Who Murdered the CIA Chief

8/9/2019 Who Murdered the CIA Chief

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WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF?

William E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death

By Zalin GrantThis was Saturday, April 27, 1996. William Colby, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone athis weekend house across from Cobb Island, Maryland, 60 miles south of Washington, D.C. Colby, who was 76 years old,had worked all day on his sailboat at a nearby marina, putting it in shape for the coming summer.

After he got home from the marina, Colby called his wife, Sally Shelton, a high-ranking State Department official who wasin Houston, Texas, visiting her mother. He told her that he had worked hard all day and was tired. He said he was going tosteam some clams, take a shower, and go to bed.

Colby made the call at 7 p.m. He was seen a few minutes later by two sets of witnesses in his yard watering a willow tree.One of the witnesses was his gardener who dropped by to introduce his visiting sister. His two next-door neighbors saw himat the same time from their window. After he finished watering his trees, he went inside and had dinner.

The witnesses saw him at 7:15 p.m. The sun set at 7:5742 minutes later.

When he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall anddrowned. I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune. I knew William Colby. And I didnt
http://pythiapress.com/


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believe that for one second.

Friends & Enemies

I considered Colby a friend. Not a close friend. He didnt have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family. Inmy book,Facing the Phoenix, I described him as being a polite man who was open and approachable but without much of a

sense of humor or an inclination to introspection. He communicated human interest, I wrote, rather than human warmth. Hewas not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me assomeone who couldnt easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything hedid.

Colby and I went back in the Vietnam War. I met him early on but got to know him pretty well when he left his job at CIAto serve as Ambassador Robert Komers deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and Iwas sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and DanaStone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.

When I began working onFacing the Phoenix he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligenceplayers of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein. The book was subtitled The CIA and the Political Defeat of theUnited States in Vietnam. To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from allsides.

Edward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greenes Quiet American, considered Colby to be the most effectiveAmerican to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened. He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, thatdidnt interfere with our working relationship in the least.


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Still, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends.In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal inNovember 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified beforecongressional committees 56 times. When Congress askedhim a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guyshated him for it. They thought it was his duty to lie. So did

Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIAchief for revealing what were called the family jewelsassassination plots and other dirty deeds.

Colby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine serviceat CIA. I'd talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives inVietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed theagency. And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, likedhim. Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the

Left.

Colby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time. But I was surprised when I went to his home inGeorgetown for the first in a series of long interviews. I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and securitycameras and top-secret protection devices.

Colby had nothing. I had a more secure lock on my door than he did. When I asked him about it he said that if anybodywanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasnt going to live his life in constant fear and worry. I admired his attitude. Iknew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.

Colby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years. When I told him nothing had come of it, he said,

That doesnt matter. You do what is necessary. And you did it.

So I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened. I didnt expect anything to come of it. I knew the guys who didit would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes. And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it. Hewouldnt have put up a fight when they came for him.

I was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timingwould be good. The media frenzy would have died out. And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.

Willam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem - Saigon 1963.


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The Murder Scene

Cobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colbys house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to SheriffFred Davis about setting up interviews. The Charles County Sheriffs department was responsible for the investigation ofColbys death.

Sheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. "There is always that window open," he said, "because therewere no witnesses."

I continued on to Colby's house. It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, rightacross Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.

Colbys home was a turn of the century oysterman'scottage. It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with abreakfast table. The sunroom, which was glassed in,was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacularview of the water, the sunroom also served as the diningroom. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby--unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.

The house was surrounded on three sides by water.Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on CobbIsland and the Wicomico River, which turned into thePotomac farther up. You could only enter or exit hisunfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.

Anyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using

a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movementaround the Colby house.

Colby's home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in

porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.


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Colby's house (right) was on a spit of land. Anyone looking with binoculars

from the other side of Neale Sound could see what was going on outside hishome.

Carroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby

As I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower--Joseph "Carroll" Wise, Colby's gardener and caretaker. Wisewas the last known person to talk to Colby. Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beerbelly, spoke quietly.

It was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby's home with his sister. Colby was standing atthe edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree. Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.

When Colby saw them coming, he said, "Carroll, you've got a new car."

"No, that's my sister's van," Wise said. "That's why I've dropped by. I'd like to introduce you."

They exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left. Colby continued to work in the yard. Hedidnt mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.


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Based on what he knew about gardening at Colby's house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn't have got to his canoebefore 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time. He wasscheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.

Next-Door Neighbors

Colby's next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sisterwere visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.

Sunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter8:10 p.m. Twilight

8:15 p.m. - Street Lights

8:30 p.m. - Dark

8:35 p.m. - Pitch Black

Bill Colby: A Meticulous Man

Carroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby's meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose afterwatering the lawn. He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle. When Colby wentboating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military familywhere everything had its place.

Clyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late. "Colby was brave but prudent," he said. Stokesremembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out. Stokes and his wifeheard nothing because they were looking at TV.

Stokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word "prudent." There was no contradictionbetween taking chances and being prudent. Colby was very brave, hed parachuted into Europe during World War II for theOSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.

But I believed Colby was prudent, too. Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he wastired and headed to bed--and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.

He Worked Hard That Day


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Mark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby's house. Colbykept his 37-foot sloop,Eagle Wing II, at the marina. Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat thatSaturday. He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said. Others did not agree on the time, maybe there wasa half-hours difference either way.

But all of them agreed on one point. For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around. He replaced a

sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.


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Sunday April 28 1996

Kevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from WilliamColby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29years old. An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishingvillages around the worlda handyman who could do most anything

connected with the sea. He wasnt getting rich but he loved the water and thefreedom that came with it.

Around noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and twokids. He hadnt gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the pointwhere Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River. Akers wasnt surprised.Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound upbeached somewhere on the Sound.

Akers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word wouldeventually reach the owners. Then he would go back to look for paddles or lifejackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.

But on this Sunday Akersimmediately spotted somethingout of the ordinary. The canoewas turned on its side and filledwith so much sand that it took

him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to themarina.

Akers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. Thatmeant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide. And therewas no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand inthe canoe. It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put rightthere.

Witnesses agreed that Colby, 76, workedat least six hours on his boat that day.

Colby's canoe. It was filled with so muchsand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.


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Something else didnt seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.But when Akers searched the area he couldnt find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.

Akers didnt tell anyone about his suspicions. Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of WilliamColby. He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.

But next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personaldanger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand inthe canoe. Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didnt fit.

Now the media wanted to talk to him. But Kevin Akers didnt want to talk to reporters. He thought it might get him killed.So he made himself scarce. When he learned that a former CIA director was the owner of the canoe, Akers was hit by onethought.

Colby got whacked.

Alice Stokes Calls 911

On Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby's next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby's red Fiat was parkednear the house. The boat was gone. The ladder was still in the water. And she hadnt seen Colby all day long. It was theladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911. Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.

Policewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m. She and Alice checked the house. Both doors were closed but unlocked.The computer was on, so was the radio. A search was made of the surrounding area. Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foulplay and reported it that way.

It looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned. That had happened times before on Cobb Island. Colby had been

a practicing lawyer for the past few years. He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life. Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody elseconnected with the police realized he was a former CIA directorand one with lots of enemies.

In a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other smallstuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation. This didnt happen.

Sharon Walsh reported: "The scene was preserved as well as possible." Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned


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investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.

If they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have beenaroused. Colby didnt finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry. It looked like hestopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal. And the cleanup was sloppy. There was a dish on the counterand on the stove. A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.

An opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy whowould have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.

There was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet. It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver's license. There was also a silver key ring with fivekeys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.

Alice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston. Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported:"Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm. She stated she was 'numb.'"

Sally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutessometimes around twilight. But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.

Local rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives. They found nothing. This was Sunday night.Nothing would really start until the next morning.

Monday April 29 1996

A massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navydivers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area. They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby

took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.

I talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort. Drowningaccidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet evenworking 24 hours a day, they couldn't find his body.

Something else they didnt find: Colbys life jacket.


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When Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat. He didnt wear it, but the life jacketwas always with him. When he returned, he put it back in the shed. The life jacket had distinctive markings that made iteasy to identify.

The search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area. But not Colbys. People who preferred tobelieve Colby had drownedeven his son Paulremarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.

Colbys body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at thatpoint. Colbys body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like hed just beentossed in.

Divers had searched that area numerous times.

Timeline

I was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colbys last day. This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police,not his family.

He had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain Johns, to buy a dozen clams after he left themarina about 5:30 or 6 p.m. He called his wife 7 p.m. And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams andcorn on the cob.

Carroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m. Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a littlelater, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.

Claude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970. She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week

by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn andStone.

Claude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in myresearch on his case.

"Claude," I said. "The sun sets at 7:57 p.m. Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare


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dinner. How long does it take him?"

"Oh, Colby is seventy-six," Claude said. "He's not going to be moving around very fast. He's going to steam the clams, boilthe corn, open a bottle of wine. You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?"

"Yes."

"That means he is not in a hurry," Claude said. "Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table. So we're talking about 20 to30 minutes."

The timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished mealand left to go canoeing. At 8:30 it was completely dark.

This drowning incident didnt ring true. I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldnt find him.

The Elusive Fisherman

All the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one. I kept going back to Cobb Island inthe following years and had lunch at Captain Johns, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find KevinAkers. I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.

Akers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arrangingcrab traps when I walked up to him. I told him Id like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe hebrought in.

You mean somebody died? he said, warily.

Yeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director. I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldnt findyou.

I didnt want to be found, he said. The media was hounding me.

When he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely. He was glad to finally tellsomeone. He thought the danger to him had passed.


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Akers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away. We parked and steppedover the No Trespassing barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.

This is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mileor so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the placewhere he found the canoe.


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Kevin Akers points to where he found Colby'scanoe. On the other side of the green spit behindhim is where Colby's body was found 9 days later.

Colby's body was found at the edge of the shore near

the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about

a three-minutes walk from the road.

Okay, heres where I found the canoe, Akers said, pointing. To the right, around that green spit of land behind me,maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colbys body nine days later. It doesnt make sense.

Why?

First, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later. But not nine


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days.

Yes, that didnt make any sense to me, either, I said. Especially considering all the divers and people who were lookingfor him.

Second, he said, the canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.

I dont understand, I said.

Okay, look at the tip of that green spit, he said. Thats where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.All of us who live out here know these currents very well. My house is just down the road and Im out on the water all thetime. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body. I dont think thecanoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.

The clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it. It almost looked like a little whirlpool. I felt a little prickly onthe back of my neck. This was a murder, not an accident.

Kevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night afterweekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking. Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far fromAkers house.

I agreed with him that was probably what had happened. But I didnt tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the onlyjournalist to see Colbys autopsy photos. And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later. He lookedlike he had been in the water for one or two daysbut certainly not for nine days.

The Maryland State Medical Examiner

John Smialek, Marylands chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator. He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray,handsome, and wore loafers without socks. He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence,thinking it out.

Smialek could tell I'd talked to medical examiners before. And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medicalexaminers often knew only one thing for certain--that the decedent was dead. Everything else, except for the standardtoxicology tests, was informed guesswork.


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Id seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina. A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases formthat floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted. It is not a pretty sight.

Id also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek. He told me that it was hard todetermine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time. Decomposition dissolved blood clots. Actually, hesaid, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.

The Maryland state medical examiner's office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby'sdisappearance. Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week afterhe disappeared.

But after the medical examiners office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in itstracks. If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasnt interested. The journalistspacked up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.

Smialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder. It was June 5, 1996, at hisoffice in Baltimore.

Did they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.

Cause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy, he said.

Smialek did not do the autopsy. That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner. But Smialek wasclosely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds ofdrowning victims. He was the expert.

Colby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didnt describe to me

what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke. He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprivedColby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.

"Can I see the autopsy report?"

It's not ready yet, he said.

"Not ready? I said, surprised. The Colby case is pretty famous. You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month


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ago. And you haven't got around to finishing the report?"

We'll fax it to you tomorrow, he said.

I asked to see the autopsy photos.

Johnny Dthats what he went bySmialeks assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table. Johnny Dwas a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me asSmialeks fixer.

Colby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.

"Hey, something doesn't seem right," I said. "I've seen a lot of drowning victims. But Colby hardly looks dead. He's notbloated a bit."

"Yes, Mr. Colby's body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed anddiscolored," Smialek said into my tape recorder. "He looked remarkably well."

"What do you think that means?" I asked.

"I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type ofgas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they've been in the water for an extended period."

The water may have been cold but it wasnt freezing, were talking about early May.

How about the time of death? I asked. Determining the time of a victims death based on his stomach contents wasForensics 101. Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.

Based on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating, Smialek said. The contents included corn andclams.

It was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing. I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attackor stroke. He said no. He even said they couldnt prove he had drowned.

I told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why. He agreed with me and said he


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thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby looked remarkably well based on the hundreds ofdrowned victims hed seen.

Then I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating. He said one to two hours. And I think that rang hisbell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.

Lets say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didnt take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees. Letssay he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.

It still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it. Lets say hesuddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m. Smialek said he had died between one and two hoursafter eating.

That meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.

Who could believe that?

The Autopsy Report

John Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996. There were twopossibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview. Or it was already written and then changedafter our interview. Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.

The autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report camedown to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: "Opinion."

"This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arterioscleroticcardiovascular disease. He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported

missing. Identity was confirmed by dental examination. He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose

him to a stroke or heart attack. Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma. It is

likely he suffered a complication of this atherosclerosis which precipitated him into the cold water in a debilitated state and

he succumbed to the effects of hypothermia and drowned. The contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reportedmeal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner. The manner of death is ACCIDENT. The deceased had been


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consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death."

First: died of drowning and hypothermia. Smialek told me they couldnt be sure he had drowned. There was a little waterin the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.

Second: found floating in a state of advanced decomposition. Maybe he was in a state of advanced internaldecomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasnt in a state of advanced externaldecomposition. Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.

Third: Identity was confirmed by dental examination. That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dentalrecords were needed to establish who he was.

In fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby. But the medical examiners office demanded dentalrecords as a matter of required procedure. She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records. They ignored hercalls. When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.

Yes, get your guys to answer my calls, she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her. Both the CIA andFBI ignored Colbys death and let a county sheriffs office run the investigation.

Fourth: The contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after hisdinner.

Shortly after his dinner? Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colbysstomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.

It looked to me like the medical examiners office wanted this be seen as an accident so no one could claim that the

Maryland police or anyone associated with the state had screwed up the investigation.

I wondered if their final sentence about Colby consuming alcoholic beverages was supposed to suggest Colby had beendrunk. Why didnt they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby aDUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.

After our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices. I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told


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Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.

I said, That doesnt square with what John Smialek just told me.

Johnny D said, We always try to make it as easy as possible for the victims families.What he meant was that Sally Shelton, like any wife, would prefer to hear that her husband had died instantly and without

pain, rather than to be told, We really cant say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.

But if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colbys death look like an indisputable drowning accident thatwas okay by me. I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasmurdered.

It was Colbys telephone bill for April 27, 1996.

Colbys Coded Telephone

As an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems. He had his phone at his weekend home

routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washingtontelephone bill. To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This wayvisiting guests couldnt run up long-distance charges on his phone. A local call could be dialed normally.

My question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or8:45 p.m., maybe even later. Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?

Detective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr

There were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriffs Department all over America, covering sleepy

counties. They were pretty good at what they did. But they didnt often investigate anything out of the ordinary. Colbysmurder occurred on a weekend. Nobody knew who he was. They assumed from the first minute that this was a routineboating accident.

Detective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff's Department, was the overall commander of the Colbyinvestigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:


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ZG

Did you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?

Detective Montminy

No. Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billedback to their regular Washington phone. In fact, they used a code so you couldn't even call out unless you knew the code.

Some of the family members who weren't familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.

ZG

Did you follow it up with Mrs. Colby?

Detective Montminy

After that time period, seven or seven fifteen, there were no calls made out [from 301-259-2905] that we are aware of. Of

course there is no guarantee. Somebody could have used that line and made a local call and we don't know about it.

ZG

Did you ask Mrs. Colby to verify the time of her call?

Detective Montminy

Uh-huh.

ZG

What time was it?

Detective Montminy

I don't have that down.


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ZG

When you went out, did you reach the conclusion it was a boating accident?

Detective Montminy

Yes and no. Of course none of the police officers there knew who Colby was.

The police did not ask Sally Shelton for Colbys telephone bill which included that Saturdays outside calls.

Colbys Wife Speaks

I interviewed Sally Shelton Colby, 52, in her office at the State Department. She was a petite blonde, 24 years younger thanher husband, his second wife. Sally Shelton was an accomplished woman. From Missouri, she was a Phi Beta Kappa whohad done graduate study as a Fulbright Scholar in Paris. She was the assistant administrator for global programs at theAgency for International Development, and a former ambassador to Grenada and Barbados. Our conversation, taperecorded in front of a witness June 25, 1996:

ZG

I know you've gone over your conversation with your husband, and I hate to ask you to go over it again. But would you?

Shelton-Colby

Well, he called, he uh

ZG

He called? Or you called?

Shelton-Colby

He called, uh-huh. We spoke everyday, at least once a day. Both of us were traveling a lot. He said he had just--normally

it takes two days to get the Eagle Wing ready for the summer. But he'd compressed it into one day, so he'd worked very

hard. And he'd had a wonderful time, and he said he was tired. He had stopped and picked up some clams and he said he


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was going to have the clams, which was his favorite dish. Then he was going to take a hot shower and go to bed.

ZG

Do you recall whether he said he was going to have dinner? Or whether he had already had dinner?

Shelton-Colby

He said he was going to have dinner.

ZG

Since the Maryland phone records show up at your Washington house, is there any way you can check so I can develop a

chronology?

Shelton-Colby

If it's important. I can tell you it was right at six o'clock [Houston time7 p.m. Washington] when he called me. Mymother had just walked in and I was looking at the news.

ZG

Well, could you check to see if he made any calls after that?

Shelton-Colby

I can check if you'd like. I don't have time to do it before I leave on Friday.

ZG

Then I would appreciate if you would check. So I can see if there were any other calls and I can put together a chronology.

Shelton-Colby


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Sure, I'll do it.

ZG

Would you?

Shelton-Colby

Uh-huh, sure, I'll do it.

How the Killers Got Away With It

Just as Id thought, the killers didnt make many mistakes. The first was unavoidableKevin Akers--but with luck they gotaway with it. Id say there were from three to five of them. Two on a boat, maybe two or three who went to his house in acar around 8:30 p.m., at nightfall. The two in the car made Colby empty his pockets so if they were stopped he would haveno ID to back up his claim that he was an ex-CIA director and these thugs were officers hed fired. One of the men put theladder in the water and took the life jacket. Then they drove to the end of Rock Point Road to rendezvous with the boat.

Meanwhile the boat backed up to Colbys canoe, which was pointed outward and tied to the pier by a small rope at the rear.They hooked their tow rope to the front and jerked the canoe so hard in taking off that the tie-up rope frayed and released.They towed the canoe to the place where Akers found it. One guy from the boat pulled the canoe to shore and another guyfrom the car joined him in helping fill the canoe with sand. The boat took off immediately. The second guy from the boatclimbed into the car with the other two guys and Colby.

Why did they want to make sure the canoe didnt move?

They wanted everybody to think that Colby had drowned in this specific area. That was because they were coming back bycar with Colbys body the next weekend and would dump him in the water not far from where the canoe was found. Thiswas the only place on Neale Sound where they would have unobserved access to the water from a dead-end road only 40meters away.

In Kevin Akers opinion, the canoe could not have washed up at the place it did unless someone towed it against theclockwise current. It would have washed up on the same side of the spit as Colbys body. But the killers had to tow thecanoe there because it was the only place in the area that had enough sand to anchor the boat so it wouldnt move. The place


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where Colbys body was found, on the other side of the spit, had little sand, as is apparent in the photos I took with Akers.

Why didnt they just kill him there and dump him into the water?

Because it wouldnt be easy to drown Colby and to make it look like an accident. But if they killed him and let his internalorgans decompose for a week the medical examiner couldnt tell how he had died. And they were betting the examiner

would call it a drowning accident.

What errors did they make?

1. Kevin Akers This wasnt an error but a coincidence. They pulled the operation off within five hundred meters of hishouse. He knew better than anyone the water and the currents around Rock Point. He became immediately suspicious whenhe saw the canoe. He told the police about the excessive sand and they wrote it in their report. But his information wasignored. He was just a fishing village guy with not a lot of education, and it looked to the police like a routine boatingaccident.

2. The Missing Life Jacket The killers didnt know whether or not Colby always wore his life jacket. If it turned out he

did, and they just threw the life jacket in the water, then where was his body? They decided to take the jacket with them andhoped that nobody noticed. In fact, everybody did notice the missing life jacket and talked about it, including his son Paul,who brought it up with me. But most people did not want to connect the missing jacket to possible foul play.

3. The Unexplained Tow Rope In their haste the killers left their tow rope attached to the front of Colbys canoe. No onehad ever seen a tow rope on Colbys canoe. Why would he need it? Again, that was a point people talked about but nobodywanted to connect it to possible foul play.

My Investigation Ends

I thought there was a good chance that Colby had made an outside call on Saturday night at 8:30 or later and it would showup on his telephone bill. I felt this would be serious proof that somebody had killed him.

Sally Shelton assured me she would find the telephone bill that would include any outside calls made on Saturday, April 27,1996, and let me know. Since I knew how meticulous Colby washe paid the billsI was sure the bill was there.

But I did not get to see the phone bill, despite my repeated requests. I drew no conclusions or inferences then or nowconcerning Sally Shelton Colbys refusal to help me obtain the telephone record. She was a wife who had lost her husband


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two months before and still in that state of grief that happens to all of us when we lose a loved one.

On my last call to Mrs. Colby, when I asked about the telephone bill, she said to me, with exasperation: I think you are on afishing expedition.

She was right.

I was fishing to find out who murdered her husband, William Egan Colby, a former CIA director, and the man I consideredthe most capable and effective American to serve in the Vietnam War.

_____________________

Zalin Grant volunteered for Vietnam and served as an army officer. A former journalist for Time and The New

Republic, he is the author of four books on the Vietnam War, including FACING THE PHOENIX:The CIA and the

Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.

Copyright 2009 Pythia Press

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