WHO MURDERED THE CIA CHIEF?<\/h1>\nWilliam E. Colby: A Highly Suspicious Death<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nBy Zalin Grant<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis was Saturday, April 27, 1996.\u00a0 William Colby, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his 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.<\/h5>\nAfter he got home from the marina, Colby called his wife, Sally Shelton, a high-ranking State Department official who was in Houston, Texas, visiting her mother. He told her that he had worked hard all day and was tired.\u00a0 He said he was going to steam some clams, take a shower, and go to bed.<\/h5>\nColby 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.\u00a0 One of the witnesses was his gardener who dropped by to introduce his visiting sister. His two next-door neighbors saw him at the same time from their window. After he finished watering his trees, he went inside and had dinner.<\/h5>\nThe witnesses saw him at 7:15 p.m. The sun set at 7:57\u201442 minutes later.<\/h5>\nWhen he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall and drowned.\u00a0 I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune.\u00a0 I knew William Colby. And I didn\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/h5>\nFriends & Enemies<\/strong><\/h5>\nI considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n![](\"http:\/\/www.pythiapress.com\/wartales\/images\/clip_image002.jpg\")
<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
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<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
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<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
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<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
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<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
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<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
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<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n![](\"http:\/\/www.pythiapress.com\/wartales\/images\/clip_image016.jpg\")
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
By Zalin Grant<\/strong><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis was Saturday, April 27, 1996.\u00a0 William Colby, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his 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.<\/h5>\nAfter he got home from the marina, Colby called his wife, Sally Shelton, a high-ranking State Department official who was in Houston, Texas, visiting her mother. He told her that he had worked hard all day and was tired.\u00a0 He said he was going to steam some clams, take a shower, and go to bed.<\/h5>\nColby 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.\u00a0 One of the witnesses was his gardener who dropped by to introduce his visiting sister. His two next-door neighbors saw him at the same time from their window. After he finished watering his trees, he went inside and had dinner.<\/h5>\nThe witnesses saw him at 7:15 p.m. The sun set at 7:57\u201442 minutes later.<\/h5>\nWhen he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall and drowned.\u00a0 I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune.\u00a0 I knew William Colby. And I didn\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/h5>\nFriends & Enemies<\/strong><\/h5>\nI considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
This was Saturday, April 27, 1996.\u00a0 William Colby, a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, was alone at his 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.<\/h5>\nAfter he got home from the marina, Colby called his wife, Sally Shelton, a high-ranking State Department official who was in Houston, Texas, visiting her mother. He told her that he had worked hard all day and was tired.\u00a0 He said he was going to steam some clams, take a shower, and go to bed.<\/h5>\nColby 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.\u00a0 One of the witnesses was his gardener who dropped by to introduce his visiting sister. His two next-door neighbors saw him at the same time from their window. After he finished watering his trees, he went inside and had dinner.<\/h5>\nThe witnesses saw him at 7:15 p.m. The sun set at 7:57\u201442 minutes later.<\/h5>\nWhen he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall and drowned.\u00a0 I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune.\u00a0 I knew William Colby. And I didn\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/h5>\nFriends & Enemies<\/strong><\/h5>\nI considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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.\u00a0 One of the witnesses was his gardener who dropped by to introduce his visiting sister. His two next-door neighbors saw him at the same time from their window. After he finished watering his trees, he went inside and had dinner.<\/h5>\nThe witnesses saw him at 7:15 p.m. The sun set at 7:57\u201442 minutes later.<\/h5>\nWhen he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall and drowned.\u00a0 I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune.\u00a0 I knew William Colby. And I didn\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/h5>\nFriends & Enemies<\/strong><\/h5>\nI considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
When he was found dead in the water nine days later, it was said that he had gone out paddling his canoe at nightfall and drowned.\u00a0 I was in Paris when I read the story in the International Herald Tribune.\u00a0 I knew William Colby. And I didn\u2019t believe that for one second.<\/h5>\nFriends & Enemies<\/strong><\/h5>\nI considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
I considered Colby a friend.\u00a0 Not a close friend.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t have any close friends that I knew about, outside his family.\u00a0 In my book, Facing the Phoenix<\/em>, 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.\u00a0 He was not very physically impressive and at bottom was a shy man, is the way I saw him. He described himself to me as someone who couldn\u2019t easily get the attention of a waiter in a restaurant. Yet he was strong and determined in everything he did.<\/h5>\nColby 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 CIA to serve as Ambassador Robert Komer\u2019s deputy for pacification. Later, when he replaced Komer as pacification chief and I was sent to Vietnam by Time and CBS to investigate the capture of two photographers in Cambodia, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, he backed me when I got into a dispute with CIA about my search for the two Americans.<\/h5>\nWhen I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
When I began working on Facing the Phoenix<\/em> he volunteered to help set up my interviews with the major intelligence players of the war, from Edward Lansdale to Lou Conein.\u00a0 The book was subtitled \u201cThe CIA and the Political Defeat of the United States in Vietnam.\u201d\u00a0 To me, Colby was the key to my being able to do the book, which got good reviews from all sides.<\/h5>\nEdward Lansdale, who was the model for Graham Greene\u2019s Quiet American<\/em>, considered Colby to be the most effective American to serve in the Vietnam War. I did too. He listened.\u00a0 He learned. Although Colby knew I was against the war, that didn\u2019t interfere with our working relationship in the least.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWillam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nStill, the fact was that Colby had more enemies than friends. In the period between September 1973 and his dismissal in November 1975 as CIA director, Colby testified before congressional committees 56 times.\u00a0 When Congress asked him a question, he gave a straight answer. The Intel guys hated him for it.\u00a0 They thought it was his duty to lie.\u00a0 So did Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger who fired him as CIA chief for revealing what were called \u201cthe family jewels\u201d\u2014assassination plots and other dirty deeds.<\/h5>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby realized, of course, that he was in danger of being killed at any time.\u00a0 But I was surprised when I went to his home in Georgetown for the first in a series of long interviews.\u00a0 I thought an ex-CIA director would have the latest locks and security cameras and top-secret protection devices.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nColby liked my work on the missing journalists that had gone on for years.\u00a0 When I told him nothing had come of it, he said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t matter. You do what is necessary.\u00a0 And you did it.\u201d<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nI was already scheduled to leave for Washington on another writing project several weeks after he disappeared. The timing would be good. The media frenzy would have died out.\u00a0 And I could go in quietly and see what I could make of it.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nCobb Island was sixty miles south of Washington. On the way to Colby\u2019s house, I stopped at La Plata, MD, to talk to Sheriff Fred Davis about setting up interviews.\u00a0 The Charles County Sheriff\u2019s department was responsible for the investigation of Colby\u2019s death.<\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\nI continued on to Colby’s house.\u00a0 It was on Hill Road which was technically in Rock Point, Maryland, but Cobb Island, right across Neale Sound, was where Colby kept his sailboat and shopped.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
\n
\n | Willam Colby (left) and Ngo Dinh Diem – Saigon 1963.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby had got rid of a lot of guys in the clandestine service at CIA. \u00a0I’d talked to ex-CIA officers who hated his guts.\u00a0 Even Lou Conein, one of the best-known CIA operatives in Vietnam, told me he believed Colby had destroyed the agency.\u00a0 And Conein, who knew Colby for many years, liked him.\u00a0 Colby had enemies coming from the Right and the Left.<\/h5>\nColby had nothing.\u00a0 I had a more secure lock on my door than he did.\u00a0 When I asked him about it he said that if anybody wanted to get him, they could do it, and he wasn\u2019t going to live his life in constant fear and worry.\u00a0 I admired his attitude. I knew he was right. On the night they got him both doors to his house were unlocked.<\/h5>\nSo I figured I owed it to him to look into how it happened.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t expect anything to come of it.\u00a0 I knew the guys who did it would have done it right, with a minimum of mistakes.\u00a0 And I knew Colby would have been a fatalist about it.\u00a0 He wouldn\u2019t have put up a fight when they came for him.<\/h5>\nThe Murder Scene<\/strong><\/h5>\nSheriff Davis admitted that it was not an open and shut case. “There is always that window open,” he said, “because there were no witnesses.”<\/h5>\n |
<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Colby’s home on Hill Road, Rock Point MD. The glassed-in porch facing the front was where he took his last meal.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nColby\u2019s home was a turn of the century oysterman’s cottage.\u00a0 It had two bedrooms and a small kitchen with a breakfast table.\u00a0 The sunroom, which was glassed in, was originally the porch. Since it offered a spectacular view of the water, the sunroom also served as the dining room. Cobb Island and his home was pure Colby–unpretentious, tranquil, anonymous.<\/h5>\nThe house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
The house was surrounded on three sides by water. Sitting on a finger in Neale Sound, it looked out on Cobb Island and the Wicomico River, which turned into the Potomac farther up.\u00a0 You could only enter or exit his unfenced grounds by driving down a narrow dirt road.<\/h5>\nAnyone standing on the other side of Neale Sound, using a pair of binoculars, could see practically any movement around the Colby house.<\/h5>\n
<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
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 his home.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nCarroll Wise: Last to Talk to Colby<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
As I drove up I saw a workman gassing a tractor-lawn mower–Joseph “Carroll” Wise, Colby’s gardener and caretaker.\u00a0 Wise was the last known person to talk to Colby.\u00a0 Wise, who had grizzled gray hair, tattoos on both arms, and a protruding beer belly, spoke quietly.<\/h5>\nIt was about 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, April 27, 1996, when Wise drove to Colby’s home with his sister. Colby was standing at the edge of his yard, near the front pier, watering a willow tree.\u00a0 Colby wore a red windbreaker, khaki slacks, and loafers.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
When Colby saw them coming, he said, “Carroll, you’ve got a new car.”<\/h5>\n“No, that’s my sister’s van,” Wise said.\u00a0 “That’s why I’ve dropped by. I’d like to introduce you.”<\/h5>\nThey exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
They exchanged pleasantries for several minutes, then Wise and his sister left.\u00a0 Colby continued to work in the yard. He didn\u2019t mention to Wise that he planned to go canoeing later, something that might have come up in their small talk.<\/h5>\nBased on what he knew about gardening at Colby’s house, Wise told me that Colby probably wouldn’t have got to his canoe before 8 p.m., even if he had not stopped to have dinner. He was watering his trees and that took a long time.\u00a0 He was scheduled to return to Washington the next day, Sunday.<\/h5>\nNext-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Next-Door Neighbors<\/strong><\/h5>\nColby’s next-door neighbors, Clyde Stokes and his wife Alice, saw Colby through their window when Wise and his sister were visiting. So Colby was firmly pegged for this time: 7:15 p.m., Saturday, April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nSunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Sunset: 7:57 p.m. Moon: First Quarter
\n8:10 p.m.<\/em> \u2013 Twilight\u00a0 <\/em>
\n8:15 p.m.<\/em> – Street Lights <\/em>
\n8:30 p.m.<\/em> –\u00a0Dark
\n8:35 p.m. – Pitch Black\u00a0<\/em><\/h5>\nBill Colby: A Meticulous Man<\/strong><\/h5>\nCarroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Carroll Wise and Clyde Stokes remarked on Bill Colby’s meticulous routine. He always collected his yellow hose after watering the lawn.\u00a0 He took it to a box where it was stored and neatly arranged it in a lasso-like circle.\u00a0 When Colby went boating, he took an aluminum ladder out of a shed and leaned the ladder in the water against the pier to reach the canoe.\u00a0 When he returned from canoeing, he removed the ladder and put it back in the shed. Colby was raised in a military family where everything had its place.<\/h5>\nClyde Stokes was skeptical that Colby had gone out canoeing that late.\u00a0 “Colby was brave but prudent,” he said. Stokes remembered that the wind was up and the water was choppy the night Colby supposedly went out.\u00a0 Stokes and his wife heard nothing because they were looking at TV.<\/h5>\nStokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
Stokes was an ex-navy man with tattoos, and I was struck by his use of the word “prudent.”\u00a0 There was no contradiction between taking chances and being prudent.\u00a0 Colby was very brave, he\u2019d parachuted into Europe during World War II for the OSS, and in Vietnam he was always ready to put it on the line.<\/h5>\nBut I believed Colby was prudent, too.\u00a0 Above all, he was not an impulsive man, someone who would tell his wife he was tired and headed to bed–and then decide to go canoeing an hour later at nightfall.<\/h5>\nHe Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
He Worked Hard That Day<\/strong><\/h5>\nMark Davis worked at the Portside Marina on Cobb Island, almost directly across Neale Sound from Colby’s house.\u00a0 Colby kept his 37-foot sloop, Eagle Wing II<\/em>, at the marina.\u00a0 Davis was impressed by how hard Colby worked on his boat that Saturday.\u00a0 He was at the marina from 11 a.m. until 5:30 p.m., Davis said.\u00a0 Others did not agree on the time, maybe there was a half-hour\u2019s difference either way.<\/h5>\nBut all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nWitnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSunday April 28 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAround noon on Sunday Kevin Akers took his boat out, with his wife and two kids.\u00a0 He hadn\u2019t gone far when he spotted a green canoe beached near the point where Neale Sound turned into the Wicomico River.\u00a0 Akers wasn\u2019t surprised.\u00a0 Small boats often broke their mooring during wind storms and wound up beached somewhere on the Sound.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\nBut on this Sunday Akers immediately spotted something out of the ordinary.\u00a0 The canoe was turned on its side and filled with so much sand that it took him and his wife nearly an hour to empty it before he could tow it to the marina.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nColby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nAkers was out on the water the day before and had not seen the canoe. That meant it probably had been beached for only two cycles of the tide.\u00a0 And there was no way, he thought, that two tide cycles could have put that much sand in the canoe.\u00a0 It looked to him like somebody wanted the canoe to stay put right there.<\/h5>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nAkers didn\u2019t tell anyone about his suspicions.\u00a0 Maybe it was just a coincidence, he thought. He had never heard of William Colby.\u00a0 He dropped the boat off at the marina and left.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nNow the media wanted to talk to him.\u00a0 But Kevin Akers didn\u2019t 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 one thought.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes Calls 911<\/strong><\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nPolicewoman Sharon Walsh arrived at 8:18 p.m.\u00a0 She and Alice checked the house.\u00a0 Both doors were closed but unlocked.\u00a0 The computer was on, so was the radio.\u00a0 A search was made of the surrounding area.\u00a0 Sharon Walsh saw no signs of foul play and reported it that way.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nIn a big city a mobile crime unit would have arrived, taken photos, dusted for fingerprints, looked for hairs and other small stuff that could be helpful during a later detailed investigation.\u00a0 This didn\u2019t happen.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nIf they had been aware of who Colby was and talked to someone who really knew him, their suspicions may have been aroused. Colby didn\u2019t finish his clams, his favorite dish, and he had worked hard, must have been hungry.\u00a0 It looked like he stopped somewhere near the beginning or middle of the meal.\u00a0 And the cleanup was sloppy.\u00a0 There was a dish on the counter and on the stove.\u00a0 A glass of wine, unfinished, was also on the counter.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nThere was another suspicious point. On the kitchen table was his black leather wallet.\u00a0 It contained $296 (14 twenties and 16 ones), a comb, a file, and various membership and credit cards, a driver’s license.\u00a0 There was also a silver key ring with five keys. When Colby was found, his pockets were empty, no identification at all.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nSally Shelton described two possible canoe routes Colby might have taken. He was known to go canoeing for a few minutes sometimes around twilight.\u00a0 But on both routes he hugged the shoreline and stayed in shallow water.<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nMonday April 29 1996<\/strong><\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nI talked to Lt Mark Sanders of the Maryland Natural Resources Police. He was chief of the search effort.\u00a0 Drowning accidents were common around Cobb Island. The searchers were practiced and knew what they were doing. Yet even working 24 hours a day, they couldn’t find his body.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nWhen Colby went canoeing, he took the life jacket from the shed and put it in the boat.\u00a0 He didn\u2019t wear it, but the life jacket was always with him.\u00a0 When he returned, he put it back in the shed.\u00a0 The life jacket had distinctive markings that made it easy to identify.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s body was found nine days later, on a Monday morning, about 40 meters from where Kevin Akers found the canoe.\u00a0 Both places were easily accessible by car and foot from a branch of Rock Point Road, which reached a dead-end at that point.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s body was found by an assistant to LT Mark Sanders, on the edge of the shore, looking like he\u2019d just been tossed in.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nTimeline<\/strong><\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nHe had stopped by a well-known fish restaurant on Cobb Island, Captain John\u2019s, to buy a dozen clams after he left the marina about 5:30 or 6 p.m.\u00a0 He called his wife 7 p.m. \u00a0And sometime after 7:15 p.m. he had prepared his meal of clams and corn on the cob.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude had met Colby in Saigon in 1970.\u00a0 She was a French medical journalist who had been captured and held for a week by the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.\u00a0 I met her in connection with my investigation of the missing photographers Flynn and Stone.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Claude,” I said.\u00a0 “The sun sets at 7:57 p.m.\u00a0 Colby enters his house about that time and presumably begins to prepare dinner.\u00a0 How long does it take him?”<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“Yes.”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThe timeline was looking like something close to 8:30 p.m. when Colby supposedly jumped up from his unfinished meal and left to go canoeing.\u00a0 At 8:30 it was completely dark.<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nThe Elusive Fisherman<\/strong><\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\nAkers had taken a job at the Portside Marina, where Colby had kept his sailboat. Bare-chested and in jeans, he was arranging crab traps when I walked up to him.\u00a0 I told him I\u2019d like to talk about the guy who died, the guy who owned the canoe he brought in.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cYeah, Colby, the ex-CIA director.\u00a0 I talked to everybody connected to the case, including his wife. But I couldn\u2019t find you.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nWhen he realized that I had done the research, he started to loosen up and talked freely.\u00a0 He was glad to finally tell someone.\u00a0 He thought the danger to him had passed.<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n\n\nThis is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
\n\n\n\n<\/h5>\nKevin Akers points to where he found Colby’s
\ncanoe. On the other side of the green spit behind
\nhim is where Colby’s body was found 9 days later.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/td>\n \n
\nColby’s body was found at the edge of the shore near the crumbling concrete pier in the foreground, about a three-minutes\u2019 walk from the road.<\/span><\/em><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n\u201cOkay, here\u2019s where I found the canoe,\u201d Akers said, pointing. \u201cTo the right, around that green spit of land behind me, maybe thirty or forty meters away, is where they found Colby\u2019s body nine days later.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cWhy?\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cFirst, if he had really gone down near here, he would have washed up the next day or maybe two days later.\u00a0 But not nine days.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, that didn\u2019t make any sense to me, either,\u201d I said.\u00a0 \u201cEspecially considering all the divers and people who were looking for him.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cSecond,\u201d he said, \u201cthe canoe would have washed up at the same place they found the body, not here.\u201d<\/h5>\n\u201cI don\u2019t understand,\u201d I said.<\/h5>\n\u201cOkay, look at the tip of that green spit,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s where the current suddenly shifts and turns in a clockwise motion.\u00a0 All of us who live out here know these currents very well.\u00a0 My house is just down the road and I\u2019m out on the water all the time. That clockwise current would have pushed the canoe back to the right, where they found the body.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think the canoe could have made it around the spit to wash up where we are standing.\u201d<\/h5>\nThe clockwise current was clearly visible, yes, I could see it.\u00a0 It almost looked like a little whirlpool.\u00a0 I felt a little prickly on the back of my neck.\u00a0 This was a murder, not an accident.<\/h5>\nKevin Akers believed somebody had killed Colby and brought his body back a week later, on a Sunday night after weekenders had left, and dumped it when nobody was looking.\u00a0 Colby was discovered the next day, Monday, not far from Akers\u2019 house.<\/h5>\nI agreed with him that was probably what had happened.\u00a0 But I didn\u2019t tell him why I believed that. In 1996 I was the only journalist to see Colby\u2019s autopsy photos.\u00a0 And Colby appeared exactly as Akers was telling me seven years later.\u00a0 He looked like he had been in the water for one or two days\u2014but certainly not for nine days.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland State Medical Examiner<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek, Maryland\u2019s chief medical examiner, was a smooth operator.\u00a0 He was 53-years-old, six-foot-one, gray, handsome, and wore loafers without socks.\u00a0 He spoke very carefully, sometimes hesitating in the middle of a sentence, thinking it out.<\/h5>\nSmialek could tell I’d talked to medical examiners before.\u00a0 And he doubtless perceived what I was thinking: Medical examiners often knew only one thing for certain–that the decedent was dead.\u00a0 Everything else, except for the standard toxicology tests, was informed guesswork.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d seen dozens of drowned bodies floating in rivers in Indochina.\u00a0\u00a0 A body sinks, then starts to decompose, and gases form that floats it to the surface, bloated and wasted.\u00a0 It is not a pretty sight.<\/h5>\nI\u2019d also been in touch with a forensic expert before I set up the appointment with Smialek.\u00a0 He told me that it was hard to determine a heart attack if a body had been in the water a long time.\u00a0 Decomposition dissolved blood clots.\u00a0 Actually, he said, it was hard to tell if someone died by drowning if the lungs were decomposed.<\/h5>\nThe Maryland state medical examiner’s office had, in effect, shut down the media circus that surrounded Colby’s disappearance.\u00a0 Scores of journalists had staked out his home with satellite trucks, the whole works, for the first week after he disappeared.<\/h5>\nBut after the medical examiner\u2019s office put out the word that he had died of a heart attack the story was stopped in its tracks.\u00a0 If that was all it was, old guy kicks off with a bad ticker, then ho-hum, the media wasn\u2019t interested. The journalists packed up and left Cobb Island and nobody followed up on the case until I came along.<\/h5>\nSmialek and I exchanged the usual warm-up pleasantries. Then I turned on my tape recorder.\u00a0 It was June 5, 1996, at his office in Baltimore.<\/h5>\nDid they have hard proof Colby drowned after having a heart attack? I asked.<\/h5>\n\u201cCause of death is often a judgment call by the M.D. who performs the autopsy,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nSmialek did not do the autopsy.\u00a0 That was performed by David R. Fowler, assistant medical examiner.\u00a0 But Smialek was closely in touch with what took place, since Colby was a high-profile case. Smialek had done autopsies on hundreds of drowning victims. He was the expert.<\/h5>\nColby had no history of heart problems and his wife said he was in very good shape. In fact, Smialek didn\u2019t describe to me what had happened to Colby as a heart attack or stroke.\u00a0 He said it was probably a cardiovascular incident that deprived Colby of oxygen to the brain long enough to topple him out of the canoe.<\/h5>\n“Can I see the autopsy report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cIt’s not ready yet,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\n“Not ready?\u201d I said, surprised. \u201cThe Colby case is pretty famous.\u00a0 You did the autopsy on May 6, 1996, exactly a month ago.\u00a0 And you haven’t got around to finishing the report?”<\/h5>\n\u201cWe’ll fax it to you tomorrow,\u201d he said.<\/h5>\nI asked to see the autopsy photos.<\/h5>\nJohnny D\u2014that\u2019s what he went by\u2014Smialek\u2019s assistant, returned with the photos and tossed them on the table.\u00a0 Johnny D was a blond guy with a mustache, in his early fifties. He had served in Vietnam, and liked to joke around. He struck me as Smialek\u2019s fixer.<\/h5>\nColby was nude in the photos, which were taken from all angles. He was five-eight, 181 pounds, blue eyes.<\/h5>\n“Hey, something doesn’t seem right,” I said.\u00a0 “I’ve seen a lot of drowning victims.\u00a0 But Colby hardly looks dead.\u00a0 He’s not bloated a bit.”<\/h5>\n“Yes, Mr. Colby’s body looked very well preserved, even though it was clear that the body was decomposed and discolored,” Smialek said into my tape recorder. “He looked remarkably well.”<\/h5>\n“What do you think that means?” I asked.<\/h5>\n“I interpret that to mean the water was of a sufficiently low temperature that prevented the body from developing the type of gas decomposition that we commonly see with drowning victims when they’ve been in the water for an extended period.”<\/h5>\nThe water may have been cold but it wasn\u2019t freezing, we\u2019re talking about early May.<\/h5>\n\u201cHow about the time of death?\u201d I asked. Determining the time of a victim\u2019s death based on his stomach contents was Forensics 101.\u00a0 Time of death was easy to estimate within a couple of hours, and medical examiners did it all the time.<\/h5>\n\u201cBased on the contents of his stomach he died one to two hours after eating,\u201d Smialek said. \u201cThe contents included corn and clams.\u201d<\/h5>\nIt was at this point that Smialek realized what I was doing.\u00a0 I had asked him if they could prove Colby died of a heart attack or stroke. He said no.\u00a0 He even said they couldn\u2019t prove he had drowned.<\/h5>\nI told him Colby looked to me in the photos like he was hardly dead and I wondered why.\u00a0 He agreed with me and said he thought it was because the water was cold. He added that Colby \u201clooked remarkably well\u201d based on the hundreds of drowned victims he\u2019d seen.<\/h5>\nThen I asked him how long they estimated he had lived after eating.\u00a0 He said one to two hours.\u00a0 And I think that rang his bell. He realized that I believed Colby had been murdered, and he had just given me important information for my timeline.<\/h5>\nLet\u2019s say that Carroll Wise, the gardener, was wrong, and it didn\u2019t take Colby until 8 p.m. to finish watering his trees.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he finished 15 minutes after he saw Wise and went into his house to prepare his meal at 7:30 p.m.<\/h5>\nIt still would have taken him 20 to 30 minutes to prepare the corn and clams and sit down to eat part of it.\u00a0 Let\u2019s say he suddenly decided to go boating and hurried out of his house at 8 p.m.\u00a0 Smialek said he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nThat meant he would have died between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m. paddling around on the water in the pitch-black darkness.<\/h5>\nWho could believe that?<\/h5>\nThe Autopsy Report<\/strong><\/h5>\nJohn Smialek faxed me the autopsy report the next day. It was five pages long and dated June 6, 1996.\u00a0 There were two possibilities, I thought. Either the report was written the day after our interview.\u00a0 Or it was already written and then changed after our interview.\u00a0 Because the report was in conflict with several important things Smialek had told me in our tape-recorded interview in front of two witnesses.<\/h5>\nThe autopsy report said Colby appeared in surprisingly good shape for a man of his age. But the gist of the report came down to the last paragraph. The paragraph was titled: “Opinion.”<\/h5>\n“This 76-year-old white male, William E. Colby, died of drowning and hypothermia associated with arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease.\u00a0 He was found floating in an advanced state of decomposition nine days after being reported missing.\u00a0 Identity was confirmed by dental examination.\u00a0 He had severe calcified atherosclerosis which would predispose him to a stroke or heart attack.\u00a0 Decomposition, however, will lyse (dissolve) clots and the fatty material in atheroma.\u00a0 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 reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u00a0 The manner of death is ACCIDENT.\u00a0 The deceased had been consuming alcoholic beverages prior to death.”<\/em>
\nFirst: \u201cdied of drowning and hypothermia.\u201d\u00a0 Smialek told me they couldn\u2019t be sure he had drowned.\u00a0 There was a little water in the lung area but his lungs were too decomposed to make a definitive determination, he said.<\/h5>\nSecond: \u201cfound floating in a state of advanced decomposition.\u201d\u00a0 Maybe he was in a state of advanced internal decomposition, likely for anyone who had been dead for nine days. But he certainly wasn\u2019t in a state of advanced external decomposition.\u00a0 Smialek had agreed with me, and so had Johnny D, that Colby looked in remarkably good condition.<\/h5>\nThird: \u201cIdentity was confirmed by dental examination.\u201d\u00a0 That makes it sound like he was in such bad shape that dental records were needed to establish who he was.<\/h5>\nIn fact, Sally Shelton had absolutely no problem identifying Colby.\u00a0 But the medical examiner\u2019s office demanded dental records as a matter of required procedure.\u00a0 She phoned CIA four times and asked for his dental records.\u00a0 They ignored her calls.\u00a0 When the CIA director phoned to offer his condolences, he asked if there was anything he could do for her.<\/h5>\n\u201cYes, get your guys to answer my calls,\u201d she said. She was still steamed about this when I talked to her.\u00a0 Both the CIA and FBI ignored Colby\u2019s death and let a county sheriff\u2019s office run the investigation.<\/h5>\nFourth: \u201cThe contents of his stomach are consistent with his last reported meal and indicate his death was shortly after his dinner.\u201d<\/em><\/h5>\nShortly after his dinner?\u00a0 Smialek told me that he had examined hundreds of drowning victims and the contents of Colby\u2019s stomach indicated he had died between one and two hours after eating.<\/h5>\nIt looked to me like the medical examiner\u2019s 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.<\/h5>\nI wondered if their final sentence about Colby \u201cconsuming alcoholic beverages\u201d was supposed to suggest Colby had been drunk. Why didn\u2019t they just state his actual alcohol level (O.07), which bordered on but was not high enough to get Colby a DUI in Maryland or anywhere in the U.S.<\/h5>\nAfter our interview ended Johnny D showed me around their offices.\u00a0 I knew that the examiner who did the autopsy had told Sally Shelton that Colby was dead when he hit the water.<\/h5>\nI said, \u201cThat doesn\u2019t square with what John Smialek just told me.<\/h5>\nJohnny D said, \u201cWe always try to make it as easy as possible for the victim\u2019s families.\u201d
\nWhat 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, \u201cWe really can\u2019t say for sure how he died, this is just our opinion.\u201d<\/h5>\nBut if Smialek and his guys wanted to fudge a bit to make Colby\u2019s death look like an indisputable drowning accident that was okay by me.\u00a0 I had a chance for another piece of evidence that might establish beyond a reasonable doubt that he was murdered.<\/h5>\nIt was Colby\u2019s telephone bill for April 27, 1996.<\/h5>\nColby\u2019s Coded Telephone<\/strong><\/h5>\nAs an ex-CIA director, Colby knew how to manipulate communications systems.\u00a0 He had his phone at his weekend home routed through his Washington number. Any outside calls made from his Maryland home appeared on his Washington telephone bill.\u00a0 To make an outside call you first had to tap in a code known only to Colby and his wife Sally. This way visiting guests couldn\u2019t run up long-distance charges on his phone.\u00a0 A local call could be dialed normally.<\/h5>\nMy question was this: How about if Colby made an outside call to someone while he was cooking, maybe around 8:30 or 8:45 p.m., maybe even later.\u00a0 Could anyone then believe he had decided to go canoeing in total darkness?<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr<\/strong><\/h5>\nThere were plenty of police agencies like the Charles County (MD) Sheriff\u2019s Department all over America, covering sleepy counties. They were pretty good at what they did.\u00a0 But they didn\u2019t often investigate anything out of the ordinary.\u00a0 Colby\u2019s murder occurred on a weekend.\u00a0 Nobody knew who he was.\u00a0 They assumed from the first minute that this was a routine boating accident.<\/h5>\nDetective Captain J.C. Montminy, Jr, of the Charles County Sheriff’s Department, was the overall commander of the Colby investigation. Our conversation at his office, tape recorded June 10, 1996:<\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\nDid you check the telephone records to see when was the last time Colby made an outside call?<\/em><\/h5>\nDetective Montminy<\/strong><\/h5>\nNo.\u00a0 Apparently the family did. Apparently they had some type of phone system where any long distance calls are billed back to their regular Washington phone.\u00a0 In fact, they used a code so you couldn’t even call out unless you knew the code.\u00a0 Some of the family members who weren’t familiar with that, when they got down here, had difficulty using the set-up.<\/em><\/h5>\nZG<\/strong><\/h5>\n
But all of them agreed on one point. \u00a0For a 76-year-old man, Colby really worked, he did not putter around.\u00a0 He replaced a sail that had been shredded in a windstorm the summer before and did a spiffy clean-up job on the boat.<\/h5>\n
\n
\n | Witnesses agreed that Colby, 76, worked at least six hours on his boat that day.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nKevin Akers lived near Rock Point, not far across the water from William Colby, although he did not know him. Akers was a wiry five-foot-two and 29 years old.\u00a0 An unemployed carpenter, he was the kind of guy found in fishing villages around the world\u2014a handyman who could do most anything connected with the sea. He wasn\u2019t getting rich but he loved the water and the freedom that came with it.<\/h5>\nAkers routinely towed the boats to a nearby marina where the word would eventually reach the owners.\u00a0 Then he would go back to look for paddles or life jackets, anything that would float, so he could return those to the owner.\u00a0 Kevin Akers was known as a helpful guy in Rock Point and Cobb Island.<\/h5>\n<\/h5>\n |
\n
\n | Colby’s canoe.\u00a0 It was filled with so much sand that Kevin Akers was suspicious.<\/span><\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nSomething else didn\u2019t seem right. Lots of people left their life jackets in their boats and it was easy to find a floating jacket.\u00a0 But when Akers searched the area he couldn\u2019t find a life jacket or paddles anywhere.<\/h5>\nBut next day when the media frenzy began and the TV satellite trucks arrived, Akers believed he might be in personal danger. The first thing he had told the police when they started investigating was about the extraordinary amount of sand in the canoe.\u00a0 Something was wrong, he said. Too much sand. No life jacket. No paddles. It didn\u2019t fit.<\/h5>\nColby got whacked.<\/h5>\nOn Sunday afternoon Alice Stokes, Colby’s next-door neighbor, kept peering out the window. Colby’s red Fiat was parked near the house.\u00a0 The boat was gone.\u00a0 The ladder was still in the water.\u00a0 And she hadn\u2019t seen Colby all day long.\u00a0 It was the ladder that finally pushed Alice Stokes to call 911.\u00a0 Colby would never leave his ladder in the water if he had returned.<\/h5>\nIt looked to her like an old guy had got himself drowned.\u00a0 That had happened times before on Cobb Island.\u00a0 Colby had been a practicing lawyer for the past few years.\u00a0 He lived a quiet, almost anonymous life.\u00a0 Neither Sharon Walsh nor anybody else connected with the police realized he was a former CIA director\u2014and one with lots of enemies.<\/h5>\nSharon Walsh reported: “The scene was preserved as well as possible.” Later, Detective Joseph Goldsmith, the assigned investigator, corrected several errors Walsh made in her report.<\/h5>\nAn opened wine bottle, with not much missing, was found on the table in the sunroom. Colby was the kind of guy who would have capped the bottle before leaving and put it in the fridge.<\/h5>\nAlice Stokes phoned Sally Shelton Colby in Houston.\u00a0 Policewoman Sharon Walsh asked to speak to her. Walsh reported: “Ms. Shelton was inquisitive yet calm.\u00a0 She stated she was ‘numb.'”<\/h5>\nLocal rescue workers and divers arrived, then Coast Guard representatives.\u00a0 They found nothing.\u00a0 This was Sunday night.\u00a0 Nothing would really start until the next morning.<\/h5>\nA massive search effort began on Monday morning and went on day and night for the next few days. Over a dozen navy divers, aided by two helicopters, and volunteers in boats scoured the area.\u00a0 They used drag-lines to troll the two routes Colby took when he went canoeing. All together, there were around a hundred searchers.<\/h5>\nSomething else they didn\u2019t find: Colby\u2019s life jacket.<\/h5>\nThe search team found more than a dozen life jackets when they scoured the area.\u00a0 But not Colby\u2019s. People who preferred to believe Colby had drowned\u2014even his son Paul\u2014remarked to me on this puzzlement. It was missing from the shed.<\/h5>\nDivers had searched that area numerous times.<\/h5>\nI was trying to develop a timeline to explain Colby\u2019s last day.\u00a0 This, I discovered, no one else had tried to do, not the police, not his family.<\/h5>\nCarroll Wise estimated he would have finished up in the yard around 8 p.m.\u00a0 Maybe he finished a little earlier, maybe a little later, but I decided to call my wife Claude, who was considered a formidable cook, to give me her analysis.<\/h5>\nClaude and I were having a drink one evening on the Continental Terrace when Colby saw us in passing and joined us.\u00a0 Colby had studied in France when he was young, and he and Claude hit it off immediately. She was very interested in my research on his case.<\/h5>\n“Oh, Colby is seventy-six,” Claude said.\u00a0 “He’s not going to be moving around very fast. He’s going to steam the clams, boil the corn, open a bottle of wine.\u00a0 You say he laid down a place mat in the sunroom facing the water?”<\/h5>\n“That means he is not in a hurry,” Claude said.\u00a0 “Otherwise he would eat at the kitchen table.\u00a0 So we’re talking about 20 to 30 minutes.”<\/h5>\nThis drowning incident didn\u2019t ring true.\u00a0 I wanted to talk to Kevin Akers but I couldn\u2019t find him.<\/h5>\nAll the interviews I did for this story took place in May and June 1996, except for one.\u00a0 I kept going back to Cobb Island in the following years and had lunch at Captain John\u2019s, which made the trip worthwhile. But I never managed to find Kevin Akers.\u00a0 I finally connected with him seven years later, on June 14, 2003. So this interview is out of sequence.<\/h5>\n\u201cYou mean somebody died?\u201d he said, warily.<\/h5>\n\u201cI didn\u2019t want to be found,\u201d he said. \u201cThe media was hounding me.\u201d<\/h5>\nAkers jumped into his white pickup and led me to the end of Rock Point Road, about a mile away.\u00a0 We parked and stepped over the \u201cNo Trespassing\u201d barrier, then found the path that led to the spot where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n |
\n
\n | This is the end of a branch of Rock Point road, a mile or so from Cobb Island. I followed Akers to the place where he found the canoe.<\/h5>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n
|