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May 28, 2021 • 43 mins

A cabbie kills a key player, and investigators dither.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:04):
On November while incarcerated for murder in Arizona, Jerry Paisley
sat down with three investigators and made a series of
startling claims. In a minute, we'll review them, but first
let's go over what we know to be true. The facts.
Fact Congressman Nick Begett vanished on October sixteenth, nineteen seventy two. Fact,

(00:27):
Peggy Beggett, Nick's widow, married Jerry Paisley seventeen months later.
Fact Paisley had documented ties to to mob families, the Bananas,
and the look of Olie's. Fact Paisley committed at least
five murders and three bombings. Fact. Paisley and Peggy started
a business, Max Inc. Shortly after they married in nineteen Fact,

(00:52):
Paisley and Peggy's partner, the company's vice president, was a
man named Danny Zivinage. Fact, Peggy received a windfall of
cash after Nick, her first husband, disappeared. These things we
can prove now. Claims, and again these are Jerry Paisley's claims,
not mine. Claim Peggy Beggett met with mob boss Joe

(01:15):
Banano in the summer of nineteen seventy two, right before
Nick Baggetts vanished. Claim Joey Tarrola, a Banana lieutenant nicknamed
Joey the I, asked Paisley to carry a locked suit
case to Alaska sometime around September nineteen seventy two. Claim
Paisley flew the suit case to Anchorage, where he met

(01:36):
up with three men, Danny Zevanich, Jean Fowler, and Larry Fowler.
Claim Zevenitch later told Paisley that the suit case contained
a bomb and that the congressmen were assassinated. From my
Heart Media, this is Missing in Alaska. The story of

(01:56):
two congressmen who vanished in nineteen seventy two and my
quest to figure out what happened to them. I'm your host,
John Waalzac. On January, Paisley reiterated his claims during a

(02:16):
follow up interview. He kept naming the same names, including
Larry Fowler. Only twenty seven days later, Fowler was shot
to death on a remote road in Alaska. And that's
a fact. Are you aware that twenty seven days after
Paisley spoke with an agent in prison, that Larry Fowler

(02:38):
was murdered? Did you know it was that shortly after
Paisley spoke with an agent. Yes, that's Dave Tullis of
the Alaska State Troopers, one of three investigators who interviewed Paisley,
that whole homicide was a little bit strange also, But
Larry Fowler was had a reputation, was not the nicest

(03:00):
guy you'd ever want to meet here in Alaska. And
Larry Fowler's homicide was odd. Yes. Why he was apparently
drinking late at a club. He was the owner of
a pawn shop. Uh. He called for a taxi. I
don't know where his vehicle might have been at the time, uh,

(03:21):
and instructed taxi driver where to go, and he ended
up on the upper part of the hillside got really
he had fallen asleep, woke up, was really disturbed. As
I recall it, he pulled out a handgun and threatened
the text cab driver. According to the surviving member of
this which was a text cab driver, task cab driver
just happened to have a weapon in his vehicle. He

(03:43):
pulled it out and immediately shot Larry Feller. The cab
driver said he acted in self defense. This task cab
driver did not have a history of crime. He was
a immigrant to the United States and to Alaska. He
was I believe polish um. But I didn't find anything
completely bizarre about his story, except for the fact that

(04:05):
he just shot somebody, with the provocation being that he
thought his life was being threatened and he was employing
self defense. But it was just a strange homicide time.
We had other homicides that followed. They were a little
bit strange, also involving some Russian immigrants, but this one
was particularly strange because Larry Feller was the victim. The

(04:33):
night Fowler died, he had been drinking at an Anchorage
bar called the Time Out Lounge. That's where the cabby
picked him up. The cabby claimed that Fowler directed him
into the hills outside Anchorage. He claimed that Fowler at
some point, for some reason, pulled the gun, pointed it
at him, and said, you will be dead, motherfucker, you
will be dead. He said, he shot Fowler and self defense.

(04:56):
He was afraid, in part because other local cabbies had
been murd heard recently during botched robberies. Fowler's family found
the story suspicious. Why was Fowler in some random, remote
area outside Anchorage. Why would he pull a gun on
the driver. Fowler was wealthy, He certainly wasn't trying to
rob the driver. The night he died, Fowler was dripping

(05:19):
in golden diamonds and he had cash on him on
the flip side. The cops didn't believe that the driver
was trying to rob Fowler either. They said the physical
evidence backed up the driver's story and he took and
passed a polygraph or Lie detector test. So on the surface,
it seems that the timing of Fowler's death so soon

(05:41):
after Paisley named him as someone with knowledge of the
missing congressman's alleged assassination was a pure coincidence. While digging
into Fowler's death, I managed to track down one of
his friends, Bob Wheel, who had breakfast with him the
day he died. That day, Wheel was raising money for
his rotary club. He wanted it Fouler to chip in.

(06:01):
The fundraiser was, shall we say creative. My rotary club
does an event every year called Moose Marble Madness, and
believe it or not, we take two thousand genuine moose nuggets.
I don't know if you've ever seen what a moose
turd looks like, but they're about this bigger round. They're
kind of oval shaped and because of their diet being
these birch trees and willow trees and all that kind

(06:22):
of thing. When they take a dump, I mean, it's
a solid, oval shaped nugget that's very hard. So we
came up with the brilliant idea myself and my dentist
and another dentist that was in my rotary club thirty
one years ago, and decided to call it Moose Marble Madness.
We numbered one through two thousand of these moose turds,
and then we had tickets made and we would sell

(06:44):
the turds for ten bucks apiece, and we'd go up
in a helicopter and they would drop the moose nuggets
out of a helicopter. Anyway, that morning, the day he died,
Larry Fowler gave his buddy Bob Wheel a hundred bucks
for ten tickets. The next day, when we learned of
Fowler's death, he was stunned. He was also confused. Like

(07:05):
Fowler's family, he wondered what his friend had been doing
on some random, unfamiliar road. Why was he there? A
short time later, we'll hurt an explanation. The only thing
I know is that apparently somebody, somebody sent a woman
in there from what I have heard, and the woman
slipped Larry a piece of paper with her phone number

(07:27):
on it and her address and said something in the
effect why don't you come see me or visit me
or something. So when Larry left the bar at one
or two am, that was the reason for the taxi
cab driver being on Rabbit Upper on Upper Rabbit Creek
Road was apparently going to this woman's address that was
on the piece of paper that Larry had that this
woman had slipped him the night before. Fowler was married

(07:50):
at the time, so if he was meeting up with
another woman that night, it could explain why he was
in an unfamiliar place and why it would be kept
hush hush. Well, wasn't the only person who told me this.
A second source said he heard the same thing. That
source speculated that it was a setup, that Fowler was
lured out of the bar and killed for some unknown reason.

(08:12):
So who was this mystery woman? Did she know Fowler previously?
Probably not, since she had to give him her phone number.
Adding to the intrigue, multiple sources told me that at
the time of his death, Fowler was funneling illegal contributions
to political campaigns and cash directly to multiple politicians. I've
heard names of people allegedly involved in the scheme, but

(08:33):
without further proof, I can't disclose them for now. Ultimately,
investigators believe the cab driver and in U the Anchorage
d A declined to prosecute him. So Larry Fowler, one

(09:11):
of five men Jerry Paisley said was involved with or
knew of, the alleged bombing of the missing congressman's plane,
was killed before investigators could question him. But what about
the other four men Paisley named Joe Banano, Joeya Tarrola,
Danny Zivinich, and Jeane Fowler. Banano died in two thousand two.
Iya tar Rolla died in I tried to interview Aya

(09:34):
tar Rolla before he died, but when I reached him
by phone in late he declined to comment and he
hung up on me. Zivinich declined multiple requests for an
on the record interview, and Jean Fowler, well, wait, we'll
get to him, Okay. So after Jerry Paisley made such
startling claims, what exactly happened? What kind of investigation took place?

(10:00):
Here's Dave Tullis, the Alaska State trooper. To my surprise,
when I got back with the tapes. Uh, we did
a transcript which I looked over and stored the tapes
in evidence, and after I decided this was pretty big
news and something that needs to be shared with bosses plural,

(10:21):
I went to my sergeant and my lieutenant and gave
them my transcript and a copy of my notes, and
they looked at it for not a long period of
time and said, we need to pass this off to
the FBI. And they notified the FBI and gave them
the transcript. And part of my recollection is that they

(10:44):
gave them the tapes. Now, whether those were duplicate tapes
the original tapes, I'm not sure. On December, the FBI's
Anchorage office received a copy of the Paisley transcript. That
did the bureau to launch a preliminary investigation, led by
Special Agent Luianne Henderson. Multiple people described Henderson to me

(11:07):
as an outstanding, hard working agent, but for some reason,
her investigation into Paisley's claims was by all accounts, cursory, insufficient,
and weak. Mainly, it consisted of reviewing the transcript, looking
at court records, reviewing FBI files, and reading old newspaper clips.
To my knowledge, Henderson conducted only a single interview on September.

(11:32):
That day, Henderson and another agent spoke with Danny Zevenitch,
Paisley's former business partner, the man who Paisley claimed told
him that the missing congressman's plane was bombed. The FBI's
interview was Zvinich, lasted a total of forty five minutes. Then,
on that very same day, the office of the U
S Attorney in Alaska declined to prosecute the case, which,

(11:53):
funny enough, nobody seems to remember. Bob Bundy, the U
S Attorney at the time, told me doesn't remember the case.
Karen Leffler, the assistant U S attorney who handled it
directly told me she doesn't remember the case, Whiley Thompson,
at the time, the Special Agent in charge or s
A C. Of the FBI in Alaska, told me he
doesn't remember the case, and former special Agent Lewin Henderson

(12:17):
declined a request for an on the record interview in September.
The same month, the FBI closed its investigation into Paisley's claims.
It replaced s a C. Wiley Thompson with another agent,
Marshall Bratton. Bratton's name is on an FBI document acknowledging
that the U. S. Attorney's Office declined to prosecute the case.

(12:37):
Bratton told me he doesn't remember the case either. Kevin Friesley,
a supervisor in the FBI's Anchor's office at the time,
decline interview request. When I reached him by phone, he
hung up on me. Danny Zevinich also declined multiple requests
for an on the record interview. So basically nobody remembers
the case and or nobody wants to talk about it.

(12:59):
It's important to know that Zivinich's bar was at the
time a popular watering hole for FBI agents. Many of
the same agents who would have been tasked with investigating
him were friends with him and hung out at his bar.
I'm not insinuating that this was the case with Special
Agent Henderson, who to my knowledge was not friends with

(13:19):
Zivinach and did not frequent his bar unlike some of
her colleagues. But why did the FBI only conduct a
single interview the Zivinach interview. Theoretically the Bureau could have
interviewed Larry Fowler, I guess, but to be fair, Fowler
was killed only weeks after Paisley first named him, but
the FBI never interviewed any of the other people Paisley named.

(13:43):
Joe Banano was never interviewed, Gene Fowler was never interviewed,
Joey A. Tarola was never interviewed, and Peggy Baggatte wasn't interviewed.
The FBI only interviewed one person, Danny Zivinich, for forty
five minutes. The three Arizona and Alaska investigators who interviewed

(14:07):
Jerry Paisley before the FBI got involved have serious doubts
about how the bureau investigated, or more specifically, failed to investigate,
Paisley's claims. Do you think, given the severity and the
seriousness of Jerry Paisley's allegations, that it is sufficient enough

(14:30):
of an investigation to basically review archives and newspaper club
bangs and talked to one suspect for forty five minutes.
I would have to say no, I don't think that's
sufficient at all. And one of the things I was
cautious about is Arizona doesn't really allow recordings in a

(14:51):
penal institution, but the Elastia State troopers insisted, and I
insisted that we record the conversation. Had we not done that,
there would have been no record of really what happened
except our notes. The FBI doesn't record hardly anything. In
my experience. They used three O two's where they write
their notes, but they do not record. And I was

(15:14):
very pleased that the troopers insisted, and I insisted on
recording their conversations, and I was quite surprised that it
didn't go any farther than that. In the FBI apparently
didn't do an extensive investigation on the subject, and I
didn't really know how much they had or had not done,
but word filled back over a couple of years, and

(15:37):
I thought it was not well done at all. Dave
Tullus is a reliable swords if there ever was one.
He served for twenty years in the US Air Force
as both a fighter pilot and an aircraft accident investigator.
He served for six years as an Alaska State trooper
investigating major crimes, including homicides, and later he worked for
the Anchorage International Airport Police and Fire Department. Then he retired.

(16:00):
Mike Grimes, one of the other two investigators, also had
decades of experience, first as a patrolman for the Anchorage
Police Department, then on the vice squad, and finally as
head of the department's homicide unit. Getting back to the FBI.
When you got back to Alaska, what follow up did
you see on what Paisley had told you about the

(16:22):
alleged bombing. When I got back, I do you know
him telling me this, I knew how big a deal
it was, um, you know, to us Congressman might have
been murdered while they were in Alaska. I called an
FBI agent that I worked with numerous cases homicides and

(16:46):
such as am and we met and I told her,
and then you know, she said, you know, I gotta
take this right to the s AC, you know. And
I at that time I waited till uh we were
thinking these murder these talents about if the body showed
up or whatever. They were probably trooper cases, you know

(17:08):
from where he's saying, they took them out somewhere. So
Dave tall Us took the cassette tapes and had them
all transcribed, and the transcription of multiple pages not that thick,
and and so I waited until I got the transcript back,
and uh so I ran off an extra copy and

(17:30):
met with the FBI agent blue Ann Henderson, and I
told her about it, and I said, here's the transcript,
and I said, this is way way out of my
league as far as uh my jurisdiction on such as that.
And she took it and I didn't hear anything from

(17:53):
her for three or four weeks, you know, nothing, and
uh you know, which really uce me because we had
worked so closely on some other cases. Uh. I mean,
we did a drug murder where we had to uh
again flight Arizona and worked with drug murder and brought

(18:14):
the guy back with us. Uh, and he took us
to where the body was up in Alaska. But so
we had a great relationship and I really a lot
of respect for it. Anyway, she came back or didn't
come back with any information. I finally kept calling and
calling and uh you know, and she said, well, meet

(18:35):
me somewhere. So obviously she didn't want to meet in
her office or my office. So we went and met
and she said, I said, what's going on? I said,
I keep waiting for a phone call with somebody wanting
to interview me. And she goes, uh, this ain't being
handled out of here. This thing s a C. He
called Washington, and Washington said, don't do anything. You don't

(19:02):
put anybody on this, do not open investigations, send everything
you got to us. I go, oh okay. Then uh So,
I said, well, I would imagine that there whoever they
send to look into this is going to be calling me.
That only makes sense. I know everybody. I did. That
took the statement from him, and uh And I worked

(19:25):
with the FBI over and over. I had just graduated
from the FBI National Academy the year before that Quantico.
I had been brought to Quantico to instruct on our
homicide response team set up. And I've been to Quantico
and FBI Academy JE probably seven eight nine times and

(19:50):
they're not gonna call me. I mean that. I was amazed.
I mean I was brought in the Alaska representative for
the founding of the International Homicide Investigator Association, and I
was the Alaska guy then. So I had been vetted
by the the FEDS over and over again, and these

(20:11):
guys are going to come out of Washington, d C.
And they're not gonna call it one guy that knows
all these people. That doesn't even make sense. The FBI's
investigation went nowhere. Like Grimes and Tullus, Tom Davis, the
third investigator, also had a long distinguished career in law enforcement.
He worked for decades for the Arizona Department of Public Safety,

(20:33):
focusing for a time un organized crime. Davis told me
that other than him Grimes and tell us, someone from
the FBI also interviewed Paisley directly. If that's true, and
I can't prove that it is, there's no official record
of the interview and no information on who conducted it.
The Bureau I know for a fact interviewed Jerry Um

(20:56):
only because they're answered to me was that we didn't
need your approval. And I said back when I said,
that's right, I said, did he cooperate? Wow, he's not believable.
It's okay to your knowledge. Was there any more in

(21:17):
depth investigation or follow up? No, But a lot of
that basically has to do with the fact that the
conversation had to do with a person that um, get

(21:39):
in line, my friend. Uh, and you you want to
push your weight around, that's fine, but get in line.
In conclusion, then Tom Davis, Mike Grimes, and Dave Tollis,
three seasoned investigators, interview Jerry Paisley in Arizona in November.

(22:03):
Paisley told them that he transported a locked suitcase to
Alaska nineteen seventy two that Danny's Ivanache, with whom he
and Peggy Begett started a business, told him the suitcase
contained high tech explosives and that the missing congressman's plane
had been bombed. The FBI learned about this and conducted
a cursory feeble investigation, and the U. S. Attorney for Alaska,

(22:26):
the Assistant U. S Attorney, the Special Agent in charge
of the FBI in Alaska, and the S A C
who replaced him, none of them supposedly remember any of this.
I guess it's possible to forget that time in your
career when a murderer with mob ties who married the
widow of a missing congressman claimed the congressman was assassinated
and that a famous missing plane had been bombed. Is

(22:49):
that something you would forget? So the FBI didn't do

(23:17):
much and the U. S. Attorney's office declined to prosecute
the case. What about the media In the mid nineties
and enterprising producer for Dateline NBC named Chris Shoal learned
about Paisley's allegations and launched his own investigation. Shoal, who's
now an executive at NBC News, did a really good job.
I respect him. We had some of the same sources.

(23:39):
One of these sources gave me copies of letters and
emails Shoal sent in the nineties and early two thousand's.
Typically I would never report the content of another reporter's correspondence.
But since so few people investigated Paisley's claims, so many
sources have died, and the information is valuable, I'm breaking
that rule. And an email sent to a source on

(24:00):
September sev Seal wrote that he spoke quote to a
former reporter for the Anchorage Daily News. He won a
Pulitzer for reporting on the mafia and Alaska in the
nineteen seventies, and he told me my theory was not
only plausible, but that law enforcement sources of his speculated
about a bomb even back then. Shul continued quote. The

(24:21):
reporter told me one of his law enforcement sources took
several statements from witnesses that night who reported seeing someone
lurking around the plane. I'm trying to locate the officer
who told the reporter this and ultimately those witnesses. So
here we have a four time Emmy Award winning investigative
producer saying that one of his sources, a Pulitzer winner,

(24:42):
heard directly from a cop that witnesses saw someone lurking
around the congressman's plane the night before it disappeared. I
know that's a chain of so and so heard from
so and so, but look at the provenance. A cop
told a Pulitzer winner, who in turn told a respected
producer for Dateline NBC. In a separate letter to a
different source, which I also obtained, Schol emphasized that he

(25:03):
was in no way a conspiracy theorist. Quote. My profession
requires skepticism, but I'm also a committed investigative journalist, and frankly,
it just seems like something stinks here. He goes on
to say that he was quote immensely skeptical of claims
made by people like Paisley, who clearly enjoys talking about
his past exploits. That alone may be enough motivation for

(25:26):
him to lie, but beyond that, he seems to have
little reason to completely fabricate a story, and in fact,
large chunks of what he's saying I've been able to document. Honestly,
I dreaded asking Schul for an interview. This is just
a weird situation for both of us because now not
only is schulan executive at NBC News, but specifically he

(25:48):
helps to oversee news standards, working on issues of fairness
and accuracy. Typically, he would be one of the people
helping to decide whether or not NBC reporters should participate
in a project like this. So was surprised that he
agreed to do an interview, and I was excited to
speak with him. You had the rare opportunity to speak
to Jerry Paisley. Did you interview him in President I

(26:09):
met him? Um, yeah, not with a camera, but yes,
he wasn't a jail um um it was whatever the
name of the jail is there in Tucson, the PMA
County Jail, right, that sounds right. And what was what
was that experience like meeting him? Um? Weird? I mean
I arrived and you know, you go through the normal

(26:32):
security stuff with the jail, um, glass reinforced doors, all
of that kind of thing, went past the security booth,
checked in my my stuff, um and uh, and went
into the room, and it was a small room. Uh.
He was sitting across the table from me, kind of

(26:53):
at an angle and uh, I he was not wearing handcuffs,
um uh and just was sitting there and we kind
of shook hands, um and I sat down. He sat down,
and that's about when he told me he uh he
could kill me right right then if he wanted to,

(27:15):
which was you know, I actually thought it was pretty silly.
You know. It seemed like he was trying to uh
a little bit of bluster, a little bit of a bluff.
I didn't take him seriously, um, but it was I
thought a pretty good sign uh as to what this
guy was all about. I asked, so what he meant

(27:39):
in the nineties when he wrote that quote something stinks here? Well,
it was so weird, right, I mean, Paisley was an
unquestionably lousy guy. And uh the fact that he was
uh later got married to the the wife of a
congressman who died, and that he was making claims about

(28:02):
having some involvement in that um thinks right. I mean
I don't know what it means. I wasn't able to
determine for sure that he was telling the truth. That's clear.
But I also wasn't uh aware of any evidence that
I came across that would indicate he had a real

(28:24):
good reason to lie. Prisoners, you know, guys like that
lie all the time, and and they sometimes do it
for their own reasons. It's not always clear what their
reasoning is. Maybe he wanted to transfer to another facility somewhere,
but from what I remember, there was no real upside
to him lying about this, and I, as I had

(28:45):
been told, he had also been truthful to uh, you know,
on law enforcement officer on a number of other occasions
about other things he had been involved with that they
sort of knew he had been involved with. So my
my conclusion was, this is weird. It stinks. It just

(29:05):
by by that, it doesn't mean uh that I had
you know, had this nail down. It means that something
wasn't right. Has felt that way to me. Chol said
that while he can't prove anything Paisley came across as truthful,
I can tell you that when I when I walked in,
when I sat down with him, um, I I came

(29:27):
away believing him, at least in part and partly because
he did not actually fest up to anything that would
have made his role look you know, huge, right, He
fessed up to a fairly minor role. Um and and
he also professed that he didn't really know why that's
my recollection anyway, He didn't really know what he was

(29:50):
doing or the purpose of everything behind it. But he
played this role, he said, so I to me, I
came away because I thought, you know, if this guy
was really trying to hype himself, he would have made
himself a bigger character. He was already uh, you know,
I think in life imprisoned at that point, he had
really nothing to lose by fessing up two more uh,

(30:12):
and I found him, you know, I mean, I've interviewed
a lot of people through the years who um, who
are lying or who have an incentive to life, and
I have a pretty good radar for that. There's no
way to know for sure with him, but I just
found incredible. Seal also spoke briefly with Peggy Baggage. I
assume there's probably nothing you can share directly about that conversation. Yeah,

(30:35):
I don't want to get into the details. It's it's
fair to say she thought she thought Beasley was a
bad guy. Yea. She regretted it you put it that way,
but beyond that, I don't want to characterize anything. Ultimately,
despite Shul's hard work, Dateline didn't run the story, mainly

(30:56):
because there was no definitive ending. So who was the
pulitzer winning reporter who told Schul that witnesses saw someone
lurking around the missing congressman's plane the night before it vanished?
In an email, should didn't name the reporter, but his
description of a reporter who won a pulitzer in Alaska

(31:18):
in the seventies narrow sings down significantly. In fact, there
are only two people who fit that profile, Bob Porterfield
and Howard Weaver. Porterfield and Weaver worked for the Anchorage
Daily News in ninety six. They want a Pulitzer for
a series they did on the statewide influence of the
powerful Teamsters Union. I tried to interview the men, both

(31:39):
of whom are still alive. Porterfield declined requests from on
the record interview. Weaver, however, agreed to speak with me,
but after our initial email exchange, he stopped responding. Schul
said that if memory serves him, it was Weaver, not Porterfield,
who told him that witnesses saw someone lurking around the
plane the night before it disappeared. Oddly enough, Weaver's name

(32:00):
has come up repeatedly during my investigation, sometimes in unexpected situations.
Multiple people, not Chris Shoal, but others, told me that
Weaver knows much more about all of this than he's
letting on. That he has specific important information about Paisley's claims.
So Howard, if you're listening, call me. Around two thousand

(32:27):
and award winning Alaska author named Charles Wolf started digging
into Paisley's claims too. Among other people, woll four spoke
with Mike Grimes, the Anchorage cop who helped interview Paisley.
Grimes said he gave woll four everything he had, but
for some reason, woll Fourth never wrote a book like
Chris Schal, he dropped the project. According to Grimes, woll

(32:49):
four got scared off. Woll Fourth did not respond to
recent interview requests, but I did have a chance to
speak with him briefly by phone. In During that call,
wll Fourth told me that he dropped the project not
because he was scared off, but because he was unable
to corroborate Paisley's claims to definitively establish beyond doubt the
correct narrative. But there's something odd here. See. Wal Fourth

(33:14):
went to high school with Mark Beggatte and Tom beggat
He's a friend of the Beggatte family. In fact, he
told me that the Beggatte family cooperated with him on
the project. So if you take him at his word,
then he was investigating claims made by his friends x
step father that their mother had been involved in the
assassination of their father, and he was going to publish

(33:34):
a book on all of this. Does that make sense
to you? I mean, maybe to get ahead of the story,
I guess, But it makes more sense to me that
woll Fourth conducted what would typically be referred to as
opposition research or OPO to see what dirt he could
dig up on Mark Beggatt before Beggetts ran for public office.
Shortly after wall Fourth dropped the project, Mark Beggatt was

(33:55):
elected the mayor of Anchorage. He served two terms before
winning a seat in the US Senate in two thousand eight.
He lost his reelection bid. He lost a guber nottorial
bid two Tom begat his brother, is also a politician
an Alaska state Senator via email. Tom Beggett's denied that
Wolforce research was some kind of OPO project conducted on

(34:18):
behalf of the Beggage family, But that's not consistent with
what Wolf Fourth, who spent six months on the project,
told me. In wolf Fourth said quote, it was kind
of a deal where the Beggage has welcomed me to
work on it before Mark ran for mayor. I think
they wanted to know what's the worst out there, and
if I found anything, I was going to publish it.
I was going to do a book. Wolf Fourth didn't

(34:40):
publish a book, but he did go on to work
as a consultant and speechwriter for Mark Beggatt from two
thousand three to two thousand nine. So, in conclusion, before me,
there were at least two other j analists who investigated

(35:01):
Paisley's claims, Chris shal the Dateline producer, and Charles Wolfforth,
the author. However, Paisley's claims were never made public until
that's when I published fore Gone, an initial story on
my findings, and that year I pitched my research to
every major news outlet in Alaska, every newspaper, every magazine,
every TV station, every news radio station. Not a single

(35:24):
outlet in the state reported anything I found, And you
know what, I respect that. Okay, nobody owes me anything, obviously,
but this isn't about me. These were serious claims about
a missing politician that prompted a previously unreported FBI investigation,
and I made clear that I wasn't alleging anything. I
did not pitch the story saying the plane was bombed.

(35:47):
I pitched the story saying Jerry Paisley claimed the missing
plane was bombed. I offered to connect reporters in Alaska
to my own sources. I offered to provide documents. In
the end, only a single allowsk of reporter interviewed me,
and then that reporter didn't air the piece. In my opinion,
Paisley's claims deserved to be investigated. Here we have a

(36:09):
convicted murderer with documented mob ties who married the widow
of a missing congressman and claimed he played a part
in the death of the congressman. So why did the
Alaska media ignore this story. I'm not entirely sure, but
I can make a few educated guesses. First, it's toxic.
Alaska is huge land wise, but it has a small

(36:31):
insular circle of political and media elites. Why rock the boat?
Why piste off a powerful political family in the state
the Beggage is Second, I think there's general sympathy for
the Beggage kids, which I understand. They lost their dad
at a young age. They suffered a horrible loss and
lifelong grief. Honestly, I feel bad for them. Third, the

(36:52):
story is complex. It's easier to ignore than to investigate.
I mean, here I am nine years later. Fourth, I
was just a freelancer. It was easy to ignore me. Thankfully, though,
I did get some press. In November, my friend and
former colleague at Seattle Weekly, Rick Anderson, a really amazing

(37:13):
old school reporter who later died, wrote a cover story
on my findings. It was Seattle, not Alaska, but Seattle
is the closest major American city to Alaska, and I'll
always be grateful to Rick for writing that story. Rick's
story opened Pandora's box. After it ran, I got many
new tips, including one which really blew me away, a

(37:35):
tip from a reliable source who said they may have
found part of the missing plane. So later, in part
because of that tip, we're going to Alaska. But first
we're going to Arizona next time on missing in Alaska
and your father met him at the airport. My father, Yes,

(37:59):
Oh wow, did you did you not know that? No? No,
this is the only thing I know about anything to
do with with with with What I think you're talking
about is Jerry was telling people there's a real big
deal about to go down, and that was right about
the time that the that the baggage plane went down.

(38:22):
But uh no, this you're blown me away with this.
Before we go, two things. First, we're dropping a bonus
episode this week. It's the full text of a never
before published report on Jerry Paisley, prepared by a private

(38:42):
investigator for Dateline NBC. So check it out. Second, something
new an epilogue. Two years after the FBI ended its
investigation into Jerry Paisley's claims, the bureau got an interesting
new lead. A tipster whose name is blacked out in
records I obtained, sent the FBI copies of letters exchanged

(39:05):
between two people who discussed the alleged assassination of the
missing congressman. The names of these two individuals are blacked out,
but let me read you part of an official FBI
document with the word blank substituted in for redacted sections. Quote.
The correspondence, which covers the period September twelve to October
thirty one, consists of letters allegedly written by Blank to

(39:28):
Blank that he had a conversation with Blank in which
Blank claims that while in Alaska nineteen seventy two, he
and Blank placed the bomb aboard Congressman Hail Boggs's plane.
Blank allegedly told Blank that the bombing was carried out
on the orders of his boss, alleged Blank, who was
doing a favor for Hoover. According to Blank, Congressman Boggs

(39:51):
wanted to cut the budget of the FBI, and Hoover
wanted Boggs taken out. So again, that's part of an
official FBI memo. Now here's something written by the tipster
who forwarded the mysterious letters to the bureau. Quote the
Hoover angle sounds far fetched to me. A convict conning
a convict. On the other hand, however, the insurance motive

(40:13):
obviously could have some basis in fact. At any rate,
I will keep you informed if there are any subsequent letters.
This is absolutely fascinating. Someone somehow got copies of letters
exchanged between two people, two convicts, apparently discussing the alleged
assassination of the missing congressman. Was one of the convicts,

(40:33):
Jerry Paisley. Maybe maybe not. I don't know something else
that's very interesting. The mystery letters covered the period of
September twelve to October, so the letters start on September.
That was exactly one day before the FBI interviewed Danny Zivinach,
one day before the U. S. Attorney's Office declined to

(40:56):
prosecute the case. So your task this week involves these letters,
specifically the tipster who sent them to the FBI. The
FBI blacked out nearly all of the tipsters information, nearly all.
At the bottom of the tipster's letter, still visible in
the footer, you can see the following Vanderbilt University one
two zero seven eight Avenue South, Nashville, Tennessee three seven

(41:21):
to one two telephone six three two one nine five
six eight facts six to seven zero seven seven eight.
So whoever sent the FBI the mystery letters in used
Vanderbilt University letter head. If you know who sent the letters,

(41:41):
or you are the person who sent the letters, please
contact us. You can reach us by phone at one
eight three three m I A tips that's one eight
three three six four two eight four seven seven again
one eight three three six four two eight war seven seven,

(42:02):
or you can reach us via email at tips at
i heeart media dot com. That's tips, T I P
s at i heeart media dot com. An important note,
none of the people Jerry Paisley claimed took part in
or had knowledge of the alleged bombing Joe Bonano, Joey A. Tarola,
Danny Zevianich, Gene Fowler, Larry Fowler, or Peggy Baggage where

(42:26):
ever charged with or convicted of crimes tied to any
of Paisley's allegations. Ben Boland 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

(42:48):
John Wallzac j O n W A L c z
A K special thanks to Tom Davis, Mike Grimes, and
Dave Tullis for having the courage to speak out while
so many others remained silent. Missing in Alaska is a
co production of I Heart Media and Greenfork Media. H
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