There have been homicide cases in the past that seem have the makings of one those Seventies paranoid political thrillers that to this day remain either unsolved or it is clear that we have not been told the whole truth. I have discussed the mysterious circumstances before and after the death of Vince Foster, and if one allows themselves to ask seemingly pertinent questions, the potential for a scandal as this country has never seen before makes it clear why no one in Washington D.C. was the least bit interested in opening up that Pandora’s Box of political horror.
In other cases of homicide, there is no great “mystery” about it; it just seems that there is a lack of “want” about it. Recently I talked about the tenth year in the “unsolved” disappearance of the then two-year-old Sky Metalwala in Bellevue, and the fact that his mother, Julia Biryukova, is still in town, which would indicate that she doesn’t feel any motherly affection for him if he was in fact still alive. The mentally-unbalanced Biryukova probably did kill him, just as she “dreamed” about doing that resulted in another short stint in a mental ward; yet she was still allowed sole custody of the boy and his sister in divorce proceedings. And there she is, walking the streets a free woman, probably never to be charged with anything—even though everyone knows about her—unless the by now skeletal remains of the boy are uncovered, somewhere.
And then earlier this week there was the twentieth anniversary of the murder of federal prosecutor Tom Wales in the basement office of his home in the Queen Anne district of Seattle, commemorated by the announcement of raising the reward for information leading to the arrest of his killer to $2.5 million. One would have thought that $1.5 million would have been sufficient after all this time, but despite the FBI putting tons of resources into the case, nothing concrete has ever emerged, and no informant has come forward with credible information. In 2018, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein paid a visit, and during a press conference announced that there was a “break” in the case, suggesting the killer was a “paid hitman.” but what came of that was another embarrassing dud.
The problem was that like so much that characterized the FBI’s investigation—most of it during the tenure of then FBI Director Robert Mueller—it was another rabbit hole that desperate investigators jumped into. Investigators claimed that a woman named Shawna Reid confessed to knowing the identity of Wales’ killer, but before a grand jury she denied ever having made such a confession. Reid was then charged with lying to the grand jury; although the case didn’t look good for the prosecution or the credibility of the FBI, she eventually pled guilty to a lesser charge of obstruction, and sentenced to time served. There is of course a composite sketch of an alleged “possible witness,” but that is not based on what any witnesses who were there to hear the shooting claim to have seen, since none of those witnesses say they saw the shooter—even those who lived next door to the crime scene—although one person claimed to have seen a man running away in the dark.
There is a ten-part podcast by the unsolved crime series “Somebody Somewhere” whose first case study in 2018 was the Wales murder mystery; while it didn’t actually make an identification of the "most likely" perpetrator, it did unearth some interested tidbits that suggested that maybe the “truth” is something that not just the killer wants to remain unknown. The series started at the beginning of the case, when the murder occurred around 11 PM on October 11, 2001. The killer had likely previously staked out the location, knowing that Wales would work in a basement office at night, accessible to the killer through a window, and be able to escape unseen through a narrow passage way nearby. Wales was hit by two bullets, one in his torso and one in his throat; still alive when he arrived at the Harborview hospital, he apparently did not speak before he died three hours later.
Initially the FBI and the Seattle Police Department “shared” investigative responsibilities, but that proved to be a mistake due to back-and-forth sniping and the likely mishandling or destruction of physical evidence, which wasn’t much save for the bullets and shell casings found at the scene.
We learn that newcomers to the Seattle FBI field office several years after the killing had urged that “new eyes” were needed on the case because agents were fixated on one man without result, but the special prosecutor in the case, Steven Clymer, made the unusual move of persuading FBI Director Mueller personally not to make any changes in personnel on the case. In this week’s announcement, Clymer revealed that those “new eyes” would be allowed in the investigation after all, meaning that his office in New York would transfer responsibilities of the case to the Seattle branch of the DA’s office.
The story of the Wales case boggles the mind. The FBI was conned by a career criminal and soon-to-be serial killer named Scott Kimball, who while in prison in Alaska promised to reveal jailhouse “scoops,” including claiming to have heard something about the Wales killing, and would be happy to divulge it if he was transferred to Colorado. Apparently he was thought to be “credible” since he was supposedly in town at the time of the Wales killing. As an FBI informant, he was allowed “supervised” parole and paid large amounts of money, which didn’t prevent him from committing crimes, including the murder of at least four people and possibly twenty more.
Between crimes and killings, Kimball provided unreliable information in open cases. He claimed to have “heard” a fellow inmate in Alaska named “Jeremiah” claim that he was involved in the Wales “hit.” Certainly it would have been easy for the FBI to verify that there was an inmate named Jeremiah, but even the sleuths with “Somebody Somewhere” never mentioned locating such a person, even after interviewing Kimball, currently spending the rest of his life in prison in Colorado.
Having previously ruled out anyone having a motive to kill him in his personal life (everyone seemed to like him, including his ex-wife he divorced from after she “outed” herself as a lesbian), or anyone angry about his support for gun control, then there must be a case that Wales worked on in which a defendant had a particularly strong grudge against him. Suspicion fell immediately on someone only identified as “The Pilot,” apparently out of fear he was crazy enough to attack those who named him. The FBI continues to view him as a suspect despite the fact they haven’t found enough evidence to charge him with anything after all this time.
The “Somebody” sleuths, David Payne and Jody Gottlieb, decided to focus on an unusual case involving “The Pilot” and others that was still in litigation at the time of the killing. “The Pilot” was demanding redress because he believed he was an innocent man unfairly targeted by the feds and the FAA; those who “The Pilot” targeted with his grievances, including a newspaper reporter who inadvertently identified him as the “president” rather than as “vice president” of a small private company called Intrex Helicopter were particularly disturbed by his behavior, and court records showed that “The Pilot” and Wales had numerous testy exchanges.
“The Pilot” and other defendants in the case against Intrex, were accused of illegally renovating an old Bell UH-1 helicopter (the “Huey” used during the Vietnam War) for civilian use. These renovations apparently angered Bell, who convinced the FAA and federal prosecutors that the improper retrofitting of their old military helicopters, and passing them off as civilian helicopters, was an air safety hazard. Bell claimed that there was a “radical” difference between the military helicopters they made and the ones they made for civilian use, which were given airworthiness certificates that purely military-use helicopters were not given. The reality was that Bell was angered by the scheme by private entities to sell at great profit, or to secure lucrative non-military contracts with, retrofitted military helicopters, which of course Bell would get no money itself for.
Bell argued that they had tens of thousands of Hueys that were the same as the ones being passed off as civilian, and not given airworthiness certificates by local regulators, and these military helicopters could not be used for civilian purposes when all these other “retrofitted” helicopters were given certificates. Having convinced FAA regulators that this was illegal, twenty or so cases were looked into, including the one helicopter in Seattle being retrofitted by Intrex, a case that was taken up by Wales in 1997. Many observers thought it was a not a very good case, and that what was done wasn’t technically illegal; but Wales had a fixation on it that seemed to some to be strange, and he would pursue it for three years.
The prosecution’s case fell apart when the FAA inspector who gave the helicopter an airworthiness certificate when it was transferred to Texas, a man named Bland, told a grand jury that he disagreed that retrofitting helicopters was dangerous, and that from what he saw, the helicopter in question was in fact a civilian Bell helicopter. Wales then cut a deal with the defendants, dropping charges against them in exchange for Intrex the company pleading guilty to misdemeanors. But “The Pilot” was furious and demanded full exoneration. Wales played him off fellow defendant and co-owner of the company, Kim Powell. Powell signed off on statement that a mechanic named Ricky Boatwright falsified the logbook for the helicopter in question.
“The Pilot” vehemently denied this. When the local news report identified him by name as being the president of the company that pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor, “The Pilot” threatened the reporter, who said he was clearly out of control. There was also a great deal of animosity between “The Pilot” and Wales, and his attorney fees were costing him a lot of money. “The Pilot” filed a lawsuit against the FAA and the “illegal” prosecution; instead of admitting defeat, Wales doubled down on the case and the war of words continued. Wales was killed when the litigation was still going on.
Yet though he was the focus as a prime suspect, after all this time there was still no case against “The Pilot.” The “”Somebody” sleuths themselves wondered what motivation he had to kill Wales, since he had the case in litigation that he might actually win, and in any case it appeared that he was more angry at the FAA rather than Wales, who was simply prosecuting their case—or at least, that is what was “obvious.”
But nothing is “obvious” in the Wales case. The FAA inspector who approved the airworthiness of the helicopter in question, Bland, and who pretty much killed the FAA’s own case, was apparently threatened himself by the FAA investigator in the Intrex prosecution. Bland claimed to have come across a memo written by a Bell functionary that had been forwarded to the company’s lead attorney, which said “Per instructions, the following people have been paid for their participation in the Bell helicopter retirement program,” apparently in reference to the 20 helicopters that had been seized by the FAA that had been retrofitted “illegally.”
The conspiracy theory was that Bell
wanted to “mothball” all of its old helicopters and sell new ones to the
government at a much higher profit. It wanted to stop small-timers like Intrex
from retrofitting its old military helicopters for civilian use and reselling
them at a substantial profit for themselves, leaving Bell out of the mix. Bland
claims that Wales was on the list to be “paid off,” whatever that signified.
There was the suggestion that the FAA investigator whose case was destroyed by Bland and then by Wales who allowed the defendants to get away with nothing more than misdemeanor charges against their company could be angry enough to kill him; perhaps Wales had embarrassed him and wrecked his career. But it was also suggested that Powell—who supposedly had his fingers in everything—could be a suspect. Boatwright claimed to have heard a rumor that Wales was killed by one of Powell’s buddies because he was “tired” of being “messed around” with by “everybody.” But “Somebody” was “suspicious” of that idea because Powell was himself never personally convicted of anything, and that Wales had cut a “deal” with him.
Boatwright then told the “Somebody” sleuths that he believed that Wales could have stumbled upon something “higher up,” something that he wasn’t supposed to find out about, given his reported integrity and desire to uncover the truth, as those who knew him claimed. What exactly he could have “found” was left to speculation, although it could have involved Bell, FAA regulators and possibly even the U.S. Department of Justice; it was speculated that Wales had a falling out with his "partners" when he discovered the truth, whatever that was. The shell casings and bullets found at the crime scene—the only physical evidence found—had been for years believed to be from a gun of Eastern European make; but the “Somebody” sleuths claimed that the bullet markings could also have been made by a government-issued Colt 380.
Oh, wow. The "Somebody Somewhere" sleuths were careful to note that what they had found was not legally-binding "evidence," but suggested that the FBI could take whatever they dug-up and use it. Whatever the truth is, twenty years seems like a pretty damn long time to solve a case with so much resources devoted to it. This case has been one big rabbit hole after another.
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