There are no haunted islands, just places that have been linked to macabre events.
Even tropical paradises to be, have been sealed in the collective fantasy with blood and death, a kind of indeterminate fear that lurks as if in palm trees and white beaches.
And that's definitely true for Atoll Palmyra, a cluster of a few dozen coral islands located on the so-called Equatorial Line Islands.
Palmyra is geographically located in the Northern Islands of Ecuador, in the northern Pacific and south Hawaii, is part of the so-called Small Islands of the United States and was once the territory of Kiribati.
It is a magnificent tropical place with an elongated reef, two shallow lagoons and a multitude of sandy islands full of vegetation.
An idyllic place to sail with your wife, so enchanting and calm as it is. It's just that the horrific events that took place there a few decades ago reminded some of the island's curse.
And indeed, the "marine curses" of the area, according to him, spoke of a "curse of Palmyra" World War II, when lost aircraft and missing ships were frequently suspected.
Characteristic here is the fact that by testifying in court about the murder case that will concern us, geologist Norman Sanders was in a hurry to comment:
"Palmyra is one of the last uninhabited islands in the Pacific. The island is a very threatening place, it is a hostile place. "
The story also had all the ingredients of a good thriller: an idyllic island, a stolen yacht, a box of human remains and a police search of more than 1.000 kilometers of open sea.
Only the case, which began in 1974 and escalated in 1981, was not fiction;
Atoli Palmyra does not have a permanent population, but she managed to see at least one murder on August 28, 1974.
Duane "Buck" Walker, also known as Wesley G. Walker, was a marijuana farmer from the Big Island of Hawaii, known to the authorities and marked. He and his partner, Stephanie Stearns, were charged drug trafficking in 1973 and was out with a suspension.
To escape the law, they decided in early 1974 to leave for the wilderness of the South Pacific. So they bought a 30-foot walnut shell from Maui, which they named "Iola", and on their maiden voyage they did not happen to be in Hawaii. To be tried in federal court on the drug case.
He pleaded guilty, she escaped. In May of the same year, they changed their identity and set sail for Cawai to prepare for Palmyra. They intended to spend two years there. And in June 1974 they loaded their three dogs on the boat and set sail for the uninhabited atoll.
They had no money, but they had supplies for 6 months. The rest of the time they would take it out with the help of land and sea. The journey from Hawaii to Palmyra usually takes a week, but the couple got lost and needed three.
Their ship was in poor condition and broke down on the island. According to the testimonies of the experts in the subsequent trial, "Iola" was in such a mess that she didn't even have to travel. No problem for the couple, they would live with coconuts and fish.
Palmyra was and remains a popular destination for Pacific boats. And so were 43-year-old Malcolm "Mac" Graham and his 41-year-old wife Eleanor "Muff" LaVerne Graham, a wealthy couple from San Diego who, having once again traveled the world, arrived in the atoll with the luxurious two-door "Sea Wind" in July.
The Grahams also planned to spend time in Palmyra and had spent the past two years supplying their boat with everything from auxiliary machines to supplies and food for months. They even kept in touch with their acquaintances in Hawaii, informing them every Monday and Wednesday that they were fine.
By the end of August, all boats had left Palmyra, leaving behind only the Sea Wind and the Iola. The two couples had managed to get to know each other, although their relationship should not have been the best.
Witnesses from other vessels testified in court that in July the Walker dog attacked Muff and since then the climate has been tense. But according to the diary kept by Stearns, the two often visited Graham on the deck of the "Sea Wind".
This must have happened on August 28, 1974, in Graham's last radio interview with a friend in Hawaii, when Mac told the man on the other side of the radio that "a boat is coming to our boat, I guess they want to make a truce."
After a short pause, the friend testified that "I heard a woman's voice and then laughter and then I heard Mac say 'I'm going to see what's going on'." Mac closed at that point. " It was the last time anyone would hear anything from Graham.
In September 1974, the couple's anxious friends staged a search mission over Palmyra. But nothing was found. The following month, someone recognized "Sea Wind" in a marina Honolulu, with crew now Walker and Stearns. The yacht was now named "Lokahi", was partially painted and owned by the couple.
The two were convicted in 1975 of stealing the Sea Wind. Stearns was justified in finding the desert in a Palmyra lagoon and taking it to save it from thieves and the weather. Photographs taken by her boyfriend from the deck of the yacht showed their own wreck, the Iola, sailing unmanned in the water.
Both testified that their ship eventually sank in the natural harbor of the atoll as they tried to tow it back to Hawaii.
Stearns ate 2,5 years for the case and another 10 Walker, who was out with a suspension for the drug case. The type of life and state finally escaped from the state prisons of Washington, but he was later arrested again, throwing him another 5 years.
In the years following the couple's disappearance, visitors to Palmyra had built a hut on land while maintaining newspaper material for Graham. Nearby, in January 1981, he found a couple of tourists from South Africa an aluminum box from the years of World War II, which the sea washed up on the beach in a storm.
Inside were a man's skull and skeleton. Having read the newspapers in the hut, they were puzzled that the remains may have something to do with the disappearance. And they had!
The forensic examination concluded that Muff Graham had been beaten to death and her body was then dismembered before everything was burned with acetylene. What was left was placed in a small storage box, which was removed from one of the observed US military ships in the atoll.
Mac Graham's body never found…
The American media of the time set up a real dance for the murder case. Only 34-year-old Californian Stephanie Stearns, who already had one on her record, was present. conviction for what had happened in Palmyra 7 years ago.
The new trial, which also resulted in charges against her, was scheduled for June 9, but was postponed to October. The second defendant, the 44-year-old Walker in 1981, could not sit next to her as she escaped from prison in July 1979 and was still wanted.
Stearns was arrested in February as an accomplice in the couple's murder, paid $ 100.000 bail and was released on bail. He was also acquitted in April.
From the hearing, people learned that Buck Walker's criminal record dates back to his adolescence in Oregon, and he has been in and out of prison ever since. In Hawaii, he was stabbed by secret police trying to sell them amphetamines in a supermarket parking lot.
Leaving with a suspension, he made a new identity, became the clergyman Roy Allen and moved to Maui with his partner while he was repairing the nutcracker and she was making money working in a bar. He never returned to be tried.
From the testimonies in court it became clear that one couple had with them what they needed and more. The other couple tried to plant some seeds on the island, but they did not come out and fed on bird eggs, coconuts and borrowed food from the other boats.
The rich people of the atoll called the special couple with the tattoos that they were trying to survive on the island as shipwrecked. While Graham, on the other hand, lived the big life, inviting people every afternoon to their yacht for a little champagne in crystal glasses and barbecue with their cooked meat.
The same sources in the yacht world said that the Graham and "Allen" couples, as they were known, had a bad relationship. And their even worse fate brought the four of them to the atoll. This was also stated by Graham's friend from Hawaii, who kept telling him about the quarrels with the other couple. The four were also the only "permanent" residents of the atoll in those two months.
As for the yacht that the criminal served, he proudly said that he won it in a game of chess with a rich man he met in Palmyra. But he counted without the yachting group of Hawaii. The cycles of the well-established Marine Mac immediately recognized it yacht informing the authorities.
Walker was released from prison after 3,5 years. He was eventually arrested and tried in 1985 for the murder case. In another federal court in San Francisco. She was acquitted, he was found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison.
The killer of the atoll came out in 2007, having built 22 years. He was in poor health and had been stricken with cancer. He lived abroad in his last years and died in April 2010 of a stroke.
In the trailer where he lived in his last years, they found his own version of the story, a novel of 895 words, which he called "the true story of an island tragedy" and claimed again that he was innocent.
Despite the fact that the titles have finally come to fruition in the horrific case of 1974, a retired Los Angeles attorney named Tom Bucy decided to revisit the macabre story. And he made an unexpected discovery. A law student at the University of Hawaii wrote an article in 2009 about a skull of a homicide victim that remained unsolved for years and years.
Bucy was speechless when Muff Graham's remains were still in his basement FBI and they were never buried. And he said to do something about it. From his own research we learned that Walker did not have his own lawyer, the state gave him one.
But Stearns, who came from a well-to-do California family, was defended by someone other than Vincent Bugliosi, Charles Manson's public prosecutor! And he was acquitted.
Bugliosi even wrote a book on the case, which was for a time in bestsellers and served as a basis for film and television series. But Bucy didn't care what Stearns might have been involved in the murder, the double murder most likely, but Muff's body that remained in Hawaii's FBI cabinets for 28 years.
Bucy embarked on a major information and funding campaign to transport the remains of the tragic woman to San Diego. If he did, we never found out.