real straight ace guy, would never
break the law. In fact, when I went there to
go to work, the only reason he called me in
is because his regular bouncer from Phoenix, ron Moawyer was
(30:35):
his name, and he had cleaned the bar up as
far as riff raff and all that. Well, he he
worked two years, had to go on vacation. Jerry wanted
me to work there for the two weeks while he
was on vacation, and I originally said no, and then
he talked me into it anyway, So I was just
(30:56):
supposed to be paid under the table for two weeks
and his partners, Oh, no, we can't do that. We
need to put him on the payroll. Yeah, we gotta
keep everything above board. And so I was lucky that
I was on work in the cop when I got shot.
But Danny Ziminich was the guy's name was partner's name,
(31:20):
Daniel Max. Zevinich was the third person who had an
ownership steak in Max Inc. The business Peggy and Paisley
started after they got married. Sevenich was the company's vice president.
The company was called Max Inc. Because both Zivinich and
Paisley shared the same middle name. Max Zeveni is a
key figure in this story, someone you'll hear about in
(31:40):
later episodes. He's still alive. He owns a popular bar
in Anchorage. He declined multiple requests for an on the
record interview. In late nineteen Peggy and Paisley got divorced.
Newly single, Paisley moved back to Arizona. For the next
fifth teen years, he was in and out of prison
(32:02):
on a variety of charges, including aggravated assault. Sometime around
he was paroled and he got a job in Phoenix
selling cars. There was a deal or another guy got
out of prison that he was in with. After a
few months they got together and there was a gal
involved a little bit. I don't know. He's told me
(32:26):
the details and I have forgotten them, except that he
ended up killing that guy and was going to kill
He told me that he pointed the gun. I guess
he killed a couple of guys, two of them in
the front seat, and he pointed the gun at the
girl and it jammed and didn't go off. Uh so
he didn't kill her. But anyway, now he's wanted by
(32:50):
the law. And that's when he came to live with me,
just for a few weeks, and I got him a
job where they didn't even want to know his name
and it was cashing to the table. Well, he he
destroyed any anything, any kind of friendship we ever had
(33:12):
because he ended up robbin some people while he was there.
And of course he left left my truck at the
Seattle airport. I was on vacation, left my truck at
the Seattle Airport. I had to go get it and
then I had to explain to the sheriffs. But there
was that he was on the ten most wanted and
(33:34):
they called him jealous Jerry. Well, he got so mad
about that because that wasn't a story at all. He
had nothing to do with the girl or he he
didn't have any affair with her or nothing. But so
that's motivated him to turn himself in. And that was in.
(33:58):
You just heard Schaefer say Heisley was on the ten
Most Wanted list, presumably the famous FBI list. Other people
told me Paisley was on America's Most Wanted. Neither is accurate.
In fact, Paisley was on a show called Prime Suspect.
Think of it as a kind of rip off of
America's Most Wanted. We tried to dig up the segment
to share it with you, but we couldn't find it.
(34:20):
When it aired. Sometime in ninety three, Paisley was living
with George Schaefer, hiding out from the cops in Eagle Creek, Oregon,
about thirty minutes southeast of Portland. By that point, he
had murdered at least five people, and he still had
murder on his mind. I'll tell you another interesting story
before we go, just like if you're interested in it.
(34:44):
It was an obsession to Jerry Head. While he was
in Oregon. He was obsessed with wanting to kill a
dentist in Safford, Arizona, and evidently the dentist had done
something to him. Farley was in prison in Arizona. He
(35:05):
was sent down there to have a tooth pole or something,
and a guy wouldn't give him enough novacaine. And then
he told Jerry, I'm here to State to extract pain
on you. I make you feel good. So Jerry was
obsessed with that, and he sware someday he was going
to kill a dentist. Paisley didn't end up killing the dentist. Instead,
(35:30):
in March, he turned himself in. He was subsequently convicted
of murder and sentenced to life in prison. By late
Paisley was fifty three. He had no chance of getting out,
no chance of leniency or reduced sentence. He was going
to die behind bars. That's when he figured, fuck it,
(35:51):
what do I have to lose? And he started talking
next time on missing in Alaska. That blow him up.
I don't know that JB have him blown up. I
don't know. I know I took a fucking package up
there and they said it was a bum. They might
have been bullshit me. Here are your three tasks for
(36:16):
the week. First, I'd really like to get a copy
of the episode of Prime Suspect that featured Jerry Paisley.
I know it aired sometime between June and March. Help
me find it. Second, I'd also like to get a
copy of a nineteen one special report produced by k
g u N, the Tucson ABC affiliate, called The Big
Cheese Joe Bonano's Notes. Finally, I mentioned earlier than an
(36:40):
undercover reporter witnessed Jerry Paisley's wedding to Peggy Baggage. I
believe that reporter is still alive, possibly living in the UK,
but I haven't been able to find him. His name
is Alex Dressler d R E H S L e R.
If you know him, contact us. You can reach us
by phone at one eight three three m I A
(37:01):
Tips that's one eight three three six four two eight
four seven seven again one eight three three six four
two eight four seven seven, or you can reach us
via email at tips at iHeart media dot com. That's tips,
T I P S at iHeart Media dot com. Ben
(37:23):
Bowen is our executive producer. Paul Decan is our supervising producer.
Chris Brown is our assistant producer. Seth Nicholas Johnson is
our producer, Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and
I'm your host and executive producer, John Wallzac. You can
find me on Twitter at at John Wallzac j O
n W A L c z a K. Footage for
(37:46):
this episode was provided by NBC and the Vanderbilt Television
News Archive special thanks to the Alaska and Polar Region's
Collections and archives at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Missing
in Alaska is a co production of I Heart Media
and Greenfork Media m M m HM
From my Heart Media. This is Missing in Alaska, the
story of two congressmen who vanished in nineteen two and
my quest to figure out what happened to them. I'm
your host, John Wallzac, March fourth, ninet, Tucson, Arizona. The
(00:29):
sun is setting. The temperature sinks below sixty. There's a
light breeze. It's early in the evening. At the El
Dorado Lodge, a luxurious desert resort. A gorgeous tree line
road leads up to a complex of old stone clad buildings.
Tranquil mountains lurk in the distance. Sitting at a bar
(00:50):
is Tom Davis, a detective with the Arizona Department of
Public Safety. He's joined by a supervisor and a reporter.
They're all undercover. And that's say you shaped bar, and
on one side is the public side. On the other
side is a room and it's just you know, it's
(01:12):
just an alcove. Well, if you set on the public side,
you could see what was going on in the alcove.
Lo and behold, here comes this party and it's Jerry
and his wife and his one of the people that
he had gone to Anchorage with. And you know it
(01:34):
for me being a brand new guy. This was fascinating.
Jerry is Jerome Jerry Max Paisley, a thirty three year
old murderer and bomber with close ties to two prominent
mafia families. So we sat there and we just kept
making notes and watching all the activities and the pictures
being taken, and boom, it's noted that Jerry married Peggy.
(02:00):
Peggy is Peggy begat the widow of Congressman Nick beget
at the time of the wedding. Did you know who
Peggy was? I probably did, but I probably didn't put
any significance to it. Were you aware at the time
of the wedding that Peggy was the widow of a
missing congressman? Uh? Yeah, but it didn't take it seriously.
(02:24):
Why because it was it was an accident plane crack
pause for a minute. Let this sink. In. Sixteen months
and sixteen days after her husband, a U S congressman,
disappeared in Alaska, Peggy Begett married Jerry Paisley, a mobster,
(02:45):
at a wedding in Arizona. It sounds sensational, It is sensational,
but I want to be clear it's true. It's not
some baseless conspiracy. It did happen. I have a copy
of the marriage license and photos of the reception. In fact,
I have the original photos. Tom Davis gave them to me.
(03:06):
The pictures I gave you with Jerry. That's the last
I have unless I resurrect. Uh. Those are the originals
I took and sent to you. But you can look
at the paper and tell that that came out of
the book, out of the Bible. This is from your bible. Yep.
(03:28):
That's the last existing piece. Davis, who had to distinguished
thirty six year career in law enforcement, worked on a
small team that battled organized climb in Arizona. He had
a secret book, a so called bible, which listed about
a hundred local mobsters and their associates. In the bible
was Jerry Paisley. Man Paisley, Where to start? He's so
(03:53):
important to this story. I need to tell you about him,
his history, his personality, his shocking laims. But I don't
want to glorify him. He was a murderer and a bomber,
an abusive, violent man. He doesn't deserve glory. Paisley was
(04:14):
born in Detroit in nineteen forty one. He grew up
in a bad neighborhood. As a teen, he enlisted in
the Navy. I don't know much about his early years,
just bits and pieces I picked up along the way.
But I can share with you an incident that occurred
when he was nineteen, a violent attack that illustrates the rough,
jagged nature of his life from birth to death. On
(04:37):
May three, nineteen sixty, Paisley was hitchhiking in California when
four men accosted him using either a razor or a
sharp piece of glass. Paisley wasn't sure which. They carved
a four inch cross and two letters ZS into his arm. Thankfully,
the wounds were superficial he didn't need stitches. Two years later,
(04:59):
after the Navy discharged him, Paisley returned to Detroit. That's
where he started working for the lick of Oli Family,
an organized crime syndicate led by Pete Horseface lika Oli Senior.
That's also where he befriended pete seniors sons, especially Pete Jr.
In fact, the two men got close enough that in
nineteen seventy four, Pete Locooli Jr. Attended Paisley's wedding to
(05:22):
Peggy Begat Pete Jr. And his wife Cathy even traveled
with Peggy and Paisley on their honeymoon in Mexico. The
lick of OLiS were a mid tier mob family, nothing
special mid century. They moved from Detroit to Tucson. Paisley
went with them. Soon thereafter, another much more famous mafia
family also moved to Tucson, The Bananas. Remember Vito cor Leoni.
(05:46):
Marlon Brando's character from the Godfather. Cor Leoni was based
in part on famed mafia don Joe Bonano Senior. During
the sixties in Tucson, Paisley befriended Banano's sons Bill and
Joe Jr. He was captivated by the family's flashy infamy
and gritty glamour ine. He even made a brief cameo
(06:07):
and honor thy father. A best seller on the Bananas
written by legendary author Gay Talise. I asked Talise, who's
eight eight, if he remembers Paisley. He said he doesn't.
That was a long time ago. The Bananas were not
only celebrities in Tucson, they were well known throughout the nation.
(06:27):
Joe Sr. Was quite literally the Big Cheese, a nickname
he got by sinking his teeth into the dairy industry. Laugh,
go ahead, but there was a lot of money to
be made in the cheese trade, counterfeit, mazzarella, money laundering,
stuff like that. Bonano was a big deal, one of
the most important mafioso's in American history, the patriarch of
(06:49):
one of the so called Five families which dominated organized
crime in New York City during the early twentieth century.
Bonano saw himself as a gentleman. He liked to say
that he lived by old school values. Booze but not narcotics. Murder, sure,
but only if you deserved it. But he distorted reality.
The Banano family was brutal. They were violent gangsters. They
(07:13):
maimed and murdered, and bombed and extorted and kidnapped and
committed fraud. Later, they tried to rehabilitate their image, But
Joe Banano didn't become Joe Banano by being a polite
man who just dabbled in bootlegging. For three decades from
the nineteen thirties to nineteen sixties, Banano held an iron
grip on his family. His stranglehold began to unravel in
(07:35):
the mid sixties when he got greedy and tried to
assassinate rival mob bosses. The plot failed, igniting a bloody
mob war called the Banana War, or, as the press
sarcastically dubbed it, the Banana Split. See. One of Banano's nicknames,
which he absolutely hated, was Joe Bananas, hence the name
of his signature war. At one point during the war,
(07:58):
Banana was kidnapped and for while he disappeared. It's thought, though,
that he staged the kidnapping in order to avoid testifying
before a grand jury. When he eventually resurfaced, he decided
to make a strategic retreat to Tucson, where he quote retired.
But that was bullshit. He was diminished, but not dead,
and he certainly wasn't retired. I know, I'm throwing a
(08:22):
million names at you, so let's recap. We have a
Jerry Paisley, who married Peggy Beget, the widow of Congressman
Nick Beget, in nineteen four b The Lick of OLiS,
a mid tier mob family from Paisley's hometown of Detroit
who relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley worked. And
see the Bananas, a famous mob family from New York
(08:46):
who also relocated to Tucson and for whom Paisley also worked,
Jerry Paisley, the Lick of Olies, the bananas, They're all
tied together. But why Tucson. It seems random, right, an
odd place for the mob to me. Not really, It's sunny,
it's pretty removed from the violence of Chicago and New York.
(09:08):
In Detroit, it makes sense, and Arizona had lacks laws
which allowed the mob to easily launder money. Arizona was
Switzerland in the United States. Arizona had a blind trust
system in his banking system that allows people to hide
moneys here just as effectively as they could in Switzerland.
(09:28):
And the blind trust accounts that could be set up
with laundered money the bank accounts themsels could also own
real estate. And when I first began working over here
in nearly seventies, Peccati was owned by number and nobody
knew who owned anything. It was all through blind trust
accounts at a bank. That's Don Devereaux a seasoned investigative
(09:50):
reporter in Arizona who covered organized crime for decades. He's
best known for his never ending investigation into the nineteen
seventy six assassination of reporter Don Bowles, who was killed
in Phoenix by a car bomb. Something will cover later.
Devereaux also dug into both the Banano and Locavoli families.
With two major mob families in Tucson, you'd figure there
(10:10):
would be some bitter rivalry, so many angry egos crammed
into a small desert city, but that wasn't the case.
We're looking Holy moved out here from Detroit, and he
was a friend of Joe's and and and writed The
Look of Religion. Lots of rolling people from around the
country to move to Tucson and the Phoenix to retire.
(10:31):
Look at really largely came to the Tucson area to retire.
But Ana was still active when he was at me too,
so but look a Holy largely had left Detroit behind.
And there was a retired bob guy living comfortably in Tucson,
um on a place called the Grace Ranches they called
with his family. Uh and close friends and close enough
(10:54):
they know they shared the same accountant um they were.
You know, there were secrets between those guys. They were
both friends and not competitors, and you know, happily you know,
seeing each other as good friends. Yeah, even though the
Bananas and Look of OLiS maintained peace between their respective families,
their presidence was detrimental to Tucson as a whole. In
(11:16):
the late sixties, the city became a hot spot for
mob violence, most notably a series of high profile bombings.
Many of these bombings were tied to extortion attempts, insurance scams,
and vigilante payback. The motivation behind some, though, was more complicated.
In July, the homes of both Joe Banano Senior and
Pete Lacavoli Senior were bombed. There was a war started
(11:39):
between Banana and Lukavoli by a rogue FDIH named David Hale.
Back in the day, Hale began planning bombs on most
of Banana and the look of Holy people as if
they were fighting back and forth between themselves, trying to
start some sort of an internet scene mob war between
Lukaolian and It obviously didn't work, and David Hale got
(12:02):
exposed as having you know, done this himself as an
FBI agent. David Hale denied that he was behind the bombings.
Hale was never convicted of any crime tied to the bombings.
He didn't respond to interview requests in night, someone also
bombed the house of a prominent judge named Evo Diconcini.
(12:25):
DeConcini had been friends with Joe Banano, but later, when
his son Dennis was elected to the U. S. Senate,
he distanced himself from the mob boss. I just said
someone bombed Judge Deconcini's home. But guess who that someone was.
Jerry Paisley, the same Jerry Paisley who only six years
later would marry Peggy Baggage. Several sources told me Paisley
(12:49):
was behind the DeConcini bombing. Paisley was something of a fixer,
they said, a wanna be gangster. He was technically a mobster,
but low and seniority, more the guy you turn to
to break some legs or chuck some dynamite over a
fence than the mastermind of any operation. To my knowledge,
he was responsible for at least three bombings, including the
(13:10):
DeConcini bombing. So how on earth did Jerry Paisley, a
(13:40):
mobster who bombed to judge's house, end up marrying Peggy Begett,
the widow of a missing congressman. How did they meet?
The official story is this in late nine About a
year after Nick Beggetts vanished, Peggy was with a friend
at the holiday in an Anchorage when she ran into Paisley,
who was tending bar. They hit it off, and a
(14:00):
few months later, in March nineteen seventy four, they got
hitched in Tucson. I've already told you why the mob
was in Tucson. But why was the mob in Alaska
in the seventies. Why was Jerry Paisley in Alaska in
the seventies? One word oil. After the discovery of oil
in nineteen sixty eight at Prudeo Bay, Alaska boomed. Everything
(14:24):
in modern Alaska history can be split into pre nineteen
sixty eight and post nineteen Pre nineteen sixty eight, Alaska
was scenic and had timber and bears a stereotype, sure,
but people in the lower forty eight didn't really care
about it except for its natural beauty, some of its resources,
and at the height of the Cold War, it's strategic
(14:44):
location near the Soviet Union. Post ninety eight, Alaska was
an oil state, a state with immense wealth waiting to
be tapped, a state with mounds of money just waiting
to be pumped into people's pockets. Pre nineteen sixty eight,
there was crime, but wasn't exorbitant. Post ninety eight, it boomed.
Pre ninety eight, you could still find affordable housing. Post
(15:08):
night with a crush of new workers, you couldn't. It
was during this boom atmosphere in nineteen seventy that Alaskin's
first elected, Nick Baggetts, to the u. S. House. Beggetts
had run a campaign promising to maximize oil prosperity, but importantly,
he also acknowledged the problems that stirred up. Here's an
ad he ran in nineteen seventy. You don't have to
(15:30):
be an economist to know that we have a critical
housing shortage. All you have to do is try to
find a place to live. Five years ago, the typical
monthly payments for a twenty thousand dollar home would be
about one Now, a twenty thousand dollar home that's if
you can find one, would be well over two dollars
(15:50):
a month. America's leading housing official recently stated that less
than of Americans can really afford to buy a home.
That's the problem nationwide. The last situation is worse. There
are practical solutions. Nick Beggatch finds practical solutions as a
(16:11):
state senator. He's been doing it for eight years, and
he's been vocal about it. Nick begat has always wanted
you to know where he stood. He still does. Nick
beggat is Alaska's man for Congress. Beggatte went on to
help pass the Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act or ANKSA,
(16:32):
a monumental piece of legislation that removed a major obstacle
blocking construction of the Trans Alaska Pipeline, but the pipeline
still faced countless legal, political, and environmental hurdles. It wasn't
until March nine, two and a half years after Beggett's vanished,
that construction finally began. Poor morning. After years of planning,
(16:52):
court fights, and stockpiling of materials, construction of the Alaska
Oil Pipeline begins. It will run almost eight hundred miles
from the North supe of Alaska to the port of Valdes.
The pipeline is supposed to be finished in about two
years at a cost of at least six billion dollars.
The Big boom is already underway in Alaska. Asked the
(17:13):
people in the city of Fairbanks, for example, Jack Perkins did,
and here is his report. It used to be in
fair Banks that keeping the snow shoveled half the roof
was one of the main problems. But today, with the
coming of the pipe loving, Fairbanks is a boomtown and
there are new problems they never thought of here before.
(17:37):
Used to be in Fairbanks you can make a telephone
call right away without having to try for an hour
without getting buzzed off. But with the pipeline, the local
phone system is flooded with more calls than a year
(17:57):
ago and can't handle them. Used to be, you could
get an apartment, nothing fancy, but sheltered for a couple
hundred dollars. Now rents have doubled and tripled, one bedroom
five hundred a month and hardly anything available. Vacancy rate
in Fairbanks about zero. And consider crime rates. Always a
(18:21):
drinking town, but arrests for drunkenness now up a hundred
and thirty five percent, juvenile arrests up fifty robberies up
a hundred and twenty three percent, and with all the
pipeline workers passing through town with their rolls of money,
prostitution arrests up seven percent. Many of the people who
(18:42):
moved to Alaska long before the oil boom were upset
to see the pristine home changing so rapidly. What you're
getting here, of course, is what is what they call progress,
isn't it? Now that's one name for it. I've heard
other names for it which might not be arable. It
happens to sit. Is this bursting and straining toward what
is sometimes called progress? But maybe nowhere has it ever
(19:06):
happened so much and so fast. And it's not just
the people of Fairbanks weren't ready for it is there?
Many of them don't want it at all. Jack Perkins,
NBC News, Fairbanks, Alaska. Two years later, in June nine,
construction on the pipeline wrapped up. Oil Mania reached a
(19:28):
fever pitch. Now the richest could really flow. There's oil
in the pipeline, the Trans Alaska Pipeline. This evening pump
station number one at Prudeoe Bay, two hundred and fifty
miles north of the Arctic Circle today began pushing heated
crude oil into the pipe. Don Oliver was there here.
It is finally finished after eight years of planning and building.
(19:51):
The oil companies rattled off all sorts of superlative statistics
about it. Eight hundred miles long, built by a peak
workforce of more than tw thousands from one end to
the other, it will hold three hundred and eighty million
gallons of oil. The cost nearly eight billion dollars, the
largest most expensive project ever attempted by a private enterprise. Okay,
(20:16):
so again, by this point it should be blatantly obvious
why the Mob and Jerry Paisley specifically came to Alaska
in the seventies. Oil oil is what drew the Mob
to Alaska. Oil is what drew Paisley to Alaska. It
was a black gold rush. Here's Mike Grimes, a retired
cop who worked for the Anchorage Police Department. That was
(20:38):
the period when Alaska was just booming. It was like
a goal rush count because of oil pipeline being constructed,
so much money up there. They had such a dramatic
increase in population, and everybody coming from somewhere else, uh
to get rich in Alaska. And so it was a
(21:01):
very fascinating time to be working vice. And there was
only three of us on the vice squad at that time.
And uh, we had such an influx of prostitutional vainly
off the West coast. So the prostitution industry was just
booming up there on the gambling that we were having
(21:24):
people come from all over with organized crime behind them
from other states and set up underground gambling joints in
Anchorage and uh and then after hours clubs that were
illegally serving alcohol. So we were inundated for the three
(21:45):
man vice squad. It was a wild time and Paisley
and the mob wanted to cash in drugs, sex work,
you name it. Paisley moved to Alaska nineteen seventy three
with his close friend Sal Spinelli. Like Paisley, Spinelli was
a mobster with ties to both the lick of Oli
and Banano crime families. When Paisley wed Peggy beget in
(22:06):
March n Spinelli was his best man After the wedding.
When Peggy, Paisley, and Spinelli returned to Anchorage, Spinelli opened
a jewelry store with Peggy's oldest son, Nick Begett's Jr.
Multiple law enforcement sources told me the store was a
front for stolen jewelry, including turquoise traffic from Arizona to Alaska.
(22:26):
Nick Begats Jr. Now a well known conspiracy theorist, was
only a teenager at the time. He declined interview requests.
He was never convicted of any crime pertaining to the
theft of jewelry, and again, he was only a kid,
a kid who lost his dad and ended up with
a violent new stepfather, Jerry Paisley. As Paisley settled into
(23:13):
married life, Peggy Begett now Peggy Paisley, showered him with money.
After Nick, her first husband, disappeared, Peggy had received a
windfall of cash. According to documents I found archived at
the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, there was a fifty five
thousand dollar life insurance policy which had a double indemnity
clause for accidental death, so a hundred and ten thousand
(23:34):
dollars from that, and there was a one time forty
five dollar benefit from Congress, plus the balance of Nick's
checking in retirement accounts. Altogether, Peggy got at least a
hundred and fifty eight thousand, four hundred and thirty one
dollars and seven cents, about a million dollars today when
adjusted for inflation. She inherited other things too, including apartment buildings.
(23:57):
Peggy spent much of that money on her new husband
and Paisley. The newlyweds honeymoon in Mexico. They were joined
on that trip, as I said earlier, by Pete Lacavol Jr.
And his wife Cathy. Peggy bought Paisley expensive jewelry and
fancy cars too, including a Cadillac El Dorado and a
Jaguar x K. She also bought him a bar. In
(24:19):
May nineteen seventy four, two months after Peggy and Paisley wed,
they started a business called Max Inc. I obtained the
company's records from the state of Alaska. Peggy was the president,
Paisley was the secretary treasurer, and another man whom I'll
discussed later was the vice president. Max Inc. Operated a
bar and anchorage called the Alaska Mining Company, the type
(24:41):
of watering hole that minted money during the oil boom.
It had previously been called the Green Dragon. Here again
is Mike Grimes, the retired Anchorage cop who worked vice
in the seventies. I heard Paisley was involved in the
it's called Laska Mining Company before it was a reading dragon,
that he was involved in that place with the Beggy
(25:04):
just and I said, God, what are they doing this scumback?
You know, because uh, I mean, I was a lifelong
Alaskan Nick Beggy towards my congress. Peggy and Paisley's marriage
wasn't exactly common knowledge, at least to the general public,
but a good number of politically connected folks and members
of law enforcement knew about it. Perhaps this is a
(25:26):
good time to pause to examine why the marriage is
even newsworthy at all, because I know what people will say.
They'll say I'm reporting it because it's salacious. They'll say
I'm trying to sex up this story in order to
sell it. But that's not true. They don't know what
I know. At first glance, Peggy Begett seems to be
(25:46):
a sympathetic character, a woman whose husband vanished, a woman
who became a single mother to six kids, a woman
who's now a grandmother in her eighties. Typically her personal
life would be none of my business. Sure, she ran
for Congress several times after Nick disappeared, so she was
for a while a public figure. But that's not why
(26:07):
I'm reporting this, So bear with me. We have a
ways to go. I also want to be clear about
something else. I'm not reporting everything I know. I learned
a lot, but certain things, while salacious, aren't pertinent to
this story, and I'm purposely leaving them out. Also, one
more thing, Mark beget, Peggy's son, served for six years
(26:29):
in the U. S. Senate. So let me say too
that I have no political agenda here. In fact, I
think Mark was a good senator, and he was just
a kid when all of this happened, a kid traumatized
by the loss of his father. Peggy Beggett and Mark
Beggett declined multiple interview requests. Living large on Peggy's money,
(26:50):
Paisley spiraled out of control by nine six. He was
heavily into drugs, was married to Peggy. He just couldn't
leave a cocaine alone. And it's since the cocaine and
the women and this and that, and it just it
was terrible to to watch the deterioration of his and
(27:13):
Peggy's relationship. I felt sorry for Peggy, you know, and
she got herself into something that she probably had no idea.
Do you know if she knew of his background really
when they got married. I would say she did not,
but I have no way of knowing for sure. That's
(27:35):
Paisley's friend. George Schaefer. I've known Paisley since the early sixties.
I probably knew him better than anybody in Alaska. Schaefer
met Paisley in Arizona sometime around nineteen. He owned a bar,
it was called the Cabaret Lounge in Tucson in Arizona,
(27:59):
and at that time, there was a lot of things
going on with the well, there was all those bombings
in Tucson. They were there was a group of people
that were coming in and trying to get a protection
(28:20):
racket on with some of the local bar owners around
the town. And I was kind of brought in and
used as a little bit of a muscle for them.
Just they were coming in and intimidating the bar owners
themselves and just trying to get them to pay protection
(28:43):
money like they did back east. Who doesn't work that
well in the West. So that's how I originally met Paisley.
He was kind of on the other side, and we
kind of became friends, but not not to any great extent.
(29:05):
When you say he was quite of on the other side,
what do you mean by that, Well, he was associated
with several of the so called mafia people, mainly the
Nanos and and Lickabli. Paisley, Shafer said, was a quote
(29:31):
crazy person wherever he went because trouble as far as
the deal with Peggy she did by him that mining company,
which is the bar. I guess you don't. You're well
aware that I got shot there. I don't know the details.
I do know that you were shot there. Okay, Well
(29:54):
I was shot there by somebody. You know that no
one knew. I mean, it was just a an incident
that I was in the wrong place the wrong time. Pasically,
he had a partner in the bar long you know,
his wife gave him that more or less as a
wedding gift. As far as the ownership in the bar,
(30:15):
his partner was a real straight ace guy, would never
break the law. In fact, when I went there to
go to work, the only reason he called me in
is because his regular bouncer from Phoenix, ron Moawyer was
(30:35):
his name, and he had cleaned the bar up as
far as riff raff and all that. Well, he he
worked two years, had to go on vacation. Jerry wanted
me to work there for the two weeks while he
was on vacation, and I originally said no, and then
he talked me into it anyway, So I was just
(30:56):
supposed to be paid under the table for two weeks
and his partners, Oh, no, we can't do that. We
need to put him on the payroll. Yeah, we gotta
keep everything above board. And so I was lucky that
I was on work in the cop when I got shot.
But Danny Ziminich was the guy's name was partner's name,
(31:20):
Daniel Max. Zevinich was the third person who had an
ownership steak in Max Inc. The business Peggy and Paisley
started after they got married. Sevenich was the company's vice president.
The company was called Max Inc. Because both Zivinich and
Paisley shared the same middle name. Max Zeveni is a
key figure in this story, someone you'll hear about in
(31:40):
later episodes. He's still alive. He owns a popular bar
in Anchorage. He declined multiple requests for an on the
record interview. In late nineteen Peggy and Paisley got divorced.
Newly single, Paisley moved back to Arizona. For the next
fifth teen years, he was in and out of prison
(32:02):
on a variety of charges, including aggravated assault. Sometime around
he was paroled and he got a job in Phoenix
selling cars. There was a deal or another guy got
out of prison that he was in with. After a
few months they got together and there was a gal
involved a little bit. I don't know. He's told me
(32:26):
the details and I have forgotten them, except that he
ended up killing that guy and was going to kill
He told me that he pointed the gun. I guess
he killed a couple of guys, two of them in
the front seat, and he pointed the gun at the
girl and it jammed and didn't go off. Uh so
he didn't kill her. But anyway, now he's wanted by
(32:50):
the law. And that's when he came to live with me,
just for a few weeks, and I got him a
job where they didn't even want to know his name
and it was cashing to the table. Well, he he
destroyed any anything, any kind of friendship we ever had
(33:12):
because he ended up robbin some people while he was there.
And of course he left left my truck at the
Seattle airport. I was on vacation, left my truck at
the Seattle Airport. I had to go get it and
then I had to explain to the sheriffs. But there
was that he was on the ten most wanted and
(33:34):
they called him jealous Jerry. Well, he got so mad
about that because that wasn't a story at all. He
had nothing to do with the girl or he he
didn't have any affair with her or nothing. But so
that's motivated him to turn himself in. And that was in.
(33:58):
You just heard Schaefer say Heisley was on the ten
Most Wanted list, presumably the famous FBI list. Other people
told me Paisley was on America's Most Wanted. Neither is accurate.
In fact, Paisley was on a show called Prime Suspect.
Think of it as a kind of rip off of
America's Most Wanted. We tried to dig up the segment
to share it with you, but we couldn't find it.
(34:20):
When it aired. Sometime in ninety three, Paisley was living
with George Schaefer, hiding out from the cops in Eagle Creek, Oregon,
about thirty minutes southeast of Portland. By that point, he
had murdered at least five people, and he still had
murder on his mind. I'll tell you another interesting story
before we go, just like if you're interested in it.
(34:44):
It was an obsession to Jerry Head. While he was
in Oregon. He was obsessed with wanting to kill a
dentist in Safford, Arizona, and evidently the dentist had done
something to him. Farley was in prison in Arizona. He
(35:05):
was sent down there to have a tooth pole or something,
and a guy wouldn't give him enough novacaine. And then
he told Jerry, I'm here to State to extract pain
on you. I make you feel good. So Jerry was
obsessed with that, and he sware someday he was going
to kill a dentist. Paisley didn't end up killing the dentist. Instead,
(35:30):
in March, he turned himself in. He was subsequently convicted
of murder and sentenced to life in prison. By late
Paisley was fifty three. He had no chance of getting out,
no chance of leniency or reduced sentence. He was going
to die behind bars. That's when he figured, fuck it,
(35:51):
what do I have to lose? And he started talking
next time on missing in Alaska. That blow him up.
I don't know that JB have him blown up. I
don't know. I know I took a fucking package up
there and they said it was a bum. They might
have been bullshit me. Here are your three tasks for
(36:16):
the week. First, I'd really like to get a copy
of the episode of Prime Suspect that featured Jerry Paisley.
I know it aired sometime between June and March. Help
me find it. Second, I'd also like to get a
copy of a nineteen one special report produced by k
g u N, the Tucson ABC affiliate, called The Big
Cheese Joe Bonano's Notes. Finally, I mentioned earlier than an
(36:40):
undercover reporter witnessed Jerry Paisley's wedding to Peggy Baggage. I
believe that reporter is still alive, possibly living in the UK,
but I haven't been able to find him. His name
is Alex Dressler d R E H S L e R.
If you know him, contact us. You can reach us
by phone at one eight three three m I A
(37:01):
Tips that's one eight three three six four two eight
four seven seven again one eight three three six four
two eight four seven seven, or you can reach us
via email at tips at iHeart media dot com. That's tips,
T I P S at iHeart Media dot com. Ben
(37:23):
Bowen is our executive producer. Paul Decan is our supervising producer.
Chris Brown is our assistant producer. Seth Nicholas Johnson is
our producer, Sam T. Garden is our research assistant, and
I'm your host and executive producer, John Wallzac. You can
find me on Twitter at at John Wallzac j O
n W A L c z a K. Footage for
(37:46):
this episode was provided by NBC and the Vanderbilt Television
News Archive special thanks to the Alaska and Polar Region's
Collections and archives at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Missing
in Alaska is a co production of I Heart Media
and Greenfork Media m M m HM
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